The incredibly absurd story of Joshua’s commanding the sun to stand still for several hours has a rational explanation, regarded as a myth, well known to initiates to set forth the correction of the calendar, so as to make different periods correspondras one stops a clock to make it agree with the ringing of the standard time by the town bell. There are scores of parallels in ancient history.
Regard Solomon as a sun-myth, and you have no difficulty about the size of his family. The seven hundred wives and the three hundred concubines represented so many stars. Even the narratives of David’s exploits with the five kings, his “unpleasantness” with Saul, and his dalliance and intrigue with Bathsheba yield to the astro-mythological key.
The same is true of the story of the two she-bears that ate up the forty-two children who called shorn Elisha “bald-head.” The prophet was the Sun, denuded of his curls at a certain astronomical period; the two bears were the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the great bear and the little bear; and the forty-two children were a group of stars covered by the two bears, so that, figuratively, it might be said they were “eaten up.” And yet the late Dr. Nehemiah Adams of Boston once exclaimed: “I believe that the forty-two children who made fun of the bald head of the prophet of God are now in hell.” He once wrote an admirable book entitled Agnes; or, The Little Key, but he failed to find the skeleton key to unlock the solar fable of the prophet, the saucy little children, and the voracious bears.
Within the last few months Philadelphia has been the scene of a most imposing ecclesiastical ceremony—the investiture of the Roman Catholic archbishop with the pallium, a narrow band or sash made from wool grown upon white lambs that had been blessed by the Pope on St. Agnes’ Day. We heard the eloquent sermon of the archbishop of New York, and he commenced his plausible discourse by tracing the pallium to the mantle that fell from Elijah upon Elisha, the summer and winter sun, and was worn by him after the translation of Elijah. But we try our skeleton key, and find that Elijah represented the ascending summer sun, and Elisha the sun of autumn; and when Elijah gained the greatest height, of course his lessened rays, well called a “mantle,” fell upon the bald-headed man representing the autumn. This is the whole story in plain language, and this is the kind of stuff that ecclesiastical man-millinery is made of. The crowd stared with admiration and wonder, just as children are amused with their doll-babies, who are “sick” or “well,” “naughty” or “good,” according to the whims of the “little women” who dress and nurse them. There is a doll-baby period in every child’s history, and it may be necessary to have a doll-baby period in religion; but it does seem to some of us that it is about time for full-grown women and men to doff their bibs and aprons, lay aside their doll-babies and other ecclesiastical toys, and act as becomes men and women of full growth. Even Paul said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” It has been well said by a judicious writer: “Intelligent readers, except revelationists, well know that the Hebrew fables are myths which teem with history of a kind, if we can only separate the wheat from the chaff. So also is the story of the Creation in Genesis. We have a very valuable myth, though a purely phallic tale, such as East Indians—and perhaps they only—can thoroughly comprehend.
“We would not seek to detract from the great value of myths, for, besides their own intrinsic worth, these stories also exhibit to us many phases of ancient life and thought. Myths may be regarded as history which we have not yet been able to read. We should not discard as untrue or unhistorical any tale, biblical or other, as implying that it is false and unworthy of consideration. On the contrary, we cannot too earnestly and patiently ponder over every ancient tale, legend, or myth, as they all have some foundation and instructive lesson. Whenever an important myth has existed an important fact has doubtless been its basis.”
[CHAPTER VII. THE FABLE OF THE FALL]
“And calleth those things which be not as though they were.”—Rom. 4:17.
THE prevailing belief of Christendom to-day is, that about six thousand years ago, somewhere in Asia, the Supreme Creator took common clay and moulded it into the form of a man, somewhat as a sculptor forms the model from which the marble statue is to be constructed, and when shaped to his liking he breathed into the clay model the breath of life, and it became a living soul. This miraculous work is believed to have been begun and completed on a particular day; so that in the morning the earth contained not a man, but in the afternoon the full-grown, bearded man stood up in his majesty and assumed supremacy over all living things. This godlike man finding himself lonely, the Creator put him to sleep, and opened his side and took therefrom a rib, out of which he formed a woman, who was to be a companion, a wife, to the man; and from this particular couple have come, by ordinary generation, all the people dwelling upon the face of the earth. They are said to have been perfect, but, unfortunately for their progeny, this perfection did not long continue. Before they were blest with offspring they lost their Creator’s favor by eating fruit from a forbidden tree, and became fearfully demoralized, and, instead of begetting children endowed with their own angelic qualities, they became the unhappy parents of a race of moral monsters, of which we are all degraded and degenerate descendants.
The sacerdotal story of the fall of Adam and Eve is based upon the assumption that it is to be received as literal history, revealed by the Creator and written down in a book by a man specially chosen and plenarily inspired; so that there can be no error or mistake in the record. To question this narrative in its literal sense is most impious, and subjects the doubter to the charge of favoring infidelity.
While persons “professing and calling themselves Christians” cannot agree regarding many things deemed by them matters of vital importance, the fall of man is a matter in which they are fully agreed. The great basic dogma which underlies all modern systems of theology, Romish and Protestant, is the utter depravity of the human race through the fall of Adam, dooming a large majority of the human family to eternal punishment.