Human Origins

by S. Laing

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

But admitting this, I do not see how any candid man, who is at all acquainted with the results of modern science and of historical criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends, and traditions of rude and unscientific ages which have no pretension to be true statements, or real history.

After all this is only applying to the Old, the same principles of interpretation as are applied to the New Testament. If the theory of literal inspiration requires us to accept the manifest impossibilities of Noah's Deluge, why does it not equally compel us to believe that there really was a certain rich man who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar named Lazarus, and definite localities of a Heaven and Hell within speaking distance of one another, though separated by an impassable gulf. The assertion is made positively and without any reservation. There was a rich man; Lazarus died, and was carried to Abraham's bosom; and Dives cried to Abraham, who answered him in a detailed colloquy. But common sense steps in and says, all this never actually occurred, but was invented to illustrate by a parable the moral truth that it is wrong for the selfish rich to neglect the suffering poor.

Why should not common sense equally step in, and say of the narrative of the Garden of Eden with its trees of Knowledge and of Life, that here is an obvious allegory, stating the problem which has perplexed so many generations of men, of the origin of evil, man's dual nature, and how to reconcile the fact of the existence of sin and suffering with the theory of a benevolent and omnipotent Creator? Or again, why hesitate to admit that the story of the Deluge is not literal history, but a version of a chapter of an old Chaldæan solar epic, revised in a monotheistic sense, and used for the purpose of impressing the lesson that the ways of sin are ways of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety? This is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and what the most liberal and learned Anglican Divines of the present day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and Canon Cheyne, insisting on "the fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical and historical problems of the Old Testament." We hear a great deal about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions try to represent it as something very obscure and unintelligible, spun from the inner consciousness of German pedants. But really there is nothing obscure about it. It is simply the criticism of common sense applied from a higher point of view, which embraces, not the immediate subject only, but all branches of human knowledge which are related to it. This new criticism bears the same relation to the old, as Mommsen's History of Rome does to the school-boy manuals which used to assume Romulus and Remus, Numa and Tarquin, as real men who lived and reigned just as certainly as Julius Cæsar and Augustus, and who found nothing to stagger them in Livy's speaking oxen.

This criticism has now been carried so far by the labours of a number of earnest and learned men in all the principal countries of Europe for the last century, that it has become to a great extent one of the modern sciences, and although there are still differences as to details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of Geology or Biology. The conclusions of enlightened English divines like Canons Driver and Cheyne are practically very nearly the same as those of foreign professors, like Kuenen, Welhausen, Dillman, and Renan, and any one who wishes to have any intelligent understanding of the Hebrew Bible must take them into consideration.

Although the Old Testament does not carry history back nearly as far as the records of Egypt and Chaldæa, still, when freed from the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their manners and customs, their first attempts to solve problems of science and philosophy, and of their popular legends and traditions.

It is with these historical results only that I propose to deal, and this not in the way of minute criticism, but of the broad, common-sense aspects of the question, and in view of the salient facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of literature on the subject, of which it may be said, in the words of St. John's Gospel, that if all that has been written were collected, "I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books."

I may begin by referring to the extreme uncertainty that attaches to all ancient history unless it is confirmed by monuments, or by comparison with annals of other nations which have been so confirmed. The instance of Cyrus is a most instructive one. Here is one of the greatest conquerors the world has seen, and the founder of a mighty Empire; who flourished at a comparatively recent period, and whose life and exploits are related by well-known historians, such as Herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death; confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of Hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. The picture given of him is that of the son of a Median princess by an obscure Persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity, he is said to have been exposed in infancy and saved miraculously or marvellously; he incites the poor and hardy people of Persia to revolt; defeats the Medes, consolidates Media and Persia, conquers Lydia and all Asia Minor; and finally, as the "servant of the most High God," and instrument of his vengeance on Babylon, takes and destroys the cruel city of Nebuchadnezzar, and allows the Jews to return from exile out of sympathy with their religion.

Unexpectedly a tablet of Cyrus himself turns up, and plays havoc alike with prophets and historians Instead of being the son of an obscure Persian father, he proves to be the legitimate descendant of a long line of Elamite kings; instead of being a servant of the most High God, or even a Zoroastrian, he appears as a devoted worshipper of the Chaldæan gods, Assur, Merodach, and Nebo; so far from being an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of Babylon, he enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last native king Nabonidus. It is apparent from this and other records, that Darius and not Cyrus was the real founder of the Persian Empire. Cyrus indeed founded a great Empire, but it fell to pieces after the death of his son Cambyses and the usurpation of the Magi, and it was Darius who, after years of hard fighting, suppressed revolts, really besieged and took Babylon, and reconstituted the Empire, which now for the first time became Persian and Zoroastrian.

Such an example teaches us to regard with considerable doubt all history prior to the fifth or sixth century b.c. which is not confirmed by contemporary monuments. Of such nations, Egypt and Chaldæa (including in the latter term Assyria) alone give us a series of annals, proved by monuments confirming native historians, which extend for some 4000 years back, from the commencement of what may be called the modern and scientific history of the Greek period.