The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science

by Sir John William Dawson

The ancient mythology of Persia appears to have had six creative periods, each apparently of a thousand years, and corresponding very nearly with the Mosaic days. [58] The Chaldeans had a similar system, to which in a previous chapter we have already referred. The Etruscans possessed a history of the creation, somewhat resembling that of the Bible, and representing the creation as occupying six periods of a thousand years each. [59]

The Egyptians believed that the world had been subject to a series of destructions and renewals, the intervals between which amounted to 120,000 years, or, according to other authorities, to 300,000 or 360,000 years. This system of destruction and renewal the Egyptian priests appear to have wrought out into considerable detail, but though important truths may be concealed under their mysterious dogmas, it will not repay us to dwell on the fragments that remain of them. There can be no doubt, however, that at least the basis of the Egyptian cosmogony must have been the common property of all the Hamite nations, of which Egypt was the greatest and most permanent; and therefore in all probability derived from the ideas of creation which were current not long after the Deluge. The Egyptians appear also, as already stated, to have had a physical cosmogony, beginning with a chaos in which heaven and earth were mingled, and from which were evolved fiery matters which ascended into the heavens, and moist earthy matters which formed the earth and the sea; and from these were produced, by the agency of solar heat, the various animals. The terms of this cosmogony, as it is given by Diodorus Siculus, indicate the belief of long formative periods. [60]

The Hindoos have a somewhat extended, though, according to the translations, a not very intelligible cosmogony. It plainly, however, asserts long periods of creative work, and is interesting as an ancient cosmogony preserved entire and without transmission through secondary channels. The following is a summary, in so far as I have been able to gather it, from the translation of the Institutes of Menu by Sir W. Jones. [61]

The introduction to the Institutes represents Menu as questioned by the "divine sages" respecting the laws that should regulate all classes or castes. He proceeds to detail the course of creation, stating that the "Self-existing Power, [62] undiscovered, but making this world discernible, He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external senses, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity, even the soul of all being, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person."

After giving this exalted view of the Creator, the writer proceeds to state that the Self-existent created the waters, and then an egg, from which he himself comes forth as Brahma the forefather of spirits. "The waters are called Nara because they are the production of Nara, the spirit of God, and since they were his first Ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana, or moving on the waters. In the egg Brahma remained a year, and caused the egg to divide, forming the heaven above and the earth beneath, and the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the receptacle of waters between. He then drew forth from the supreme soul mind with all its powers and properties." The rest of the account appears to be very confused, and I confess to a great extent unintelligible to me. There follows, however, a continuation of the narrative, stating that there is a succession of seven Menus, each of whom produces and supports the earth during his reign. It is in the account of these successive Menus that the following statement respecting the days and years of Brahma occurs:

"A day of the Gods is equal to a year. Four thousand years of the Gods are called a Critya or Satya age. Four ages are an age of the Gods. One thousand divine ages (equal to more than four millions of human years) are a day of Brahma the Creator. Seventy-two divine ages are one manwantara. * * * The aggregate of four ages they call a divine age, and believe that in every thousand such ages, or in every day of Brahma, fourteen Menus are successively invested with the sovereignty of the earth. Each Menu they suppose transmits his authority to his sons and grandsons during a period of seventy-two divine ages, and such a period they call a manwantara. Thirty such days (of the Creator), or calpas, constitute a month of Brahma; twelve such months one of his years, and 100 such years his age, of which they assert that fifty years have elapsed. We are thus, according to the Hindoos, in the first day or calpa of the fifty-first year of Brahma's life, and in the twenty-eighth divine age of the seventh manwantara of that day. In the present day of Brahma the first Menu was named the Son of the Self-existent, and by him the institutes of religion and civil duties are said to have been delivered. In his time occurred a new creation called the Lotos creation." Of five Menus who succeeded him, Sir William could find little but the names, but the accounts of the seventh are very full, and it appears that in his reign the earth was destroyed by a flood. Sir William suggests that the first Menu may represent the creation, and that the seventh may be Noah. The name Menu or Manu is equivalent to "man," and signifies "the intelligent." [63]

In this Hindoo cosmogony we have many points of correspondence with the Scripture narrative: for instance, the Self-existent Creator; the agency of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit; the absolute creation of matter; the hovering of the Spirit over the primeval waters; the sevenfold division of the creative process; and the idea of days of the Creator of immense duration. If we suppose the day of Brahma in the Hindoo cosmogony to represent the Mosaic day, then it amounts to no less than 4,320,000 years; or if, with Sir W. Jones, we suppose the manwantara to represent the Mosaic day, its duration will be 308,571 years; and the total antiquity of the earth, without counting the undefined "beginning," will be either more than twenty-five or than two millions of years. It would be folly, however, to suppose that these Hindoo numbers, which are probably purely conjectural, or based on astronomical cycles, make any near approximation to the facts of the case. The Institutes of Menu are probably in their present form not of great antiquity, but there are other Hindoo documents of greater age which maintain similar views, and it is probable that the account of the creation in the Institutes is at least an imperfect version of the original narrative as it existed among the earliest colonists of India. [64] It corresponds in many points with the oldest notions on these subjects that remain to us in the wrecks of the mythology of Egypt and other ancient nations, and it aids in proving that the fabulous ages of gods and demigods in the ancient mythologies are really pre-Adamite; and belong not to human history, but to the work of creation. It also shows that the idea of long creative periods as equivalents of the Mosaic days must, in the infancy of the postdiluvian world, have been very widely diffused. Such evidence is, no doubt, of small authority in the interpretation of Scripture; but it must be admitted that serious consideration is due to a method of interpretation which thus tends to bring the Mosaic account into harmony with the facts of modern science, and with the belief of almost universal antiquity, and at the same time gives it its fullest significance and most perfect internal symmetry of parts. It is also very interesting to note the wide diffusion among the most ancient nations of cosmological views identical in their main features with those of the Bible, proving, almost beyond doubt, that these views had some common and very ancient source, and commanded universal belief among the primitive tribes of men.

I have hitherto in this part of the discussion avoided detailed reference to what may be regarded as the "prophetic day" view of the narrative of creation. This may be shortly stated as follows: In the prophetical parts of Scripture the prophet sees in vision, as in a picture or acted scene, the events that are to come to pass, and in consequence represents years or longer periods by days of vision. Now the revelation of the pre-Adamite past is in its nature akin to that of the unknown future; and Moses may have seen these wondrous events in vision—in visions of successive days—under the guise of which he presents geological time. Some things in the form of the narrative favor this view, and it certainly affords the most clearly intelligible theory as to the mode in which such a revelation may have been made to man. It is advocated by Kurtz, by the author of an excellent little work, the "Harmony of the Mosaic and Geological Records," by Hugh Miller, and more recently by Tayler Lewis. To these writers I must refer for its more full illustration, and for the grand pictorial view which it gives of the vision of the creative week.

In reviewing the somewhat lengthy train of reasoning into which the term "day" has led us, it appears that from internal evidence alone it can be rendered probable that the day of creation is neither the natural nor the civil day. It also appears that the objections urged against the doctrine of day-periods are of no weight when properly scrutinized, and that it harmonizes with the progressive nature of the work, the evidence of geology, and the cosmological notions of ancient nations. I do not suppose that this position has been incontrovertibly established; but I believe that every serious difficulty has been removed from its acceptance; and with this, for the present, I remain satisfied. Every step of our subsequent progress will afford new criteria of its truth or fallacy.

One further question of some interest is—What, according to the theory of long creative days and the testimony of geology, would be the length and precise cosmical nature of these days? With regard to the first part of the question, we do not know the actual value of our geological ages in time; but it is probable that each great creative æon may have extended through millions of years. As to the nature of the days, this may have been determined by direct volitions of the Creator, or indirectly by some of those great astronomical cycles which arise from the varying eccentricity of the earth's orbit, or the diminution of the velocity of its rotation, or by its gradual cooling.