The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By Science

by T. S. Ackland

Then there was a poverty in these primitive vocabularies even in reference to sensible objects, which in many cases rendered it necessary to employ the same word in more or less extensive significations, and in the Semitic languages the power of inflexion was in some directions very limited. This limitation is most remarkable in the forms used for the expression of time. One form alone was available to express those modifications which are indicated by the imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and aorist tenses of the classical languages.

Instances of all these sources of uncertainty meet us very early in Genesis. In the very first verse we have a word, [Hebrew script], which has great latitude of meaning. It is either the earth as a whole (ver. 1), or the land as distinguished from the water (ver. 10), or a particular country (ii. 11). In many cases, as in all these, the context at once determines the sense to be chosen; but there are other cases in which considerable difficulty arises. The whole question of the universality of the deluge turns, in a great degree, upon the signification which is assigned to this same word in the sixth and following chapters. In the second verse we have another word, [Hebrew script], which is capable of various interpretations. It is used throughout the Bible in the three distinct meanings of "wind," "breath," and "spirit." Where we read, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," the Jewish paraphrase is, "And a wind of God (i.e. a great wind) moved," &c. Here there is nothing in the context to assist us in determining the sense to be chosen; but, as will be seen in the sequel, modern science indicates that the Jewish interpretation is untenable, and that our translation is, consequently, the correct one. As an instance of confusion of time, we may refer to ii. 19. In our translation this verse seems to place the creation of animals after that of man; but in xii. 1, the very same form is translated by the pluperfect, "Now the Lord had said unto Abram." It ought evidently to be translated in the same way here: "And out of the ground the Lord God had formed," &c. In ii. 5, on the other hand, the pluperfect might with advantage have given place to another form: "For the Lord God did not cause it to rain." The phenomenon referred to appears to have been local and temporary. Had the pluperfect been omitted in one case and supplied in the other two sources of apparent difficulty would have been removed.

It is very clear, then, that there could be no approach to scientific accuracy in a narrative written in such a language as this. Such accuracy is, in fact, attainable only in proportion, as science has moulded language for its own purposes. But language is at all times an index of the general mental condition of the people who use it, and so the knowledge and the ideas of the men of these primitive times must have been extremely limited in all those directions with which we have to do. Accordingly, we find no trace of any doubt whether the information with reference to external objects which was received through the senses was in all cases to be depended on. There can be little doubt that to those early observers the sky was a solid vault, on the face of which the sun, moon, and planets moved in their appointed courses; the stars were points of light, golden studs in the azure canopy; the sun and moon were just as large as they appeared to be, and the earth was a solid immovable plane of comparatively small extent. At the time of the Exodus, it seems clear that, even among a people so far advanced as the Egyptians, all that lay beyond the mountains which bounded their land on the west was believed to belong not to living men, but to disembodied spirits. It was the terrible country through which the souls of the departed made their arduous way to the Hall of Judgment [Footnote: "The Nations Around," pp. 49, 50.] Accordingly, we find that the Egyptians made no attempt to extend the limits of their empire in this direction, while the monarchs of the Mesopotamian region seem to have been equally unambitious of conquest beyond the mountain ranges which bounded the valley of the Tigris on the east. Mesopotamia, then, on the east, Egypt on the west, Armenia and Asia Minor on the north, and Arabia on the south, seem, in the view of the contemporaries of Moses, to have been the utmost regions of the world. Ignorant as they were of any countries beyond these, they were, of course, equally ignorant of the numberless varieties of plants and animals that were to be found in them, and with which we are familiar. Mining was not unknown, but the mines were few and superficial; they could not reveal much of the structure of the earth, and what little they did reveal passed unnoticed. Nothing was known of the successive beds of rock which form the crust of the earth, of the fossils with which they abound, or of the gradual changes to Which they are still subject. If any one had told the men of that generation that the solid earth on which they stood, or the everlasting hills which surrounded them, were undergoing slow but steady modifications, he would have been looked upon as a madman.

A revelation, then, addressed to men whose language, whose intellectual powers, and whose stock of ideas were thus limited, must of itself also necessarily have been both limited and destitute of precision. It could only deal with things with which they had some acquaintance, or of which they could form some idea, while, from the character of the language, and the extreme brevity of the record, the treatment of even these few subjects must have been of a vague and indefinite character. Traces of a deeper knowledge there might be, but they would not lie upon the surface. They must be carefully sought for, and then they would be discernible only by those who were in possession of the key which would unlock their hidden secrets.

Such are the limitations under which the revelation was necessarily given. We have now to consider our own especial difficulties, the obstacles which stand in our way when we would discover for ourselves all the information which the record is capable of conveying. For if this record be, as we believe, the work of the Great Architect of the Universe, then it is probable that its every detail is significant; that wherever it was possible words were chosen which, when scrutinized, would convey much more information than appeared on the surface. The great problem for us to solve is, What are the difficulties which stand in our way when we would seek this knowledge, and what are the means by which those difficulties may be surmounted, and the hidden treasure displayed?

Our first difficulty arises from a matter which, viewed in another light, is one of our greatest blessings. We are familiar with the Record through the medium of our own noble version. Probably it is impossible for any translation more exactly to represent the original as it presented itself in the first instance to the minds of those to whom it was addressed. Accordingly we learn it in our earliest childhood; its majestic phrases imprint themselves on our memory; our undeveloped minds seem capable of taking in all that it was intended to convey, and so the impressions formed of it in our infancy abide with us all our days. We are contented with them, and do not trouble ourselves to inquire whether there is not something beyond, which we have not realized.

All this time we forget that, excellent as it is, it is after all only a translation, and that the very best translation cannot represent in their fulness the ideas embodied in the original. Etymological relations between words often give a force and meaning to a sentence which it is impossible to transfuse into another language, because the same relations do not exist between the words which we are constrained to employ. Then there is an intimate relation between men's thoughts and the language which they habitually use, so that those thoughts cannot be perfectly expressed in a language whose character is different. Again in every language there are many words which bear several cognate senses, which may be represented by as many different words in the language of the translation; so that if the best word is chosen, much of the fulness of the original must be lost; while it may so happen that the selected word has also a variety of significations, which do not correspond with the varying meanings of the original word, and thus senses may be ascribed to the original which it will not bear, because the reader annexes to the word in the translation a sense different from that in which it corresponds to the original word. To all these sources of imperfection must be added the fact that our translation was made at a time when science was not yet sufficiently developed to exercise any influence upon it. There was nothing to induce the translators to attempt, where it was possible, to preserve any indications of a deeper meaning, because they had no reason to suspect that any such deeper meaning existed, or that any indications of such a meaning were to be found.

To the difficulties of translation must be added the difficulties of accumulated tradition. The characteristics which mark our own childish intellect are apparent also in the collective intellect of the human race in its earlier and ruder development. There are two characteristics of the human mind in this condition, which have had a very great effect on the interpretation of this portion of the Bible.

The first of these is the impatience of doubt and uncertainty. The power of recognizing the imperfection of our knowledge, and the consequent necessity of suspending our judgment, is a power which is only gradually acquired with the accumulation of experience. The young untrained mind finds it difficult to realize the truth that any information communicated to it is not altogether within the grasp of its faculties. It must attach some definite meaning to the words; it must image to itself some way in which great events were brought about, great works were accomplished. It finds it difficult to realize a fact as accomplished, unless it can also picture to itself some way in which it might have been effected. For this purpose such knowledge as it has at its command is employed, and where that fails recourse is had to the imagination to supply the deficiency. Thus it has been with ourselves in our childhood, and thus it was in the childhood of the world. Knowledge was indeed sought, but it was not sought in the right way, and so the search often resulted in error, and this error produced its effect in the interpretation of the passage in question. The old school of inquirers started from certain abstract principles, and endeavoared to reduce the results of observation to conformity with those principles. This was the case with astronomy. The old astronomers taking as axioms the two assumptions that everything connected with the heavenly bodies must be perfect, and that the circle is the only perfect figure, easily satisfied themselves that the orbits of all the heavenly bodies must be circles. Hence came the

"Cycle on epicycle, orb on orb,"