THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 183 



of the East. This sagacious hypothesis of ITon- 

 tanus'a is adopted not only by Joseph a Costa 

 and George Horn, author of a work published in 

 1652, on "The Origin of the Americans" (De 

 Originibus Americanis), but by all those who 

 were concerned about reconciling with the Bible 

 the discovery of America. Indeed, the problem 

 was worthy of the assiduous study of the theo- 

 logians. As we know, the Bible makes Shem, 

 Ham, and Japhet, the ancestors of the Asiatics, 

 the Africans, and the Europeans — America was 

 overlooked ; but now we have in Joktan an an- 

 cestor for the people of that continent. 



The discovery of America must have been 

 highly unpleasant news to the orthodox Church. 

 St. Augustine, that Christian sophist and rhetori- 

 cian who has always been over-estimated, says 

 of the disputed point of the existence of antip- 

 odes : " It is impossible that the opposite side 

 of the earth should have inhabitants, for, among 

 the descendants of Adam, Holy Scripture men- 

 tions no such progeny." Words fail Lactantius 

 to characterize properly the foolishness of the 

 mathematicians and astronomers of his time (third 

 century), who regarded the existence of antipodes 

 as an open question, and a possibility, nay, even 

 as a probability. " Is it possible," he exclaims, 

 " for men to be so silly as to believe that on the 

 other side of the earth the trees are turned down- 

 ward, and that the feet of the inhabitants are 

 higher than their heads? If we ask for the 

 proofs of the monstrous opinion that objects on 

 the other side do not fall downward, we get the 

 reply that it is a physical property that heavy 

 bodies, like the spokes of a wheel, tend toward 

 the centre; while light bodies, as, for instance, 

 clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre toward 

 the heavenly spaces. Truly, I know not how I 

 shall express myself about men who, walking in 

 the wrong path, still obstinately pursue it, and 

 labor to strengthen one foolish assumption with 

 another still more foolish." 



Nothing shows more plainly how severe was 

 the blow suffered by the mystical view of creation, 

 in the discovery of America, than does the stu- 

 dious diligence with which men strove to find 

 America in the Bible. As formerly it used to 

 be shown from the Scripture that the Western 

 Hemisphere could not be inhabited, so men strove 

 now to prove that this quarter of the world had 

 been well known to the Jews ; nay, that the Jews 

 had from immemorial time been in commercial 

 relations with the people of America. The name 



of the country from which Solomon derived his 

 treasures of gold, the Ophir of the ancients, was 

 simply an anagram of Peru, the land of gold : 

 Phiro = Peru, a very simple matter. Suddenly a 

 light broke upon Mercurius, Postellus, Goropius, 

 Becanus, Montanus, and other scholars of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they 

 vied with one another in belittling the services 

 of Columbus, who had played them so scurvy a 

 trick. They said that Solomon and all the peo- 

 ples of antiquity had sent their ships to Ophir — 

 the present Peru — and there was no new discov- 

 ery at all. 



The worthy Milius even sympathizes with 

 these depreciations of Columbus's services, ex- 

 pressing himself as follows about the American 

 Ophir : " We may conjecture, nay, even with 

 certainty conclude, that the golden land of Ophir, 

 from which, besides the best and finest gold, 

 Solomon also derived a* great quantity of valua- 

 ble wood, ivory, apes, peacocks, and parrots, is 

 this very Peruvian province. At the present 

 time we, too, derive from this same country a 

 multitude of the same wonderful animals, precious 

 woods of every kind, as ebony, paradise-wood, 

 red, yellow, and white Brazil-wood; also the 

 holy wood called guaiacum, sassafras, and many 

 others. From the Red Sea, whence Solomon, 

 that wisest of kings, used to fit out and dispatch 

 his fleets, it has been found that the voyage can 

 be conveniently made to America. From all this 

 it very clearly appears that Solomon's Ophir is 

 the- American country, Peru. This conclusion is 

 further confirmed by the Bible text which says 

 that the voyage to and fro took three years, 

 whence it appears that the land of Ophir must 

 have been very distant. But who could suppose 

 that the voyage from the Arabian coast to the 

 islands of Japan and Malacca, or to any other 

 part of the East Indies, would take three years ? " 

 The author regards it as very probable that the 

 voyage, then as yet unattempted, " from the Red 

 Sea and its world-renowned port of Thir to 

 Peru " and back again, would have taken three 

 years, and thence draws the gratifying conclusion 

 that the wise Solomon must have enjoyed no 

 contracted geographical outlook. 



Surely, free research was almost nipped in 

 the bud by the necessity imposed upon the stu- 

 dent of taking account of traditional beliefs. 

 Only after long struggling has it been able to 

 reach that atmosphere of liberty in which alone 

 it can live and thrive. — Kosmos. 



