Was the Mosaic Cosmogony horrowedj'rom the Egyptians ? 59 



a line which passes very nearly through the point assigned by 

 Moses for the scene of the confusion of languages. 



The Semitic languages, so peculiar in their structure and 

 roots, having been thus limited, from early times, to the western 

 side of the Tigris, forms an insurmountable objection to the 

 conjecture that language had its origin in India. 



In no evidence, therefore, extraneous to his own writings, is 

 there any proof whatever that Moses derived his natural science 

 from Egypt or India. When we refer to his own writings, we 

 discover there highly satisfactory internal evidences that he did 

 not, and to some of these we shall now direct our attention. 



The first chapter of Genesis is written in a pure Hebrew. 

 This was the language spoken, and afterwards extensively writ- 

 ten, by the people whom Moses conducted to Palestine from the 

 land of Goshen. That it differed greatly from the language of 

 the Egyptians, we have full proof in the Coptic remains of the 

 latter, in the Egyptian proper names preserved in the Hebrew 

 writings, and also in the circumstance that Joseph, when pre- 

 tending to be an Egyptian, conversed with his brethren by means 

 of an interpreter. Yet, in the chapter in question, we find no 

 foreign terms, no appearance of its being translated from any 

 other tongue ; but, on the contrary, it bears every internal mark 

 of being purely original, for the style is condensed and idioma- 

 tical in the very highest degree. Had Moses derived his science 

 from Egypt, either by oral communication, or the study of 

 Egyptian writings, it is inconceivable that some of his terms, or 

 the style of his composition, should not, in some point or other, 

 betray the plagiary or copyist. 



But the conjecture that Moses borrowed his cosmogony from 

 the Egyptians, must rest, moreover, on a supposition that the 

 order which he assigns for the different epochs of creation had 

 been determined by a course of observation and induction, and 

 the correct application of many other highly perfected sciences 

 to the illustration of the subject, equal at least in their accuracy 

 and philosophical precision to those by which our present geo- 

 logical knowledge has been obtained. Nothing less than this 

 can account for Moses' teaching us precisely what the modem 

 geology teaches, if we allow his knowledge to be merely human. 



