EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



to explain them, to assign to them their proper place in 

 universal history. Scientific history aims at an exact conformity 

 of its narrative with the event as it actually occurred. Such 

 a history of human origins is impossible. The two beacons of 

 scientific history are chronology and geography. But the 

 biblical reports of origins are not framed in any definite 

 historical epoch or located in any definite geographical region. 

 When was the world created? When did man appear? Where 

 was the cradle of mankind? To such questions Genesis gives 

 no answers. The sacred writer was far more interested in 

 assuring us that the world exists because God drew it from 

 nothing, that God acted personally in creating man, and 

 that early mankind developed under the watchful eye of 

 Providence. 



Consequently the biblical accounts of creation are not 

 historical in our modern sense of the word; they do not go 

 back to eye-witnesses or to contemporary documents. Yet 

 they do aspire to full truth, and are historical in the sense 

 that they narrate past events that really happened. The 

 creation of the universe, the formation of the first human 

 beings, and the original state of innocence are facts; and the 

 reporting of these facts is history. But it is a popular history, 

 not based on written sources or on the reminiscences of people 

 who were present when the incidents took place. The sacred 

 author could not furnish us with accurate details, for he did 

 not know them; even to provide a setting for his narrative he 

 had to draw on his imagination, and he did so in line with 

 the traditions of his time and the view of the natural world 

 shared by all men of his era. Where the modern historian 

 searches for the immediate causes of the facts he records and 

 their inter-relations, the historian of Genesis perceives at every 

 stage the direct action of God, and divine intervention marks 

 all the decisive turning points. Hence he presents us with a 

 religious history, in which facts are introduced, explained, 

 and grouped for the purpose of demonstrating a religious 

 thesis. This subordination of facts to a religious thesis does 

 not imply an alteration, much less a falsification of facts; but 

 it does justify simplifications, omissions, and the stressing of 

 certain details. Thus the narration is not complete, but frag- 

 mentary; among all the facts and events of the beginnings, 



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