1ST!).] «"'iJ [Grote. 



with India, opened by Solomon (1015, 975 B. C.)» must have settled down 

 to staple articles. " " Considerable time elapsed from the first partner- 

 ship of Solomon with Hiram, before India became well known and its gold 



proverbial." "The Euphrates was the chief river since the main 



troubles of the Israelites originated thence." 



The author then gave a chapter on the " Testimony of Archaeology, " 

 describing the Assyrian tablets of the Genesis, Deluge, &c, and laid special 

 stress on the occurrence of the deity 11 in the Chaldean Pantheon, "stand- 

 ing at its head, the fountain and origin of deity, equivalent to the Hebrew 

 El, Eloali, with its plural Elohim, and of the Arabic Allah." 



"The word used in the Hebrew text of Genesis, and translated God, is 

 Elohim, a plural, but the verbs and pronouns agreeing with it are all in 

 the singular, excepting in the account of the sixth day. The twenty-sixth 

 verse of the first chapter of Genesis reads, ' And Elohim said : Let us make 

 man in our image, after our likeness.' The twenty-seventh verse again 

 returns to the singular by beginning, ' So Elohim created the man in his 

 own image, in the image of Elohim created he him.' We see then the 

 noun signifying the Deity is plural, but conceived as a unit in its creative 

 power. 



"And now let us look at the first verse of the account of the fourth day 

 and the fifth Chaldean tablet quoted above in full. 'It was delightful all 

 that was fixed by the Great Gods (Illinu, Hebrew Elohim) stars their ap- 

 pearance in figures of animals He arranged.' Exactly as in the Hebrew 

 text, the noun is in the plural and the pronoun and verb in the singular, 

 and this is kept up throughout the whole account. Thus, under the test 

 of the linguistic crucible, this difference also gives way and the identity of 

 the Hebrew and Chaldean accounts, not only in their incidents, but even 

 in their fundamental mythological notions must be accepted as proven." 



He then discussed the probable date of the Chaldean originals of the 



Assyrian tablet stories, and "the conclusions reached may be thus 



briefly stated : The legends having existed for a long time as oral tradi- 

 tions, were committed to writing before the union of the kingdoms or 

 before 2234 B. C, when Abraham, according to Biblical chronology, was 

 not yet born. The earliest date assigned to the composition of the Biblical 

 records is the time of Moses ; this date is positively established through 

 hieroglyphical inscriptions to be that of the king Menephthah, the Pharaoh 

 of the Exodus, who followed his father Rameses II. on the throne in the 

 year 1245 B. C. According to this the Chaldean account of Genesis would 

 be nearly 1000 years older than the composition of the Biblical legends." 



After giving "parallel myths" from other races and nations, the author 

 concluded his paper with "The testimony of facts. " 



"At the outset it will be seen to be foreign to our purpose to introduce 

 here any evidence in proof of the reality of the process of Evolution. But 

 the existing evidence that things have been brought to their present con- 

 dition by a slow process of succession, in which the more simple forms pre- 



