in the First Chapter of Genesis. 159 



to be received by us in the sense they were understood by the 

 people to whom he addressed himself. If, when speaking of the 

 creation, instead of using the terms light and water, he had spo- 

 ken of the former as a wave, and of the latter as the union of 

 two invisible airs, he would assuredly have been perfectly unin- 

 telligible to his countrymen. At the distance of above three 

 thousand years his writings would just have begun to be com- 

 prehended, and possibly three thousand years hence, those views 

 may be as inapplicable to the then existing state of human 

 knowledge, as they would have been when the first chapter of 

 Genesis was written. 



Those, however, who attempt to disprove the facts presented 

 by observation, by placing them in opposition to revelation, 

 have mistaken the very groundwork of the question. The re- 

 velation of Moses itself rests, and must necessarily rest, on testi- 

 mony. Moses, the author of the oldest of the sacred books, 

 lived about 1500 years before the Christian era, or about 3300 

 years ago. The oldest manuscripts of the Pentateuch at pre- 

 sent known, appear to have been written about 900 years ago.* 

 These were copied from others of older date, and those again 



• Mr Home, in the IntroducHon to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures, 

 states, that the total number oi; Hebrew MSS. collated by Dr Kennicott 

 for his critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, was about 630. In that workj 

 Mr Home gives an account of ten of the most ancient of these MSS., three 

 of which contain the first chapter of Genesis, viz : — 



No. 4. Codex Caesanae, in the Malalesta Library at Bologna, written 

 about the end of the eleventh century. 



No. 6. Codex Mediolanensis, written towards the close of the twelfth cen- 

 tury. " The beginning of the book of Genesis, and the end of Leviticus and 

 Deuteronomy, have been written by a later hand.'' 



No. 8. Codex Parisiensis, 27, about the commencement of the twelfth cen- 

 tury. 



No. 10. Codex Parisiensis, 24, written at the beginning of the twelfth cen- 

 tury. 



In the same work is an account of six of the most ancient of the 479 col- 

 lated by M. De Rossi. Two of these contain the first chapter of Genesis, 

 and the date of both is about the end of the eleventh or beginning of the 

 twelfth century. Of the manuscripts of the Samaritan versions of the Pen- 

 tateuch, cited in the same work, — one, the Codex 197, in the Ambrosian Li- 

 brary at Milan, Dr Kennicott thinks, is certainly not later than the tenth 

 century. 



