Mi:. ;i \nsTo\i: AND GENESIS v 



waters of the earth, of the air, and of the land. Leviticus 

 1 uid reptiles, among other animals, as "sheh-ret/ " ; 

 "f all creeping land animals, among which land 

 itj.ti ily included, as "reh-mes." Our trans- 



lators, therefore, have given the true sense when they render 

 both "sheh-ret/" and "reh-mes" by "creeping things." 



Having taken a good deal of trouble to show what Gem-sis 

 i.-ii. 4 does not mean, in the preceding pages, perhaps it may 

 11 that I should briefly give my opinion as to what it docs 

 mean. I conceive that the unknown author of this part of the 

 :-uclial compilation believed, and meant his readers to 

 U-lieve, that his words, as they understood them that is to say, 

 in their ordinary natural sense conveyed the "actual historical 

 truth." When he says that such and such things happened, I 

 believe him to mean that they actually occurred and not that ho 

 imagined or dreamed them : when he says "day," I believe ho 

 uses the word in the popular sense ; when he says " made" or 

 "created," I believe he means that they came into being by a 

 process analogous to that which the people whom he addressed 

 called "making" or " creating"; and I think that, unless we 

 forget our present knowledge of nature, and, putting ourselvr, 

 b:u:k into the powition of a Phienieian or a Chald;ean philosopher, 

 from his conception of the world, we shall fail to grasp tin' 

 ling of the Hebrew writer. We must conceive the earth to 

 i immovable, more or less flattened, body, with the vault 

 of heaven above, the watery abyss below and around. Wo 

 must imagine- sun, moon, and stars to he "set " in a " firma- 

 ment" with, or in, which they move ; and above which is yet 

 another watery mass. We must consider "light" and "dark- 

 ness " to be things, the alternation of which constitutes day 

 and night, indrp.-ndently of the existence of sun, moon, and 

 -f n>. We must further suppose that, as in the case of the 

 Htory of the deluge, the Hebrew writer was acquainted with a 

 Qfl (probably ( 'haldtean or Accadian) account of the origin 

 of things, in which he substantially believed, but which lie 

 of all its idolatrous associations by substituting 



B , Ann. I!,], ai.d the like. 

 this pnint >t \i.-\v tin- first verse strikes the keynote 



