THE BIBLE NARRATIVE AND HEATHEN TRADITIONS. 11 



thology, " Bryant's Analysis," it was represented that there were certain particu- 

 lar facts which were first recorded in the Bible, and which could be recognized 

 in nearly all the mythologies of the East, and it occurred to us that possibly these 

 same points or facts might also be traced in the traditions of other and even dis- 

 tant lands. We have confined our attention then to the earliest recorded facts 

 of the Bible. It remains for us to show that these many resemblances of certain 

 traditions among nearly all races to the scripture account can be explained on no 

 other supposition than that of a common historic origin. 



The scientific proof may be wanting, yet we maintain that the various cos- 

 mogonies contained in so many different traditions, the universal prevalence of a 

 certain form of tree and serpent worship, the very common tradition of a deluge, 

 and the various traditions of ancestral history and migrations, are all strong 

 proofs that the same facts recorded in the Bible are the basis of the resem- 

 blances. We may call the Bible story an allegory, or believe, as Tyndall pro- 

 fesses to, that it is a poem ; or we may suppose that the processes of nature were 

 the basis of the sacred record itself, yet the similarity of traditions in these 

 particular points will need to be accounted for. 



Now, taking into consideration the fact that these were the common inheri- 

 tance of the Semitic nations of the East found in history, dug up in buried tab- 

 lets, recognized in mythology, celebrated by poetry, repeated in many of the 

 sacred books, and confirmed by many of the recent discoveries, it seems proba- 

 ble that they also might be transmitted through the lines of emigration, and pre- 

 served both by tradition and history in other and distant lands. The very dis- 

 covery, then, of myths or traditions which bear a resemblance to these records 

 of the East would certainly render the supposition plausible that the Bible itself, 

 or the facts there recorded, were really the basis of these resemblances. 



In taking this position we are not undertaking to prove or disprove the au- 

 thenticity or the authority of the Bible as a religious book, but only as a matter 

 of scientific investigation we consider ourselves at liberty to give this construc- 

 tion to the resemblance. 



The cosmogony of the Bible may have been derived from a nature myth, 

 and the serpent and tree may have been the natural objects of veneration and 

 fear; the story of the flood may have been that of a local deluge, like others in 

 other lands; the dispersion may have been an historical event; the confusion of 

 tongues also an event which was inevitable from the growth of society and sepa- 

 ration of families ; the story of the fall and subsequent woes, and defections, and 

 corruptions may all have been mere national and historical events which are re- 

 corded in the Bible in the familiar and yet reverential style ; but the question 

 still remains, how came the same facts to be so extensively recorded and by so 

 widely separated peoples. 



If these stories of a deluge, of a tree and serpent worship, and of the crea- 

 tion were so similar because each had similar experience, and there were local 

 causes in each which would give rise to the resemblances, still we are at a loss to 



