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PROF. H. EDOUARD XAVILLE, D.C.L.. LL.D., OX 



may be assigned to a day. The sixth is the crowning day : man 

 is created, and the author cannot say less than that man was 

 the aim and end of the whole work. It was for him that 

 heaven and earth came out of nothing, and afterwards that 

 plants grew and that animal beings of all kinds were born, 

 therefore he was to have dominion over the whole. As to the 

 special way in which he was made male and female, and to the 

 place of the earth which was assigned to him for his abode, all 

 that is left for another tablet. In the first chapter we do not 

 hear much more about the creation of man than of animals, 

 except that he is to be the ruler. 



The second tablet is the generation of mankind. It is 

 specially devoted to man, therefore there is no need to repeat 

 everything which was in the first, there is absolutely no reason 

 to speak of fishes, nor is there any necessity for following a 

 chronological order of creation. On the large surface of earth, 

 the general features of which were described in the first- 

 chapter, God had prepared a beautiful abode for man. The 

 second chapter supplements the very scanty information which 

 we had about the sixth day, and it very aptly begins with 

 contrasting the beginning of the earth's formation with its 

 appearance at the end, when man, the masterpiece of the whole 

 fabric, was settled in his magnificent abode. An author who 

 describes a superb palace in which a prince settles for the first 

 time, may insist on the beauty of the furniture, but he is not 

 obliged to revert to the wav how it was built and to the 

 various phases of the construction. 



A great importance also has been attached to the fact that God 

 is named there Jahveh (Jehovah). But this also seems quite 

 natural. Moses, the writer, has been taught that in his dealings 

 with men the usual name of God is Jahveh. When he relates 

 what God said and did to man in the garden, he speaks of 

 Jahveh, the God he knows under that name. In the first 

 chapter, God is merely the Creator, the God of heaven and earth, 

 who does not speak differently to man and beast, except in what 

 has reference to man as the ruler of the earth, and even this 

 may be considered as an ordinance concerning the whole created 

 weald. Therefore God will be called Elohim. 



Another indication supposed to point to two different authors 

 is the question of the two trees. The first description of the 

 garden speaks of the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the 

 tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the prohibition not 

 to eat of its fruit applies only to the second, on which alone the 

 story of the Fall turns. The tree of life is mentioned only once 



