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fact that the Phoenician speech — the old Hebrew speech — was not the original 
speech of the Jewish family. The Phoenician was the language of Palestine 
when Abraham got there, and he adopted it. If that fact is borne in mind, 
in connection with the other fact, that an immense space of time elapsed 
between the creation and the deluge, to say nothing of the time from the 
deluge to the Abrahamic migration, you have a period sufficiently long to 
account for any change of language introduced and grafted upon the original 
stock of speech. But if it should be conclusively established that Hebrew 
was not the original language of the world, you have not touched the 
integrity of the Biblical narrative at all. The Biblical narrative does not say 
that it was the original language, and that has always been too much assumed 
and taken for granted. With regard to the word Eve, I must note, that, 
whatever was the original name in the original language, Moses, writing for 
the Hebrew people, would translate the word into its Hebrew equivalent, 
just as, if he had been writing in Greek, he would probably have called it 
Zoe. What we are required to hold is, that the names of Scripture stand in 
precisely the same relation to the language of the Bible that they would 
originally to the language in which they were given. With regard to the 
meaning of the words, I hold the view of the present Archbishop of Dublin, 
who, in his work on the Synonyms of the New Testament, says it is in pro- 
portion as we are acquainted with them that we get at the precise meaning 
of the New Testament. Dr. Gladstone has hinted that the Scriptural writers 
possessed more scientific knowledge than we have credited them with, and 
that they were scientifically in advance of their times. Now I think that 
was not the case, and that it is a mistake to suppose anything of the kind. 
Dr. Candlish put the matter in this way : the problem to be solved was how 
could the Divine mind, enlightened in everything and comprehending every- 
thing, convey to finite minds the revelation of spiritual and moral truth, 
which should be, with respect to other truths of revelation, the admiration of 
each succeeding age, and yet should be so couched as to be always in perfect 
consistency with other knowledge, and so that the expressions of the Holy 
Scriptures on scientific matters should teach nothing whatever. We are 
bound to arrive at the conclusion that we see the action of the Divine mind 
in this, that the language of the Bible was so framed as not to teach anything 
on these points more than was known at the time, while at the same time 
it was so large and elastic as to include all the developments of the scientific 
truths which have come to light. As to consciousness, Mr. Bow will remember 
that the argument for the identity of the resurrectioned body is, that what 
proves the identity is the consciousness. 
Mr. Beddie. — Strictly speaking, the paper before us is more a paper of 
exegesis than a scientific paper, but it would be impossible for us quite to 
exclude papers of this nature from the Institute ; and we should bear in 
mind that it is of great importance to have views of this kind brought 
forward in a society like this, where they will be met with such opposing 
criticisms as we have had offered upon the paper read this evening. I find it 
contains a great deal of what Dr. Baylee has already put forward in his 
