The account of the movement thus begun is next to be given.[311]
II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
At the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural
interpretation were certain ideas regarding the first five books
of the Old Testament. It was taken for granted that they had been
dictated by the Almighty to Moses about fifteen hundred years
before our era; that some parts of them, indeed, had been written
by the corporeal finger of Jehovah, and that all parts gave not
merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology. It was also held,
virtually by the universal Church, that while every narrative or
statement in these books is a precise statement of historical or
scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains vast hidden
meanings. Such was the rule: the exceptions made by a few
interpreters here and there only confirmed it. Even the
indifference of St. Jerome to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship
did not prevent its ripening into a dogma.
The book of Genesis was universally held to be an account, not
only divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the creation
and of the beginnings of life on the earth; an account to which all
discoveries in every branch of science must, under pains and
penalties, be made to conform.
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