While his readers soon realized that these
assumptions and assertions of overzealous critics no more disproved
the main results of biblical criticism than the wild guesses of
Kepler disproved the theory of Copernicus, or the discoveries of
Galileo, or even the great laws which bear Kepler's own name, they
found new mines sprung under some of the most lofty fortresses of
the old dogmatic theology. A few of the statements of this champion
of orthodoxy may be noted. He allowed that the week of seven days
and the Sabbath rest are of Babylonian origin; indeed, that the
very word "Sabbath" is Babylonian; that there are two narratives of
Creation on the Babylonian tablets, wonderfully like the two
leading Hebrew narratives in Genesis, and that the latter were
undoubtedly drawn from the former; that the "garden of Eden" and
its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldea in
pre-Semitic days; that the beliefs that woman was created out of
man, and that man by sin fell from a state of innocence, are drawn
from very ancient Chaldean-Babylonian texts; that Assyriology
confirms the belief that the book Genesis is a compilation; that
portions of it are by no means so old as the time of Moses; that
the expression in our sacred book, "The Lord smelled a sweet
savour" at the sacrifice made by Noah, is "identical with that of
the Babylonian poet"; that "it is impossible to believe that the
language of the latter was not known to the biblical writer" and
that the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife was drawn in part from
the old Egyptian tale of _The Two Brothers_.
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