matters not one bit what the records or suggests about the human condition of a group of women and men who ex- the history of the earth as far as modern science is concerned, perienced life differently because of another man, Jesus. In and it should not become an issue between the scientist and their construction of myths about that man are they very dif- the person of biblical faith. The public should not allow it to ferent from us? If they were disciples, often blinded by devo- disorder rational scientific inquiry in the public schools. tion, do they differ markedly from modern disciples of Freud There is a line in Hadrian VII in which Hadrian is accus- and Jung, Marx and Jefferson, Lincoln and King, Barth and ed of being in revolt against the faith. He replies, "I am not in Brunner? We need not strike out in anger or ill will at biblical revolt against the faith, I am in revolt against the faithful." writers merely because a lunatic fringe desires to co-opt them. For many humanists still related to the Christian tradition, no When Pat Robertson asserts that the United States is men- matter how tenuously, this statement applies. For, indeed, in tioned only once in Ezekiel (chapter 38, for the curious) it is the present decade the critic and the Christian humanist alike not the author of Ezekiel who is a fool! are camp followers, to borrow a phrase from Van Harvey, We can most assuredly take heart that our human ra- unacceptable to the faithful but unwilling to forsake the faith. tionality is pitted against a band of religionists who, taking a Now, by "the faith" I mean quite a different thing from cue from "Amazing Grace," claim to be wretches in the sight that suggested by various current orthodoxies. It does not oc- of God. We would be more comfortable with an appellation cur to me that I am required to abandon a worthy philosophy written by Emerson and reportedly applied by Thomas Hux- just because of a rather consistent pattern of lunacy asso- ley to Charles Darwin: "Beware when the great God lets loose ciated therewith. As a humanist I am prepared to respond to a thinker on this planet." •

Creationism: 500 Years of Controversy

ANNRIMITIN

Gerald Larue

When Christianity became the religion of kings and emperors the cosmos came into being through a series of divine acts and came to dominate the Western world, it inherited from spread across the Jewish week of six workdays. Because this Judaism a cosmology and a weltanschauung that fitted well revelation was conceived as divine truth, to doubt was with what was known of the world at that time. The earth was heresy. believed to be a flat disc, surrounded by seas. Above was the To be sure, the Christian and Jewish worlds confronted firmament, the hard shell of heaven, and above the firma- other ideas. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other ment were the primeval waters. The sun, moon, and stars Europeans had differing theories, myths, and theologies, but were set immediately below the heavens, while somewhere the actual structure of the world in these so-called "pagan" above in a never too clearly defined locale was the realm of cultures was not out of keeping with the biblical view. It was the deity and the court of heaven. Below the earth was the only necessary to insist that the biblical view was correct or to place of the dead, the underworld, and the kingdom of Satan. enter into dialogue with the philosopher's teachings. Farther below this were the primeval waters. It was not until the time of Copernicus (1473-1543) and Sandwiched between heaven and hell, between the realms during the following five hundred years that the conflict bet- of light and darkness, were humans who inhabited the earth ween the church — or religion — and science developed. That and whose welfare depended upon their roles in the continual conflict is still going on. struggle between good and evil. For guidance toward the The Polish astronomer Copernicus, who said that good and for warnings against evil, God had provided reveal- planetary motion was heliocentric, lived at a time when other ed Scriptures. Included in those Scriptures was an account, horizons were being broadened. Christopher Columbus had believed to have been written by the deliverer Moses, of how sailed from Spain in 1492 and had discovered a new world,

Summer, 1982 9 and Vasco da Gama had sailed to India (1493). The world was John Ray had argued that fossils were the remains of living quite a bit larger than before. Questions were being raised organisms whose presence revealed that the earth's surface about the geography of Genesis. There was excitement in the had undergone dramatic changes that could not be reconciled air, and the implications of these new discoveries had not yet with the Genesis creation account. had an impact upon the Christian church. It was not until the Georges Leopold Cuvier (1769-1832), the paleontologist, Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo began to make his had to some degree allayed the fears of believers by saying thinking known that the real conflict between science and that the earth had experienced a series of cataclysms that had religion began. Doubts were raised about the validity of destroyed its inhabitants, so that the idea of the Flood was biblical cosmology. left secure. But there still remained problems with the six days It is interesting to note that at this time the church did of creation. Something of the resentment of the ordinary not take a doctrinal stand, to try to show that science was churchgoer was expressed by the poet William Cowper wrong. Rather, personal limitations were put upon Galileo by (1731-1800): Cardinal Bellarmine so that certain precepts could not be taught. In 1615 Bellarmine wrote to the Carmelite Foscarini: Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there If there was a real demonstration that the sun is in the center Extract a register, by which we learn, and that the earth goes around it, then one would have to pro- That he who made it, and revealed its date ceed with much care in expounding the places of Scripture to Moses, was mistaken in its age. which seem to be contrary to that, and it would be better to say that we do not understand them than to declare that false which has been demonstrated. Between 1830 and 1833 the British geologist Sir Charles Meanwhile in China, where Roman Catholic missionaries had Lyell (1797-1875) published Principles of Geology, in which taken the theories of Galileo, correct calculations were made he tried to accommodate geological findings to Genesis by for an eclipse and, the missionaries reported, the Ptolemaic postulating a series of creative acts, but when he published formulae were found to be in error.2 Evidence for the Antiquity of Man in 1863 he demonstrated About this same time James Ussher (1581-1656), convincingly the presence of humans long before the time archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, determined that Adam was allowed by biblical chronology. The community of believers, created in the year 4004 B.C. and that the flood occurred 1655 however, held fast to the established date of 4004 B.C. Some years later in the year 2349 B.C. John Lightfoot of Cam- would expand the six days to six ages, but the conviction re- bridge stated in 1642 that the creation of man had taken place mained that somewhere, back in distant history, Adam and at 9:00 A.M. on October 23, 4004 B.C. Archbishop Ussher Eve had been created. published his chronology titled Annales Veteris et Novi There were objections to the attempts to reconcile the six Testamentum between 1650 and 1654. By 1703 the dates he days of creation with geological epochs. In 1855, Tayler proposed were being printed in the margins of the King James Lewis wrote: Bible published by Charles Bill. They have continued to be printed in modern times, and thus they tend to be given the It is a wretched self-deception, when we fancy we have a belief same authority as other Biblical materials by believers. grounded on the Scriptures, which after all rests for its main But by this time the rationalist movement was beginning. support on Buckland, or Lyell, or Hugh Miller ... If the Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes (1592-1650), twenty-four-hour hypothesis is the one, and the only one, that both of whom professed orthodoxy, raised doubts about the comes from a faithful and exact exegesis of the Sacred Words, he [the believer] must accept it in spite of any difficulties of authority of the Bible because they made reason the ultimate science; he must believe — as faith is often required to do — criterion. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and his followers, against appearances, however striking, or reasonings however with their concepts of celestial mechanics in which there was plausible. And he would not be irrational in so doing ... We no reference to a creator, were to start in motion scientific can get along very well without geology; our intellectual and ideas that would later have an impact on the church. Newton, moral dignity would not be impaired had no such science ever however, held that his research only served to enhance the existed. But where are we without Revelation, if the very initial wonder of the universe and exalt the wisdom of the creator. recognition of Man, and of the Earth, turns out to be all false, Since many church people subscribed to his idea, reveal- a lying legend — a work of fancy or designed deception?3 ed religion and science were able to coexist. Certainly for the ordinary person the biblical view of the relationship between Lewis proposed to study the Bible without being in- God and man had not been seriously affected by the Coper- fluenced by science by using the following design:4 nican removal of the earth from the center of the universe, nor by Newton's thesis that the heavens were subject to the 1. "Revelation is independent of science." same mechanistic patterns that could be observed in everyday 2. Revelation uses its own language which is not scientific, experience. nor poetic or metaphysical, but is strictly phenomenal — "that The real clash came with the confrontation of the fin- is, it takes as representatives of remote energy — remote either dings of geologists. Before the end of the seventeenth century, in time, or causal sequence, or both — those last phenomena

10 Fee Irt wuor or appearances through which these remote energies finally Although the thinking of the seventeenth century seemed manifest themselves directly to the senses, and which are, to be aimed at accommodating religion and science, the foun- therefore, the same for all ages and all men ... These dations for rational criticism were being laid. The basic ultimate appearances or 'the things that are seen' thus furnish assumption was that, in matters of religion, reason is the name to the unseen ultimate causality or the remote supreme. For example, John Locke (1632-1704) in his Essay creative energy. Thus in phenomenal language, to make the on Human Understanding (1690) wrote that reason and firmament, is to bring into being, and into action, that system revelation were not opposed. or series of physical law or laws, which terminates in the manifestation so named ... 3. "The Bible may be, in some respects, designed to teach "The relationship between the Babylonian creation us natural and not merely moral truth ... the Bible, rightly account ... and the Hebrew version of Genesis I is interpreted, and its meaning fairly ascertained, is of authority unmistakable.... In both stories divine spirit is in whatever it proposes to teach us of the natural world .. . " 4. "Creation is an alternating series of growths or involved: in the Babylonian, divine spirit and natures ... each have a supernatural beginning ... [which] cosmic matter coexist and are coeternal; in the Bi- followed by natural growths, constitute the chronological ble divine spirit exists independently of cosmic mat- periods of the divine working, of which there are six mention- ter and creates it." ed by Moses as having a direct relation to the birth or genesis of our own world, in its present formation." But were there limits to the supernatural communication 5. "These creative periods are indefinite ... They are called days for three reasons: 1st. Because this is the best of truth? Many felt that Christianity had to be accepted as language the Hebrew or any other tongue could true and the Bible as credible. To support that thesis a statute furnish ... 2d. Because of its cyclical or periodical character, was enacted in Britain that provided that anyone "who shall and 3d. because this periodical character is marked by two deny the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be contrasted states which could not be so well expressed in any of divine authority" could not hold public office, and for a way as by those images that in all the early tongues enter into second offense would be sentenced to three years imprison- the terms for evening and morning." ment. Indeed, in 1697 an eighteen-year-old man, Thomas 6. "This ... is forced upon us by considerations which Aikenhead, was hanged in Edinburgh because he said that lie upon the very face of the account, especially in the descrip- Ezra wrote the Pentateuch and that Moses had learned magic tion of the first four periods which preceded the regular divi- in Egypt.6 sion of days by the sun. By representing them as ante-solar, the But the confrontation could not be deterred. The Deists writer ... gives us a clear intimation that the days ... are not the common diurnal revolutions measured by the rising could accept the idea of a deity that created the heavens and and setting of heavenly bodies ... " the earth, but the crude anthropomorphisms that insisted that 7. "The key-note ... comes from the distinction which is this same God made clothing for Adam and Eve and muzzled believed to exist, between the language of Paul, Hebrews 11:3 lions to protect Daniel was a bit too much to accept. The and that of the Mosaic account in Genesis — the one referring Deist controversy weakened the traditionalist position and the to the essential, the other to the phenomenal ... " publication of many aspects of the debate in pamphlets tend- 8. "An important aid in interpreting the days in ed to remove the Bible from the secure pedestal it had oc- Genesis ... is derived from a right view of the Hebrew olam, cupied during the seventeenth century. and the Greek aion, as they so frequently occur in the Old and Despite the defensive efforts of the literalists, the attack New Testaments. These terms show that there existed in the on the Bible continued. Even the idea that the divine Creator earliest use of language, a conception of durations transcen- should reveal his nature and purpose to a small barbaric ding any of the ordinary divisions of time as measured by the group living in an obscure corner of the earth through "a heavenly phenomena ... This Hebrew conception of olams, or of world under that name, is in striking contrast with the series of trivial and sometimes outrageous laws and anec- modern notion that five or six thousand years carries us back, dotes"7 was simply unacceptable. The impact of Thomas not only to the beginning of the human race, but to the ab- Hobbes (1588-1679), who in Leviathan disputed the Mosaic solute beginning of all created substance with nothing before it authorship of the , and of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), — if we accept the solitary divine existence — but an eternal the Dutch philosopher and theologian who argued that the Bi- blank." ble should be treated like any other book, were not to be denied. Lewis argued that "the Bible does not teach that the The battle continued into the eighteenth century with creative days were twenty-four hours long, but leaves a great contenders like David Hume (1711-1776), Voltaire latitude in this respect, determining nothing about their dura- (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-1778), and popularizers of the tion except that they must be in harmony with the growths debate, such as Tom Paine (1737-1809). Now, however, a new and processes assigned to each."5 In other words, though he emphasis was developing — the analytical approach to Pen- argues that he does not approach the Bible from the point of tateuchal studies. view of the science current in his time, he ends up Questions about the Mosaic authorship of the Torah had demonstrating that the Bible is in accord with science. His is been raised long before the eighteenth century. After about only one of the attempts to make an adjustment between the 400 B.C. it was commonly accepted that Moses wrote the Hebrew creation account and science. Torah, but there were some who questioned. The author of

Summer, 1982 11 Fourth Ezra (about A.D. 90) thought that the entire Torah 3. The third source, "D," consists of the Deuteronomic had been lost and that it had been revealed to or dictated to code of 621 B.C. and was added by a redactor (RD) about Ezra under divine inspiration. Jerome (died 420), the 550 B.C. translator of the Bible into Latin Vulgate, was able to accept 4. The fourth source, "P," was composed between 500 Moses as the author and Ezra as the editor. About A.D. 500 a and 450 B.C. and was added by the final redactor (RP) about passage in the Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b) suggested that 400 B.C. when the Torah was completed. Joshua wrote the last eight verses of Deuteronomy, in which Subsequently, other scholars found minor sources within Moses describes his own death, funeral, and burial. the four. Still others found major sources such as that labeled During the Reformation, scholars began to point to "S" by Pfeiffer and "L" by Eissfeldt. The source theory is other problems in the Torah associated with shifts in diction still current, but modern scholars have pushed the dates back. and style and with such inconsistencies as the mention of the Both J and E are now dated in the second half of the tenth city of Dan, which did not come into existence until after century B.C. — that is, during the reign of David and Moses' death. It was suggested that other hands besides those Solomon for J, and during the reign of Jeroboam of Israel for of Moses were involved in recording the accounts, either in E. Many would insist that P was begun during the last half of touching up the originals or in introducing materials of the sixth century when the Jews were exiles in Babylon. All human origin. would agree that the Torah reached its final state by the time of Ezra, about 400 B.C. There have been battles against this hypothesis. Some would dismiss the whole argument and return to the Scrip- "So far as modern scholarship is concerned, Hebrew tures as they are published today. There have been debates creation myths are no more factual or scientific than over datings and sequences. The result has been the same: the those of other peoples." concept of the Torah as a divinely revealed document has come under challenge, and the Torah as the handiwork of dif- ferent authors and editors has been demonstrated. During the eighteenth century what is now called "the At least two differing creation accounts have been older documentary hypothesis" was developed. Individuals recognized, and the remnants of others are scattered like Pastor H. B. Witter (about 1711) of Hildesheim, and throughout the Bible. Through the research of Hermann Jean Astruc, the son of a Protestant minister who became a Gunkel (1862-1932), who is often called the father of biblical Roman Catholic after studying medicine at Montpellier (died form-criticism, differing literary categories have been iden- 1766), began to recognize sources within the Pentateuch. tified. Gunkel was influenced by the folkloric studies of the Astruc suggested that Moses had two sources from which he brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, who classified folk- drew: an "A" source, which used the divine name Elohim for traditions as fairy-tales, sagas, and legends and myths. Myths the deity, and a "B" source, which used the divine name were defined as "stories of the gods." Because he believed Yahweh. His work was expanded in a three-volume Introduc- that myths require more than one deity, Gunkel found only tion to the by J. G. Eichhorn, published bet- "faded myths" within the Old Testament.8 Most scholars ig- ween 1780 and 1783. And there were other hypotheses. nore this comment and the creation accounts are labeled, Alexander Geddes, an English Catholic priest, proposed together with creation accounts from other cultures, as a "fragment hypothesis" which was later developed in Ger- "myths." So far as modern scholarship is concerned, Hebrew many by J. S. Vater. This theory said that the Pentateuch was creation myths are no more factual or scientific than those of compiled in the time of Solomon from fragmentary remains other peoples. of two older documents that used differing divine names. The Two more developments were to bear upon the creation fragments were combined by a redactor who disregarded stories in the Bible. The first was the publication of Darwin's continuity. Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. The second was the Still other hypotheses appearing during the nineteenth discovery of Mesopotamian creation myths. century led to what has been called "the new documentary The pre-Darwinian concept of species implied an absence hypothesis." This bears the names of K. H. Graf and J. of intermediate links, and when in Charles Darwin's time Wellhausen. They proposed that the Torah was composed of such links were being found, the conservatives could either four major sources or documents, each distinguishable by react with impatience, admit their error, or reaffirm biblical stylistic and linguistic usages, which were combined, added authority. to, or adjusted by redactors: Within Roman Catholicism, there was at first some at- 1. The earliest document, the "J" source, was believed tempt to find a concord between science and religion. In 1861, to have been composed in Judah about 350 B.C. and used the Cardinal John Newman wrote that he found no collision bet- divine name Yahweh throughout. ween religion and science, for each operated in separate 2. The "E" source was composed in Israel about 750 spheres with little in common. "Nothing that human science B.C. and used the divine name Elohim until the name or inquiry can discover is able to reach for confirmation or Yahweh was revealed to Moses on Mount Horeb (Sinai in for damage, those sacred truths and facts which the voice of "J"). The two sources "J" and "E" were combined by a the Church, or of her Doctors and schoolmen, or of her redactor (RJE) about 650 B.C. Bishops and people in orbe terrarum has recognized and

12 declared to be dogma in the Written Word." contained translations and a discussion of the fragments that In 1870 the First Vatican Council took a stand that had close affinities with the opening chapter of Genesis. reflected the impact of Darwin's ideas and biblical criticism; Subsequent excavations at other sites have enabled scholars to it was much stronger. The Council not only affirmed God as know that there were seven tablets and to recover the myth creator and Lord, who by a completely free decision almost in its entirety. Although Ashurbanipal's library was "established, at the same time as time began, creatures of developed during the seventh century B.C., that monarch had both kinds, spiritual and bodily from nothing; and then the sent his scribes to the learning centers of his world to copy human creature, made up of spirit and body, as it were materials. together," but announced that anathema would be decreed on all who disagreed: If there is anyone who does not confess that the world and all "To follow logically the arguments of modern the things that are contained in it — both spiritual and material — have been produced in their entire substance by science and to let logic and reason lead, rather than God out of nothing: or who says that God's will to create was a dogma about biblical inspiration, would result in not free from every kind of compulsion, but that he created as the recognition that biblical creation mythology is necessarily as he necessarily loves himself: or who denies that not only outdated but irrelevant." the world has been established for the glory of God — let him be anathema.9 The inspiration of the Scriptures was reaffirmed in 1893 in the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus: It is now clear that the Mesopotamian creation myth is much older than the time of Ashurbanipal, that it was used in For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and the New Year ritual during the month of Nisanu at the shrine canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, of Marduk in Babylon as far back as the time of Hammurabi at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; and so far it is from being (1723-1686 B.C.), that there are indications that it may go possible that any error can coexist with inspiration, that in- back to Sumerian times (third millennium B.C.), and that it spiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but was used in rituals as late as the time of Alexander the Great excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is im- (fourth century B.C.). Moreover, it is clear that the impact of possible that God Himself the supreme Truth, can utter that Babylon on the Near Eastern world was so great that parts of which is not true. the myth appear to have been translated into the languages of Books on evolution by Roman Catholic scholars were many of the cultures of the ancient Near East. condemned or withdrawn from circulation. The Mosaic The relationship between the Babylonian creation ac- authorship of the Pentateuch was reaffirmed. The effect of count, named after its opening words, enuma elish ("when on such measures was to delay any effort by the church to ac- high"), and the Hebrew version in Genesis 1 is unmistakable. commodate to evolutionary theories and developing biblical As Alexander Heidel demonstrated in 1942 in his study of the criticism until after 1943, when Pope Pius XII issued his en- Babylonian account, in both stories divine spirit is involved: cyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu and the encyclical Humani in the Babylonian, divine spirit and cosmic matter coexist and Generis in 1951. Divino Afflante recognized the contribution are coeternal; in the Bible, divine spirit exists independently of authors who wrote under divine inspiration in the making of cosmic matter and creates it. In the Enuma elish, there was of grammatical errors, in the choice of metaphor, in the use primeval chaos and the goddess Tiamat was enveloped in of non-historical genera, and even in inaccurate citations. darkness; in Genesis, the earth is a desolate waste with Despite these human errors the writers do not put forth as darkness covering the deep (tehom, which is a term related to their own that which is false. Tiamat). In Genesis light is created; in Enuma elish it Since that time, the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy and emanates from the gods. In both there is the same sequence of inspiration has undergone considerable reinterpretation creative events: the firmament, dry land, the luminaries, and because of the pressures of modern science, even though the lastly man. In both there is a day of rest: in Enuma elish the Roman still maintains its position. gods rest and celebrate, in Genesis God rests and sanctifies References to biblical error can be held as unofficial opinions the seventh day.to and explained as the human assumptions of the biblical It has been argued that the Hebrews were exposed to and writers. The Roman church remains the guardian and only adapted the Babylonian myth during their captivity in the authentic interpreter of the Bible, so that belief in inerrancy sixth century B.C. Others have suggested that the influence of and inspiration is linked to the belief in the infallibility of the Babylon had impacted earlier. church. For the most part, conservative scholarship has ignored Between 1848 and 1876, Austen Henry Layard the Babylonian creation myth and its relationship to the Bi- discovered for the British Museum thousands of tablets in the ble, just as they have ignored the relationship of the "J" excavation of the library of King Ashurbanipal of Nineveh in myth to ancient Near Eastern mythic patterns. Even in liberal Assyria. In 1876, George Smith, who had been working with scholarship, much emphasis has been placed on the crudeness these tablets, published from some twenty fragments of of the Babylonian account, which describes the creative pro- tablets a book titled The Chaldean Account of Genesis, which cess in terms of battles between deities, as opposed to the

Summer, 1982 13 sublimity of the Hebrew account. Even Heidel, a first-rate private admitting that they are no longer where their fathers Semiticist but a devout Lutheran, felt compelled to make a and grandparents were in their belief patterns. disclaimer. Meanwhile, the fundamentalists have continued to at- tempt to reconcile biblical beliefs with modern science, to ex- There are those who seem to be convinced that Gen. 1:1 to 2:3 plain Hebrew cosmology in conformance with modern views shows Babylonian traces, while others appear to be just as con- vinced that it does not. In my estimation, no incontrovertible about the universe. One writer, James Lauer Baldwin, has an- evidence can for the present be produced for either side; I nounced that science has returned to special theories of evolu- believe that the whole question must still be left open. But tion and that the belief in the divine creation of species is no whatever the true facts of the case may be, whether the biblical longer just an article of faith.14 The interpretation of the account is or is not dependent on the Babylonian material, Hebrew word for "day" (yom) is important in this type of there is no reason, as we have seen, why anyone should be presentation, and it is argued that yom simply means a long disturbed in his mind and lose his reverence for the opening period of time and should not be linked to a solar day. chapter of the Bible. If certain features of the biblical account were derived from the Babylonian, this was done in conformi- "So far as modern scholarship is concerned, ty with the will of Him who according to Heb. 1:1 revealed Hebrew creation myths are no more factual or Himself "in divers manners." Moreover, a comparison of the Babylonian creation story with the first chapter of Genesis scientific than those of other peoples." makes the sublime character of the latter stand out in even bolder relief. [p. 139] The first three "days" of the Genesis myth were lighted by electrical energy from thunderstorms coming from the in- Some scholars make a cursory note of the relationship terior of the earth and producing lightning and from radioac- but almost dismiss it as irrelevant. Others, such as Gerhard tive gases projected into the upper atmosphere or from solar Von Rad, accept the fact that in the opening verses "all these and planetary flares. Of course there is no scientific basis for statements have their terminological origin in the mythologies these conjectures. This particular group of creationists is of neighboring religions." 11 ready to accommodate the biblical day to fit scientific epochs How does the effect of cosmology, geology, ar- in order to account for the long process of evolution. chaeology, and comparative mythology impact on the work Such arguments — and others set forth by various crea- of the scholar and on the belief-systems of the Jewish and tionist groups — are on the order of last-ditch attempts, to Christian world? For some, there is a frank admission that make the biblical creation myths credible in a modern scien- the material is mythological, that it comes from and belongs tific world. To follow logically the arguments of modern in a different place-world and time-world. There is no at- science and to let logic and reason lead, rather than a dogma tempt and no desire to make it scientific. Nahum Sarna told about biblical inspiration, would result in the recognition that his readers: biblical creation mythology is not only outdated but irrelevant. It should be obvious that by the nature of things, none of these stories can possibly be the product of human memory, nor in any modern sense of the word scientific accounts of the origin Notes and nature of the physical world. Biblical man, despite his undoubted intellectual and I. Quoted by F. J. Crehan, "The Bible in the Roman Catholic Church spiritual endowments, did not base his views of the universe from Trent to the Present Day," in The Cambridge History of the Bible: The and its laws on the critical use of empirical data. He had not, West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. by S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge, 1963), p. 225. as yet, discovered the principles and methods of disciplined in- 2. Ibid. quiry, critical observation or analytical experimentation 3. Tayler Lewis, The Six Days of Creation; or the Scriptural Cosmology ... Hence, it is a naive and futile exercise to attempt to recon- with the Ancient Idea of Time-Worlds, In Distinction From Worlds in Space. cile the biblical accounts of creation with the findings of (, 1855), pp. 1-2. modern science. 12 4. The outline is taken from Lewis, op. cit. pp. 3-8. 5. Ibid., p. 12 In The Interpreter's Bible, which was designed as a 6. W. Neil, "The Criticism and Theological Use of the Bible, scholarly and homiletic aid for the teacher and preacher, the 1700-1950," in S. L. Greenslade, op. cit., pp. 241 f. expositor urges his readers to find "the truth" embedded 7. Ibid., p. 247. within the Genesis mythology — the truth that "God 8. Hermann Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis, tr. by W. H. Carruth created."13 This response reflects the way in which many (New York, 1964, first ed., 1901), p. 14. liberal church persons handle the issue. To let their scholar- 9. Quoted in Robert Butterworth, S.J., The Theology of Creation (South Bend, Ind., 1969), pp. 14 f. ship and logic lead them to the conclusion that creation 10. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago, 1969), p. 129. mythology is simply the way in which persons living in a small 11. Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis, tr. by John Marks (Philadelphia, 1961), corner of the Mediterranean world viewed their universe and pp. 48 f. translated their beliefs about beginnings into cultic myth and 12. Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York, 1966), to admit that these beliefs are no more significant than those pp. 2 f. 13. Walter Russell Bowie, The Book of Genesis: Exposition, in of the ancient Egyptians or Greeks or Romans would be to The In- terpreter's Bible, vol. 1. (Nashville, 1952), pp. 462 ff. move against the dogma of inspired scriptures. Indeed, many 14. James Lauer Baldwin, A New Answer to Darwin (Chicago, 1957), retain this theological concept in public settings, while in P. 1. •

14