In Dr. Cooper's able letter to Professor Silliman, Spinoza's 'Tractates Theologico-Politicus,' Pere Simon's critical history of the Old Testament, Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,' Volney upon Ancient History, as also in the notes to Volney's 'Ruins,' and in Thomas Paine's 'Age of Reason,' part 2, the reader will find the arguments I have used more fully elaborated.
In Professor Newman's 'Phases of Faith,' pp. 83 and 84, there is an eloquent repudiation of the attempts at argument of those theologians who contend for the Mosaic Pentateuch. (The word Pentateuch is a compound Greek word, meaning five books.)
Why should we acknowledge Moses as the author of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy? We have positive evidence that he was not the writer of very many portions, and we have no evidence at all to support the assertion that he wrote a single line of either of the five books.
In Voltaire's dialogue between the monk and the honest man, the following remarks occur: —
'1. – It seems difficult that Moses could have written the Pentateuch which we attribute to him, in the desert. If his people came from Egypt, where they had lived, says the author, 400 years (although he is mistaken in 200 years), the book would, probably, have been written in Egyptian, and we are told it was in Hebrew. It must have been graven upon stone or wood, because, in the time of Moses, they had no other mode of writing. This was a very difficult art, and one which required long preparations, since it was necessary to polish the wood or the stone. It does not appear that this art would have been exercised in a desert, where, according to the book itself, the Jewish horde were not able to make their own clothes and shoes, and where God was obliged to work a continual miracle during forty years to preserve their vestments without decaying, and the coverings of their legs and feet. It is so true that they were only able to write upon stone, that the author of the book of Joshua says that Deuteronomy was written upon an altar of rough stones, plastered with mortar. It appears Joshua did not even imagine this book was durable. '2. – Those men who are most versed in antiquity think these books were written more than 700 years after Moses. They found this opinion upon that which is spoken of the Kings of Edom and Israel, when there were no kings till a long time after Moses; upon the position of the cities, which is false if the books were written in the desert, and true if they were written at Jerusalem; upon the names of the cities and small towns of which these books speak, which were neither built nor called by the names there given them till many ages afterwards, &c.'
Previous to my analysis of the first chapter of Genesis, I shall quote from an able letter which appeared in a provincial paper a short time since, and in which I fully concur.
'Before entering into a detailed examination of the Mosaic narrative, I will glance at the order and operation of its incidents. This is the more necessary, as the sequence of those operations becomes a leading and important feature in the final deductions.
'Genesis, read in its literal sense, teaches that, on the first day God directed light to be, and divided light from darkness, calling the light day and darkness night, 'On the second day He placed a firmament to divide the waters, gathering the waters together and forming dry land, which He commanded to bring forth grass and herbs yielding seed, and trees yielding fruit.
'On the fourth day He placed lights in the firmament to give light upon the earth; and, on the same day, He made two great lights, the greater to rule the day, the lesser the night; and he also made the stars, and placed them in the firmament to give light upon the earth.
On the fifth day the sea was commanded to bring forth the living creature that had life, and the fowl that might fly above the earth in the open firmament.
'The great whales were also created on that day, and every living thing that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind.
'The first part of the sixth day opens with the creation of the beasts of the earth, and cattle, and everything that creepeth on the earth; consummating the mighty work with the creation of man.
'My task is to prove that, so far as geology and the sister sciences have examined into the results of this creation, neither the order, the mode, nor the period of operations can, on physical evidences, be sustained.
'"God said, let there be light, and there was light." We have here a fiat originating light; but from what physical source was that luminous effect evolved? Neither sun nor moon was yet made; not a single star had twinkled in the heavens; nor was a firmament or atmosphere placed, as a vehicle for the rays. By what natural law could there be light? The common rudiments of Physics teach us that air diffuses the solar beams, thereby causing the brightness of that portion of light called, from the earliest recorded period, "day." Without that diffusive medium, the heavenly bodies would be sharply defined balls of apparent fire, in the profoundly black vault of heaven. Science has never, hitherto, found a substitute for the sun; nor research discovered a period since the earth existed, having evening and morning, without one.
'The terms "evening and morning" of a day have, from all recorded time, conveyed to the mind distinct impressions; evening, that portion of sun light immediately preceding and succeeding its apparent departure or disappearance below our horizon; morning, that portion of light that immediately precedes and succeeds its apparent rising above. They also imply two other divisions of time, night and mid-day. Now, we have the direct conclusive evidence daily exhibited, that the sun, or its luminous atmosphere, by recognised laws and combinations, lights the world; and that darkness, as a necessary consequence, follows its absence.
'If the earth had existed independently of the sun, it would have been a wanderer in space, under circumstances which are decidedly inconceivable. Yet Genesis relates that there was light, without a sun to give it forth, or medium to diffuse its rays. We have also involved in this order of creation the phenomena of a diurnal rotation, indicated without any central source of light to make the period or time of revolution, and a planet revolving in an orbit without a centre round which to revolve. Scientific observations and deductions, every day evidences of the physical laws that govern our solar system, lead clearly to the conclusion that the sun, 140,000 times larger than the earth, was the first born. Genesis asserts that our pigmy earth was its precursor.
'Whence, without sun or moon or stars, did this light, in accordance with any known natural law, proceed; and how was the division of evening and morning of the first day indicated?
'The second day's creation again gives us an evening and morning without any arrangement to measure those divisions of time, and still without any source from which light could proceed. What the waters were above the firmament or atmosphere, I cannot discover; certainly clouds are not above the firmament or atmosphere, but floating in it; and of any other aqueous aggregations above the firmament we know nothing.
'In the third day's creation we have dry land appearing, and grass and herb yielding seed, and fruit trees yielding fruit brought forth.
'We have, as yet, had no sun to shine on the earth created, to give colour to the leaves or to the flowers; to ripen the seeds of herbs yielding seed, or the fruit of trees yielding fruit. Neither does Genesis mention any other creation of plants; we must therefore infer this creation originated all the vegetable world.
'The present number of named species of plants is about 280,000, spread in provinces over the known world. The greater part of this large number are peculiar in their habits, and arbitrary in their provinces of growth. The palms of the tropics would die in the ungenial atmosphere of the northern hemisphere; and the plants that flourish under the chilling blasts of the Arctic Regions would wither under the scorching suns of the Torrid Zone. It is, therefore, a preliminary question – was this a multitudinous creation, assorted to their several localities, or a creation of one or two plants of a class from whence all the rest proceeded? If the former is alleged, I ask, as the ordered world was then only two days old, what provision was there, by known laws, to meet numerous physical wants of this immense creation? Were