Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS. 371
tions recovered from the sites of this and kindred civilizations
presented the Hebrew sacred myths and legends in earlier
forms forms long antedating those given in the Hebrew
Scriptures ; and that the accounts of the Creation, the Tree
of Life in Eden, the institution and even the name of the
Sabbath, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and much else in
the Pentateuch, were simply an evolution out of earlier Chaldean
myths and legends. So perfect was the proof of this
that the most eminent scholars in the foremost seats of Chris-
tian learning were obliged to acknowledge it.*
The more general conclusions which were thus given to
biblical criticism were all the more impressive from the fact
that they had been revealed by various groups of earnest
Christian scholars working on different lines, by different
methods, and in various parts of the world. Very honourable
was the full and frank testimony to these results given
in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown, a professor in the Pres-
byterian Theological Seminary
at New York. In his ad-
mirable though brief book on Assyriology, starting with the
declaration that " it is a great pity to be afraid of facts," he
showed how Assyrian research testifies in many ways to the
historical value of the Bible record ;
but at the same time he
freely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the
sacred chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a
mass of doubtful apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact
that very many of the early narratives in Genesis belong to the
* As to the revelations of the vast antiquity of Chaldean civilization, and especially
regarding the Nabonidos inscription, see Records of the Past, vol. i, new-
series, first article, and especially pp. 5, 6, where a translation of that inscription is
also Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, introduction, in which,
given ;
on page 12, an engraving of the Sargon cylinder is given ;
especially pp. 166 et seq., 309 et seq. ; also Meyer,
161-163 ; also Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, p. 599
also, on general subject,
Geschichte des Alterthums, pp.
and note.
For the earlier Chaldean forms of the Hebrew Creation accounts. Tree of Life
in Eden, Hebrew Sabbath, both the institution and the name, and various other
points of similar interest, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, throughout
the work, especially p. 30S and chaps, xvi, xvii ; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie
der Babylonier ;
also Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament ;
also Lenormant, Origines de VHistoire ; also Sayce, The Assyrian Story of Crea-
tion, in Records of the Past, new series, vol. i. For a general statement as to ear-
lier sources of much in the Hebrew sacred origins, see Huxley, Essays on Contro-
verted Questions, English edition, p. 525.