revelation to anybody, he passes on to examine its contents. It contains, he says, scientific errors, of which (p. 42, n.) he specifies three. His charges are that (1) it speaks of the heaven as a solid vault; (2) it places the creation of the stars after that of the earth, and so places them solely for its use; (3) it introduces the vegetable kingdom before that kingdom could be subjected to the action of solar light. All these condemnations are quietly enunciated in a note, as if they were subject to no dispute. Let us see.
As to the first: if our scholars are right in their judgment, just made known to the world by the recent revision of the Old Testament, the "firmament" is, in the Hebrew original,[1] not a solid vault, but an expanse. As to the second (a), it is not said in the sacred text that the stars were made solely for the use of the earth; (b) it is true that no other use is mentioned. But we must here inquire what was the purpose of the narrative? Not to rear cosmic philosophers, but to furnish ordinary men with some idea of what the Creator had done in the way of providing for them a home and giving them a place in nature. The advantage afforded by the stars to them is named alone, they having no interest in any other purpose for which the stars may exist.
The assertion that the stars are stated to have been "created" after the earth is more serious. But here it becomes necessary first of all to notice the recital in this part of the indictment. In the language of Dr. Réville, the Book speaks of the creation of the stars after the formation of the earth. Now, curiously enough, the Book says nothing either of the "formation" of the earth, or of the "creation" of the stars. It says in its first line that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It says further on,[2] "He made the stars also." Can it be urged that this is a fanciful distinction between creating on the one hand and making, forming, or fashioning on the other? Dante did not think so, for, speaking of the Divine Will, he says:
"Clò ch' Ell cria, e che Natnra face."[3]
Luther did not think so, for he uses schuf in the first verse, and machte in the sixteenth. The English translators and their revisers did not think so, for they use the words "created" and "made" in the two passages respectively. The main question, however, is. What did the author of the Book think, and what did he intend to convey? The LXX drew no distinction, probably for the simple reason that, as the idea of creation proper was not familiar to the Greeks, their language conveyed no word better than poiein to express it, which is also the proper word for fashioning or making. But the lie brew, it seems, had the distinction, and by the writer of Genesis i it has been strictly, to Dr. Réville I might also say scientifically, followed. He uses the word "created" on the three grand occasions (1) of the beginning of the mighty work (v. 1); (2) of the beginning of animal life (v. 21), "And God created great whales," and every living creature that peoples the waters; (3) of the yet more important beginning of rational and spiritual life; "so God created man in his own image" (v. 27). In every other instance, the simple command is recited, or a word implying less than creation is employed.
From this very marked mode of use, it is surely plain that a marked distinction of sense was intended by the sacred writer. I will not attempt a definition of the distinction further than this, that the one phrase points more to calling into a separate or individual existence, the other more to shaping and fashioning the conditions of that existence; the one to quid, the other to quale. Our Earth, created in v. 1, undergoes structural change, different arrangement of material, in V. 9. After this, and in the fourth day, comes not the original creation, but the location in the firmament, of the sun and the moon. Of their "creation" nothing particular has been said; for no use, palpable to man, was associated with it before their perfect equipment. Does it not seem allowable to suppose that in the "heavens"[4]
- ↑ The στερέωμα of the Septuagint is construed in conformity with the Hebrew.
- ↑ Gen. i, 16.
- ↑ "Paradiso," iii, 87.
- ↑ In our translation, and in the recent revision the singular is used. But we are assured that the Hebrew word is plural (Bishop of Winchester on Genesis I, 1, in the Speaker's Bible). If so taken, we have the creation, visible to us, treated conjointly In versos 1-5, distributively in verses 6-19; surely a most orderly arrangement.
