Page:Anacalypsis vol 1.djvu/98

 reformed Christian religion is chiefly founded, has always been held to be the production of Moses. But it requires very little discernment to perceive, that it is a collection of treatises, probably of different nations. The first ends with the third verse of the second chapter—the second with the last verse of the fourth.

In the first verse of the first book, the, which will be proved to be the Trinity, being in the plural number, are said by Wisdom to have formed, from matter previously existing, the שמיס smim, or planetary bodies, which were believed by the Magi to be the rulers or directors of the affairs of men. This opinion I shall examine by and by. From this it is evident, that this is in fact a Persian, or still more Eastern, mythos.

The use of animals for food being clearly not allowed to man, in chap. i. vers. 29, 30, is a circumstance which bespeaks the book of Buddhist origin. It is probably either the parent of the Buddhist religion, or its offspring. And it is different from the next book, which begins at the fourth verse of the second chapter, and ends with the last verse of the fourth; because, among other reasons in it, the creation is said to have been performed by a different person from that named in the first,—by Jehovah Aleim, instead of Aleim. Again, in the first book, man and woman are created at the same time; in the second, they are created at different times. Again, in the first book, the fruit of the trees is given to the man; in the second, this is contradicted, by one tree being expressly forbidden. These are in fact two different accounts of the creation.

The beginning of the fifth chapter, or third tract, seems to be a repetition of the first, to connect it with the history of the flood. The world is described as being made by God, (Aleim,) and not as in the second by Jehovah or the God Jehovah or Jehovah Aleim; and, as in the first, the man and woman are made at one time, and not, as in the second, at different times. The account of the birth of Seth, given in the twenty-fifth verse of the fourth chapter, and the repetition of the same event in the third verse of the fifth chapter, or the beginning of the third tract, are a clear proof that these tracts are by different persons; or, at least, are separate and distinct works. The reason why the name of Seth is given here, and not the names of any of the later of Adam’s children, is evidently to connect Adam with Noah and the flood, the object of the third tract. The permission, in the third tract, to eat animals implying that it was not given before, is strictly in keeping with the denial of it in the first.

The histories of the creation, both in the first and in the second book of Genesis, in the sacred books of the Persians, and in those of the Chaldeans, are evidently different versions of the same story. The Chaldeans state the world to have been created not in six days, but in six periods of time—the lengths of the periods not being fixed. The Persians, also, divide the time into six periods.

In the second book, a very well-known account is given of the origin of evil, which is an affair most closely interwoven with every part of the Christian system, but it is in fact nothing more than an oriental mythos, which may have been taken from the history of the ancient Brahmins, in whose books the principal incidents are to be found; and, in order to put this matter out of doubt, it will only be necessary to turn to the plates, to Figs. 2, 3, 4, taken from icons in the very oldest of the caves of Hindostan, excavated, as it is universally agreed, long prior to the Christian æra. The reader will find the first to be the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head; the second, the serpent biting the foot of her seed, the Hindoo God Cristna, the second person of their trinity; and the third, the spirit of God brooding over the face of the waters. The history in Genesis is here so closely depicted that it is impossible to doubt the identity of the two.

Among the Persians and all the oriental nations it has been observed, that the Creator or God was adored under a triple form—in fact in the form of a trinity. In India, this was Bramah,