Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/409

Rh that it is nowhere hinted that Adam had the knowledge imputed to him. The hints of something resembling the knowledge in patriarchal times have been already noticed, but these may very well be explained by reference to the natural growth of human knowledge, rather than to the hypothesis of a primeval tradition.

Having laid the foundations which are to be found in the previous part of this paper, I now address myself to the consideration of the week as we find it in the opening of the book of Genesis.

I propose to argue that the week did not take its rise from the sacred history, but that, contrariwise, the form in which that history was cast depended upon the knowledge possessed by the writer of the division of time by weeks, and of the institution of the Sabbath.

It will probably be admitted by all that the account of the creation given in the book of Genesis was not the result of scientific investigation. I am not wishing to raise the old question how far the account is consistent with scientific truth—this question does not now concern us—but am only asserting that the creative history can not be regarded in the same manner as that in which we regard a scientific treatise. It is either a speculation, or a poetical picture, or the record of a vision accorded to some gifted seer. Whichever it be, when the author of the written document which we possess came to put down in words his speculation, or his poem, or his vision, he would have to consider, or rather he would instinctively know, what kind of framework he should adopt in order to convey his thoughts to others. Compare the case of Moses, or the author of the original document which Moses used, with that of St. John the Divine. In the Apocalypse St. John speaks of things which he saw in his vision: there were candlesticks, and thrones, and choirs clothed in white garments, and the city of Jerusalem, etc.; all these were things with which he was familiar, and so his vision adapted itself to and formed itself upon these familiar things. No one will for one moment maintain the objective existence of these earthly things in that heaven into which St. John was permitted to peep through the open door; the vision was, in fact, of necessity to a great extent subjective; it is of the very nature of visions that this should be so. If, therefore, a vision of so absolutely transcendental an event as the creation of the universe be permitted to the mental eye of mortal man, that vision, when imparted to others, must clothe itself in such knowledge as the man himself possesses. And as the man, when he comes to record his vision, will instinctively use his own language—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, whatever it may be—to express himself, so also all other furniture of his mind will be naturally put into requisition in order to describe what he has seen.

This being conceded, let us suppose Moses himself to have been the speculator, poet, or seer to whom the vision of creation was for the first time vouchsafed, and let us suppose that the division of time