Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."Bradlaugh, Charles
Religion
Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."
Bradlaugh, Charles
Rationalists -- Biography
hands, or had had more eyes, or other members, than the use of a human
body requires. But in the beginning we cannot but suppose that all
things were made with all imaginable exactness.
"For my part, I do not pretend to decide this dispute, but what more
perplexes me is, how, out of one rib, the whole mass of a woman's body
could be built? For a rib does not, perhaps, equal the thousandth part
of an entire body. If you answer that the rest of the matter was taken
from elsewhere, certainly, then, Eve might much more truly be said to
have been formed out of that borrowed matter, whatever it was, than out
of Adam's rib. I know that the Rabbinical doctors solve this business
quite another way, for they say the first man had two bodies, the one
male, the other female, who were joined together, and that God having
cloven them asunder, gave one side to Adam for a wife. Plato has, in his
'Symposium,' something very like this story, concerning his first man,
Anoroginus, who was afterwards divided into two parts, male and female.
Lastly, others conjecture that Moses gave out this original of woman to
the end that he might inspire a mutual love between the two sexes, as
parts of one and the same whole, so as more effectually to recommend his
own institution of marriage.... But leaving this subject, I will hasten
to something else.
"Now, the second article treats of God's, garden in Eden, watered with
four rivers arising from the same spring.... Those rivers are, by Moses,
called Pishon, Gishon, Hiddekal, and Perath, which the ancient authors
interpret by Ganges, Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. Nor do I truly think
without some reason, for Moses seems to have proposed nothing more than
the bringing four of the most celebrated rivers of the whole earth to
the watering of his garden. Ah! but, say you, these four rivers do not
spring from the same source, or come from the same place; 'tis true, nor
any other four rivers that are named by the interpreters. Wherefore
this objection will everywhere hold good, as well against the ancient
as modern writers.--But although you should reduce these rivers to only
two, as some do, to Tigris and Euphrates, yet neither have these two
rivers the same fountain-head, but this is really and truly an evasion,
instead of an explanation, to reduce, contrary to the history of Moses,
a greater number of rivers to a smaller, only that they may the more
conveniently be reduced to the same spring; for these are the words of
Moses, 'But there comes a river out of Eden to water the garden, and
from thence it divides itself into four branches, the name of the first
is Pishon,' etc., whereby it is apparent that either in the exit or in
the entrance of the garden there were four rivers, and that these four
rivers did one and all proceed from the same fountain-head in Eden. Now,
pray tell me in what part of the earth is this country of Eden, where
four rivers arise from one and the same spring? But do not go about to
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