Canon Rawlinson, in Aids to Faith, 275, compares the Mosaic account with the cosmogony of Berosus, the Chaldean. Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:267-272, gives an account of heathen theories of the origin of the universe. Anaxagoras was the first who represented the chaotic first matter as formed through the ordering understanding (νοῦς) of God, and Aristotle for that reason called him “the first sober one among many drunken.” Schurman, Belief in God, 138—“In these cosmogonies the world and the gods grow up together; cosmogony is, at the same time, theogony.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The Bible writers believed and intended to state that the world was made in three literal days. But, on the principle that God may have meant more than they did, the doctrine of periods may not be inconsistent with their account.” For comparison of the Biblical with heathen cosmogonies, see Blackie in Theol. Eclectic, 1:77-87; Guyot, Creation, 58-63; Pope, Theology, 1:401, 402; Bible Commentary, 1:36, 48; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 1-54; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2:193-221. For the theory of “prophetic vision,” see Kurtz, Hist. of Old Covenant, Introd., i-xxxvii, civ-cxxx; and Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, 179-210; Hastings, Dict. Bible, art.: Cosmogony; Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 372-397. (_b_) The _hyperliteral interpretation_ would withdraw the narrative from all comparison with the conclusions of science, by putting the ages of geological history between the first and second verses of _Gen. 1_, and by making the remainder of the chapter an account of the fitting up of the earth, or of some limited portion of it, in six days of twenty-four hours each. Among the advocates of this view, now generally discarded, are Chalmers, Natural Theology, Works, 1:228-258, and John Pye Smith, Mosaic Account of Creation, and Scripture and Geology. To this view we object that there is no indication, in the Mosaic narrative, of so vast an interval between the first and the second verses; that there is no indication, in the geological history, of any such break between the ages of preparation and the present time (see Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, 141-178); and that there are indications in the Mosaic record itself that the word “_day_” is not used in its literal sense; while the other Scriptures unquestionably employ it to designate a period of indefinite duration (_Gen. 1:5_—“_God called the light Day_”—a day before there was a sun; _8_—“_there was evening and there was morning, a second day_”; _2:2_—God “_rested on the seventh day_”; _cf._ _Heb. 4:3-10_—where God’s day of rest seems to continue, and his people are exhorted to enter into it; _Gen. 2:4_—“_the day that Jehovah made earth and heaven_”—“_day_” here covers all the