_If we are to listen to many expositors of no mean authority, we must believe that what seems so clearly defined in Genesis--as if very great pains had been taken that there should be no possibility of mistake--is not the meaning of the text at all. The account is divided into periods that we may make just as long or as short as convenience requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent with the original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals may have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of years, out of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvelous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations._ * * Controverted Questions, page 100. The Great Tragedy |BUT it is when we come to read the bible story of the creation of man that its unreliability becomes more manifest than ever. The story of Adam and Eve seems to have been lifted bodily out of some foreign document. This is evident from the fact that it is never referred to again throughout the Old Testament. When the Jews were carried into captivity they became familiar with the Babylonian legend of creation, its Garden of Eden, the serpent, the forbidden tree, the fall of man, etc. The name of the first man in the Babylonian story was _Adami_. The belief that man was formed out of the earth is very ancient. Men saw dead bodies return to dust, and, naturally enough, they inferred from it that man was made out of the dust of the earth. In the Jewish story, as related in the second chapter of Genesis, the first man was a bachelor, and if he had liked that sort of life, woman, in all probability, would never have been created. It is suggested in the story that God asked Adam to choose a companion from among the animals, which were made to pass before him, that he might name them, and if possible select from among them a companion for himself: _And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an helpmeet for him._ * Adam was lonely: _And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs... and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man._ ** * Genesis ii, 20. ** Ibid. 21-22.