But the fact must be emphasized that it is quite useless to criticise the so-called Mosaic narrative of the fall, because it is acknowledged to be a huge myth or allegory by the best scholarship of modern times. The Christian author of the _Beginnings of History_ has with profound research actually produced and printed the stories of many ancient peoples in contrast with the narrative in Genesis. He says in the preface to his book: “This is the problem which I have been led to examine in comparing the narrations of the Sacred Book with those current long ages before the time of Moses among nations whose civilization dated back into the remote past, with whom Israel was surrounded, from among whom it came out. As far as I myself am concerned, the conclusion from this study is not doubtful. That which we read in the first chapter of Genesis is not an account dictated by God himself, the possession of which was the exclusive privilege of the chosen people. It is a tradition whose origin is lost in the night of the remotest ages, and which all the great nations of Western Asia possessed in common, with some variations. The very form given it in the Bible is so closely related to that which has been lately discovered in Babylon and Chaldea, it follows so exactly the same course, that it is quite impossible for me to doubt any longer. The school of Alexandria in general, and Origen in particular, in the first centuries of the Church interpreted the first chapters of Genesis in the allegorical sense; in the sixteenth century the great Cardinal Cajetan revived this system, and, bold as it may appear, it has never been the object of any ecclesiastical censure.”