The Evolution of Theology: an Anthropological Study: Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"Huxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
The Evolution of Theology: an Anthropological Study: Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Bible and science; Evolution; Paleontology; Science
stolen," "I have not done fraud to man;" to the ninth, "I have not
told falsehoods in the tribunal of truth," and, further, "I have not
calumniated the slave to his master." I find nothing exactly similar to
the tenth commandment; but that the inward disposition of mind was held
to be of no less importance than the outward act is to be gathered from
the praises of kindliness already cited and the cry of "I am pure,"
which is repeated by the soul on trial. Moreover, there is a minuteness
of detail in the confession which shows no little delicacy of moral
appreciation--"I have not privily done evil against mankind," "I
have not afflicted men," "I have not withheld milk from the mouths of
sucklings," "I have not been idle," "I have not played the hypocrite,"
"I have not told falsehoods," "I have not corrupted woman or man," "I
have not caused fear," "I have not multiplied words in speaking."
Would that the moral sense of the nineteenth century A.D. were as far
advanced as that of the Egyptians in the nineteenth century B.C. in this
last particular! What incalculable benefit to mankind would flow from
strict observance of the commandment, "Thou shalt not multiply words
in speaking!" Nothing is more remarkable than the stress which the
old Egyptians, here and elsewhere, lay upon this and other kinds of
truthfulness, as compared with the absence of any such requirement in
the Israelitic Decalogue, in which only a specific kind of untruthfulnes
is forbidden.
If, as the story runs, Moses was adopted by a princess of the royal
house, and was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, it is
surely incredible that he should not have been familiar from his youth
up, with the high moral code implied in the "Book of Redemption." It
is surely impossible that he should have been less familiar with the
complete legal system, and with the method of administration of justice,
which, even in his time, had enabled the Egyptian people to hold
together, as a complex social organisation, for a period far longer than
the duration of old Roman society, from the building of the city to
the death of the last Caesar. Nor need we look to Moses alone for the
influence of Egypt upon Israel. It is true that the Hebrew nomads who
came into contact with the Egyptians of Osertasen, or of Ramses, stood
in much the same relation to them, in point of culture, as a Germanic
tribe did to the Romans of Tiberius, or of Marcus Antoninus; or as
Captain Cook's Omai did to the English of George the Third. But, at the
same time, any difficulty of communication which might have arisen out
of this circumstance was removed by the long pre-existing intercourse
of other Semites, of every grade of civilisation, with the Egyptians. In
Mesopotamia and elsewhere, as in Phenicia, Semitic people had attained
to a social organisation as advanced as that of the Egyptians; Semites
had conquered and occupied Lower Egypt for centuries. So extensively had
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