The problem here set to the "unknown" author of Genesis is a hard one--given the one fact that "man is" to find in detail how the world was formed in a series of preceding ages of vast duration. Is it possible that such a problem could have been so worked out as to have endured the test of three thousand years, and the scrutiny of modern science? But there is an "oversight" in one detail, and a "blunder" in another. By reference farther on, the reader will find under the chapters on "Light" and the "Atmosphere" that the oversight and blunder are those not of the writer of Genesis, but of the learned American ethnologists in the nineteenth century; a circumstance which cuts in two ways in defense of the ancient author so unhappily unknown to his modern critics. The second of the alternatives above referred to, the mythical hypothesis, has been advanced and ably supported, especially on the continent of Europe, and by such English writers as are disposed to apply the methods of modern rationalistic criticism to the Bible. In one of its least objectionable forms it is thus stated by Professor Powell: "The narrative, then, of six periods of creation, followed by a seventh similar period of rest and blessing, was clearly designed by adaptation to their conceptions to enforce upon the Israelites the institution of the Sabbath; and in whatever way its details may be interpreted, it can not be regarded as an _historical_ statement of the _primeval_ institution of a Sabbath; a supposition which is indeed on other grounds sufficiently improbable, though often adopted. * * * If, then, we would avoid the alternative of being compelled to admit what must amount to impugning the truth of those portions at least of the Old Testament, we surely are bound to give fair consideration to the only suggestion which can set us entirely free from all the difficulties arising from the geological contradiction which does and must exist against any conceivable interpretation which retains the assertion of the historical character of the details of the narrative, as referring to the distinct transactions of each of the seven periods. * * * The one great fact couched in the general assertion that all things were created by the sole power of one Supreme Being is the whole of the representation to which an historical character can be assigned. As to the particular form in which the descriptive narrative is conveyed, we merely affirm that it can not be history--it may be poetry."[14]