The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

This is an ingenious device, but it will hardly satisfy sound thinkers. The question is, whether the story of Adam is historical truth or pagan fiction. The highest scholarship pronounces it fiction, while certain orthodox writers admit the fact “that God used prevailing but unreal fancies to teach important truths.”

The document in which the story of the fall is found is a confused, inconsistent, and absurd compilation by at least two different writers, representing each a different God, Jehovah and Elohim, the writers contradicting each other in many particulars; and this feet is admitted by candid Christian writers, and by none more frankly than the late Dean Stanley of the English Establishment. The first account of creation ends at the third verse of Gen. 2, and the second account begins with the fourth verse and closes with the end of that chapter. In the first account the man and woman are created together on the sixth and last day of creation (Gen. 1:28). In the second account the beasts and birds are created after the creation of the man and before the creation of the woman; and it was not until after Adam had examined and named all the beasts of the fields, and had failed to find among the apes, chimpanzees, and ourangs a suitable companion for himself, that Eve was made from one of Adam's ribs, taken from his primeval anatomy while under the influence of a divine anaesthetic (Gen. 2:7, 8, 15, 22). In the first account man was made on the last day, and woman was made at the same time; in the second account man was made after the plants and herbs, but before fruit trees, beasts, and birds. So it would seem that, inasmuch as woman was made after all things, she was an afterthought, a sort of necessary evil for the solace and comfort of man. These contradictions run through the whole of the first and second chapters of Genesis, and plainly show that these narratives were compiled by two different persons from vague traditions or from different written documents. Had the Creator undertaken to write or dictate an account of his own work, he certainly would not have contradicted himself six times within the limit of a few lines.

The credibility of the document in which is found the account of the fall is further impaired by the fact that it contains statements openly at variance with the demonstrations of science. It teaches not only that the world was made in six days of twenty-four hours each, but that the whole planetary system was made in a single day. “He made the stars also.” The discoveries of modern science have lately driven our sacerdotalists to a new and absurd interpretation of the story of creation by alleging that the six days spoken of were not periods of twenty-four hours each, but six indefinite periods of very long duration. But it would be easy to furnish numerous admissions of orthodox scholars that the six days of the creative week were intended by the writers to describe ordinary days, of twenty-four hours each, and not indefinite periods. Any other interpretation Professor Hitchcock has pronounced “forced and unnatural, and therefore not to be adopted without a very urgent necessity.” The venerable Moses Stuart, long professor of Biblical Literature in the Andover Theological Seminary, says: “When the sacred writer in Gen. 1 says the first day, the second day, etc., there can be no possible doubt— none, I mean, for a philologist, let a geologist think as he may—that a definite day of the week is meant. What puts this beyond all question,” the learned theologian adds, “is that the writer says specifically ‘the evening and the morning were the first day,’ ‘the second day,’ etc. Now, is an evening and a morning a period of some thousands of years?… If Moses has given us an erroneous account of the creation, so be it. Let it come out and let us have the whole truth.” The fact is, that the indefinite-period hypothesis does not, after all the quirks and special pleadings, overcome the difficulty. The question arises, Why six indefinite periods? One indefinite period is as long as six or sixty. There is nothing in geology to indicate six periods. One need only consider the attempt to reconcile Genesis and geology to plainly see that the Mosaic record was intended to be taken in its obvious sense. The forced interpretations put upon the Hebrew story to make it appear to be historical and literal truth make it more absurd than it would otherwise appear. Think of Adam created (according to one account) on the second day, and Eve on the sixth day, and then accept the hypothesis that these creative days represent indefinite periods of thousands, if not millions, of years to each day, so that four indefinite periods of thousands of years passed away before Adam had his Eve to be his helpmeet, and what a long, lonely time he must have had! Then how small the human census must have been for unnumbered ages, and how strange the fact that the same writer says that Adam “lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died;” that is to say, he died several hundred thousand years before the rib was taken from his side to make him a wife!

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.”

It is well understood among men of learning that the whole story of Eden, the talking serpent, and the sinning woman is a myth, and that all nations of sun-worshippers have had substantially the same legend, and their priests, poets, and philosophers have not hesitated to acknowledge among themselves its fabulous character. That early Jewish and Christian writers freely admitted the allegorical character of the narrative ascribed to Moses is well known. Maimonides, a learned Jewish rabbi, said: “One ought not to understand nor take according to the letter that which is written in the Book of the Creation, nor have the ideas concerning it that most men have, otherwise our ancient sages would not have recommended us to carefully conceal the sense of it, and on no account to raise the allegorical veil which conceals the truth it contains. Taken according to the letter, this work gives the most absurd and extravagant idea of divinity. Whoever shall discover the true sense of it ought to be careful not to divulge it.” Philo, the great Jewish authority, took the same ground, and wrote mainly to show the allegorical character of all the sacred books. Josephus held similar views, and so did Papias and many of the early Christian Fathers. Origen said: “What man of good sense will ever persuade himself that there was a first, second, and a third day, and that these days had each their morning and evening without the not-yet-existing sun, moon, and stars? What man sufficiently simple to believe that God, acting the part of a gardener, planted a garden in the East—that the ‘tree of life’ was a real tree, evident to the senses, whose fruit had the virtue of preserving life?” etc. St. Augustine held the same views as to the allegorical character of the so-called Mosaic account of the creation and fall, and so did Tertullian, Clement, and Ambrose. Some of the early Christian authorities carried this idea of the allegorical character of the Scriptures so far as to apply it to the Gospels themselves. “There are things therein” (said Origen) “which, taken in their literal sense, are mere falsities and lies;” and St. Gregory asserted of the letter of Scripture that “it is not only dead, but deadly;” while Athanasius admonished us that “should we understand Sacred Writ according to the letter we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies.” It seems to have been fully realized in early times that there was no rational way to interpret Moses and his writings but upon the allegorical hypothesis. As the Mosaic account of the creation and the fall of man is so evidently the same story that was suggested to the Persians and other nations by the astronomical phenomena, we are forced to the conclusion that this is the only key to unlock the mysteries of the first three chapters of Genesis. If the original story is known to have been founded upon the ancient astrological religion, the substantial copy in our Jewish Scriptures must have the same basis. All the ancient religions had their Cabala—secret words and initiations—and the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are no exceptions, as is seen upon their very surface. We may not have all their secrets—some of them may not be proper things to write about in our day—but no fair man of intelligence can successfully deny that many of those things which are absurd if taken for historical truth are at once explained by reference to the solar cults of the ancients.

Many theologians have virtually admitted that there is nothing injurious to the interests of true religion in the hypothesis here presented, but, on the contrary, there is much that is truly beautiful and calculated to elevate and inspire the devout mind. Even the distinguished Albertus, of the twelfth Christian century, surnamed the Great for his attainments as a scholastic ecclesiastic, did not hesitate to write: “All the mysteries of the incarnation of our Saviour Christ, and all the circumstances of his marvellous life from his conception to his ascension, are to be traced out in the constellations and are figured in the stars.” “The Gospel in the Stars” was the significant advertisement of a course of sermons recently delivered in a prominent Lutheran church in Philadelphia by a learned doctor of divinity, and, though many of his hearers thought that the title should have been “The Stars in the Gospel,” it was certainly an evidence of progress and increasing light to have a frank admission from such a source that all the truths of the gospel and the doctrines of the Reformation were prefigured in the celestial heavens and illustrated in the constellations of the solar zodiac.

This author admits the identity between the tenets of the astro-theology of ancient sun-worshippers and the present dominant theology of Christendom, but assumes that the original construction of the celestial heavens and its fanciful division into constellations had reference to, and in fact prefigured, what was literally fulfilled in Christianity. He finds in the solar zodiac of Esne in Egypt as clear predictions of the coming of Christ as he finds in Isaiah or any other Jewish prophet. Thus, he “gives away” the whole argument, and unwittingly admits the natural origin of all the distinctive tenets of modern dogmatic theology. This last craze may well be regarded as a compound of scientific trifling and theological, moonshine.

But it is said by theologians that man is depraved, and that the present moral status of humanity confirms the dogma of total depravity by descent through fallen and depraved ancestors. This involves the question, What is depravity?

That man is not perfect in morality is as true as that he is not perfect in body nor in mentality. But does not every one know by his own experience and observation that human shortcomings mainly arise from a want of perfect development and the influence of environment, rather than from essential, innate viciousness? What is called “sin” should be known as “undevelopment,” and, as real as is the law of heredity, it is no more real than the law of environment. Where there is evidence of hereditary evil tendencies it is not necessary to go back more than two or three generations to find the source.

But the fact must here be emphasized and continually kept in mind that the story of Eden and the fall is substantially found in the annals of many nations anterior to the existence of the Jewish tribes, varied only in trivial matters. The story of the serpent in Eden is probably of Aryan source, to which the conception of the satanic origin of evil was attached after the Jews came into close contact with Persian dualistic ideas. To doubt which was the original and which the copy, shows, regarding the well-established facts of history, a want of information so great as to make argument on this matter quite useless.

The conclusion is inevitable that if the fall of Adam is a fiction, then the entire system of evangelical theology is based upon a fiction; and the fruit must be natural to the tree—a fictitious tree can only bear fictitious fruit. Orthodox theologians, especially of the logical Presbyterian stamp, realize that if they give up Adam and Eve as progenitors of the entire human race, they give up the very foundation-stones of the “redemptive scheme.” This accounts for Presbyterian opposition to the doctrine of evolution. They are logical enough to see that the second Adam as a Saviour in the evangelical sense must share the fate of the first Adam; and so Professor Woodrow of South Carolina has recently been degraded on account of his theory of evolution.

The world moves, and, as Professor Marsh of Yale College has well said, “The doctrine of evolution is as thoroughly demonstrated as the Copernican system of astronomy.”

In the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1890, we have a very able article from Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-president of Cornell University, showing how completely science contradicts theology in regard to the Edenic story. He shows that the tendency of the race has always been upward from low beginnings. He further shows that Archbishop Whately and the Duke of Argyll championed the Bible story, but were so conclusively answered by Sir John Lubbock and Tylor that the views of the archbishop were seen to be untenable, while the duke, as an honest man and a sound thinker, was obliged to give up his former views and adopt the scientific theory. The light thrown upon this subject by Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Max Müller, and scores of other great scholars is among the glories of the century now ending. The public declaration of the celebrated Von Martius, of his conversion to the scientific view of the story of the Fall, ought to make smaller men less confident of their views on a subject they have never studied.

In 1875, Commodore Vanderbilt endowed a university in Tennessee, and it was put in charge of the Methodists. Dr. Alexander Winchell was called to the chair of Geology. He was distinguished in his specialty by his successful labors in another university. He openly taught “that man existed before the period assigned to Adam, and that all the human race could not have descended from Adam.” The Methodist bishop told him “that such views were contrary to the plan of redemption.” The Methodist Conference resolved “that they would have no more of this,” and Professor Winchell was summarily dismissed from the chair, and the position, with its salary, assigned to another. The State University of Michigan recalled him to his former chair in that institution, where he could teach science regardless of the impotent thunders of theology.

The fall of Adam is really the pivotal principle in dogmatic theology of the orthodox variety. If the entire human race are not descendants of a real, genuine, historical pair miraculously created (a pair almost divine in perfections), and who by disobedience fell from their high estate, and by their federal or representative character involved all their countless descendants by natural generation and descent in the same ruin,—if these things are not true, then what is called the evangelical scheme is based upon a fiction, and is to be so treated, regardless of the effect upon other theological doctrines. The dogma of a sudden, special creation of a perfect man is not sustained by the facts of history nor the science of palaeontology. Scientific investigators find man, so far as the evidence of his remote existence can be traced, very nearly allied to apes; and there is abundant evidence to show that man has been improving in every respect as years and cycles of years have rolled away. It is thus absolutely demonstrated that the history of our race shows the rise or ascent of man from a very low estate, instead of his “fall” from a condition of high perfection.

But it does not follow, because man as we first find him was very much like the anthropoid ape, that he is a lineal descendant of the ape. The more rational hypothesis is, that both apes and man were evolved from still lower animal forms by divergent lines, so that there is a relation of a very distant cousinship existing between them. There is many a fool-born jest about man and the monkey, oft repeated by adcaptandum

theologians who have never read Darwin’s Origin of Species nor his Descent of Man, and who therefore do not know that there is nothing in these writings to justify such caricatures.

The fact is, the evolution of man by slow and long-continued processes, instead of his sudden miraculous creation on a certain day, is now as well established as the law of gravitation, in the judgment of scientists who are not hampered and blinded by preconceived theological dogmas. It cannot be denied that the weight of scientific testimony is very largely in favor of the development of man, instead of a miraculous and complete creation at a particular period of time. The true ground will be found to be creation by evolution; and if our purblind sacerdotalists had accepted this doctrine, as the brightest of them have privately done, they would have saved themselves the disgrace of becoming the laughing-stock of the scientific world. If man was brought to his present high estate by a system of evolution, it is no less the work of the Supreme Creator of the universe than if he had been made from clay in an instant of time; and if the character of man, mentally and morally, is admitted to be based on the degree of his development, it would solve many a knotty question in theology and morals. At any rate, the evolution hypothesis has many advantages over the Church dogma, manifestly founded on a pagan fable. The fact is, sacerdotalists have always been their own worst enemies, and have always been defeated in their battles with science and a true philosophy.

It is not intended to ignore the fact that legends of a paradisiacal period, a real “golden age,” are found among all ancient peoples, also of periods of general demoralization; but these legends can easily be accounted for. It is a natural instinct in man to praise the past, and to think that “the former times were better than the present.” We see this among aged men and women to-day. Then it is well known that the stream of human history has never run in an unbroken channel. Our race has ever had its “ups and downs,” and, comparatively speaking, mankind has had many falls and ascents, while the general or ultimate tendency and result have been ascending higher and higher. Moreover, the golden age of Adam in Eden must have been very short, according to the fable of Genesis, as the fall occurred before he had any children. What a pity that Adam and Eve could not have maintained their innocence by blind obedience until at least a son and daughter could have been born to them! This may be considered irreverent, but everybody knows that, outside of the pulpit and the Sun-day-school, the story of Adam and Eve is hardly ever mentioned except as a huge joke, and that witty preachers often take part in laughing at it. It is difficult to write about a fiction otherwise than facetiously.

I cannot refrain from again quoting Professor Huxley in summing up my own conclusions in regard to this matter:

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one for a moment can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history. The identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jehovah; if the ‘ten words’ were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the deluge a fiction; that of the fall a legend; that of the creation the dream of a seer,—if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than the stories of the regal period of Rome, what is to be said of the Messianic doctrine which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who on this theory have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legends and quicksands?

“The antagonism between natural knowledge and the Pentateuch would be as great if the speculations of our time had never been heard of. It arises out of contradictions upon matters of fact. The books of ecclesiastical authority declare that certain events happened in a certain fashion; the books of scientific authority say they did not.”

“What we are pleased to call religion now-a-days is for the most part Hellenized Judaism; and, not un-frequently, the Hellenic element carries with it a mighty remnant of old-world paganism and a great infusion of the worst and weakest products of Greek scientific speculation; while fragments of Persian and Babylonian—or rather Accadian—mythology burden the Judaic contribution to the common stock. The antagonism of Science is not to Religion, but to the heathen survivals and the bad philosophy under which Religion herself is wellnigh crushed. Now, for my part, I trust this antagonism will never cease, but that to the end of time true Science will continue to fulfil one of her most beneficent functions, that of relieving men from the burden of false Science which is imposed upon them in the name of Religion.”

The fact that well-dressed congregations do not laugh sacerdotalists to scorn shows how safe it is to rely upon the credulity and indifference of those who have been taught mere myths as real history from early childhood. The day will come when even children will laugh in the faces of priests when they seriously speak of the fall of Adam and Eve as a matter of actual occurrence. The great curse of true religion to-day is literalism, enforced by priestcraft, in regard to what relates to our most sacred concerns.

It is no part of our design to here explain the development theory as to how man did originate from the lower forms of animal existence, but must refer those who are willing to learn to such works as Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man, Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, and to scores of other books accessible to all. Perhaps ninety-nine-hundredths of living working scientists repudiate the Adam-and-Eve story, and regard it as a fable intended to illustrate what man's attainments at the time would not enable him to account for on natural principles.

CHAPTER VIII. SEARCH FOR THE “LAST ADAM”

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”…