[Footnote 1:  It should be borne in mind that just as Revelation is often absolutely silent on many points that mere curiosity would like to see explained, so also, the Divine Author may have allowed parts of the original text of Revelation to be so far lost or obscured as to leave further points that might have been once recorded, now doubtful.  All that we may be quite sure of is that the text has been preserved for all that is essential to “life and godliness.”]

APPENDIX.

PROFESSOR DELITZSCH ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

The information here put together is a compilation from papers in “The Nineteenth Century,” and other sources.  It has no pretentions to originality, but only to give a brief and connected account of the subject, more condensed and freed from surrounding details than that which the original sources afford.

Before entering on the subject, I would again call attention to the surpassing importance of these early chapters of Genesis.  And, I add, that unbelievers are especially glad to be able to allege anything they can against them, because they are aware that hardly any chapters in the Bible are more constantly alluded to, and made the foundation of practical arguments by our Lord and His Apostles, than these early chapters in the Divine volume.  If these chapters can be shown to be mythical, then the divine knowledge of our Lord, as the Son of God, and the inspiration of His Apostles, are put in question.  All through the Old Testament, allusions to Adam and to the early history in Genesis occur; and among other passages, I will only here invite attention to the 31st chapter of Ezekiel, where there is, in a most beautiful description of the cedar-tree, an allusion to “Eden, the Garden of God” (see also chapter xxviii. ver. 13), which some have thought to indicate that the site was still known, and existing in the time of the prophet.  This at least may be remarked, that in verse 9, where the prophet speaks of the “trees that were in the Garden of God,” the word were is not in the original, and the sense of the context would rather denote the present tense—­“the trees that are in the Garden of God.”

But it is in the New Testament that the most repeated and striking allusions to Adam, the temptation of the woman by the Serpent, and the entrance of sin and death into the life-history of mankind, occur.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See on this subject page 137 ante.] [Transcriber’s note:  Chapter X.]

As regards the narrative of Eden itself, there has been, from the very earliest times, some disposition to regard it as mystical or “allegorical,” i.e., to regard it as representing spiritual facts of temptation and disobedience, under the guise or story of an actual audible address by a serpent, and the eating of an actual fruit.  The earliest translators seem to have glossed the “Gan-’Eden,”