Now, in any case, the writer could have had no knowledge of any kind of his own on the subject:  how did he hit on this particular arrangement?[2] It is a mere matter of calculation on the well-known rules of permutation and combination to realize in how many different ways the same set of events could have been arranged; the number is very considerable.

And he could derive no assistance from any similar existing narrative.  If we conclude from the Assyrian discoveries that a non-biblical but similar narrative existed, still it is certain that the principal one we as yet have is so late in date, that it is more likely to be derived from the Bible than the Bible from it.  And though, on referring to the earlier tablets, we find traces of the same narrative, it is so obscured by idolatrous and false details, that the Bible writer must have had to make a virtually new departure to get his own simple narrative.  A re-revelation would be required.  As to all other cosmogonies, Egyptian, Indian, and Buddhistic, nothing can be more opposed in principle and in detail than they are to the severe and stately simplicity and directness of the Mosaic.

[Footnote 1:  Not even, for example, by Professor Haeckel.]

[Footnote 2:  How, for example, did the writer come to introduce the adjustment of hours of daylight and seasons in the middle, after so much work had been done?  How did he come to place birds along with fish and water monsters, and not separately?]

We cannot, then, account for the narrative on human grounds; nor can we suppose that any inspiring control would have given the author so much truth, and yet allowed so much error.

All this points to only one of two possible conclusions:  either the narrative is not inspired at all, and is a mere misleading story, into which the name of God is introduced by the author’s piety—­and so really teaches us nothing, since it is not revelation; or the narrative is, as a whole, divinely dictated, and must be true throughout, if we can only arrive by due study at its true meaning.  That part of it is, or may be, true, even on the most cursory study, is not denied; that it is all true will appear, I think, in the sequel.

But there is a shorter and simpler reason why the rejection of the narrative in Genesis would be a direct blow to Christian faith.  The plain truth is that it can hardly be denied, by any candid student of the New Testament, that our Lord and His apostles certainly received the early chapters of Genesis as of Divine authority.  This has always been perceived by the whole school of writers opposed to the Faith.  They therefore continue to attack these early revelations, and rejoice to overturn them if they can, 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.