CHAPTER II.

CREDIBILITY AND ANTIQUITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.

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MR. OLMSTED begins his attack upon the writings of Moses by saying, "Let us suppose that Cicero were to re-appear among us, with faculties as vigorous as when he penned his oration for Milo, and you were to put the Bible into his hands, with a request that he would read it carefully, and give you his opinion as to the veracity of the several authors. He reads a few of the first chapters of Genesis. He then asks who the author is. You tell him his name was Moses. He takes it for granted. He then tells you that this Moses relates some wonderful facts so wonderful that he cannot believe them; and asks again, how Moses knew them. You tell him that Moses was inspired. He calls upon you for proof of this assertion. reply that he must presume it. He would then address you somewhat in the following strain: "You requested me to examine this book, as a man of good sense or a logician should do, and why ask me now to take for granted what would render scrutiny, or examination of testimony unnecessary; for if Moses was inspired by a truth telling God, as you wish me to presume, he must necessarily have written the truth." Under the full conviction that I have proved that nothing can be presumed in favor of Moses that could not be presumed in favor of any other author, I shall proceed to examine the Pentateuch, on the supposition that a man of that name wrote it.

I have already remarked, that from no man who is said to have lived before Moses, and there were many to whom he says God revealed himself, have we a single line? The question here suggests itself: how did Moses know what transpired at the creation? for he no where tells us, that in any of their interviews, God ever told him any thing about it. You must infer that God told him, or this cosmogony of his was a mere vague tradition. I shall proceed upon the ground that Moses means to be understood as telling us that he derived his information from the mouth of God himself. If God told him so, all he has written is true; but, if I can show that what he has written is not true, then God never told him so."

Without detaining the reader to comment upon Mr. Olmsted's unjust and false representation of the ground occupied by the advocates of Revelation; suffice it to say, that to arrive at a correct decision

quirer is not required first to suppose that any of them are inspiredand it is heartily admitted "that nothing can be presumed in favor of Moses, that could not be presumed in favor of any other author."

Mr. Olmsted enquires, "How did Moses know what transpired at the creation?" To this it is replied, that it will be admitted this cosmogony of his was a mere vague tradition, and consequently unworthy of credit, provided it can be proved that it contains any error concerning the material world. But it is maintained that while all the false theologies of both the ancients and the moderns, abound not only with systems revolting in their views of the Deity, but with the grossest physical errors, that nothing of this nature is to be found in the writings of Moses, or in any of the books of the Bible. Had Moses, like the authors of the sacred writings of the Hindoos, represented the moon as 50,000 leagues higher than the sun, that it shines by its own light, that it animates our body; that the night is formed by the descent of the sun behind the Someyra mountains, situated in the middle of the globe, and many thousand leagues high; that our earth is flat and triangular, composed of seven stories, each of which has its own degree of beauty, its inhabitants and its sea; that the first is of honey, the other is of sugar, the other of butter, the other of wine; and finally, that all the mass is carried on the heads of innumerable elephants, who in shaking themselves cause the earthquake, then we should have been brought to the mortifying conclusion that Moses was an impostor. Or had his writings contained one of the many errors with which those of the most eminent philosophers of Greece and Rome abound; or had he like Mohammed represented mountains as being made to hinder the earth from being moved, and represented it as being held by anchors and cords; or had he given us the cosmogony of Buffon; or, like Lucretius, Pliney or Plutarch, and even the fathers of the Christian church, had he reasoned against the theory of antipodes, we should have been constrained to have treated his natural philosophy with contempt, and as a consequence, would have spurned his theology. But we rejoice under the conviction that not one of the fifty sacred writers of the Bible, from the admirable Moses, who wrote in the desert four hundred years before the Trojan war, down to that fisherman, the son of Zebedee, who wrote in Ephesus and Patmos, during the reign of Domitian, not one of them have made one of those mistakes, which the science of every age discovers in the books of the preceding ages: none of those absurdities which modern astronomy discovers in such great numbers in the writings of the ancients.

Let the Infidel search through the Scriptures, from one end to the other, seeking for such spots; and while he is so doing, let him bear in mind that this book speaks of every thing; that it describes nature, recounts its grandeurs, narrates its creation; tells us of the formation of the heavens, of the light, of the waters, of the atmosphere, of the mountains, of the animals and of the plants; that it teaches us the first revolutions of the world, and that it predicts to us its last; that it treats, not only of the visible, but of the invisible world; that it is a book to which nearly fifty persons of every degree of cultivation, taste, and condition, have contributed. Let him search, but he cannot find one of the thousand errors with which both ancient and modern writings are filled, when they speak either of heaven or of earth, or of their revolutions, or of their elements. And if the writings of Moses, and all the others, be found to be perfectly free from every physical error, then will Mr. Olmsted's question be answered; for then in these sacred pages, we must be constrained to hear the voice of the world's Creator, and it is maintained that the more closely they are examined, the more distinctly will that voice be heard.

Mr. Gaussen says, of the Scriptures, "They speak poetically, but precisely the true language of appearances. We there hear a father who condescends to speak to the smallest of his children, but in such a manner, that the elder can never discover a single word of his conversation contrary to the true position of the things which he has made, and in such a manner too, that often he drops, without affectation, words enough to show them that all that which they have learned of his works for four thousand years, he knew before them, and better than they now do. It is thus, that in the Bible, eternal wisdom addresses its children. In proportion as they grow, they see the Scriptures made for their age, adapted to their developments, appearing always to grow with them, and always presenting to them, on the one hand, absence of all errors, and on the other, indirect indications, but incontestable, of a science which preceded all that of man.”*

Mr. Olmsted further says, "I now proceed to show that what he (Moses) has written is not true. I assert in the first place, that the first allegation in the book, that God made the Heaven, is a falsehood. In order to determine this question, we must ascertain what Moses meant by the word Heaven-he meant something-he tells us that God made something that he called Heaven; and we want to know

what that something was, that we may determine whether God made it or not. Moses does not formally define the word. It could not therefore have been a new term, or used by him in a sense different from its common acceptation. We must therefore resort to his, and the writings of other authors of the Bible, for the purpose of ascertaining what was understood by the word heaven. If I do not succeed in showing that heaven was the studded firmament, then all the previous observations, and after arguments apply to the allegation that God made the firmament. I contend, that by the word firmament, Moses meant a transparent, pliant, solid arch or concave over our heads; and that heaven was the same arch, with the sun, moon, and stars set in it. It can be compared to a tambord shawl; before it is put into the frame, it is a square of white muslin only, (firmament,) but after figures are worked upon it, it becomes a shawl, (heaven.) Moses tells us that God called the firmament heaven; they cannot therefore be two totally distinct things; but one must be a modification of the other-one the muslin, the other the tambord muslin or shawl.

Let us inquire for what purpose, or object Moses says this firmament was made-what office it was to perform. "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters," was, according to Moses, one of the fiats of the Almighty. It does not require a knowledge of the Hebrew to discover that the expression, "in the midst of," should be rendered "between," for God immediately goes on to say, " and let it divide the waters from the waters." Then Moses tells us that "God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." This firmament was something palpable, something solid, as the term imports, which was to serve as a barrier to prevent certain waters which were above it from a confluence with certain other waters which were upon the earth. The same substance, water—a liquid— the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, not in a gaseous or vaporous, but in a liquid state, that was upon the earth, and afterwards gathered into seas and lakes, was said by Moses to be above, or resting upon this firmament. It must therefore have been something solid. This firmament, according to Moses, was perforated, over whose openings there were gates, or windows, or trap-doors, which were opened and shut, as God chose to give or withhold rain. In vii. 2: Gen. Moses says: "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened; and what then? "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty

nights." Again, in viii. 2: Gen. he says, "The fountain of the great deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped;" and what then? And the rain from heaven was restrained. Again, to the same point; 1 Kings, 8, 35: "When the heaven is shut up and there is no rain." 2 Chron. 6, 36, the same, and 7, 13: "If I shut up heaven, and there be no rain," Psalm 78, 23: "Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna." Luke 4, 25, "Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land." That is, there was no rain; see James 5, 17. Are not these quotations sufficient to prove the perforation. The Scriptures also frequently speak of the heavens passing away, and the creation of new heavens, and of the pillars and foundation of heaven, and of their trembling; but the passages which are as decisive as any other of the main position (that heaven meant an arch,) are the followingPsalm civ. 2, "Who stretchest out the heavens as a curtain." Isa. lx. 22, to the same effect; also xxxiv. 4: "And the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll." And Rev. vi. 14: "And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together;" that is, heaven was rolled up as we roll a sheet of paper or a piece of sheet iron. What stronger proof can you require that Moses' firmament, or heaven, was a solid, though transparent and pliant, arch or concave. sun, moon, and stars were set in it, as gems in a coronet-water rested upon it-it had doors or windows, through whose openings the water ran-was spread out-could be rolled up, and was to be destroyed, and a new one made in its place. Ezekiel says, its likeness was as the color of the terrible crystal stretched forth over their heads; and Josephus, a Jewish author, held in high repute by you all, calls it the crystaline. And lastly, its very name imports solidity.

The

I am aware that some of you, seeing the force of this argument, object to the common translation, and tell us that the Hebrew word rendered firmament can and should be rendered expanse, or expansion. Let us test the correctness of this translation, by the same rule that polemics adopt towards each other, viz: substituting the word expanse for heaven, or firmament, in the passages quoted. "And God said let there be an expanse," (firmament). That must be a singular system of philosophy, which shall teach that it required a fiat from any being whatever, for the existence of expanse or expansion.