Page images
PDF
EPUB

"with a Creating God, but with Chaos:" Lactantius evidently considered these two principles, as essentially adverse, and incompatible. But, Moses obtained an earth by the creation of God. How inconsistent is it, then, in admitting the Mosaical statement of the creation of this earth by the wisdom and power of God, to admit at the same time, that the earth so created was a Chaos which should produce an earth? or, how is it possible to avoid perceiving, in those two adverse admissions, the confusion of two principles essentially hostile and irreconcilable?

That heathen Chaos, was apprehended and represented with great diversity. Some, with Aristotle, understood the Chaos of Hesiod to signify merely Toros1-place or void space;-thence xEVOV2 -vacuity; and these derived Xaos, like xaoua, from Xawa-dehisco-to gape. Others, (like many of the mineral geologists of our own age,) assumed it to imply "a confused assemblage of ele"ments"-" rudis inordinataque materiæ confusa

66

congeries." This notion, constituted the principle of the Phoenician and Chaldaic cosmogonies, afterwards embraced by some of the Greek philosophers; and these derived χαος from Xεw-fundo -to pour out. But, Josephus knew of no such article as a Chaos in the Mosaic cosmogony; for, he pointedly affirms, "that Moses does not begin "to speak of any natural operation, until after the

1 Natur. Auscult. eap. 2.

2 Ibid.

3 LACTANTIUS, lib. i. cap. 5.

"Divine cessation from creative operation on the "seventh day1."

The Hebrew Platonist, Philo, appears to have been the first who grafted the heathen Chaos upon the Mosaic record; and, from that graft, has sprung forth the Christian Chaos. Yet, Philo did not find it in the words, tohu va-bohu, where alone the Christian imagines that he has discovered it; for, he expressly interprets those two words to signify, αορατος και ακατασκευαστος —invisible and unfurnished, conformably with his ancient countrymen, the Septuagint, and Josephus; but he presupposed it, through a bias received in the Greek or Phoenician schools of philosophy. “ The Creator (he says) "made the heaven incorporeal, and the earth invi"sible, and poured the entire mass of the waters

66

upon the whole earth”ὁ ποιων εποιεί ουρανον ασώματον, και γην αορατον.—το συμπαν ὕδωρ εις απασαν την γην ανεκεχυτο : Thus far he followed the history. But he added, from his Phanician physiology; " that the waters, thus poured upon the "earth, penetrated into it as into a sponge, so as to reduce it to a deep mud” και δια παντων αυτής επεφοιτηκει (το ύδωρ) των μερων, οἷα σπογγιας αναπεπωκυιας ικμάδα, ὡς ειναι τελμα τε άμα

66

1

και δη και ΦΥΣΙΟΛΟΓΕΙΝ Μωϋσης μετα την ἑβδομην ΗΡΞΑΤΟ. Αnt. Jud. lib. i. cap. 2.

2 « The Jewish Lawgiver Moses begins thus. “ In the beginning God « created the heaven and the earth, but the earth was invisible and un“ furnished” ὁ Ιουδαιων νομοθετης Μωυσης – αρχεται τον τρόπον τουτον Εν αρχη εποιησεν ὁ θεος τον ουρανον και την γην. ἡ δε γη ην αορατος και De Mundi Incorrupt.

ακατασκευαστος.

.

xas Batur Thor'. This, was the Chaos of Philo; και βαθυν πηλον. which notion, therefore, he did not attempt to deduce from the words of the record—tohu va-bohu, but superadded it to them from his own physical theory. Aquila and Theodotion, who came after Philo, are the first who appear to have brought this notion to the interpretation of the words tohu vabohu, which they did, by rendering those words XEVOY xaι ouder-void and nothing. But, in so doing, they manifestly betray the quarter from whence they derived the notion; as likewise do those who followed, and who have introduced the interpretations, void, and without form. For Aristotle first interprets xaos-Chaos, to signify, TOTOS -place or space; next, xɛvov vacuum or void; and he then inquires, whether that xevov-void, dos-form?-The origin of the void and without form, is thus traced to the heathen school of Greece. No such senses were ever assigned to the Hebrew words by those ancients, who only looked for their signification within the Hebrew church and language. Symmachus approaches near to the true interpretation, though he inverts the order of the words, when he renders the Hebrew, afyon xaı adıαxpıτov-inactive, i. e. unproductive; and undistinguishable, i. e. imperceptible.

had

The heathen Chaos grafted by Philo on the Mosaic record, was therefore the first parent of

1 De Mundi Opific. p. 6 and 8. See above, p. 123, note 2.

2 Natur. Auscult. cap. 8.

the Christian Chaos so much in fashion in the present and former age; a doctrine, which we may and must nevertheless pronounce to be, with relation to the logical principle implanted within us, of all the conceptions that ever obtained a shelter in the human mind, the most incongruous and irreconcilable, since we have seen that it is peremptorily and equally denied, both by reason and by authority, both by philosophy and by philology, in the very premises from which it is laboured to deduce it. To the preceding ancient testimonies produced against the modern fictitious interpretation of tohu-vabohu, I will yet further add the following reflective and unequivocal testimony of Ambrose, in the fourth century: "The earth was therefore

66

66

invisible, because, being covered by the waters, "it could not have been visible to corporeal eyes; as, things lodged in the depth of waters, "are beyond the reach of ocular sight and pene"tration. Not, that any thing is invisible to

[ocr errors]

God; but, a creature or creation of the world, is "here charactered with relation to a creature-sed "creatura mundi, creaturæ utique æstimatione cen"setur.-The earth was also invisible; because,

66

no light, no sun, as yet illumined the world'." Such was the ancient prescriptive signification of a term, which the moderns have gratuitously determined, shall "mean the same thing as the CHAOS of profane authors."

1

Hexaëmeron, lib. i. cap. 6.

2 See above, vol. i. p. 197.

CHAPTER IV.

THE historian proceeds to his Second Article, in which he relates the events that distinguished the Second diurnal revolution of this globe.

"And GOD said, Let there be a FIRMAMENT "in the midst of the waters: and let it divide the "waters from the waters.

"And GOD made the firmament, and divided "the waters which were under the firmament from "the waters which were above the firmament.

"And it was so: and GOD called the firmament

66 HEAVEN.

"And the evening and the morning were the SECOND DAY."

The word yp, which our version renders firmament, from the Latin firmamentum, is rendered by the Alexandrian interpreters oτsgewa; which word denotes a firm and permanent support. That support was to sustain a part of the waters, which part was now to be separated from the waters beneath.

66

A recent learned, but adventurous writer, has emphatically pronounced his dissent from this interpretation: the proper and literal import of "the word (he insists) is the expansion; and so "doubtless it ought to have been rendered; for,

« PreviousContinue »