Antiquity of the Human Race.

13

In further support of this demand for an enormous extension of our chronology an appeal is made to the gradual development of languages:

How many years are needed to develope modern French out of Latin, and Latin itself out of its original crude forms? How unlike is English to Welsh, and Greek to Sanskrit-yet all indubitably of one family of languages! What years were required to create the existing divergence of members of this family! How many more for other families, separated by a wide gulf from this, yet retaining traces of a primeval aboriginal affinity, to have developed themselves, either in priority or collaterally!' (pp. 54, 55.)

Now, the argument we take it here is :-We know that it took several centuries for French to grow out of Latin; but the affinities of French to Latin are much closer than those of Gaelic to Sanskrit, and the affinities of these are much closer than those of the Aryan to the Shemitic dialects, and the affinities of these are much closer than those of either of them to the Mongolian; therefore, as the French took some centuries to grow out of the Latin, we cannot allow less than a distance of twenty millenniums for the epoch when the one primitive tongue was spoken, from which the oldest of these is a divergence. Was ever so huge a conclusion built on more tottering premises? The whole rests on a tissue of the merest assumptions. First, it is assumed that the period actually taken in the development of French from Latin was the period which needed to be taken, i.e., that under no circumstances could it be less. Second, it is assumed that all dialectical divergences proceed from the parent stock at the same rate, and can never be quickened in one case or retarded in another, by peculiar influences. Third, it is assumed that the amount of divergence of one language from another belonging to the same group gives the measure of the time during which these have grown. Fourth, it is assumed that because the languages of the same group can be referred to a common source, the sources of these groups themselves may be referred to one primeval tongue, whence they have all been developed. And Finally, it is assumed that from the beginning the process of development has gone on regularly without any violent break or dislocation, occasioned by some peculiar outward agency such as Moses, for instance, tells us was called into operation at the Tower of Babel. An argument built on such premises as these reminds us of the Hindoo cosmogony, where the earth is represented as resting on an elephant, the elephant on a serpent, the serpent on a tortoise, and the tortoise on nobody knows what. And yet it is on reasoning of this sort that we are asked to con

cede to man's existence on the earth a period at least three times longer than any known fact, historic or scientific, demands!

Reason,' says Dr. Williams, has convinced us that the Se'mitic languages, which had as distinct an individuality four thou sand years ago as they have now, require a cradle of larger 'dimensions than Archbishop Ussher's chronology.' What the reasons are which have convinced him of this he does not condescend to tell us; but, so far as we can gather them from the above statement, they resolve themselves into some such argument as this:-Four thousand years ago Hebrew was a distinct and independent tongue; but it could not have grown to be that in so short a space of time as Ussher's chronology allows for the previous existence of man upon the earth; therefore we must greatly enlarge the dimensions of the cradle of the race-by a few additional millenniums at least. Now, we may in the first place just ask in passing, how Dr. Williams arrives at the conclusion in consistency with the views he holds, and which we shall notice more particularly by and bye, of the composition of the Old Testament books, that the Hebrew language was in the state he describes four thousand years ago? If Bunsen and he are to be believed, we have no authentic specimens of the language so ancient as that. The Pentateuch was put together between the ages of Solomon and Hezekiah,' that is (say) between the year 1000 and the year 700 B.C. From it, therefore, no evidence can be drawn of what Hebrew was four thousand years ago; for though it appears there are 'imbedded' in it numerous fragments that 'go up to a high antiquity,' yet as we have only Dr. Williams's word for this, and as he can give us no assurance that the various writers who preserved these fragments in the crust of a later narrative,' did not alter the language in which they were originally." composed, so as to assimilate it to the more modern style they were themselves using, we really cannot accept these fragments as authentic vouchers for the state of the Hebrew language four thousand years ago. Dr. Williams has, in fact, involved himself here in as vicious a circle as ever man ran into. These fragments, says he, are of high antiquity, because the language in which they are written is the Hebrew of the time of Abraham. But how do you know, asks an objector, what was the Hebrew of the time of Abraham? We know it, replies Dr. Williams, because we have it preserved to us in these fragments of high antiquity; that is to say, we know it because we know it! But if the evidence of these be discarded, to what else will Dr. Williams appeal? Let this, however, pass. We return to Dr. Williams's argument as

Antediluvian History.

15

above stated. Is it, we ask, worth anything? How does he propose to prove his minor premiss? Obviously he must know three things in order to do so:-1. From what the Hebrew started in its progress towards development; 2. Under what circumstances the alleged development proceeded; and 3. What is the rate at which the development of language proceeds under such circumstances. Perhaps as Dr. Williams is a Professor of Hebrew he may be prepared with an answer to these inquiries; but clearly they must be answered before a step can be taken towards the conclusion to which he would bring us. He might

as well ask us to calculate the time taken by a body in its fall without telling us from what height it fell, through what sort of medium it passed, and what is the rate at which such bodies fall through such a medium, as expect us to calculate the time which the Hebrew required in order to develope itself from its parent source, without furnishing us with the data above spe

cified.

Before passing from this section of our examination, we must just notice Bunsen's grand etymological travestie of the simple account which Moses has preserved to us of the descent of the sons of Adam along the lines of Cain and Seth respectively. Dr. Williams says:

-

'In the half-ideal, half-traditional notices of the beginnings of our race compiled in Genesis, we are bid notice the combination of documents and the recurrence of barely consistent genealogies. As the man Adam begets Cain, the man Enos begets Cainan. Jared and Irad, Methuselah and Methusael are similarly compared. Seth, like El, is an old deity's appellation, and MAN was the son of Seth in one record, and Adam was the son of God in the other.' (p. 56.)

Whether Bunsen would be altogether pleased with this representation of his views we greatly doubt. No person, we presume, who had only it to guide him could form any clear conception of what these views are; and we must in Bunsen's name protest against there being imputed to him the impiety of describing El as the name of some old deity. What Bunsen says is that El was the name in one traditionary record, and Seth the name in another, of the one God. His theory is sufficiently fantastic and objectionable without loading it with the guilt of impiety. According to him Seth was not the son of Adam but of God, who created Enos or man according to one tradition, just as, according

another tradition, the same fact is commemorated as the formation of Adam by El. The somewhat awkward fact that in both traditions Seth is represented as the son of Adam the Baron passes over quietly. Having evaded this difficulty, he next

assumes that, instead of a record of the descent of two lines of the human race, we have in Genesis iv. and v. two traditionary accounts of one line of descent. For this the only authority he attempts to adduce is the occurrence of identical names in both, such as Cain and Cainan, Jared and Irad, &c. Now, on this we would remark, 1. That it is only by a process of the most violent etymological straining (against which even Dr. Williams feels obliged somewhat to protest) that the alleged identity of names is made out;* and 2. That even were the identity established on the most solid grounds, it would no more prove that the two lists are one than the occurrence of the same names in the genealogy of two families sprung from the same source would prove them not two but one. Further, Bunsen thinks that instead of these being the names of 'impossible men,' as he is pleased to term them, they are to be viewed as designating epochs in the history of the race during which society was in a particular state, and each of which marks a great critical change which society underwent. Thus Cain the marauder' represents an epoch of unsettlement and confusion; Irad, the agricultural builder of cities,' an epoch of commencing civilization; and

Cain (Qayin) Bunsen says, signifies Artist, in which he follows Gesenius and others, who derive it from 1 to beat, to pound, or to play the strings of an instrument. It may be very unscholarly, but we cannot help thinking that the ancient compiler of the tradition (we put Moses out of the account) knew a little better about the meaning of the word than those learned Germans, and he derives it from to get, to obtain. But how comes this name to be identified with Qeynan? It is the younger form with a reduplication at the end,' says Bunsen, (Egypt. iv. 388). How does he know this? Is the longer form of a word always the younger form? Or is it certain that the termination an is a mere reduplication of the penultimate consonant? As it is found at the end of many names in Hebrew, and after different consonants (comp. Eran, Asan, Paran, Zenan, &c.), we take it to be significant; and as the words which are terminated by it usually convey the idea of the possession of what is denoted by the word to which it is appended (comp. vigilant, from waking; having caves, from to dig holes; having flocks, from a flock, &c.), we are inclined to think that Cainan is a distinct formation from Cain, and bears the sense of one rich from gains, the possessor of gettings (Besitzer, Fürst.) As for Bunsen's attempt to identify with, it is positively amusing, and reminds one of the etymological ventures of a former generation. 'Hirad means citizen, from 'hir, city; and Yared 'would seem to be merely an attempt to bring into closer analogy with the later language a formation, which had ceased to be understood, at the expense of the sense.' But if is a formation from so common a word as, why should it have ceased to be understood? Why should a Hebrew-speaking people be at a loss to discover the meaning of a word which a Christian of the nineteenth century finds no difficulty in explaining? On what evidence, moreover, is it asserted that a form, which was in use as long as the language was spoken, was at a very early age exchanged for one more in analogy with the later language? And where are the grounds for saying that Yared is more in analogy with the later language than 'Hirad? All this seems to us arbitrary to the last degree. Bunsen further identifies Mechuyael and Mahalalel; but for what reason we cannot conceive, except for that which led Fluellen to make 'comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth.'

History by Means of Etymology.

17

Enoch, the man of God,' coming between these two, an epoch of religious influence and sacerdotal rule. Now all this may be very ingenious as it is certainly very amusing; but how utterly gratuitous and baseless it is! Out of Bunsen's imagination and apart from his etymological legerdemain it has not a shadow of evidence to support it. It is true the longevity ascribed to the antediluvian patriarchs is rather a startling fact; but it is so simply because it lies out of the range of our ordinary experience. When Bunsen pronounces it impossible' he quite forgets the nature of the problem under which this fact comes. The question which physiologists have to answer in regard to the duration of human life is not, How long may a man live? but Why should any man die? And as they can answer this question only by falling back on the Divine appointment and will, it follows that as against a longevity which is asserted to have been appointed by God, it is utterly incompetent to appeal to any laws of human and animal organism' as observed to operate now. If man dies only because such is the appointment of Heaven, there is no greater natural impossibility in God's appointing a man to live a thousand years than in his appointing an infant to die the moment after it is born. To talk about 'laws' in such case, as if human life and death were controlled absolutely by these, is really quite foolish; if it were a law of human existence that life should last for seventy years, no man could come short of this, and no man could go beyond it. But the moment we call in the Divine appointment as determining the bounds of human life, we cut ourselves off from all appeal to natural laws as competent to determine the possibility' of any alleged duration of life. He who appoints one human being to live for an hour, and another for a few years, and another for a century, may, if he pleases, appoint one to live for five centuries, or eight, or ten, or for

ever.

6

As to the names of the antediluvians being significant, that proves nothing, or it proves what would justify us in turning all history into a parable and a riddle. Why should this process stop with the antediluvian age? Why should Cain, the marauder,'* be the name of an epoch, while Abraham, the father of a multitude;' or Joshua, God is help;' or Solomon, 'the peaceful,' are to be treated as historical individuals? Is the mere brevity of the early record to be that which exposes it to be treated as a riddle? Then, why not extend the principle to all

Why 'Marauder,' by the bye, if his name means artist? Baron has forgotten his etymology here, and after deciding for

קנה gone over to

NO. LXV.

C

Surely the learned

as the root has