508 Science and the Bible. [July,
Now
the simple fact is, as we are informed by one of our profoundest
biblical scholars, that not one of the known Greek manuscripts sustains
the reading ek μη φαινομένων ; that the two versions or
translations referred to (the Vulgate and Syriac) are only indirect
testimony that, possibly, such a text once existed, while it is as
possible, and more probable, that the " ut ex invisibilibus visibilia
fierent" of the Vulgate, and the corresponding phrase of the Syriac,
were translations from a text like our own ; and, further, that the
above L· μη φαινομένων cannot be correct, as the Greeks would not use the negative μή in such a case, but the negative ου;
so that this reading is not only bad Paul, but bad Greek. On this
point, the best Greek authority in the country sustains, as we know
(and so must all Greek scholars), the assertions of standard German
commentators. We leave the rest of the argument for the criticism of
others.
The phrase invisible things, in
the Vulgate, if it were the right translation, would not mean,
necessarily, " unseen dynamical entities." The second verse of Genesis
speaks of darkness over the face of chaos, whose beginning the
first verse announces; and this would meet all the requisites of
interpretation without the " entities." But it is an objection to such
a view that it makes Paul reckon creation from the third verse of
Genesis, instead of the first.
We
believe it now demonstrated, that the author of the " Six Days "
brought his philosophy to the Bible, instead of taking it out of it by
faithful exegesis. And if it has no foundation in the Bible, none in
pure reason, none in science, how far is it worthy of commendation ?
How far, of repudiation ?
It
is not wonderful that the " World-Problem" prefers " imagination " to
sober science. The same convenient assistant carries him over " the
beginning" in Moses, as we have said ; so that we have nature waking
and sleeping before " the beginning," as well as after, and the
heavens and earth, and light also, earlier creations. The great
thought, " the creation out of nothing," which has been believed to
come forth from the opening chapter of the Bible, which is
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