Not only
are the statements positive, but, taking any interpretation whatever of
them, they are not nearly imaginative enough to suit the purpose.
They have an obvious amount of relation to fact which has never been
denied.[1]
If the narrative is purely human even (and that the school we are
considering do not aver), how did the writer come to be accurate even to
that extent? Take only the order of events. I admit it does not
correspond with the geologic record in the way commonly asserted; yet it
has a very remarkable relation to that sequence.
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.
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