The Creation of God - Jacob Hartmann (readict TXT) 📗

physiologically the same. They have the same organs, the same number of muscles, and same number of bones, with some few exceptions. They are built on the same general principles as man; or rather, as man came later, we will say that man is constructed on the same general principles as the animals.

(3) The same mechanism and functions are to be found in the one as in the other—respiration, circulation, digestion, etc.

(4) The proportion of mineral matters contained in a man—or dust, as it is termed in scripture—is about 1⁄23​ to 1⁄24​ of the bodily weight. That is, a body weighing about 125 to 130 pounds would yield about 4½ to 5 pounds of dust, or rather ashes, and the largest proportion of these ashes comes from the solid framework, the skeleton, the bones, composed of phosphates and carbonate of lime.

(5) More than two-thirds of the body’s weight is water—that is, hydrogen and oxygen. The principal elements found in the body are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon. There are traces of sulphur, etc., besides the mineral substances above alluded to. Thus man is not made of dust, but of water, oxygen and hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon. If they had made God say that he made man out of water, he would have been much nearer the truth. Solomon repeats the same in his Eccles. iii, 20: “All go unto one place; all are of dust, and all turn to dust again.” In the burial service the same absurdity is repeated. Alter your service, your prayer—put water in place of dust. Or better, give all the four elements a chance.

Do not teach children we are made out of dust. It is not true. Teach the young what is true. What is the good of lying because some man said, God said so?

The “breath of life.” Is it not time that men of intelligence, in this age of progress and civilization we boast so much of, cease to pretend to believe such nonsense? It is absurd to talk of its being “parables” and “figures of speech.” Either the text means what it says, or it means nothing.

There has been an immense amount of controversy over two Hebrew words, viz.: nephesh—breath, respiring, life, life strength, animal soul; ruach—anamos, breath, wind, psyche, soul, spirit, etc. They thought that the life is in the blood. Lev. xvii, 11: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Gen. ix, 4, 5: “But the flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof,” etc., etc. This controversy has given rise to no end of studies, as psychology—derived from the word psyche,—soul. The literature that has been expended on this subject, psyche, soul, cannot be easily estimated. The matter has been twisted into a science, discussed, argued, lectured on, etc. On the word Theo, Theon—Deos—God, societies and sects, etc., have been formed, as the Theosophists.

What is the breath of life that caused so much controversy, in church and out of church? Oxygen. Deprive a man of oxygen and he dies. Deprive a beast of oxygen and it dies. Oxygen thus is essential to life. Neither man nor beast, as we said, can live without it. The issues which this has given rise to are bewildering—theological, metaphysical, Theosophical, philosophical, Agnostic, gnostic, spiritual, etc., etc. Oxygen, however, covers the ground. It represents all, so far as the life of a body is concerned.

We now come to Paradise, or the garden of Eden.

We will try to locate this garden of Eden geographically, as nearly as possible correctly. Verse 8: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward of Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” That was very kind of God. Verse 9: “God planted the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” A wonderful tree surety. What is most to be regretted is that the species has become extinct. What a boon to humanity if but one tree were planted in every church. Verse 10: “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it parted, and became into four heads.” Verse 11: “The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.” Verse 12: “And the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone.” Verse 13: “And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.” Verse 14: “And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.”

Assyria was founded about 2247 B.C. and is situated near the Persian gulf; and seems to be wedged in between the Persian empire on the east, Arabia on the west, or Badien el Arab, and on the southern point the gulf of Persia.

Ethiopia comprises Nubia, Sennaar, and Northern Abyssinia, and takes in a stretch of country on the west shore of the Red sea. The two countries are separated by the Red sea, and by Arabia, which extends from the east shores of the Red sea to the west shores of the Gulf of Persia, and Assyria. Some one made a big blunder, or Johnston’s atlas is wrong, or they—God—made a mistake in the name. There is considerable distance between the two countries. Assyria lies in Asia and Ethiopia in Africa. Egypt lies farthest north of what is usually known as Ethiopia. Assyria is hemmed in, north by Armenia, west by Media and Susiana, south and southeast by Babylon and Mesopotamia. The river Tigris is the dividing line on the south and southeast. The Parachoatras and Zagrus mountains form the dividing line on the western border, and Armenia is the boundary on the north.

Chaldea is, comparatively speaking, a small tract of land situated between the river Euphrates and the Arabian desert, or Badien el Arab, with Babylon on its north and the Gulf of Persia on the southwestern point.

The river Euphrates takes its rise in the Gulf of Persia and runs westward, and divides into four branches.

The first branch, the Pasitigris, runs somewhat westward through Susiana; the second, Chaosper or Kirkhah, runs northward through Susiana; the third, the river Tigris, runs north, northwest, separating Babylon from Susiana by Assyria; the fourth, the river Euphrates, the farthest south, runs westward, etc.

This is the only river near the Gulf of Persia that divides into four branches, and these are the four rivers that are indicated where the garden of Eden was planted. This is near enough geographically to locate this garden which the Lord God planted. It will indeed afford great pleasure for pious people to know whereabouts they can find the garden of Eden. In this rapid-transit age, they can get an excursion ticket and reach this Paradise in a few weeks. This garden was planted in Chaldea.

We will now see what God did next.

Verse 15: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it.” God gave the position of gardener to Mr. Adam. The only stipulation in the contract between the Lord God and Adam was (verses 16, 17), he could eat of every tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge. There is a God for you—wants to keep the man he made in his own image, a living soul, as ignorant and as stupid as possible; in addition tempting him to commit a wrong act.

Verse 18: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.” Very considerate indeed on the part of God.

Verse 21: “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof.” This is the cleverest kind of surgical operation that was ever performed, without loss of blood, use of antiseptics or anesthetics, without ligature, etc. And out of this rib he made a woman. Why did God make a man of dust and the woman out of the man’s rib? Why did he breathe into the nostrils of the man and forget to do it to the woman? The only reasonable explanation that can be given is that, in those days, among the Chaldeans, woman was considered an inferior creature, possessing no soul. She was the slave sometimes, but the servant always. She was the creature of man’s lust, of his passion, and she was placed in the Bible by the man that wrote it in just the position and condition she occupied at that period. This is a gross falsehood, it is debasing, it is an infamous libel on truth. Does any woman believe that she is a bone of her husband’s bone, and flesh of his flesh?

Verse 25: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” What is there extraordinary about that? Savage races up to this present time are found in many instances nude. Cæsar describes the Germans as bathing promiscuously in a nude state. Columbus found our American Indians nude. Evidently a degree of civilization had already been attained when this story was evolved. The story had its origin in the romantic regions of Chaldea, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Persian gulf, near the river Euphrates. The singer, the story-teller, or the traveling minstrel tramped from place to place, from one shepherd’s tent to another, relating the story to his crude, barbarous countrymen, reciting the curious yet pretty fable of how man was made; the world made; the garden made; how gold, onyx, and bdellium were found, and where; lauding and glorifying their own country, and making out that they were the immediate descendants of the gods.

Every nation has its fairy tales, its fables, its myths, its songs, and its romances. Whether they have their origin in Egypt, or come down embellished from Mount Olympus, whether they are the fairy tales of the Rhine, or those from the river Euphrates in Chaldea, they are only the products of imagination.