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losophefs . The principle of Varro was n 6 t unknown to them ; they were acquainted with the mythology of the Egyptians , Greeks , Romans , Persians , and many others , of less celebrity , much betted than we at the present day . They had been familiar from their youth with these productions of the fancy , they had been brought up amidst them , had themselves once held them in high esteem , and knew all the subtle refinements of interpretation by which their credit was kept up even in their own day . Now , when these men
came to read the Bible , might it not have been expected that they would immediately have recognized mythi here too , especially as the ancient oriental mode of narrative was not indeed strictly poetic , but yet lively , sensible , graphic , and tropical , qualities of style which might lead them to suppose that mythical which was not so , because the difference between history and mythi is thus made less obvious . Yet they saw in the Bible only historical truth . The difference then between biblical and mythical narrative must not only be real but pretty striking .
" It is very true , these simple-minded ancients knew nothing of ' the higher criticism , ' and , it may be said , did not examine things very carefully or very acutely ; and being accustomed to what was mythical in heathenism , were not astonished at it in the Bible , and did not recognize it for what it really was . Yet surely it might have been expected , that the more familiar a man is with any thing , the more easily he would recognize it if he met with it again , in different circumstances and with features somewhat altered . Is there then no difference at all between the ancient monuments of Hebrew
literature and the mythical narratives of other ancient nations ; or is the difference so small as to be discerned with difficulty ; or is not rather their similarity and coincidence so slight and forced , that it was only to be found in our days after a lapse of eighteen centuries ? " If we return to the principle of Varro which has been applied to the Bible , we are immediately struck with the absence in the Hebrew documents of that dark age , which , according to him , precedes the mythical , but which
they neither record nor presume . The old legends of other nations begin with polytheism ; they relate not only marriages of gods and goddesses , but also their adulteries and unions with mortals ; they tell us of wars and depositions of the gods ; they deify the sun , moon , and stars , and acknowledge a variety of demigods and inferior deities , Genii , Daemons , Fervers , Izeds , Dews ; * the inventors of arts and the founders of nations are gods or heroes ; they have either no chronology or a monstrous one , and their
geography expands into a boundless field of fancy ; things undergo strange metamorphoses , and the reins are given to the most grotesque imagination . The Bible history begins , on the contrary , with one God , the Creator , whose power is irresistible , who commands , wills , and every thing is done . We have neither a chaos , nor rebellious and intractable matter , nor an Ahriman , the author of all evil . The sun , moon , and stars are here so far from being gods , that they are subservient to the uses of man , giving him
light , and measuring and dividing his time . The authors of inventions are simply human beings . Chronology proceeds in a regular series , and geography does not go beyond the bounds of this earth on which we live . Here are no metamorphoses of men into trees and wild beasts ; nothing , in short , which in the early memorials of other nations so evidently betrays the operations of fancy . " This knowledge of the Creator , without any mixture of superstition , is - niri * ¦ -1 ¦ i n i - 11 ' i ' ¦¦ - - ¦ ¦ — ¦¦ ' --- ji n jj _ j ii i | r f ¦ - ' nr ¦ ¦ - . - . . * These names are borrowed from the mythology of the Zend-Avesta . Tr .
Untitled Article
638 On the Mythical Interpretation of the Bible .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 638, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/6/
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