Article January 2, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

THE DATE OF GENESIS.—While not a few modern scholars are assigning a late date to the composition of the Book of Genesis, it is interesting to note an incidental proof of its origin in the era, if not from the hand of Moses. In his introduction to the "Temple Bible," Professor Sayce remarks that "it is clear that the writer of Genesis has drawn his materials, not from a Babylonian library, but from a library of Canaan, where the euneiform literature of Western Asia was still stored in the days of Moses." The clay-books that had been brought from Babylonia here became, he continues, the basis of other historical works, in which the local coloring was modified in accordance with the environment. "The literature of Babylonia, in other words, was adapted to the new country and the new population to which it had been carried; it remained Babylonian in origin, but its setting was that of Canaan."

Professor Sayce then points out that there was one period only in the history of the Oriental world when this could have been the case. "It was the period when Canaan was for long centuries a province of Babylonia, and when the culture of Babylonia was transported to the West; and it was a period that lasted down to the Mosaic age. When Moses, or Messu, the adopted 'son' of the daughter of Pharaoh, was born, there was still intercourse between Canaan and the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon. The Canaanitish libraries had not as yet been destroyed, and though Canaan had ceased to belong to Babylonia, and had become a province of Egypt, it was still so permeated with Babylonian influences that its official correspondence with its new masters was carried on in Babylonian script. But all this came to an end before the great Hebrew legislator was dead, By this time Egypt had been driven out of Asia. The Hittites were overrunning Canaan in the North, and the Israelites were threatening it with invasion and devastation in the south. Soon it ceased to be possible even for one who was trained in all 'the wisdom of the Egyptians, to collect the older records of western Asia; the libraries were destroyed in which they had been preserved, the meaning of the cuneiform characters was forgotten, and a new system of writing came into use. The ancient documents which form the background of the earlier chapters of Genesis must have been read and consulted before Kirjath-sepher, or 'Book City,' was sacked and Jerusalem transformed into a Jebusite stronghold."

The Examiner.

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