stands on a higher,
certainly on a later, level. To our way of thinking its views are
more intelligible, simpler, more natural, and on this account they
have been held to be also older. But this is on the one hand to
identify naturalness with originality, two things which every one
knows not to be the same, and on the other hand it is applying
a standard to prehistoric tradition which applies to historical
tradition only: freedom from miracle and myth count in favour
of the latter, but not of the former. But the secret root of the
manifest preference long shown by historic-critical theology for
Genesis i. appears to lie in this, that scholars felt themselves
responsible for what the Bible says, and therefore liked it to
come as little as possible in conflict with general culture. /1/
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1. I merely assert that Genesis ii. iii. is prior to Genesis i.;
I do not believe the story of Paradise and of the Fall to be very
old with the Israelites. We are led to think so by the fact that
the man and the woman stand at the head of the genealogy of the
human race; a place we should rather expect to be assigned to the
serpent (according to primitive Semitic belief the serpent was by
no means opposed to God).
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