Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

And the King James version continues

"32. _With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it not to
shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt_.

"33. _The noise thereof_ sheweth concerning it, the cattle also
concerning the vapor."

This last line shows how greatly the original text has been garbled;
what have the cattle to do with it? Unless, indeed, here, as in the
other myths, the cows signify the clouds. The meaning of the rest is
plain: God draws up the water, sends it down as rain, which covers
all things; the clouds gather before the sun and hide its light; and
the vapor restores the cows, the clouds; and all this is accompanied
by great disturbances and noise.

And the next chapter (xxxvii) continues the description:

"2. Hear ye attentively the terror of his" (the comet's) "voice, and
the sound that cometh out of his mouth.

"3. He beholdeth under all the heavens," (he is seen under all the
heavens?) "and his _light is upon the ends of the earth_.

"4. After it a NOISE SHALL ROAR, he shall thunder with the voice of
his majesty, and shall not be found out when his voice shall be
heard."

The King James version says, "And he will not stay them when his
voice is heard."

"5. God shall _thunder wonderfully_ with his voice, he that doth
great and unsearchable things."

Here, probably, are more allusions to the awful noises made by the
comet as it entered our atmosphere, referred to by Hesiod, the
Russian legends, etc.

{p. 307}

"6. _He commandeth the snow to go down upon the earth_, and _the
winter rain_ and the shower of his strength "--("the _great rain of
his strength_," says the King James version).

"7. He sealeth up the hand of every man."

This means, says one commentator, that "he confines men within doors"
by these great rains. Instead of houses we infer it to mean "the
caves of the earth," already spoken of, (chap. xxx, v. 6,) and this
is rendered more evident by the next verse:

"8. And _the beast shall go into his covert_ and shall _abide in his
den_.

"9. Out of the inner parts" (meaning the south, say the commentators
and the King James version) "_shall tempest come_, and _cold out of
the north_.

"10. When God bloweth, there cometh _frost_, and _again the waters
are poured forth abundantly_."

The King James version continues:

"11. Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud."

That is to say, the cloud is gradually dissipated by dropping its
moisture in snow and rain.

"12. And it is turned round about by his counsels that they may do
whatsoever be commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth.

"13. He causeth it to come, whether for _correction_, or for his
land, or for mercy."

There can be no mistaking all this. It refers to no ordinary events.
The statement is continuous. God, we are told, will call Job out from
his narrow-mouthed cave, and once more give him plenty of food. There
has been a great tribulation. The sun has sucked up the seas, they
have fallen in great floods; the thick clouds have covered the face
of the sun; great noises prevail; there is a great light, and after
it a roaring noise; the snow

{p. 308}

falls on the earth, with winter rains, (cold rains,) and great rains;
men climb down ropes into deep shafts or pits; they are sealed up,
and beasts are driven to their dens and stay there: there are great
cold and frost, and more floods; then the continual rains dissipate
the clouds.

"19. Teach us what we shall say unto him; for we can not order our
speech _by reason of darkness_.

"20. Shall it be told him that I speak? If a man speak, surely _he
shall be swallowed up?_"

And then God talks to Job, (chap. xxxviii,) and tells him "to gird up
his loins like a man and answer him." He says:

"8. Who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth as issuing
out of the womb?

119. When I made a _cloud the garment thereof_, and wrapped it in
_mists_ as in swaddling-bands,

"10. I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors." . . .

"22. Hast thou entered into _the storehouses of the snow_, or hast
thou beheld the treasures of the _hail?_" . . .

"29. Out of whose womb came the _ice_? and the _frost_ from heaven,
who hath gendered it?

"30. The waters are hardened like a _stone_, and _the surface of the
deep is frozen_."

What has this Arabian poem to do with so many allusions to clouds,
rain, ice, snow, hail, frost, and _frozen oceans_?

"36. Who hath put wisdom in the inward part? Or who hath given
understanding to the heart? "

Umbreit says that this word "heart" means literally "a shining
phenomenon--a meteor." Who hath given understanding to the comet to
do this work?

"38. When was _the dust poured on the earth_, and the _clods hardened
together_?"

{p. 309}

One version makes this read:

"Poured itself into a mass by the rain, like molten metal."

And another translates it--

"_Is caked into a mass by heat, like molten metal_, BEFORE THE RAIN
FALLS."

This is precisely in accordance with my theory that the "till" or
"hard-pan," next the earth, was caked and baked by the heat into its
present pottery-like and impenetrable condition, long before the work
of cooling and condensation set loose the floods to rearrange and
form secondary Drift out of the upper portion of the _débris_.

But again I ask, when in the natural order of events was dust poured
on the earth and hardened into clods, like molten metal?

And in this book of Job I think we have a description of the
veritable comets that struck the earth, in the Drift Age, transmitted
even from the generations that beheld them blazing in the sky, in the
words of those who looked upon the awful sight.

In the Norse legends we read of three destructive objects which
appeared in the heavens one of these was shaped like a serpent; it
was called "the Midgard-serpent"; then there was "the Fenris wolf";
and, lastly, "the dog Garm." In Hesiod we read, also, of three
monsters: first, Echidna, "a serpent huge and terrible and vast";
second, Chimæra, a lion-like creature; and, thirdly, Typhœus,
worst of all, a fierce, fiery dragon. And in Job, in like manner, we
have three mighty objects alluded to or described: first the
"winding" or "twisting" serpent with which God has "adorned the
heavens"; then "behemoth," monstrous enough to "drink up rivers,"
"the chief of the ways of God"; and lastly,

{p. 310}

and most terrible of all, "leviathan"; the name meaning, the twisting
animal, gathering itself into folds."

God, speaking to Job, and reminding him of the weakness and
littleness of man, says (chap. xl, v. 20):

"Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a book, or canst thou tie his
tongue with a cord? "

The commentators differ widely as to the meaning of this word
"leviathan." Some, as I have shown, think it means the same thing as
the crooked or "winding" serpent (_vulg_.) spoken of in chapter xxvi,
v. 13, where, speaking of God, it is said:

"His spirit hath adorned the heavens, and his artful hand brought
forth the winding serpent."

Or, as the King James version has it:

"By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed
the crooked serpent."

By this serpent some of the commentators understand "a constellation,
the devil, the leviathan." In the Septuagint he is called "the
apostate dragon."

The Lord sarcastically asks Job:

"21. Canst thou put a ring in his nose, or bore through his jaw with
a buckle?

"22. Will he make many supplications to thee, or speak soft words to
thee?

"23. Will he make a covenant with thee, and wilt thou take him to be
a servant for ever?

"24. Shalt thou play with him as with a bird, or tie him up for thy
handmaids?

"25. Shall friends" (Septuagint, "the nations") cut him in pieces,
shall merchants" (Septuagint, "the generation of the
Phœnicians") "divide him?" . . (chap. xli, v. 1. Douay version.)

"I will not stir him up, like one that is cruel; for who can resist
my" (his?) "countenance," or, "who shall stand against me" (him?)
"and live?" . . .

{p. 311}

"4. Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can go into the
midst of his mouth?

"5. Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round
about.

"6. His body is like _molten shields_, shut close up, the scales
pressing upon one another.

"7. One is joined to another, and not so much as any air can come
between them.

"8. They stick one to another, and they hold one another fast, and
shall not be separated.

"9. His sneezing is like the _shining of fire_, and his eyes like the
eyelids of the morning." (Syriac, "His look is brilliant." Arabic,
"The apples of his eyes are fiery, and his eyes are like the
brightness of the morning.")

10. _Out of his mouth go forth lamps, like torches of lighted fire_."

Compare these "sneezings" or "neesings" of the King James version,
and these "lamps like torches of lighted lire," with the appearance
of Donati's great comet in 1858:

"On the 16th of September two diverging streams of light shot out
from the nucleus across the coma, and, having separated to about the
extent of its diameter, they turned back abruptly and streamed out in
the tail. _Luminous substance_ could be distinctly seen _rushing out
from the nucleus_, and then flowing back into the tail. M. Rosa
described the streams of light as resembling _long hair brushed
upward from the forehead_, and then allowed to fall back on each side
of the head."[1]

"11. _Out of his nostrils goeth forth smoke_, like that of a pot
heated and boiling." (King James's version has it, "as out of a
seething pot or caldron.")

"12. His breath _kindleth coals, and a flame cometh forth out of his
mouth_.

"13. In his neck strength shall dwell, and want goeth before his
face." (Septuagint, "_Destruction runs before him_.")

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208.]

{p. 312}

"14. The members of his flesh cleave one to another; he shall send
lightnings against him, and they shall not be carried to another
place." (Sym., "His flesh being cast for him as in a foundry,"
(molten,) "is immovable.")

"15. His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's
anvil." (Septuagint, "He hath stood immovable as an anvil.")

"16. When he shall raise him up, _the angels shall fear_, and being
affrighted shall purify themselves."

Could such language properly be applied, even by the wildest stretch
of poetic fancy, to a whale or a crocodile, or any other monster of
the deep? What earthly creature could terrify the angels in heaven?
What earthly creature has ever breathed fire?

"17. When a sword shall lay at him, it shall not be able to hold, nor
a spear, nor a breast-plate.

"18. For he shall esteem iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

"19. The archer shall not put him to flight, the stones of the sling
are to him like stubble.

"20. As stubble will he esteem the hammer, and he will laugh him to
scorn who shaketh the spear."

We are reminded of the great gods of Asgard, who stood forth and
fought the monster with sword and spear and hammer, and who fell dead
before him; and of the American legends, where the demi-gods in vain
hurled their darts and arrows at him, and fell pierced by the
rebounding weapons.

"21. _The beams of the sun shall be under him_," (in the King James
version it is, "SHARP STONES _are under him_"--the gravel, the
falling _débris_,) "and _he shall strew gold under him like mire_."
(The King James version says, "_he spreadeth sharp-pointed things
upon the mire_.")

To what whale or crocodile can these words be applied? When did they
ever shed gold or stones? And

{p. 313}

in this, again, we have more references to gold falling from heaven:

"22. He shall make the deep sea to boil like a pot, and shall make it
as when ointments boil." (The Septuagint says, "He deems the sea as a
vase of ointment, and the Tartarus of the abyss like a prisoner.")

"23. _A path shall shine after him_; he shall esteem the deep as
growing old." (The King James version says, "One would think the deep
to be hoary.")

1124. _There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him_,
who was made to fear no one.

"25. He beholdeth every _high thing_; he is king over all the
children of pride." (Chaldaic, "of all the sons of the mountains.")

Now, when we take this description, with all that has preceded it, it
seems to me beyond question that this was one of the crooked serpents
with which God had adorned the heavens: this was the monster with
blazing bead, casting out jets of light, breathing volumes of smoke,
molten, shining, brilliant, irresistible, against whom men hurled
their weapons in vain; for destruction went before him: he cast down
stones and pointed things upon the mire, the clay; the sea boils with
his excessive heat; he threatens heaven itself; the angels tremble,
and he beholds all high places. This is he whose rain of fire killed
Job's sheep and shepherds; whose chaotic winds killed Job's children;
whose wrath fell upon and consumed the rich men at their tables; who
made the habitations of kings "desolate places"; who spared only in
part "the island of the innocent," where the remnant of humanity,
descending by ropes, hid themselves in deep, narrow-mouthed caves in
the mountains. This is he who dried up the rivers and absorbed or
evaporated a great part of the water of the ocean, to subsequently
cast it down in great floods of snow and rain, to cover the north
with ice;

{p. 314}

while the darkened world rolled on for a long night of blackness
underneath its dense canopy of clouds.

If this be not the true interpretation of Job, who, let me ask, can
explain all these allusions to harmonize with the established order
of nature? And if this interpretation be the true one, then have we
indeed penetrated back through all the ages, through mighty lapses of
time, until, on the plain of some most ancient civilized land, we
listen, perchance, at some temple-door, to this grand justification
of the ways of God to man; this religious drama, this poetical
sermon, wrought out of the traditions of the people and priests,
touching the greatest calamity which ever tried the hearts and tested
the faith of man.

And if this interpretation be true, with how much reverential care
should we consider these ancient records embraced in the Bible!

The scientist picks up a fragment of stone--the fool would fling it
away with a laugh,--but the philosopher sees in it the genesis of a
world; from it he can piece out the detailed history of ages; he
finds in it, perchance, a fossil of the oldest organism, the first
traces of that awful leap from matter to spirit, from dead earth to
endless life; that marvel of marvels, that miracle of all miracles,
by which dust and water and air live, breathe, think, reason, and
cast their thoughts abroad through time and space and eternity.

And so, stumbling through these texts, falling over mistranslations
and misconceptions, pushing aside the accumulated dust of centuried
errors, we lay our hands upon a fossil that lived and breathed when
time was new: we are carried back to ages not only before the flood,
but to ages that were old when the flood came upon the earth.

Here Job lives once more: the fossil breathes and palpitates;-hidden
from the fire of heaven, deep in his cavern;

{p. 315}

covered with burns and bruises from the falling _débris_ of the
comet, surrounded by his trembling fellow-refugees, while chaos rules
without and hope has fled the earth, we hear Job, bold, defiant,
unshrinking, pouring forth the protest of the human heart against the
cruelty of nature; appealing from God's awful deed to the sense of
God's eternal justice.

We go out and look at the gravel-heap--worn, rounded, ancient, but
silent,--the stones lie before us. They have no voice. We turn to
this volume, and here is their voice, here is their story; here we
have the very thoughts men thought-men like ourselves, but sorely
tried--when that gravel was falling upon a desolated world.

And all this buried, unrecognized, in the sacred book of a race and a
religion.

{p. 316}

CHAPTER XIII.

GENESIS READ BY THE LIGHT OF THE COMET.

AND now, gathering into our hands all the light afforded by the
foregoing facts and legends, let us address ourselves to this
question: How far can the opening chapters of the book of Genesis be
interpreted to conform to the theory of the contact of a comet with
the earth in the Drift Age?

It may appear to some of my readers irreverent to place any new
meaning on any part of the sacred volume, and especially to attempt
to transpose the position of any of its parts. For this feeling I
have the highest respect.

I do not think it is necessary, for the triumph of truth, that it
should lacerate the feelings even of the humblest. It should come,
like Quetzalcoatl, advancing with shining, smiling face, its hands
full of fruits and flowers, bringing only blessings and kindliness to
the multitude; and should that multitude, for a time, drive the
prophet away, beyond the seas, with curses, be assured they will
eventually return to set up his altars.

He who follows the gigantic Mississippi upward from the Gulf of
Mexico to its head-waters on the high plateau of Minnesota, will not
scorn even the tiniest rivulet among the grass which helps to create
its first fountain. So he who considers the vastness for good of this
great force, Christianity, which pervades the world down the long
course of so many ages, aiding, relieving, encouraging, cheering,
purifying, sanctifying humanity, can not afford

{p. 317}

to ridicule even these the petty fountains, the head-waters, the
first springs from which it starts on its world-covering and
age-traversing course.

If we will but remember the endless array of asylums, hospitals, and
orphanages; the houses for the poor, the sick, the young, the old,
the unfortunate, the helpless, and the sinful, with which
Christianity has literally sprinkled the world; when we remember the
uncountable millions whom its ministrations have restrained from
bestiality, and have directed to purer lives and holier deaths, he
indeed is not to be envied who can find it in his heart, with
malice-aforethought, to mock or ridicule it.

At the same time, few, I think, even of the orthodox, while bating no
jot of their respect for the sacred volume, or their faith in the
great current of inspired purpose and meaning which streams through
it, from cover to cover, hold to-day that every line and word is
literally accurate beyond a shadow of question. The direct
contradictions which occur in the text itself show that the errors of
man have crept into the compilation or composition of the volume.

The assaults of the skeptical have been largely directed against the
opening chapters of Genesis:

"What!" it has been said, "you pretend in the first chapter that the
animated creation was made in six days; and then in the second
chapter (verses 4 and 5) you say that the heavens and the earth and
all the vegetation were made in one day. Again: you tell us that
there was light shining on the earth on the first day; and that there
was night too; for 'God divided the light from the darkness'; and
there was morning and evening on the first, second, and third days,
while the sun, moon, and stars, we are told, were not created until
the fourth day; and grass and fruit-trees were made before the sun."

{p. 318}

"How," it is asked, "could there be night and day and vegetation
without a sun?"

And to this assault religion has had no answer.

Now, I can not but regard these opening chapters as a Mosaic work of
ancient legends, dovetailed together in such wise that the true
chronological arrangement has been departed from and lost.

It is conceded that in some of the verses of these chapters God is
spoken of as Elohim, while in the remaining verses he is called
Jehovah Elohim. This is very much as if a book were discovered to-day
in part of which God was referred to as Jove, and in the rest as
Jehovah-Jove. The conclusion would be very strong that the first part
was written by one who know the Deity only as Jove, while the other
portion was written by one who had come under Hebraic influences. And
this state of facts in Genesis indicates that it was not the work of
one inspired mind, faultless and free from error; but the work of two
minds, relating facts, it is true, but jumbling them together in an
incongruous order.

I propose, therefore, with all reverence, to attempt a re-arrangement
of the verses of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, which
will, I hope, place it in such shape that it will be beyond future
attack from the results of scientific research; by restoring the
fragments to the position they really occupied before their last
compilation. Whether or not I present a reasonably probable case, it
is for the reader to judge.

If we were to find, under the _débris_ of Pompeii, a grand
tessellated pavement, representing one of the scenes of the "Iliad,"
but shattered by an earthquake, its fragments dislocated and piled
one upon the top of another, it would be our duty and our pleasure to
seek, by following the clew of the picture, to re-arrange the
fragments so as

{p. 319}

to do justice to the great design of its author; and to silence, at
the same time, the cavils of those who could see in its shocked and
broken form nothing but a subject for mirth and ridicule.

In the same way, following the clew afforded by the legends of
mankind and the revelations of science, I shall suggest a
reconstruction of this venerable and most ancient work. If the reader
does not accept my conclusions, he will, at least, I trust,
appreciate the motives with which I make the attempt.

I commence with that which is, and should be, the first verse of the
first chapter, the sublime sentence:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Let us pause here: "God created the heavens and the earth _in the
beginning_";--that is, before any other of the events narrated in the
chapter. Why should we refuse to accept this statement? _In the
beginning_, says the Bible, at the very first, God created the
heavens and the earth. He did not make them in six days, he made them
_in the beginning_; the words "six days" refer, as we shall see, to
something that occurred long afterward. He did not attempt to create
them, he created them; he did not partially create them, he created
them altogether. The work was finished; the earth was made, the
heavens were made, the clouds, the atmosphere, the rocks, the waters;
and the sun, moon, and stars; all were completed.

What next? Is there anything else in this dislocated text that refers
to this first creation? Yes; we go forward to the next chapter; here
we have it:

Chap. ii, v. 1. "_Thus_ the heavens and the earth were finished, and
all the host of them."

{p. 320}

And then follows:

Chap. ii, v. 4. "These are the generations of the heavens and of the
earth, _when they were created_, IN THE DAY that the Lord God made
the earth and the heavens.

Chap. ii, v. 5. "And every plant of the field before it was in the
earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God
_had not caused it to rain upon the earth_, and there was not a man
to till the ground."

Here we have a consecutive statement--God made the heavens and the
earth in the beginning, and thus they were _finished_, and all the
host of them. They were not made in six days, but "_in the day_," to
wit, in that period of remote time called "The Beginning." And God
made also all the herbs of the field, all vegetation. And he made
every plant of the field before it was cultivated in that particular
part of the world called "The Earth," for, as we have seen, Ovid
draws a distinction between "The Earth" and the rest of the globe;
and Job draws one between "the island of the innocent" and the other
countries of the world.

And here I would call the reader's attention particularly to this
remarkable statement:

Chap. ii, verse 5. "For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon
the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

Verse 6. "But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the
whole face of the ground."

This is extraordinary: _there was no rain_.

A mere inventor of legends certainly had never dared make a statement
so utterly in conflict with the established order of things; there
was no necessity for him to do so; he would fear that it would throw
discredit on all the rest of his narrative; as if he should say, "at
that time the grass was not green," or, "the sky was not blue."

{p. 321}

A world without rain! Could it be possible? 'Did the writer of
Genesis invent an absurdity, or did he record an undoubted tradition?
Let us see:

Rain is the product of two things--heat which evaporates the waters
of the oceans, lakes, and rivers; and cold which condenses them again
into rain or snow. Both heat and cold are necessary, In the tropics
the water is sucked up by the heat of the sun; it rises to a cooler
stratum, and forms clouds; these clouds encounter the colder air
flowing in from the north and south, condensation follows,
accompanied probably by some peculiar electrical action, and then the
rain falls.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29