THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE


We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claim
that no religion known to man can be truly said to be original. All
religions, the Christian religion included, are adaptations or variants
of older religions. Religions are not _revealed_: they are _evolved_.

If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in
whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its
revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never
been a religion which fulfils those conditions.

According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years
ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which
was at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era.

Here I recommend the study of Laing's _Human Origins_, Parson's
_Our Sun God_, Sayce's _Ancient Empires of the East_, and Frazer's
_Golden Bough_.

In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of
Manchester spoke as follows:

Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall
we assign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so long
preceded Sargo I. and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best
answer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel:
"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern