1st. These writers admit the greater
antiquity of the first chapter, though assigning the whole of the book
to a comparatively modern date. They say:

"The 'document Jehovah'[13] does not especially concern our present
subject; and it is incomparable with the grander conception of the
more ancient and unknown writer of Genesis 1st. With extreme felicity
of diction and conciseness of plan, the latter has defined the most
philosophical views of antiquity upon _cosmogony_; in fact so well
that it has required the palaeontological discoveries of the nineteenth
century--at least 2500 years after his death--to overthrow his
_septenary_ arrangement of 'Creation;' which, after all, would still
be correct enough in great principles, were it not for one individual
oversight and one unlucky blunder; not exposed, however, until long
after his era, by post-Copernican astronomy. The oversight is where he
wrote (Gen. i. 6-8), 'Let there be _raquie_,' _i. e._, a _firmament_;
which proves that his notions of 'sky' (solid like the concavity of a
copper basin, with _stars_ set as brilliants in the metal) were the
same as those of adjacent people of his time--indeed, of all men
before the publication of Newton's 'Principia' and of Laplace's
'Mecanique Celeste.' The blunder is where he conceives that _aur_,
'light,' and _iom_, 'day' (Gen. i. 14-18), could have been physically
possible _three whole days_ before the 'two great luminaries,' _Sun_
and _Moon_, were created. These venial errors deducted, his majestic
song beautifully illustrates the simple process of ratiocination
through which--often without the slightest historical proof of
intercourse--different 'Types of Mankind,' at distinct epochas, and in
countries widely apart, had arrived, naturally, at cosmogonic
conclusions similar to the doctrines of that Hebraical school of which
his harmonic and melodious numbers remain a magnificent memento.

"That process seems to have been the following: The ancients knew, as
we do, that man _is_ upon the earth; and they were persuaded, as we
are, that his appearance was preceded by unfathomable depths of time.
Unable (as we are still) to measure periods antecedent to man by any
_chronological_ standard, the ancients rationally reached the
tabulation of some events anterior to man through _induction_--a
method not original with Lord Bacon, because known to St. Paul; 'for
his unseen things from the creation of the world, his power and
Godhead,