es us nothing, since it is not revelation; _or_ the narrative is,
as a whole, divinely dictated, and must be true _throughout_, if we can
only arrive by due study at its true meaning. That part of it is, or may
be, true, even on the most cursory study, is not denied; that it is
_all_ true will appear, I think, in the sequel.

But there is a shorter and simpler reason why the rejection of the
narrative in Genesis would be a direct blow to Christian faith. The
plain truth is that it can hardly be denied, by any candid student of
the New Testament, that our Lord and His apostles certainly received the
early chapters of Genesis as of Divine authority. This has always been
perceived by the whole school of writers opposed to the Faith. They
therefore continue to attack these early revelations, and rejoice to
overturn them if they can, because they are aware that hardly any
chapters in the Bible are more constantly alluded to and made the
foundation of practical arguments by our Lord and His apostles.

If these chapters can be shown to be mythical, then the Divine knowledge
of our Lord as the Son of God, and the inspiration of His apostles, are
called in question. In the New Testament, especially, there are repeated
and striking allusions to Adam, the temptation of the woman by the
Serpent, and the entrance into the world of sin and death. Our Lord
Himself places the whole argument of His teaching on marriage and the
permissibility of divorce on Genesis ii. 24 (_cf_. St. Matt. xix. and
St. Mark x.). In St. John viii. 44 our Lord clearly alludes to the
Edenic narrative when He speaks of the tempter as a "manslayer ([Greek:
anthropoktonos]) from the beginning." Still more remarkable is the
argument of St. Paul in Romans v.; altogether based as it is on the
historical verity of the account of the Fall; and other allusions are to
be found in 1 Cor. xi. 8, in 2 Cor. xi. 3, in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, and elsewhere. In short, there are at least sixty-six
passages in the New Testament, in which the first eleven chapters of
Genesis are directly quoted or made the ground of argument. Of these,
six are by our Lord Himself, two being direct quotations;[1] six by St.
Peter, thirty-eight by St. Paul, seven by St. John, one by St. James,
two by St. Jude, two by the assembled apostles, three by St. Luke, and
one by St. Stephen.

[Footnote 1: St. Matt. xix. 4; St. Luke xvii. 27; and perhaps we might
add a third--St. Matt. xxiii. 35.]