cing a number of passages recording
additional incidents in the lives of the patriarchs before and after the
flood, and especially by inserting the second account of the creation,
ii., 4-25."

Colenso observes that verse four of chapter second belongs to the
Elohist, and that it was removed from its original position at
the beginning of Gen. i., in order to form the commencement of the
Jehovistic account of the creation.(95)

95) Lectures on the Pentateuch, p. 32.

Quoting from Bishop Browne in the New Bible Commentary, the same writer
remarks that in the Elohistic account of the creation "we have that
which was probably the ancient primeval record of the formation of the
world."(96)

96) Ibid. p. 16.

The oldest or Elohistic portion of Genesis is, at the present time, seen
to conceal great wisdom and a knowledge of Nature far surpassing that of
later times.

According to Higgins, the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis,
if properly translated, would not declare that in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth, but that Wisdom "formed" the earth
and the planets. In none of the ancient Kosmogonies can there be a word
found regarding the creation of matter. From the facts which have come
down to us respecting the speculations of the ancients, it is plain
that the original conception was, that within the primeval beginnings
described in their Kosmogonies, in chaos or unorganized matter, was
contained primeval force; no attempt, however, was made by them to
account for the creation of either motion or matter.

As soon as human beings began to speculate on the attributes of their
Deity; when the two principles composing it began to separate, and the
idea was gaining ground that the male was the only important factor in
reproduction, the sun became male, the earth and sea female. Still, even
then the doctrine seems not to have been questioned, that the creative
agency had proceeded from matter, or that it was developed in and
through it. The belief that something can be made from nothing was
reserved for a later age.

In the oldest Semitic Kosmogonies, we are assured that the
self-conscious God who is manifested in the order of the universe,
proceeded out of the great abyss, and out of unorganized, dark, primeval
matter. During the earlier historic period, however, by both Jew and
Gentile, the belief was entertained that spirit is material. It is the
essence of fire--a substance