written by two different, but equally anonymous, authors. No Christian
theologian of to-day, with any pretensions to scholarship, claims that
Genesis was written by Moses. As was long ago pointed out, the Bible
itself declares that all the books the Jews originally possessed were
burned in the destruction of Jerusalem, about 588 B. C., at the time
the people were taken to Babylonia as slaves too the Assyrians, (see II
Esdras, ch. xiv, V. 21, Apocrypha). Not until about 247 B. C. (some
theologians say 226 and others; 169 B. C.) is there any record of a
collection of literature in the re-built Jerusalem, and, then, the
anonymous writer of II Maccabees briefly mentions that some Nehemiah
"gathered together the acts of the kings and the prophets and those of
David" when "founding a library" for use in Jerusalem. But the earliest
mention anywhere in the Bible of a book that might have corresponded to
Genesis is made by an apocryphal writer, who says that Ezra wrote "all
that hath been done in the world since the beginning," after the Jews
returned from Babylon, under his leadership, about 450 B. C. (see II
Esdras, ch. xiv, v. 22, of the Apocrypha).

When it is remembered that the Jewish books were written on rolls of
leather, without much attention to vowel points and with no division
into verses or chapters, by uncritical copyists, who altered passages
greatly, and did not always even pretend to understand what they were
copying, then the reader of Genesis begins to put herself in position
to understand how it can be contradictory. Great as were the liberties
which the Jews took with Genesis, those of the English translators,
however, greatly surpassed them.

The first chapter of Genesis, for instance, in Hebrew, tells us, in
verses one and two, "As to origin, created the gods (Elohim) these
skies (or air or clouds) and this earth. . . And a wind moved upon the