in early days polytheists--Scott's supposition that this is the origin
of the Trinity has no foundation in fact, as the beginning of that
conception is to be found in the earliest of all known religious nature
worship. The acknowledgment of the dual principal, masculine and
feminine, is much more probably the explanation of the expressions here
used.

In the detailed description of creation we find a gradually ascending
series. Creeping things, "great sea monsters," (chap. I, V. 21, literal
translation). "Every bird of wing," cattle and living things of the
earth, the fish of the sea and the "birds of the heavens," then man,
and last and crowning glory of the whole, woman.

It cannot be maintained that woman was inferior to man even if, as
asserted in chapter ii, she was created after him without at once
admitting that man is inferior to the creeping things, because created
after them.


L. D. B.





CHAPTER II.


Genesis ii, 21-25.