Chapter I: Moses is a historian, and not a poet

In going through the numerous writings which treat this important question, we were not a little surprised to encounter some which dispute Moses’s title of historian, claiming that his style is poetic and that he himself forewarns the reader against the interpretation according to the literal sense which one might be tempted to give to his words. It is difficult not to discover, in the claim of the authors who thus try to transform Moses into a poet, a kind of oratorical precaution under cover of which they believe themselves permitted to torture his word at their

pleasure, in order to make him say what he did not wish to say and what he did not say. “Others have already observed,” we read in the Civiltà cattolicà, “that the first chapter of Genesis is written in a figurative and in some measure poetic style. By its coloring and images, it partakes of poetry. One would call it a canticle or a traditional hymn, placed by Moses at the frontispiece of his books.¹”

“In the state of ignorance to which humanity was reduced,” the Review of the Catholic World said in its turn, “expressions were insufficient to retrace the great acts of divine power; Moses was therefore forced to choose those which departed least from the thought which he had to render, but while warning that they were more or less diverted from their habitual acceptation.²”

Among the numerous criticisms of which the Pentateuch has been the object, and which are summarized in the Critical History of the Old Testament, by Richard Simon, and in the Conjectures on Genesis, by Astruc and Vater, one does not see the transformation of Moses into a poet, and of the first chapter of Genesis into a sacred cantata, make an appearance. The fact is that, no matter how much one has

read, read again, and reread this narrative, one discovers nothing in it that justifies this idea; no matter how much one searches for the terms by which Moses would endeavor to warn us that his language must not be taken literally, one does not find them. On the contrary, this assessment is in contradiction with all the characteristics of this primitive document and with all the data of science.

It is in contradiction:

1. With the simplicity of the account, which retraces in precise, clear, positive terms the primordial history of the world. No ornament suited to charming the imaginations, no arrangements, precautions, or means of any kind to forestall the objections of unbelief and win sympathies: narration and nothing but narration. Whether he speaks of natural and perishable things, or of miraculous, sublime, incomprehensible things, the sacred writer employs the same language; he speaks like the copyist whose pen runs beneath an author’s dictation. In fact, it was absolutely impossible for Moses to express himself with less affectation, and the poetic grandeur of his work is found, not in the form, but in the substance itself, and solely in the substance of the subject.

2. It is in contradiction with the character of the later documents which unfold the history of the world and of humanity, taking Moses as their guide and developing his thought.

3. It is in contradiction with geology itself—not hypothetical geology, but positive geology—which cannot represent to itself, in particular, the history of the formation of our earth otherwise than in the form and the series of forms described by the book of Moses.

4. It is in contradiction with the manner in which Genesis has always been understood by the great majority of the doctors and the Fathers, who have never ceased to consider it a true history, and Moses the oldest, most concise, most exact, clearest, and truest historian. A few quotations will prove the correctness of our reflections:

“Nothing is simpler than the account, given by Moses, of the creation of the universe,” say the commentators of the Vence Bible.³

The illustrious Bishop of Hermopolis, in his conference entitled Moses, Historian of Primitive Times, delights in drawing the attention of his listeners to the naïveté and simplicity of the Mosaic narrative: “Moses,” he says, “left us the history of the first age in the book placed at the head of our sacred books, under the name of Genesis. I shall not dwell upon all that it contains of beauty in its simplicity, of purity in its doctrine. He describes the facts and the events, not as a poet, but as a historian. Let us take great care not to contradict this account and combat it with conjectures

and systems which may be nothing but chimeras.⁴”

“The style of Moses,” says Abbé Glaire in his turn, “is simple and without ornament, without any of those oratorical precautions suited to removing the difficulties which might arise in his account. Full of confidence himself in his fidelity, he does not trouble himself to convince his contemporaries; he recounts without ever discussing or proving. The description of the creation of the world bears within itself, in a striking manner, the imprint of truth.⁵”

5. Finally, it is in contradiction with the whole of Genesis. For, if it were admitted, it would no longer be the history of the creation of the world which Moses recounts to us, as has always been believed, and as he himself informs us in chapter II, when he says: Hæ sunt generationes cæli et terræ [These are the generations of heaven and earth], and, according to the Greek text: Hic est liber generationis [This is the book of generation], etc.; it would be the history of its definitive and final reorganization. From that point on, the first verse, thus worded: In principio Deus creavit cælum et terram [In the beginning God created heaven and earth], intended by the sacred historian to make known to us the beginning of all things, would be essentially inaccurate and incomplete. Likewise, these expressions, so simple and so forceful: Fiat lux, fiat firmamentum, fiant luminaria [Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let there be luminaries], etc., would become unintelligible; they would no longer indicate

the acts of creative power, but simply modifications, apparently repairs which God would have made to his work, created previously and then destroyed, without anyone knowing why or how. Yet the revolutions whose necessity people delight in imagining would have been far more radical (if we may be permitted the word) than the revolution caused by the Flood. Well then! Would Moses have spoken to us of the latter in such detail, without making the slightest mention of the former, if the former had occurred? It seems to us that to pose the question is to answer it.