Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 22:87 (Jul 1865)
Article: The First Eleven Chapters Of Genesis Attested By Their Contents
Author: Horatio B. Hackett

BSac 22:87 (July 1865) p. 395

The First Eleven Chapters Of Genesis Attested By Their Contents1

Horatio B. Hackett

A distinguished writer, Max Duncker, begins his excellent History of Antiquity with a general remark respecting

BSac 22:87 (July 1865) p. 396

the lands of Africa as divided by the equator; and then, on the second page, proceeds to speak of the lands and people of Egypt. He passes over, without a single word, the fundamental preliminary questions which pertain to ancient history, and brings us, by a single step as it were, into the presence of the various nations of which he writes. It is certainly, in many respects, a wise and commendable reserve which excludes the obscure domain of first causes and effects from the sphere of history. But it is a characteristic sign of our times that we consider it so wise to confine ourselves here to the middle of things, and not to inquire after their beginnings and ends, while in other studies the investigators who have most repute for wisdom are those who search most deeply for ultimate reasons and principles. In truth, it is hardly correct to speak here of a history of antiquity, in any proper sense of the term; at least it is antiquity more as an aggregation of separate parts, than as the representation of a world’s common origin and growth. A more correct designation would be a history of the ancient nations. It is the style of history of which Herodotus is father, not that of which Moses is father. Herodotus has written for us a history of antiquity according to this idea, since he leads us, in his narratives, from one nation to another. It corresponds with the point of view of the Greeks, those coryphaei of heathendom, to addict themselves, with love as well as labor, to single objects and detached investigations, and to set forth the results of such study with artistic skill. The historic art, the plastic representation of single forms, reaches here its crowning point. But something different from this is the philosophy of history, a thoughtful, scrutinizing survey of the whole order of life, as it unfolds itself in space and time, therefore not of single nations only, but of the race, and not of the middle only, but also of the beginning and end, of the idea of the world, and its realization in history. It is only such inquiry, extended to the entire range of history, that satisfies the wants of an inquisitive spirit; for such scrutiny, all those works of his-

BSac 22:87 (July 1865) p. 397

toric art are, in the end, only preparatory labors. This highest form of history is at present one of our philosophical wants, as Schiller’s well-known Academic Inaugural, for example, has shown. Such a view,...