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DR. WINCHELL’S “PREADAMITES.”
Reprinted from Unitarian Review,
March, 1881.
*º-sºmº-º-º-º
.”
*
*...*
REV. J. T. SUNDERLAND.
DR. WINCHELL’S “PREADAMITES.” +
Prof. Winchell's book belongs to the class of literature
which attempts to reconcile the Bible with science. But it
is among the very best of its class; and, what is more, it has
a real value entirely aside from its attempt to “harmonize ''
Moses with Peschel and Lyell. -Pndeed, the book seems to
me in several respects so notable that I cannot but think
such readers of the Unitarian Review as may not have read
the work will be glad to have their attention called to it
in some detail.
The aim of the book may be stated in general terms to be
to show that Adam — the Adam of the Bible — cannot have
been the progenitor of the human race, and that the col-
lateral statements of the Bible either imply or permit the
existence of human beings before Adam, he being simply
the father of the Jewish people. This is the main thesis of
the work. The author also endeavors to show that the old
belief that the black races are the descendants of Ham
is neither Scriptural nor scientific, and to answer the ques-
tions naturally arising in the mind of the reader, “Who
were the first men 2 ” “Where did they appear, and how
long since?” “How have the different races of mankind
come into existence?” and “What have been their paths
of dispersion over the earth?’” & *
It will thus be seen that the work is both theological and
scientific.
The positions taken by the author are maintained with
much logical ability, and with great fulness of appeal to the
Bible, secular history, Hebrew and Egyptian chronology,
and the writings of eminent investigators in all branches
of ethnology.
* Preadamites; or, A Demonstration of the Eaºistence of Men before Adam,
Together with a study of their condition, antiquity, racial affinities, and progressive
dispersion over the earth. With charts and illustrations. By Alexander Winchell,
LL.D., Professor of Geology and Palaeontology in the University of Michigan, author
of Sketches of Creation, etc. Chicago : S. C. Griggs & Co ; London : Trübner & Co.
1880.
4 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
Prof. Winchell, who is understood to be “orthodox,” has
evidently written his book with an “orthodox * public most
prominently in view ; and to this class of readers it will per-
haps be of more value than to any other, in calling their
attention, in a very telling way, to certain lines of facts
which too many of their number, even their preachers and
scholars, are in the habit of turning away from and refusing
to see. But the book has scarcely less value to liberals, as
covering better than has been done by any preceding work
a field of thought and research with which every intelligent
liberal ought to be familiar. Last, but not least, the work
has great interest from a purely ethnological point of view.
From a somewhat familiar acquaintance with the ethnologi-
cal writings of Quatrefages, Peschel, Brace, Foster, Huxley,
Haeckel, Prichard, Nott and Gliddon, Agassiz, Tylor, Lub-
bock, and others, I do not hesitate to rank this work of
Prof. Winchell as second to none of these in spreading be-
fore the reader, in a clear, compact, and scholarly manner,
the latest and best information attainable upon the whole
subject of the races of mankind, their origin, probable lines
of dispersion, habitats, characteristics, and respective parts
in the world’s past progress. One of the most valuable
features of Prof. Winchell’s book is the charts and illustra-
tions, which, distributed through the volume, throw great
light upon all these subjects. Particularly worthy of note
is the “Chart of the Progressive Dispersion of Mankind,” by
means of which the author shows, by differently coloréd
lines, the paths along which he thinks the different races
have advanced from their original home (which, in common
with Peschel, Quatrefages, Haeckel, and others, he conceives
to have been a continent, known among scientists as Lemu-
ria, now buried beneath the Indian Ocean) to their present
habitats. The basis of this chart, as the author tells us,
is Kracher's Ethnographische Welt-Karte (Wien, 1875); but
readers of Haeckel will recognize it as also bearing striking
resemblances to the ethnographic chart which prefaces the
first volume of that writer's History of Creation. Winchell,
however, while agreeing with Haeckel in most important
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 5
particulars as to the place of origin, affinities, and routes of
dispersion of the race, has given us a chart larger than
Haeckel's, and more careful as to details, and containing
Some important new features. To any one desiring to gain
information regarding past migrations and present locations
of the races of the world, this chart is simply invaluable.
After seeing it, one wonders that any work upon ethnology
or ethnography should ever be published (as almost all
works on these subjects are) without such a chart. It would
be scarcely more of an omission to publish a geography or a
history without a map.
Scarcely less valuable than the Chart of Dispersion are
the Tables of Affiliated Classification of Mankind on pages
52, 53, and 300–306. Prof. Winchell adopts very nearly
the classification of Peschel. He makes the number of
races seven. Of these, four —to wit, the Australian (in
Australia and Tasmania), the Papuan (in the islands of Me-
lanesia), the Hottentot (in South Africa), and the Negro (in
Central Africa) — he calls the Black races, and assigns them
the lowest place, both structurally and in point of culture,
in his scale of classification. The “first men’’ of the world,
he thinks, were of the Australian or pre-Australian family.
Next above the Black, he places the Brown races; namely,
the Dravidian (the prehistoric inhabitants of India, still
surviving in a few localities) and the Mongoloid (includ-
ing the Malay, the Malayo-Chinese, the Chinese, the Japa-
nese, the Altaic, the Behrings, and the American families).
Finally and highest in the scale, he puts the White (or Medi-
terranean or “Blushing”) race, including (1) the Sunburnt
or Hamitic family of Western Asia and Northern Africa,
(2) the Brunette or Semitic family of Western Asia and
North-eastern Africa, and (3) the White or Aryan or Indo-
European or Japhetic family, including the Hindoos and
Persians of Asia, and the Latins, Greeks, Slavs, Teutons,
and Kelts of Europe.
Our author, while holding that Adam was “a representa-
tive of the white race,” regards the white race itself as
having sprung from the older Dravida of Southern Asia;
6 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
and, among the excellent illustrations of the volume, he
furnishes us, not exactly with a portrait of Adam, but
with a picture of a Dravidian of the Toda tribe, Nilghiri
Hills in Southern India, a brown-faced, symmetrical feat-
ured, bright-eyed, curly-haired, moustached individual [far
too intelligent looking, if he had been in Eden, not to have
“known good from evil,” and not to have at least suspected
that it was the proper thing to wear clothes], who, we are
told, is “supposed to represent the stock from which Adam
sprung.”
The book is throughout able in its argument, and in the
main candid, though there are not wanting places where
there is suggestion of the special pleader. Yet the author
succeeds in giving us, on the whole, the impression that he
is a thoughtful and sincere searcher after truth rather than
“a champion of a cause.” His chain of argument, extend-
ing through chapters eight to fourteen inclusive, in which
he endeavors to show that the time since the supposed No-
achian flood, or even since the supposed creation of Adam,
is entirely insufficient to account for the differentiations in
type which appear, and for fully four thousand years have
appeared, in the human species, is not more able than it is
fair and convincing. Let me give my readers a glimpse at
one of the lines of facts employed, with conclusions deduced
therefrom.
Prof. Winchell shows from pictures and inscriptions on
Egyptian monuments that the negro type, as well as several
other well-known human types, was as well marked and
distinct 2000 years B.C. as it is to-day. That is to say,
268 years after the Usherian Deluge, if we trust the Egyp-
tian inscriptions, or 342 years according to the iconographs,
we find the negro exactly what he is now. Thus, in the
brief space of these 268 or 342 years, the whole enormous
process of differentiation, from the Noachite type (white)
to the negro, must have taken place. Is this credible? If
such an enormous differentiation could take place in three
or four hundred years, how does it happen that in the three
or four thousand years which have elapsed since there has
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 7
been no perceptible change? Or, if we take the ground
that the deluge was local, which the Scriptures in the most
explicit and emphatic manner declare it was not, our diffi-
culties are only slightly less. With a local deluge, we are no
longer compelled to trace all human types to Noah. Four-
teen hundred and fifty-six years more — the time, according
to Usher, which elapsed between the creation of Adam and
the flood — are allowed us in which to account for the dif-
ferentiation of the negro. But does even this afford time
enough? According to Usher, Adam appeared 5,884 years
ago. The negro was finally differentiated in 1,798 years
from that time, and has not changed during the last 4,086
years. In other words, the negro continued to diverge
during thirty per cent. of his existence upon the earth; but,
during the remaining seventy per cent., he has not diverged
to any appreciable extent. Prof. Winchell holds that, in the
light of ethnological science, such a belief cannot be held.
Still further. If we take Lepsius for our authority in
Egyptian chronology, and no writer on the subject is
more careful or stands higher, we find that Egypt eacisted
as an established monarchy 3,892 years before Christ, which
is only 112 years after the creation of Adam, according to
the dates of Usher. Or if, instead of adopting Lepsius as an
authority, we adopt Brugsch, Mariette, Lenormant, Böckh,
or Unger, all of them high authorities, we have Egypt exist-
ing as a settled monarchy as early as 396 if not 1,698 years
before Adam. Such considerations as these give us a glimpse
of one or two of the many classes of difficulties which are
shown by Prof. Winchell to lie in the way of a belief in the
Adam of the Genesis story, as the first parent of the human
I’8,C62.
It is unquestionably the scientific side of Prof. Winchell’s
book that is the strong side. And yet he reaches some
scientific conclusions which are at least open to question.
One of the most novel of his theories is that which he ad-
vances to account for the origin of the hunting tribes of
American Indians. Nearly every writer of eminence on
either side the Sea, who has written of the American aborig-
8 Dr. Wºmehell’s “Preadamites.”
ines, has classed them all together as essentially one race,
with an origin from a common source; and generally that
source has been regarded as Asiatic. Moreover, Behring's
Strait has commonly been fixed upon as the point of proba-
ble passage from the Old World to the New. But Prof. Win-
chell regards them as really two races. One, he thinks,
came over Behring's Strait, and gave us the American
Eskimo, the Mound-builders, and the more civilized and
stationary populations of California, Mexico, and Peru. The
other came from the Polynesian Islands to the west coast
of South America, about the thirtieth degree of south
latitude, or just south of the empire of the Incas, pressed
through the passes of the Andes, entered, and in time pop-
ulated the rich plains of the eastern part of the continent,
and became the hunting tribes of South America. In the
course of time, these pressed up into the Carribean Islands
and across to Florida, and thence still north, forming the
hunting tribes of North America, which expelled the Mound-
builders. This theory is at least ingenious. It may be held
by other writers beside Dr. Winchell; but I do not recol-
lect to have met it. It will need to be supported by a good
deal more evidence than our author furnishes before it will
be generally accepted.
Another point at which many will take decided issue with
this book is its exceedingly low estimate of the negro, not
only as regards his past achievements and present condition,
but also his physical structure and possibilities. Devoting
a chapter to the task of proving the non-Hamitic origin of
the negro race, the author devotes another to showing their
essential inferiority to nearly or quite all the other races of
the world. Of course, he is able to cite a great many facts
and figures in support of such a position. But it is one of
those cases where facts and figures are apt to be of very
little value, because there are just as many on the other side.
Humboldt declares that there are no races which are to
be accounted naturally inferior races. We are prone to for-
get that, just as we set down all forms of religion which are
not our own as inferior to our own, so we set down civiliza-
Dr. Winchall’s “Preadamites.” 9
tions which are unlike ours, and physical characteristics —
as hair and color of skin, etc.— which are not like ours, as
inferior to ours, when very possibly, in a just estimate, they
may be superior. Peschel says that no African races are so
low down as several American races, notably some of the
Athabascan tribes of the Hudson Bay territory, and the
Botacudos and Fuegians of South America. Huxley says
that we are probably indebted to the negro for the inven-
tion of the process of the smelting of iron, an invention
scarcely second in importance to the invention of the alpha-
bet. One of the prominent marks of negro inferiority
urged by Winchell is dolichocephalism; and yet Quatre-
fages calls attention to the fact that the greater number of
the higher civilizations of the world has arisen among doli-
chocephalous peoples. Prof. Winchell seems never to have
considered the important fact that all tribes of negroes
which we know anything of speak agglutinative languages,
the second stage of languages. Monosyllabic languages,
which are the first and most crude attempts at human
speech, exist only among the yellow races; so that linguisti-
cally we must class the negroes above the Chinese. In the
Middle Ages, the basin of the Niger contained empires of
black peoples very-little inferior in many respects to Euro-
pean kingdoms of the same epoch. We forget that though
we, the white nations of the world, happen to be taking the
lead in civilization now, it has not always been so. And
very likely the time may come again when it will not be so.
As a part of his argument for the inferiority of the negro,
Dr. Winchell urges at great length the point that the white
and black races are in nature so far apart that union of the
two races produces a progeny which, if not sterile at first,
tends soon to become so, and is in every way inferior in vi-
tality to either the pure white or the pure black. But this is
also one of the cases where it is of little value to have facts
on one side, unless we can have those on the other, so as to
weigh the two together. Dr. Winchell cites Dr. Nott as
giving testimony to the effect that mulattoes are less pro-
lific than the parent stocks, and have a tendency to run out;
tº
º • e”
º * e
º
10 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
but he does not tell us that Nott says this of South Carolina
only, while he confesses that in Louisiana, Florida, and Ala-
bama, mulattoes are robust, fruitful, and energetic. Pes-
chel declares that, when sterility appears in mulattoes, the
cause is not physiological, but an immoral life. In harmony
with Peschel and in opposition to Winchell, Quatrefages
insists that, although many facts may be cited to show the
degeneracy of mulattoes, yet such degeneracy is nearly or
Quite always due to conditions under which they live; and,
when these conditions are equally favorable with the condi-
tions of whites and negroes, he thinks they are quite as
prolific and strong as the latter. He cites many facts to
show this. He also brings forward testimony from distin-
guished travellers and others, showing that half-breeds of
the most opposite races are very commonly among the hand-
somest people in the world, which indicates not physical
deterioration, but a high degree of physical perfection. In
answer to Prof. Winchell’s claim that mulattoes are morally
as well as physically inferior to both negroes and whites,
both Peschel and Quatrefages urge that what of truth there
is in this comes from the fact that unions of whites and
blacks are very often morally criminal, and the offspring
are looked upon as a sort of outcasts. But, when the
unions are legal and legitimate, and the moral surroundings
and education of the mulattoes are favorable, they develop
into a fine class of people. Other points might be men-
tioned in which Prof. Winchell has taken ethnologic
grounds which are at least open to question.
With so much of comment upon the more purely scientific
side of the work before us, I turn now to the Biblical and
theological side.
Dr. Winchell gives us distinctly to understand, at the very
outset of his work, that he regards all statements found
in the Bible, touching scientific questions, as amenable to
science. If, after due investigation, science is found to sup-
port them, they stand: if science contradicts them, they must
fall. Here are his words: “That the first man came into
existence but six thousand years ago, and, with his immedi-
iº
gº º
& * >
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 11
ate successors, attained an age ten times as great as modern
men, is a question to be examined in the light of anthro-
pology, ethnology, archaeology, and history. That the west-
ern centre of Asia was the primitive seat of the human
species can certainly be confirmed or discredited by re-
searches touching early traditions, migrations, and monu-
mental records.” This we say at once is fair and candid;
and if we remember that it is written by a man who is
claimed as orthodox, and with an orthodox public mainly
in view, I think we must also say it is outspoken and brave.
Certainly, it is brave for a man writing for orthodox readers
to adopt the theory of Evolution, as Prof. Winchell all
through the book gives us to understand he does, even
going so far as to imply that he believes in man’s descent
(or ascent) from the highest of the inferior animals; and not
in Western Asia either, where the Bible account is generally
regarded as placing man’s origin, but in the submerged con-
tinent of Lemuria. However, it will be pretty hard for
even admirers to avoid thinking him timid, when he comes
to deal with the Bible in points where it plainly contains
errors. Evidently, he has not courage to confess in plain
words that the Bible may make mistakes. Indeed, he even
goes out of his way more than once to pat on the back the
theory of Bible infallibility, and to lead us to understand,
without exactly saying so, that he thinks the theory true.
And yet that he is not really blind to the errors of Bible
chronology, genealogy, ethnology, and so on, appears in many
places in his book; for example, on pages 8 and 9, where he
quotes with implied approval passages from Sears and Moses
Stuart, declaring that there are thirty thousand to eighty
thousand various readings in the Hebrew manuscripts which
we possess of the Old Testament, and on page 11, where, in
speaking of the genealogical tables in Genesis, chapters x.
and XI., he says, “The tenth chapter is the older document,
and, presumptively, possesses the highest authority.” Of
course there could be no degrees of authority, if all were
infallible and perfect.
Whatever there is of outspokenness and courage shown in
12 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
the book only makes our disappointment the greater on com-
ing upon exhibitions of an opposite character, as, for exam-
ple, the following: After having told us (in the passage
already quoted) that the statements of the opening chapters
of Genesis, involving scientific questions, must be tested by
science, the author goes forward practically to make null
what he has said by informing us that even if, as the result
of our scientific investigations, we find ourselves obliged to
declare any of those statements untrue, that will not prove
“that the divine truth was not contained in the original doc-
uments, but only that it so far transcended uninspired knowl-
edge or apprehension that uninspired men have been unable
to grasp it.” And in many places in the book it is urged
that, if mistakes or scientific inaccuracies occur anywhere
in the Bible, it is, of course, the fault of the translators:
the original, or what God wrote, was without error. Well,
without stopping to ask Prof. Winchell, as Col. Ingersoll
or any other sharp reasoner of his class would, how he
knows that God wrote the original, I will content myself
with merely expressing admiration at the exceeding con-
venience of this double-barrelled plan of Biblical interpreta-
tion. It may not be in every way satisfactory, but it is
certainly convenient. Better than any other that I know
does it enable one to face two opposite ways at the same
time, even very possibly thinking honestly all the while that
he is facing only one way. To the scientist, it holds out the
very sweet sop: “Of course, science must have her verdicts
respected. Whenever the Bible touches anything which
comes within the domain of science, it must be examined,
and science must decide whether it is true or not.” While
to the theologian it holds out the sop, quite equally sweet :
“Yes, to be sure, we let science have its way about these
things. We don't pretend to contradict science: the verdicts
of science are not to be gainsaid. But then, you know, if
science decides that the Bible contains any error anywhere,
—as in the declaration that the world was created in six
days, or that the whole earth was drowned with a flood, or
that Eve was created from a rib of Adam,_ why, we sim-
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 13
ply say that she does not understand the sacred declarations:
rightly interpreted, they would not contradict science. All
that is wanted is a new translation, or a better method of
exegesis.” This is the game which, consciously or uncon-
sciously, Prof. Winchell plays all through those chapters of
his book in which he deals with the Bible. In the midst of
the difficulties, discrepancies, and contradictions, which come
to view in treating the relations of Genesis to his doctrine
of Preadamites, he again and again insists that, if we could
discover some new and more correct interpretation of the
original Hebrew Scriptures, we should find our way clear to
believe, on Biblical grounds, that Adam was not the first
man; that Eve, instead of being taken out of Adam's side,
was born naturally of a Dravidian father and mother; that
all the human race did not descend from the Eden pair; that
the deluge covered only some small section of the earth, etc.
One cannot help wondering if Prof. Winchell ever heard of
the preacher who, after delivering a series of sermons on the
“Harmony of the Mosaic Account of Creation and Geology,”
and urging that all that was necessary to reconcile the two
was simply a proper interpretation of the Genesis account,
making the word “day,” for example, mean not a day, but
an indefinite period of a million of years or so, had occasion
to bargain with one of his flock for a pig. After a few days,
the man who had engaged to furnish him with the young
porker came, bringing a miserable, worthless dog, saying,
“Here is the pig I sold you.” The minister, of course,
objected, and declared that the animal brought was no pig,
but only an ugly cur. “I grant,” answered the layman,
reflectively, “that science, and even my own eyes, pronounce
the beast a dog; but the necessities of the case are that it
should be a pig. Theologically, therefore, I have no doubt
it may be considered to be a pig. Science and my own
eyes probably err for want of a proper interpretation. With
a new and superior exegesis, I feel sure the animal will turn
out a pig.”
Prof. Winchell's system of Biblical exegesis, as shown in
chapters ii., xviii., and xxviii., not to say chapters iii.,
14 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
iv., v., vii., and xii., of the work before us, as well as the .
exegesis generally of the “reconcilers” of Scripture and
science, if turned in the channel of mercenary things, might
easily be relied upon to interpret a dog into a pig. Such
a task would be slight compared with that of interpreting
the account of the creation of man, in Genesis, in such a
manner as to make it harmonize with the theory that the
race had been in existence thousands of years before Adam.
For, if the Bible anywhere declares anything, it declares, in
plain, straightforward, unmistakable prose, that when God
had finished the rest of the creation he then made Adam,
“when there was NOT A MAN to till the soil,” and planted a
garden which he named Eden, and put this first man in it,
and made from a rib of his body a woman to be his wife,
which woman Adam called “Eve (Living), because she was
the mother of ALL LIVING.” And from this first human pair
Spring all the nations of the earth. Any interpretation
which pushes and pulls and twists the plain Biblical narra-
tive, whether as told in our common English version or in
the original Hebrew (for the Hebrew is as plain and ex-
plicit in nearly or quite every particular as the English),
until the Bible account is made to harmonize with a theory,
the direct opposite of what it says, is a system of interpreta-
tion according to which anything can be made to mean any-
thing. Granted that certain difficulties in the Genesis
story — for example, that suggested by the old question,
“Where did Cain get his wife?”—are lessened, or even al-
together removed, as soon as we suppose the existence of
Preadamites, yet they are removed only by introducing
other far greater difficulties of a different kind. After a
few more, or perhaps a few thousand more, books like the
one before us shall have been written, it will at last be
found out, what it seems singular that a man like Prof.
Winchell should not have found out already, that Genesis
is not in any sense a scientific work, or even more than to
a very meagre extent an historical work, but that it is in the
main legendary and mythical; that the anonymous authors
from whom it came lived before there was any such thing
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 15
as science, as we to-day understand the word, that they
shared the conceptions of their age as to the creation of
the world and man, and that it is as unreasonable to make
the attempt to reconcile their notions on these subjects with
the teachings of modern science as it would be to undertake
to manufacture a like “reconciliation ” between the teach-
ings of Homer or the Vedas and modern science.
The weak side of Prof. Winchell’s book appears perhaps
most distinctly in the author's elaborate and somewhat
exultant attempt to explain the genealogical tables of Gen-
esis x. and xi. in harmony with his Preadamic theory. To
'begin with, he sets down the date of the writing of the
first of these tables as probably 2100 B.C., the time of Abra
ham. But why 2 Is he not aware that a date so early as
that is pure conjecture, with the probabilities all against
it? The subtraction of 1200 years, if not of 1600 or 1700,
from the number named, would give us more nearly the real
date of its compilation. These tables first appear as a part
of the celebrated “Book of Origins,” so that there seems to
be no reason for supposing that they existed before the lat-
ter part of the captivity; and their origin was probably in
Babylon. Prof. Winchell expresses his astonishment at
their accuracy; and yet, in order to make them stand his-
toric and ethnologic tests at all, he finds himself obliged to
interpret the names Gomer, Magog, Madai, Cush, Mizraim,
Elam, Asshur, and the rest of the descendants of Shem,
Ham, and Japhet as tribes, and not as persons; and, even
when he has got them made into tribes, he is at his wits' end
to know what to do with them. As specimens of the difficul-
ties that rise up in his way, he finds two tribes—namely,
Havilah and Sheba — put down among the descendants of
both Ham and Shem. Canaan and Sidon are both given
as descendants of Ham, while all the linguistic evidence
we can get goes to show that the Sidonians (Phoenicians)
and the Canaanites were both Shemitic. Asshur (who
stands for the Assyrian people) is called a son of Shem ;
and yet Nimrod, a Hamite, is declared to have been the
builder of Nineveh and other leading Assyrian cities,
16 . Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
Madai is placed among the descendants of Japhet, and yet
the Medes (whom Madai is claimed to mean) were almost
certainly not Japhetic. With regard to a large proportion
of the names in the tables, Dr. Winchell is unable to deter-
mine what tribes or nations they do apply to. And it is
especially noticeable that, with all the adjusting he can do,
he cannot make the given Japhetic genealogy cover the
Hindoos, who are certainly an important part of the Aryan
(and if Aryan is synonymous with Japhetic, then of the
Japhetic) family. The fact is, an ethnological classification
based upon the Genesis genealogies is altogether mislead-
ing. It is and has long been a stumbling-block in the way
of ethnological science. It has caused ethnic affinities to
be asserted which did not exist, and others to be overlooked
or denied which really did exist. This has become so clear
that already the name Japhetic is rapidly giving place to
one far more scientific. The name Hamitic also shows signs
of passing away. The term Shemitic (or Semitic) is the
only one of the three which seems likely to keep its place
in the scientific world. Thus, it appears that the wonderful
accuracy of the Genesis tables (as if the correctness of an
infallible book ought to be a matter of wonder) is purely
a thing of the Professor's imagination. He finds it, because
he seeks for it.
But the difficulties which grow out of such an attempt as
Prof. Winchell makes to interpret the names in the Genesis
tables so as to make them signify tribes, and not individual
men, I have pointed out only in part. If these genealogies
are of tribes, and not of persons, we shall be obliged to regard
Abraham as a tribe, thus making nonsense of the thirteen
chapters of Genesis which give the history of his life; and,
further, we shall be obliged to regard Noah, Shem, Ham,
and Japhet as tribes, and thus we shall have the four tribes
of Noah and his sons all saved in the ark, which, to say the
least, will considerably add to the already somewhat crowded
condition of things in that not particularly capacious struct-
ure. But the greatest difficulty in the way of accepting
these names as referring to tribes arises from the very plain
tº s
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Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 17
and definite nature of the language employed, particularly
in the second table (chapter xi.). Here we read, “Shem was
an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after
the flood; and Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five
hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Ar-
phaxad lived five hundred and thirty years, and begat
Salah. And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah,” etc.
The record runs on in this same manner from Shem down
to Abraham. . Could anything be more specific 2 More-
over, two of the men (or tribes?) mentioned are spoken of
as marrying wives. Can we say of a tribe that it marries a
wife named Sarai or Milcah. ”
However, Prof. Winchell's most extended effort is given
to explaining tribally the genealogical table not in the tenth
or eleventh, but in the fifth, chapter of Genesis; and to this,
therefore, we must give special attention. He is very sure
that he has found a way of interpreting this last-named
table so as to lengthen the Biblical chronology, and give us
as the time from Adam to the flood seven thousand seven
hundred and thirty seven years (instead of the paltry one
- thousand six hundred and fifty-six years of Usher), and
from the flood to the birth of Abraham two thousand
seven hundred and sixty-three years (instead of the three
hundred and fifty-two of Usher), making the whole time
from Adam to Abraham ten thousand five hundred years;
at the same time reducing the ages of the patriarchs from
eight hundred or nine hundred years each to the reasonable
average of one hundred and twenty years. As this is the
last, so it may be regarded as the climax of Prof. Win-
chell's Biblical interpretations. Indeed, he himself tells us
that he regards it so important as to form an appropriate
close to the main portion of his book. The Bible passage
under consideration reads as follows: “And Adam lived an
hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own like-
ness, after his image, and called his name Seth. And the
days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hun-
dred years; and he begat sons and daughters. And all
the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty
18 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
years; and he died.” A similar paragraph is recorded
respecting Seth, Enos, and each of the other antediluvian
patriarchs. That I may be sure to represent Prof. Win-
chell's method of interpretation correctly, I will quote the
exact words in which he himself explains it:—
“The word Adam is employed above in a personal, and
afterward in a family sense. The first clause denotes the
whole life of Adam, and not his age at the birth of Seth.
YOLaD, translated “begat,” signifies rather ‘appointed,’ and
refers to Adam's designation of Seth (in place of Abel) to
be his successor. “Likeness’ and ‘image ' refer, not to per-
sonal appearance, but to character and office, the name Seth
itself signifying ‘The Appointed.’ ‘Adam,” in the next
clause, refers to the tribe or family of Adam. The Adamic
family continued to be ruled over by successors, not in the
line of Seth, for a period of nine hundred and thirty years.
Thereafter, the representatives of the Sethite line acceded
to the kingship for nine hundred and twelve years, when
the family of Enos assumed government, and so on. . . . A
paraphrase of the passage concerning Adam would there-
fore read somewhat as follows: And Adam lived a hundred
and thirty years. And at the close of his life he appointed
his son to be his spiritual heir and successor, and designated
him Seth, “The Appointed.’ And the duration of the house
of Adam after the appointment of Seth was eight hundred
years, represented by male and female descendants. And
the whole duration of the house of Adam was nine hundred
and thirty years, and he ceased to exist. The paragraphs
touching the other antediluvian patriarchs are to be simi-
larly understood.”
By this manner of interpretation, as I said, it is claimed
that we have the double advantage of a great lengthening
of the time from Adam to Abraham, and a shortening of the
ages of the individual patriarchs from nigh a thousand years
each to an average of only one hundred and twenty years
each. But, unfortunately, as we examine a little more
closely this very remarkable system of exegesis, we find
that, like so many others that have gone before it, it crum-
Dr. Wºmehell’s “Preadamites.” 19
bles to pieces on being touched. For, aside from the very
glaring injustice it does to the plain declarations of the text
(worse than interpreting a dog into a pig), it introduces
other difficulties far greater than those which it removes.
Let us see exactly how.
Adam, the man, lives one hundred and thirty years, then
dying appoints his son Seth to be his successor, as head of
his house. After this event, Adam, the tribe, exists for eight
hundred years before Seth comes to his inheritance. Thus,
the house or dynasty of Adam lasts nine hundred and thirty
years in all. Then Seth comes on the stage, and sets up the
Sethite house or dynasty. But here we strike a difficulty.
Where has Seth been all these eight hundred years while he
has been kept from his succession ? He cannot have been
living, because Prof. Winchell includes, as an essential part
of his theory, the supposition that he lived only one hundred
and five years. Did he die, and then, after the eight hun-
dred years' reign of the Adamic dynasty, come to life again
and set up his own dynasty, which he had been kept so long
from inaugurating 2 Going forward now a step in the gene-
alogical list, and applying the same principle of interpre-
tation to Seth and his line that we have applied to Adam
and his, we find that Seth, the man, lived one hundred and
five years, and then appointed his son Enos to be his suc-
cessor. After his death, however, instead of Enos receiving
the inheritance at once, the family of Seth continue to be
ruled by a king, not in the line of Enos, for eight hundred
and seven years; and only after the expiration of those
eight hundred and seven years does the man Enos come to
the headship, or the dynasty of Enos begin. But, again we
ask, how can this man have come to the throne eight hun-
dred and seven years after his father died and left him the
succession, when his whole life, according to the theory be-
fore us, was only ninety years 2 Going forward to the next
patriarch in the list, and the next and the next, we find the
same difficulties arising in the case of every one down to
Noah. In other words, according to the improved plan of
interpretation of Prof. Winchell, we have in the tables
20 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
before us not only a list of individual lives, but a list of
dynasties : the first dynasty founded by Adam, the second
by Seth, the third by Enos, the fourth by Cainan, ten in all,
down to the flood; and all these dynasties successive, none
overlapping each other, but the second beginning where the
first ended, the third where the second ended, and so on.
Now, these dynasties last through a total of seven thou-
sand seven hundred and thirty-seven years. But they were
Jounded by ten men who form an unbroken genealogical line
of father, son, grandson, and thus on, the sum of whose indi-
vidual ages is only one thousand six hundred and fifty-sia,
Ayears. Will Dr. Winchell be so good as to explain how
that could be 2 The discrepancy may not be so obvious at
first sight, but a little careful looking will show that there
is a very serious discrepancy here. It is of much the same
nature as if I should say that of two roads, which must nec-
essarily be of the same length, one is seven thousand seven
hundred and thirty-seven miles long, and the other one
thousand six hundred and fifty-six miles long. Finally, it
may be interesting to notice, as one of the minor results
of the plan of interpretation under consideration, that it
relieves us from having to talk any more about Noah's
flood. If we follow Winchell, Noah had no connection
with the flood. He was five hundred years old, according
to the Genesis account, when he begat Shem, Ham, and Ja-
phet. According to the new interpretation, this means that
he was five hundred years old when he appointed Shem,
Ham, and Japhet his successors, and died. But the Genesis
account goes on to state that the flood did not come until
Noah was six hundred years old; that is to say, Noah had
... been dead one hundred years (or if the last-mentioned Noah
in the Genesis story means Noah, the tribe, then Noah,
the man, had been dead six hundred years) when the flood
arrived.
I need not trace further the results to which this very
extraordinary theory leads. My only excuse for giving so
much space to it as I have is the fact that it has been put
forth with prominence and confidence by an eminent writer
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 21
in what, taken all in all, is perhaps as able a book as has
ever been contributed to that vast mass of literature whose
aim is to reconcile the Bible and science. Prof. Winchell's
Biblical interpretation, taken as a whole, is better than is
common to writers on this class of subjects; yet we can
only express again our astonishment that a man accustomed
to the accurate methods of science, as Prof. Winchell is,
could have put forth, as sound exegesis, such vagaries as
many of his interpretations of Scripture are. To be sure,
his method of interpreting the Genesis tables, which we have
been considering, he borrows from one Rev. T. P. Crawford;
but he makes the method virtually his own by introducing
it into his book, taking pains to explain it at length, and
earnestly commending it to the attention of his readers.
I cannot close this article without expressing regret at
what the author says in his chapter xviii., on “Theological
Consequences of Preadamitism.” He devotes the entire
chapter to this subject, and evinces through it all what im-
presses us as a nervous anxiety lest his book should not be
thought theologically orthodox. Moreover, it seems to us
that he is hardly ingenuous in claiming for the book that
it leaves intact the “Plan of Salvation ” and the doctrine
of the Divine Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Of
course there is a sense in which it can be urged that the
Bible is still a book of divine inspiration and authority, even
after we have granted Dr. Winchell's whole theory of Pread-
amites. But it is a sense other than the ordinary one. By
these words, “Divine Authority and Inspiration,” applied to
the Bible, the theological world understands, and the people
at large understand, an infallible book. But, if there is any
one thing certain about this volume of Prof. Winchell, it is
that no man can accept its teachings with anything like
completeness, and any longer consistently hold the Bible to
be infallible. Prof. Winchell must be aware of this as well
as anybody. And yet he labors to convey to his readers the
opposite impression. º
Again, he makes a long, though we cannot feel quite sin-
cere, argument to show that Preadamitism does not conflict
22 Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.”
with the “Plan of Salvation.” Perhaps it does not with
any plan of salvation which the Doctor himself believes in.
But is he not aware that the “Plan of Salvation,” as formu-
lated by the creeds and standard theologians, and as under-
stood by Christendom, is based upon the fall of the race in
Adam?
“In Adam’s fall
We sinned all”
is the starting-point and foundation of all orthodox the-
ology, whether Calvinist or Arminian. It was because the
race was a “fallen’’ race that a Saviour was needed. And
ñow, when we destroy the doctrine of a fallen race, as we
do when we make Adam the progenitor and representative
of only one segment of the race, we certainly strike at the
very root of the whole idea of “Redemption ” as the world
has always understood it, and still understands it. That
this is felt to be so is shown by the significant fact that the
leading orthodox journals of the country are, almost with-
out exception, pronouncing an unfavorable verdict upon Prof.
Winchell’s book, theologically considered. They clearly rec-
ognize the fact that, when it is once admitted that there was
neither an Adam nor a Fall, the corner-stone of their theo-
logical system, as a system, is gone. When Milton, in the
opening lines of Paradise Lost, sings
“Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into our world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,”
he sings of exactly what the Christian world, for fifteen hun-
dred years, with hardly a dissenting voice, has pronounced
the corner-stone of the orthodox system,-- the event with-
out which the “Scheme of Redemption ” or “Plan of Sal-
vation” has no starting-point or raison d'être. To be sure
there is a system of Christian truth (and to the present
writer it seems much more rational, as well as much more
harmonious with the teaching of Jesus than the orthodox
Dr. Winchell’s “Preadamites.” 23
system) which does not rest upon the fall of the race in
Adam, and which therefore would be unaffected by the
doctrine of Preadamites. But it would be a travesty to
call such a system orthodoxy; and indeed no one would
more earnestly resent the identification of Orthodoxy with
such a system than orthodox leaders and authorities them-
selves. So that, in spite of our author's very ingenious
reasoning, we cannot but feel that that part of his book in
which he attempts to show his Preadamite theory to be
friendly to the current theology is essentially weak. Or-
thodox writers pronounce it weak. Scientists, and others
who write without theological predilections, will be cer-
tain to pronounce it weak, if not timid and time-serving.
My task is now finished. I have endeavored in this paper
to do two things: first, to give the reader as clear an out-
line as possible of this, however we regard it, very interest-
ing work of Prof. Winchell; and, second, to commend and
criticise where commendation or criticism seem to me de-
served. It happens that the features of the book which I
have found myself compelled to speak unfavorably of have
been noticed last. But I should be very sorry if, on account
of this, any reader should carry away from the reading of
this article the impression that I have other than high ap-
preciation of the book as a whole. Though I have dwelt
somewhat long in my criticisms upon its Biblical exegesis
and more strictly theological features, yet let me call atten-
tion again to the fact that these form but a minor part of
the work, and that, entirely aside from these, the book has a
most substantial value. The author's main thesis, in every
way an important one, that the world was peopled long
before the existence of any person who can possibly be
identified with the Biblical Adam, is maintained with an
ability and comprehensiveness of treatment that leaves noth-
ing to be desired ; while, as I have before said, the work,
considered purely as a popular treatise upon ethnology, is
one of the very best in the language.
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