History Of The Warfare Of Science With Theology In Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

  Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies, and "blessed them altogether," there has never been a more unexpected tribute to truth.

  Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted in Lynch's book, aided to undermine the myth among thinking men; for the background of the picture showed other pillars of salt in process of formation; and the ultimate result of all these expeditions was to spread an atmosphere in which myth and legend became more and more attenuated.

  To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century: Seetzen, Robinson, and others had found that a human being could traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that the waters gave forth no odours; that the fruits of the region were not created full of cinders to match the desolation of the Dead Sea, but were growths not uncommon in Asia Minor and elsewhere; in fact, that all the phenomena were due to natural causes.

  Ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the Dead Sea and the surrounding country were to be found in various other lakes and regions, to which no supernatural cause was ascribed among enlightened men. Lynch, Van de Velde, Osborne, and others had revealed the fact that the "pillar of salt" was frequently formed anew by the rains; and Lartet and other geologists had given a final blow to the myths by making it clear from the markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a sudden upheaval of the sea above the valley of Siddim, there had been a gradual subsidence for ages.[442]

  [442] For Seetzen, see his Reisen, edited by Kruse, Berlin, 1854- '59; for the "Dead Sea Fruits," vol. ii, pp. 231 et seq.; for the appearance of the sea, etc., p. 243, and elsewhere; for the Arab explanatory transformation legends, vol. iii, pp. 7, 14, 17. As to similarity of the "pillars of salt" to columns washed out by rains elsewhere, see Kruse's commentary in vol. iv, p. 240; also Fallmerayer, vol. i, p. 197. For Irby and Mangles, see work already cited. For Robinson, see his Biblical Researches, London,1841; also his Later Biblical Researches, London, 1856. For Lynch, see his Narrative, London, 1849. For Gratz, see his Schauplatz der Heyl. Schrift, pp. 186, 187. For De Saulcy, see his Voyage autour de la Mer Morte, Paris, 1853, especially vol. i, p. 252, and his journal of the early months of 1851, in vol. ii, comparing it with his work of the same title published in 1858 in the Bibliotheque Catholique de Voyages et du Romans, vol. i, pp. 78-81. For Lartet, see his papers read before the Geographical Society at Paris; also citations in Robinson; but, above all, his elaborate reports which form the greater part of the second and third volumes of the monumental work which bears the name of De Luynes, already cited. For exposures of De Saulcey's credulity and errors, see Van de Velde, Syria and Palestine, passim; also Canon Tristram's Land of Israel; also De Luynes, passim.

  Even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision had been pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both Christian and scientific, from whom there could be no appeal. During the second quarter of the century Prof. Carl Ritter, of the University of Berlin, began giving to the world those researches which have placed him at the head of all geographers ancient or modern, and finally he brought together those relating to the geography of the Holy Land, publishing them as part of his great work on the physical geography of the earth. He was a Christian, and nothing could be more reverent than his treatment of the whole subject; but his German honesty did not permit him to conceal the truth, and he simply classed together all the stories of the Dead Sea--old and new--no matter where found, whether in the sacred books of Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans, whether in lives of saints or accounts of travellers, as "myths" and "sagas."

  From this decision there has never been among intelligent men any appeal.

  The recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view of the Dead Sea legends presents some curious features. As typical we may take the travels of two German theologians between 1860 and 1870--John Kranzel, pastor in Munich, and Peter Schegg, lately professor in the university of that city.

  The archdiocese of Munich-Freising is one of those in which the attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has been most steadily carried on. Its archbishops have constantly shown themselves assiduous in securing cardinals' hats by thwarting science and by stupefying education. The twin towers of the old cathedral of Munich have seemed to throw a killing shadow over intellectual development in that region. Naturally, then, these two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit themselves to clearing away any of the Dead Sea myths; but it is significant that neither of them follows the example of so many of their clerical predecessors in defending the salt-pillar legend: they steadily avoid it altogether.

  The more recent history of the salt pillar, since Lynch, deserves mention. It appears that the travellers immediately after him found it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two later it had utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 Prof. Palmer, on visiting the place, found at some distance from the main salt bed, as he says, "a tall, isolated needle of rock, which does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulders."

  And, finally, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the standard work of reference for English-speaking scholars, makes its concession to the old belief regarding Sodom and Gomorrah as slight as possible, and the myth of Lot's wife entirely disappears.

  IV. Theological Efforts At Compromise.-- Triumph Of The Scientific View.

  The theological effort to compromise with science now came in more strongly than ever. This effort had been made long before: as we have seen, it had begun to show itself decidedly as soon as the influence of the Baconian philosophy was felt. Le Clerc suggested that the shock caused by the sight of fire from heaven killed Lot's wife instantly and made her body rigid as a statue. Eichhorn suggested that she fell into a stream of melted bitumen. Michaelis suggested that her relatives raised a monument of salt rock to her memory. Friedrichs suggested that she fell into the sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus making a statue of her. Some claimed that a shower of sulphur came down upon her, and that the word which has been translated "salt" could possibly be translated "sulphur." Others hinted that the salt by its antiseptic qualities preserved her body as a mummy. De Saulcy, as we have seen, thought that a piece of salt rock fell upon her, and very recently Principal Dawson has ventured the explanation that a flood of salt mud coming from a volcano incrusted her.

  But theologians themselves were the first to show the inadequacy of these explanations. The more rationalistic pointed out the fact that they were contrary to the sacred text: Von Bohlen, an eminent professor at Konigsberg, in his sturdy German honesty, declared that the salt pillar gave rise to the story, and compared the pillar of salt causing this transformation legend to the rock in Greek mythology which gave rise to the transformation legend of Niobe.

  On the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested against such attempts to explain away the clear statements of Holy Writ. Dom Calmet, while presenting many of these explanations made as early as his time, gives us to understand that nearly all theologians adhered to the idea that Lot's wife was instantly and really changed into salt; and in our own time, as we shall presently see, have come some very vigorous protests.

  Similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient legends regarding the Dead Sea. One of the most recent of these is that the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary earthquake helping on the work. Still another is that accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, and so produced the catastrophe.[443]

  [443] For Kranzel, see his Reise nach Jerusalem, etc. For Schegg, see his Gedenkbuch einer Pilgerreise, etc., 1867, chap. xxiv. For Palmer, see his Desert of the Exodus, vol. ii, pp. 478, 479. For the various compromises, see works alredy cited, passim. For Von Bohlen, see his Genesis, Konigsberg, 1835, pp. 200-213. For Calmet, see his Dictionarium, etc, Venet., 1766. For very recent compromises, see J. W. Dawson and Dr. Cunningham Geikie in works cited.

  Th
e revolt against such efforts to reconcile scientific fact with myth and legend had become very evident about the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1851 and 1852 Van de Velde made his journey. He was a most devout man, but he confessed that the volcanic action at the Dead Sea must have been far earlier than the catastrophe mentioned in our sacred books, and that "the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with this." A few years later an eminent dignitary of the English Church, Canon Tristram, doctor of divinity and fellow of the Royal Society, who had explored the Holy Land thoroughly, after some generalities about miracles, gave up the whole attempt to make science agree with the myths, and used these words: "It has been frequently assumed that the district of Usdum and its sister cities was the result of some tremendous geological catastrophe....Now, careful examination by competent geologists, such as Monsieur Lartet and others, has shown that the whole district has assumed its present shape slowly and gradually through a succession of ages, and that its peculiar phenomena are similar to those of other lakes." So sank from view the whole mass of Dead Sea myths and legends, and science gained a victory both for geology and comparative mythology.

  As a protest against this sort of rationalism appeared in 1876 an edition of Monseigneur Mislin's work on The Holy Places. In order to give weight to the book, it was prefaced by letters from Pope Pius IX and sundry high ecclesiastics--and from Alexandre Dumas! His hatred of Protestant missionaries in the East is phenomenal: he calls them "bagmen," ascribes all mischief and infamy to them, and his hatred is only exceeded by his credulity. He cites all the arguments in favour of the salt statue at Usdum as the identical one into which Lot's wife was changed, adds some of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and heresy." With the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose, he says that the word in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis which is translated "statue" or "pillar," may be translated "eternal monument"; he is especially severe on poor Monsieur De Saulcy for thinking that Lot's wife was killed by the falling of a piece of salt rock; and he actually boasts that it was he who caused De Saulcy, a member of the French Institute, to suppress the obnoxious passage in a later edition.

  Between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older theories, and they were dealt by two American scholars of the highest character. First of these may be mentioned Dr. Philip Schaff, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York, who published his travels in 1877. In a high degree he united the scientific with the religious spirit, but the trait which made him especially fit for dealing with this subject was his straightforward German honesty. He tells the simple truth regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the natural inference as to its relation to the myth. With the fate of Dr. Robertson Smith in Scotland and Dr. Woodrow in South Carolina before him--both recently driven from their professorships for truth-telling-- Dr. Schaff deserves honour for telling as much as he does.

  Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the travels of the Rev. Henry Osborn, published in 1878. In a truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity of the Dead Sea, with the river Jordan, to sundry other lake and river systems; points out the endless variations between writers describing the salt formations at Usdum; accounts rationally for these variations, and quotes from Dr. Anderson's report, saying, "From the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling looseness of the marl, it may well be imagined that, while some of these needles are in the process of formation, others are being washed away."

  Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the Dead Sea myths, and especially the salt pillar at Usdum; but the final truth remained to be told in the Church, and now one of the purest men and truest divines of this century told it. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, visiting the country and thoroughly exploring it, allowed that the physical features of the Dead Sea and its shores suggested the myths and legends, and he sums up the whole as follows: "A great mass of legends and exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old belief that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually removed in recent years."

  So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the great church of St. Peter at Zurich, gave to the world a book of travels, reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly acknowledged that the needles of salt at the southern end of the Dead Sea "in primitive times gave rise to the tradition that Lot's wife was transformed into a statue of salt." Thus was the mythical character of this story at last openly confessed by Leading churchmen on both continents.

  Plain statements like these from such sources left the high theological position more difficult than ever, and now a new compromise was attempted. As the Siberian mother tried to save her best-beloved child from the pursuing wolves by throwing over to them her less favoured children, so an effort was now made in a leading commentary to save the legends of the valley of Siddim and the miraculous destruction of the cities by throwing overboard the legend of Lot's wife.[444]

  [444] For Mislin, see his Les Saints Lieux, Paris, vol. iii, pp. 290-293, especially note at foot of page 292. For Schaff, see his Through Bible Lands, especially chapter xxix; see also Rev. H. S. Osborn, M. A., The Holy Land, pp. 267 et seq.; also Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, London, 1887, especially pp. 290-293. For Furrer, see his En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i, p.246. For the attempt to save one legend by throwing overboard the other, see Keil and Delitzsch, Biblischer Commentar uber das Alte Testament, vol. i, pp. 155, 156. For Van de Velde, see his Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.

  An amusing result has followed this development of opinion. As we have already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and Protestant, now visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one of them follows the New Testament injunction to "remember Lot's wife." Nearly every one of them seems to think it best to forget her. Of the great mass of pious legends they are shy enough, but that of Lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to have heard of, and if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole subject with a haze of pious rhetoric.[445]

  [445] The only notice of the Lot's wife legend in the editions of Robinson at my command is a very curious one by Leopold von Buch, the eminent geologist. Robinson, with a fearlessness which does him credit, consulted Von Buch, who in his answer was evidently inclined to make things easier for Robinson by hinting that Lot was so much struck by the salt formations that he imagined that his wife had been changed into salt. On this theory, Robinson makes no comment. See Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, etc., London, 1841, vol. ii, p. 674.

  Naturally, under this state of things, there has followed the usual attempt to throw off from Christendom the responsibility of the old belief, and in 1887 came a curious effort of this sort. In that year appeared the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie's valuable work on The Holy Land and the Bible. In it he makes the following statement as to the salt formation at Usdum: "Here and there, hardened portions of salt withstanding the water, while all around them melts and wears off, rise up isolated pillars, one of which bears among the Arabs the name of `Lot's wife.'"

  In the light of the previous history, there is something at once pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the myth upon the shoulders of the poor Arabs. The myth was not originated by Mohammedans; it appears, as we have seen, first among the Jews, and, I need hardly remind the reader, comes out in the Book of Wisdom and in Josephus, and has been steadily maintained by fathers, martyrs, and doctors of the Church, by at least one pope, and by innumerable bishops, priests, monks, commentators, and travellers, Catholic and Protestant, ever since. In thus throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the Arabs Dr. Geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his countrymen and their incapacity to recognise a joke.

  Nor is he more happy in his rationalistic explanations of the whole mass of myths. He supposes a terrific storm, in which the lightning kindled the combustible materials
of the cities, aided perhaps by an earthquake; but this shows a disposition to break away from the exact statements of the sacred books which would have been most severely condemned by the universal Church during at least eighteen hundred years of its history. Nor would the explanations of Sir William Dawson have fared any better: it is very doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed today from a synod of the Free Church of Scotland, or of any of the leading orthodox bodies in the Southern States of the American Union.[446]

  [446] For these most recent explanations, see Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., in work cited; also Sir J. W. Dawson, Egypt and Syria, published by the Religious Tract Society, 1887, pp. 125, 126; see also Dawson's article in The Expositor for January, 1886.

  How unsatisfactory all such rationalism must be to a truly theological mind is seen not only in the dealings with Prof. Robertson Smith in Scotland and Prof. Woodrow in South Carolina, but most clearly in a book published in 1886 by Monseigneur Haussmann de Wandelburg. Among other things, the author was Prelate of the Pope's House-hold, a Mitred Abbot, Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Doctor of Theology of the Pontifical University at Rome, and his work is introduced by approving letters from Pope Leo XIII and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Monseigneur de Wandelburg scorns the idea that the salt column at Usdum is not the statue of Lot's wife; he points out not only the danger of yielding this evidence of miracle to rationalism, but the fact that the divinely inspired authority of the Book of Wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and fifty years before Christ, distinctly refers to it. He summons Josephus as a witness. He dwells on the fact that St. Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and St. Cyril, "who as Bishop of Jerusalem must have known better than any other person what existed in Palestine," with St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and a multitude of others, attest, as a matter of their own knowledge or of popular notoriety, that the remains of Lot's wife really existed in their time in the form of a column of salt; and he points triumphantly to the fact that Lieutenant Lynch found this very column. In the presence of such a continuous line of witnesses, some of them considered as divinely inspired, and all of them greatly revered--a line extending through thirty-seven hundred years--he condemns most vigorously all those who do not believe that the pillar of salt now at Usdum is identical with the wife of Lot, and stigmatizes them as people who "do not wish to believe the truth of the Word of God."