h of at least ten thousand years.

Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error
of time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well,
an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in
a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it _has_ a bearing on
evolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisation
lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends.

Here I quote from _Our Sun God_, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:

To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with
the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations that
the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge,
and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the
Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus
under Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the
observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by
the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or
even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created,
is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in
an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these
pregnant words:

"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel
our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that
the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three
thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed
in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the
Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."

The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the
legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the
Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.

Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires_ of the East,
speaks as follows:

With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new
departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period
of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_.
Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the
waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their
sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch
it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every
species. Xi