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Preadamites Or, A Demonstration Of The Existence Of Men Before Adam
Preadamites Or A Demonstration Of The Existence Of Men Before Adam Author:Alexander Winchell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREADAMITES. CHAPTER I. SOME TRADITIONAL BELIEFS. f I HERE exists a collection of very ancient Hebrew -'- documents, in which an account is given of the... more » origin of the world and its inhabitants. From a very remote period these documents were understood to teach the following things: 1. That the world, with' all it contains, was created by God. 2. That this creation took place about 4,000 years before our era. 3. That the work of creation extended over the period of six days. 4. That the first man, Adam, was created on the sixth day. 5. That the first woman, Eve, was formed of .a rib taken from the side of Adam. 6. That Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and his immediate posterity attained a similar longevity. 7. That the primitive seat of the human species was in western central Asia. 8. That after the lapse of about 1,656 years, a universal deluge destroyed all the posterity of Adam, except Noah and his family; and all animals, except those preserved in the "ark" with Noah. 9. That all the existing races of men are descended from Noah. 10. That the black races of Africa are descended from Ham, a son of Noah. With this traditional understanding of the Hebrew documents, our standard English translation of them was framed to give expression to such conceptions; and these have very generally been received as representing the facts touching the origin and early history of the world and its inhabitants. In glancing over this series of propositions, we are at once impressed by a remarkable circumstance. Save the enunciation of the supernatural origin of all things, these statements all relate to questions touching the order of the natural world. They concern things about which it is supposable something might be learned by observation ...« less