THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 32, 10 September 1869, Page 3

THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

At tlie annual meeting of the Hoyal Asiatic Society, held on Monday at the Society's house, Albemarle Btreet, Sir Henry Rawlinson, in accepting the presidency of the society, proceeded to give a sketch of the progress which was being made in Oriental studies, referring particularly to the labors of Mr. George Smith in collecting and arranging the- fragments, of the Nineveh library, and expressing his conviction of the connection subsisting between the Babylonian documents in our possession and the earliest Biblical notices. He had no doubt that they would be able to derive the whole, of the history given in the Book of G-enesis from the time of Abraham from the original documents, and it was . ot too much to expect that almost the same facts and the same descriptions would be found in the Babylonian documents as in the Bible. He hoped very shortly to have ready a paper on the Garden of Eden, in which he should show that was the natural name of Bab}*lon. The rivers bore the very same names, and it would be seen that the Babylonian documents gave an exact geographical account of the Garden of Eden. He was, of course, speaking merely of the geography, and not of the facts connected with it. The same remarks would apply to the accounts of the Flood and of the building of the Tower of Babel, which it would be found were most amply illustrated in the Babylonian documents.