EARLIER CREATIONS
(a) In the beginning God created numerous worlds, destroying one after the other as they failed to satisfy Him. All were inhabited by man, a thousand generations of whom He cut off, leaving no record of them.[45]
(b) After these first essays in creation, God was left alone with His great Name, and recognized at last that no world would satisfy Him unless it offered man a means of repentance. Hence, before making a new start, He created seven things: the Law, Gehenna, the Garden of Eden, the Divine Throne, the Celestial Pavilion, the Messiah's Name, and Repentance.[46]
(c) When two Divine Days—namely two thousand terrestrial years—had passed, God asked the Law, who had become His counsellor: 'What if I should create yet another world?' 'Lord of the Universe,' she asked in return, 'if a king has neither army nor camp, over what does he rule? And if there is no one to praise him, what honour has he?' God listened and approved.[47]
(d) Yet some say that the Law pleaded against God's creation of mankind with: 'Do not leave me at the mercy of sinners who drink evil like water!' God answered: 'I created Repentance as a remedy for such; the Divine Throne as my Seat of Judgement; the Pavilion, to witness sacrifices of atonement; the Garden of Eden, to reward the righteous; Gehenna, to punish the unrepentant; yourself, to occupy the minds of men; and the Messiah, to gather in the exiles.'[48]
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1. It is not known whether the discovery of fossils far older than the four thousand years which had elapsed since Adam's day troubled the rabbis. If so, their account of previous experimental creations was more plausible than the theory held by such Victorian zoologists as Philip Gosse: God, he said, had inserted fossils in the rocks to try the Christian's faith.
2. It became an article of belief that the Law was eternal (cf. Matthew V. 18), and had existed before Creation. Hebrew myth, a charter confirming successive historical changes in religion, becomes allegorical at this late stage and defines the doctrine of individual salvation (see 61. 5).
3. Gehenna was the Jewish Hell. Its name is borrowed from the Valley of Hinnom at Jerusalem, which included Tophet (2 Kings XXIII. 10): a site originally used for human sacrifices to the God Moloch (2 Chronicles XXXIII. 8), afterwards for burning the city's rubbish.
4. The equivalence of one divine day with a thousand terrestrial years is derived from Psalm XC. 4: 'A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday.'
