The Seed of the Woman
1. Tennyson, Sir Charles, The Listener, 8 July, 1971, p. 39, in an interview.
2. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, History of Human Life Span and Mortality, Akademial Kiado, Budapest, 1970, p. 15.
3. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, ibid., p. 16.
4. Ludwig Aschoff: in the editorial, "Old Age in Mind and Body," Lancet, 9 July, 1938, p. 87.
5. Selyc, Hans: quoted by Stephen E. Slocum, "Length of Life," J. Amer. Scient. Affil, 13, 1, 1961, p. 19.
6. Casarett, George W., "Radiation Slows Down Aging in Dogs," Science News Letter, 30 Aug., 1957, p. 136.
7. West, Irma, G. L. Nielson, Allen E. Gilmour and J. R. Ryan, "Natural Death at the Wheel," Amer. Med. Assoc., 205, 1968, p. 226-271.
8. Simms, H. S.: quoted in Brit. Med. J., 5 July, 1947, p. 14 from. Gerontology, 1, 1946, p. 24.
9. Simms, H. S.: quoted by Ernst LaFrance and Sid Ross, "Can We Live to be 120?", Mag. Digest, Nov., 1950, p. 46.
10. Selyc, Hans, "Is Death Inevitable?", MacLean's Mag., 15 Aug., 1959, p. 13.
11. On this, see Hayflick's findings discussed in reference #123.
12. Korenchevsky, V., "Conditions Desirable for the Rapid Progress of Gerontological Research," Ant. Med. J., 28 Sept., 1946, p. 468.
13. Haldane, J. B. S: reported in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, Princeton Univ. Bicentennial Conference (series 2, Conf. 3), 1946, p. 26.
14. Woodruff, L. L.: noted by Florence Moog, "The Biology of Old Age," Sci. Amer., June, 1948, p. 41.
15. Dorsey, George A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings, N.Y., Blue Ribbon Books, 1925, p. 105.
16. Pearl, Raymond, The Biology of Death: Monographs on Experimental Biology, Phila., Lippincott, 1923, 275 pp. , reviewed in Brit. Med. J., 3 Mar., 1923, p. 382.
17. Muller, H. J., "Life," Science, 121, 1955, p. 5.
18. Dobzhansky, Theodosius, "Man Consorting with Things Eternal" in Science Ponders Religion, ed. H. Shapley, N.Y., Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960, p. 118.
19. Zahl, Paul A., "Need There Be Death?", a contribution in a report published by the New York Joint Legislative Committee on "Problems of the Aging," 1950, p. 134.
20. Zahl, Paul A., ibid., p. 135.
21. Sturgeon: Ontario Government Service Bulletin, I May, 1954.
22. Huxley, Sir Julian, "The Meaning of Death" in Essays on Popular Science, London, Penguin Books, 1938, p. 105.
23. Huxley, Sir Julian, ibid., p. 105.
24. Lancaster, Sir Edwin Ray: quoted by Alex Comfort in "The Biology of Old Age" in New Biology, 18, 1955, p. 19 [publ'd by Penguin Books].
25. Medawar, Sir Peter B., The Uniqueness of the Individual, N.Y., Basic Books, 1957, p. 57.
26. Bidder, G. P: reported under "Senescence" in Brit. Med. J., 2, 1932, p. 583.
27. Barnett, Lincoln, The World We Live In, N.Y., Time Inc., 1955, p. 150.
28. Huxley, Sir Julian, op. cit., (ref.#22), p. 104. Plants that die bearing one crop of seeds can, if kept under conditions that prevent flowering, be made to continue indefinitely in their vegetative form. Their life is extended probably without limit provided that the aging effect of seed and flower production is prevented.
29. The factor of size is dealt with subsequently, see ref. #128.
30. Went, F. W., "The Size of Man," Amer. Scientist, 56, 4, 1968, p. 400A13.
31. Comfort, Alex, "The Biology of Old Age" in New Biology, 18, 1955, p. 18 (published by Penguin Books).
32. Walker, Kenneth, Meaning and Purpose, London, Penguin, 1950, p. 63.
33. Weismann, August, Essays Upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, tr. E. B. Poulton, S. Schonland and A. E. Shipley, Oxford, 1889, 1892, in 2 vols., Vol. 1, p. 25, 159.
34. Weismann, ibid., Vol. 1, p. 111.
35. Weismann, ibid., Vol. 1, p. 158.
36. Special Communication, Amer. Med. Assoc., 205, 1968, p. 337.
37. Camps, F., The New Scientist, 27 Feb., 1964, p. 558 f.
38. Doskaoh, E., Worldwide Abstracts of General Medicine, 5, 2, 1962.
39. Negovsky, V. A. and V. I. Soboleva, "Delaying the Process of Death," Discovery, Dec. 1964, p. 20.
40. Dr. Leo Davidovich Landau: The Man They Wouldn't Let Die, Alexander Dorozynski, N.Y., Macmillan, 1965.
41. "Death Needs Better Definition," Science J., Feb., 1969, p. 11,13, over the signature of Hadassah Gillon.
42. The problem of determining when death has occurred is particularly acute when the dying individual is a potential donor of some organ such as a kidney, to a living individual who may be seriously in need, because such tissue deteriorates very quickly in the dead and must be removed at the earliest possible moment for transplant. Early in March, 1974, it was reported that a sixty-five year old man who had been injured in a road accident, and whom two doctors had presumed dead, began breathing again in a Birmingham hospital when an attempt was made to remove his kidneys in just such an emergency [Robert Jones, "Organ Grafting Dilemmas," New Scientist, 7 March, 1974, p. 595].
43. "Human Heart Beats After Extraction," New Scientist, 28 Oct., 1965, p. 248.
44. Hiliman, Harold, "When is Death?", New Scientist, 19 Mar., 1970, p. 552.
45. Parkes, A. S.: quoted by R. C. W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality, N.Y., Macfadden-Bartell, 1966, p. 16.
46. G.M. Gould and W. L. Pyle in their book Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [N.Y., Julian Press, 1966] observe concerning this phenomenon: "The hair and beard may grow after death, and even change colour. Bartholinus recalls a case of a man who had short black hair and beard at the time of internment but who, some time after death, was found to possess long and yellowish hair. Aristotle discusses post mortem growth of the hair, and Garmanus cites an instance in which the beard and hair was cut several times from the cadaver. We occasionally see evidences of this in the dissecting rooms. Caldwell mentions a body buried four years, the hair from which protruded at the points where the joint of the coffin had given way. The hair of the head measured eighteen inches, that of the beard eight inches, and that on the breast from four to six inches. Rosse of Washington mentions an instance in which after burial the hair turned from dark brown to red, and also cites a case in a Washington cemetery of a girl, twelve or thirteen years old, who when exhumed was found to have a new growth of hair all over her body. Nails sometimes grow several inches after death, and there is on record the account of an idiot who had an idiosyncrasy for long nails, and after death the nails were found to have grown to such an extent that they curled up under the palms and soles" (p. 523).
47. Ettinger, R. C. W.: in his introduction to R. F. Nelson's We Froze the First Man, N.Y., Dell, 1968, p. 8.
48. Morison, R. S., "Death: Process or Event?", and L. R. Kass, "Death as an Event: A Commentary on Robert Morison," Science, 173, 1971, p. 694-702.
49. Morison, R. S., ibid., p. 695.
50. Decerebrate cats: Sir Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature, Cambridge, 1963, p. 149f.
51. Decerebrate birds: A. J. Carison and V. Johnson, The Machinery of the Body, Univ. Chicago Press, 1941, p. 422; see also Walter B. Cannon, The Way of an Investigator, N.Y., Hafner, 1968 reprint, p. 121.
52. Decerebrate dogs: G. H. Bell, J. N. Davidson and H. Scarborough, Textbook of Physiology and Biochemistry, London, Livingstone, 1954, p. 860.
53. Decerebrate cats: H. C. Bazett and E.G. Penfield, "A Study of the Sherrington Decerebrate Animal in the Chronic as Well as the Acute Condition," Brain, XLV, 1922, p. 218, 261.
54. Wakerlin, George E., "The Biology of Aging," editorial, J. Amer. Med. Assoc., 16 Mar. 1957, p. 950.
55. Kass, Leon, op. cit., (ref. #48), p. 698.
56. Medawar, Sir Peter B., op. cit., (ref. #25), p. 117.
57. Sauer, Erich, The Dawn of World Redemption, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1953, p. 56.
58. Scheer, Bradley T., General Physiology, N.Y., Wiley, 1953, p. 428.
59. Total life span versus birth-to-maturity ratio = six to one: see Paul A. Zahl, op. cit., (ref. #19), p. 134; and Fritz Kahn, Man in Structure and Function, N.Y., Knopf, 1960, Vol. 1, p. 57. Maturity is marked by birth of first-born.
60. Progeria: see William Reichel, Rafael Garcia-Bunuel, and Joseph Dilallo, "Progeria and Werner's Syndrome as Models for the Study of Normal Human Aging," J. Amer. Geriatrics Soc., 19, 5, 1971, p. 369-375. See also A. L. Rosenbloom and Franklin L. DeBusk, "Progeria of Hutchinson-Gilford: A Caricature of Aging," Amer. Heart J., 82, 3, 1971, p. 287 - 289; and B. Scharnan Danes, "Progeria: a Cell Culture Study on Aging," J. Clin. Invest., 50, 1971, p. 2000 - 2003. For a popular account, see S. Katz, "Old Age at Eleven," MacLean's Mag., 11 Aug., 1962, p. 12f., photograph p. 40.
61. Progeria: reported in Toronto Evening Telegram, 9 Mar., 1967, p. 9, under the heading, "MDs probe death of boy 'aged 95.'"
62. Reported in San Francisco Chronicle, l7 June, 1970, p. 4.
63. de Beer, Sir Gavin: in a book review, Sci Amer., Sept., 1962, p. 268.
64. On this see J. B. S. Haldane, "On Being the Right Size" in The World of Mathematics, ed. J. R. Newman, N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 1956, Vol. 2, p. 952f.
65. As reported in New Scientist, 25 Mar., 1976, p. 2: the species is Cryptomeria japonica..
66. A tiny organism believed to be two billion years old and still alive, has recently been reported in MD Canada, Feb. 1971, p. 144.
67. Think, Sept., 1939, p. 19.
68. Bonner, J. T., Size and Cycle: An Essay on the Structure of Biology, Princeton, 1965, p. 66.
69. Godwin, H., "Evidence for Longevity of Seeds," Nature, 120, 1968, p. 708f.
70. Juglands australis: Science J., Jan., 1969, under News, p. 16.
71. Black, Michael, "Arctic Lupines Bloom After 10,000 Years," New Scientist, 19 Oct., 1967, p. 148, 149.
72. Bacteria have been recovered from the deepest strata of salt mines, first in Europe and then in America, completely insulated by rock salt. These bacteria on being removed proved to be still viable. They are dated from the strata in which they were found as half a billion years old. See H. J. Dombrowski, Lebende Bakten en aus dem Palaozoicum (1963) for an excellent account of their discovery and characteristics. Theodosius Dobzhansky observed: "Life carries the potentiality of endless self-replication, but the realization of this potentiality is restricted by the resistance of the environment" [in Science Ponders Religion, ed. by H. Shapley, N.Y., Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960, p. 118].
73. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. I, chap. 3, §9. According to Stanley M. Burstein who has published a complete transcript of all the known works and fragments of Berossus, "Berossus was probably the ultimate source of Josephus for the underlying theory concerning the extraordinary ages of the patriarchs" [The 'Babylonnica' of Berossus, Malibu, Cal., Undena Publ., 1978, p. 29]. What Josephus has said is virtually an exact quote from Berossus whom Burstein had already noted as a very careful reporter of the materials he had at hand.
74. Lenormant, Francois, The Beginnings of History, N.Y., Scribners, 1891, p. 293.
75. Lenormant, Francois, ibid., p. 294.
76. Rawlinson, George, Historical Illustrations, p. 14, quoted by Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, Edinburgh, Clark, nd., p. 29, fn.2.
77. Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge, 1954 to the present. Eight substantial volumes have been published so far. See especially, Vol. V, Pt. 3, pp. 1 - 167, "The Golden Age of Alchemy."
78. Needham, J. and Lu Gwei-Dj en, "Sex Hormones in the Middle Ages," Endeavour, XXVII, 1968, p. 131.
79. Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo, N.Y., Library Publications, n.d., p. 276.
80. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. News, Sept./Oct., 1975, p. 13.
81. Leaf, Alexander, "Every Day is a Gift When You are Over 100," Nat. Geog. Mag., Jan., 1973, p. 99.
82. Warthin, A. S., Old Age, N.Y., 1929, p. 166, 167. Dr. Clive Wood of Oxford pointed out that between 1789 and 1963 the expectancy for white American men who had reached the age of 60 remained almost stationary at fifteen years, for "The old men of the Revolution were as old as the old men of today. There were just fewer of them" ["Longevity, Catalyst of Social Revolution," New Scientist, 24 May, 1973, p. 469].
83. Pearl, Raymond, Man the Animal, Bloomington, Ind., Principia Press, 1946, p. 52.
84. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, op. cit., (ref. #2), p. 69, 251, 255.
85. Soviet Census: news item, New Scientist, 22 May, 1969, p. 412.
86. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, op. cit., (ref. #2), p. 22.
87. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #46), p. 370.
88. Prichard, James C., Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, London, Houlston and Stoneman, 1936, Vol. 1, p. 127.
89. Pearl, Raymond, op. cit., (ref. #83), p. 47.
90. Davies, David, "A Shangri-La in Ecuador," New Scientist, 1 Feb., 1973, p. 237.
91. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #46), p. 378.
92. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #46), p. 373.
93. "Inheritance of Longevity," Brit. Med. J., 4 Oct., 1952, p. 767.
94. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #46), p. 379.
95. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, op. cit., (ref. #2), p. 251 and elsewhere.
96. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #46), p. 379.
97. Sebastian Kresge: feature article, "Adding Life to Years," Time, 20 Oct., 1958, p. 52f.
98. Kahn, Fritz, op. cit., (ref. #59), p. 57.
99. For Simms, see ref. #8; Selyc, ref. #10; and Huxley, ref. #22.
100. Acsadi, Gy. and J. Nemeskeri, op. cit., (ref. #2), p. 16.
101. Note: Tayler Lewis, in Lange's Commentary on Genesis, has a most interesting editorial comment of some length showing that such a confusion of terms is exceedingly unlikely [Zondervan reprint, p. 271].
102. Raske and Hensler: referred to in Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Genesis, John Peter Lange, Grand Rapids, Zondervan reprint, p. 271.
103. Wiseman, P. J., New Discoveries in Babylonia About Genesis, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1936, p. 47 ff. especially.
104. Such editing is apparent in the following:
Gen. 14:2, 8 - "Bela (which is Zoar)
14:3 - "Vale of Siddim (which is the Salt Sea)
14:7 - "En-mishpat (which is Kadesh)
14:15 - "Hobah (which is on the left hand of Damascus)
14:17 - "Valley of Shaveh (which is the King's Dale)
The italics in parenthesis are clearly editorial comment to identify a place name no longer likely to be familiar to the reader.
105. Accuracy in copying: not only did the Jewish scribes adopt exceedingly high standards in copying but pagan nations did also. J. Cerny gives a good example from an Egyptian funerary papyrus of about 1400 B.C. which bears the following colophon: "The book is completed from its beginning to its end, having been copied, revised, compared, and certified sign by sign" [Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt, 1952, p. 25, quoted by K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and New Testament, London, Tyndale Press, 1966, p. 140].
106. Urquhart, John, The Bible and Modern Discovery , London, Marshall Bros., 1898, p. 158.
107. Moore, Patrick, Atlas of the Universe, N.Y., Rand McNally, 1970, p. 146.
108. Driver, S. R., Commentary on Genesis, London, Methuen, 3rd ed., 1904; George Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, Phila., Amer. Sunday School Union, 1916; Fritz Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Traditions As Illustrated by the Monuments, London, SPCK, 1879.
109. Sayce, A. H., Higher Criticism and the Monuments, London, SPCK, 1895.
110. Sarton, George, The History of Science, Harvard, 1952, p. 120.
111. Casarett, George W., "Acceleration of Aging by Ionizing Radiation," Univ. Rochester Atomic Energy Project, U.R. # 492, N.Y., 1957; Howard J. Curtis, "Biological Mechanisms Underlying the Aging Process," Science, 141, 1963, p. 689-691; and "Effects of Radiation on Human Heredity," WHO, Geneva, 1959.
112. Hollander, Willard, "Lethal Heredity," Sci. Amer., July, 1952, p. 60.
113. Here are Hugh Miller's words: "If, during a period so vast as to be scarce expressible by figures, the creatures now human have been rising, by almost infinitesimals, from compound microscopic cells...until they have at length become the men and women whom we see around us, we must hold either the monstrous belief, that all the vitalities, whether those of monads or of mites, of fishes or of reptiles, of birds or of beasts, are individually and inherently immortal and undying, or that human souls are not so. The difference between the dying and the undying, - between the spirit of the brute that goeth downward, and the spirit of the man that goeth upward, - is not a difference infinitesimally, or even atomically small. It possesses all the breath of eternity to come, and is an infinitely great distance...Nor will it do to attempt to escape from the difficulty by alleging that God at some certain link in the chain might have converted a mortal creature into an immortal existence, by breathing into it a 'living soul'; seeing that a renunciation of any such direct interference on the part of the Deity in the work of creation forms the prominent and characteristic part of the scheme, - nay, that it constitutes the very nucleus around which the scheme has originated...If man be a dying creature, restricted in his existence to the present scene of things, what does it really matter to him, for moral purpose, whether there be a God or no?" [Footprints of the Creator, Boston, 1850, p. 38,39].
114. In his Commentary on Genesis 1-5, Luther explores the implications of Adam and Eve's potential immortality in interesting ways. On Genesis 2:17 he wrote: "Adam was created in a state of innocence...Therefore if Adam had obeyed this command, he would never have died for death came through sin. Thus the remaining trees of Paradise were all created for the purpose of helping man and maintaining his physical life sound and unimpaired.
"For us today it is amazing that there could be a physical life without death...If (Adam) had remained as he was he would have done the other things physical life demands until at last he would have been translated to the spiritual and eternal life.
"This, too, we have lost through sin, because now the present life is separated from the future life by that awful intermediate event, death. In the state of innocence that intermediate event would have been a delightful one; by it Adam would have been translated to the spiritual life or, as Christ calls it in the Gospel, to the angelic life (Matt. 22:30)."
Subsequently on the same verse he wrote: "It is as if God were saying:
'You can indeed remain in the life for which I have created you. And yet you will not be immortal in the same way as the angels. Your life is, as it were, placed in the middle: you can remain in it and afterwards be carried to an immortality that cannot be lost; contrariwise, if you do not obey, you will become a victim of death and lose your immortality.'"
In other words, Luther is saying - as Augustine had said - that there were two kinds of immortality. There was the immortality which means that the individual need not die, and the immortality which signifies that the individual cannot die. The first is contingent, contingent upon obedience: the second is absolute. The first is potential but not certain unless the requisite conditions are fulfilled: the second cannot be lost under any conditions whatever. As Luther puts it, "This (first kind of) immortality had not been made so sure for him that it was impossible for him to fall into mortality."
In commenting on Genesis 3:23, 24 Luther notes that "Adam was not created to remain forever in this physical life, but from this physical life and from the physical eating he was to pass over into spiritual life...no death intervenes on that occasion...Adam, without any intervening death would have exchanged his mortal life for an immortal one." That is to say, he would have exchanged his contingent immortality for an absolute immortality.
115. Note on Romans 5:12.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
"As by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin": by one man, single and singular. I think this is a profoundly important phrase: not "by two people" as might have been supposed since Adam and Eve were both in collaboration. It is apparent that the seed of the man is the viaduct that carries the corruption Adam introduced into the body to all succeeding generations.
It may be remarked that non-canonical literature on the subject of man's fall is just as likely to attach the entrance of death to Eve as to Adam. Thus Sirach 25:24 reads: "From a woman sin had its beginning and because of her we all die." So also a Latin work from a group of Jewish writers on Adam, edited by Meyer (1878) and titled Vitae Adae et Evac ("Lives of Adam and Eve": see G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1964, Vol. II, p. 856, fn. 191), and Strabo, Bk. 1, p. 137 f., and Bk. III, p. 646. In a sense this is true; but there is an element of only half-truth about it, and therefore of half-falsehood, which Scripture studiously avoids by never attributing the entrance of death to Eve. The seed of the man and the seed of the woman play antithetical roles in the redemptive history of man. Thus physical death was introduced, it entered, it was a novelty for human kind, and it entered by man not by woman, and it is passed on from generation to generation via the male seed. The seed of the woman is not the viaduct of death, but of life.
Paul continues, "and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." The last part of this sentence has occasioned a great deal of controversy. Lange's Commentary [Grand Rapids, Zondervan reprint, 1960, Vol. X at Rom. 5:12, p. 177 - 180] gives a most useful summary of this debate. The assumption is commonly made that the word sin here means a sinful act. In Adam's case this is, of course true; his disobedience. But is this true thereafter? Do we die physically because we become active sinners, or are we active sinners because we are physically dying creatures? Or to put the matter slightly differently, do we finally return to the dust because we, individually, commit sins that have the effect of making us mortals, or do we commit sins because of the weakness of the flesh (Rom. 8:3) which "weakness of the flesh" is demonstrated by the final death of our body?
The usual view, if I read the commentaries correctly, is that the former is the truth of the matter and the intent of Paul's words. Physical death overcomes each one of us in due course because we inherit some spiritual malaise that turns us into active sinners, the penalty of which is physical death. But not a few commentators have seen the situation in reverse. We become sinners because we inherit from Adam by natural generation a defective body that becomes a source of infection of our spirit as we mature. The initial corruption of the spirit (or soul) by its union with the body has been a view very widely held from the earliest times. It was explicitly maintained by the following who are representative.
New Testament: Paul (Rom. 7:17, 18).
Patristic: Augustine (354-430).
Medieval: Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 - 1109), Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), Hugo St. Victor (c. 1096 - 1141), Peter Lombard (c. 1095 - 1161), Stephen Langton (d. 1228).
Reformed: Ulrich Zwingli (1484 - 1531), Zacharius Ursinus (1534 - 1583),
Andreac Hyperius (1568), Benedictus Aretius (1589), Bartholomaeus
Keckerman (1611), J. H. Hottinger (1620-1667), Amandus Polanus
(1624), Francois Turretin (1632 - 1687), Johannes Wollebius (1626),
Samuel Endemann (1777).
Jewish: Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (1962) under soul.
The question of how soon this occurs, at what young age, is not at issue here. It is assumed to be in youth, for so Scripture states it (Gen. 8 :21; Jer. 22:21; 32:30 and cf. 2 Kings 24:8,9) but obviously this could be interpreted rather broadly depending upon how quickly a particular culture encourages the maturing processes. But certainly there is an age of innocence before the malaise has time to express itself. Babies die, though innocent. The possibility of dying has therefore also become the lot of those who have not yet reached the age of accountability. Meyer was one of the earlier commentators of modern times who acknowledged the force of this argument.
It might be argued that when an infant dies, it is really "killed," by disease in one form or another. But we know now that our bodies appear to be dying anyway, from the day of our birth - if not even prenatally.
So mortality replaced immortality by the action of one man and this physiological defect was then transmitted by natural procreation to all his descendants. This defect now appears to be at the root of our spiritual death which seems in the end as inevitable as physical death. Augustine said: Persona corrupit natura, natura corrumpit personam: "A person (i.e., Adam) corrupted (human) nature, (human) nature corrupts the individual." This is why the law fails to produce moral behaviour. The pure spirit with which each new body is endowed by a creative act of God is soon infected by the corruption in the body.
When God gives this spirit, what was previously only a body is constituted a person. Conscious life thereafter turns this person into a personality: but sadly, time also turns innocence into guilt, and this process is somehow initiated by a defective body. It is a form of somato-psychic influence, of which medicine is becoming increasingly aware in cases of chronic forms of poisoning due to industrial pollution of our environment, for example.
Paul longed to be rid of this "body of sin" (Rom. 7:24) and confidently asserted that physical death alone could guarantee the final perfecting of the spirit. When the perfected spirit is reintroduced into a perfected resurrection body, the whole man is at last made perfect.
Now the universality of this experience by which we all become active sinners is a clear demonstration of the universality of the root cause. That which has rendered every naturally procreated body a dying organism is shared by us all. This is the universal cause of a universally observed effect. Born mortals, we become inevitable sinners if we live long enough. If we die prematurely, we remain innocent of moral guilt but, alas, we die physiologically nevertheless.
And so the phrase "for that all have sinned" can be translated (as many claim) "on account of the fact that all have sinned." Active sinfulness then becomes the proof of the common root cause, the cause being that physical death passes upon all men by inheritance.
F. W. Farrar, in his Life and Work of St. Paul [London, Cassell, Pelter, Galpin, 1879, Vol. II, p. 215, fn.2] wrote: "There can be no doubt that epho ('for that') means in as much as. Since the argument of Paul seems simply to be that sin was universal and that the universality of death was a proof of this [emphasis his], it certainly seems advisable to understand epho in the sense of 'in accordance with the fact that.'" With this agree the majority of grammars which refer to this passage, such as Dana and Mantey [Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Toronto, Macmillan, 1957, p. 106], other aids to study such as Vincent [Word Studies in the New Testament, N.Y., Scribner's, 1890, Vol. III. p. 62] and Abbott Smith [Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, Edinburgh, Clark, 1964, p. 166], Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (under various word headings, especially Vol. I, p. 427, fn. 14), and Expositors Greek Testament [ed. W. R. Nicoll, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans reprint, 1976, Vol. II, p. 627 f.].
In summary, it seems that we are justified in understanding Paul's words to mean that Adam, endowed with immortality by the Creator, forfeited that immortality by his sin and entailed to all his descendants the poisoned constitution which he had acquired, the proof of this entailment being the universality of human wickedness.
We can interpret these words in Romans 5:12 to mean either that all are mortal and dying, and as a consequence became sinners; or that all have an inherently sinful nature by spiritual entailment from Adam and that this condemns the body of every individual to physical death. The grammar of the sentence does not speak unequivocally and we have to decide which is cause and which is effect. About the only telling factor, in helping us to make the decision, is the knowledge that an innocent baby may die as easily as a guilty old man or woman. Physical death can overtake those who have as yet committed no sins, which seems to demonstrate that it is at work before any display of a disobedient spirit.
116. It is appointed unto men once to die (Heb. 9:27). This being so, we must assume that both Enoch and Elijah have yet to keep this appointment. There are some commentators who believe that the two witnesses referred to in Revelation 11:3 f. are none other than Enoch and Elijah who, after giving their testimony for an unspecified length of time, will be overcome and slain. Their dead bodies will lie in the street for three and a half days (vv. 8 and 9), a figure which has particular significance in that there is a widespread belief that the lapse of three days is required to certify that the deceased really is dead. The two witnesses are then raised from the dead and both ascend into heaven (vv. 11 and 12). If this surmise as to their identity is correct, then man's appointment with death has been truly universal, even with respect to the Lord Jesus Christ.
117. With reference to Hebrews 12:2, in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, [Edinburgh, T. &. T. Clark, 4th ed.], J. H. Thayer under the Greek anti gives the following meanings: (1) it properly seems to have signified over, against, opposite to, before, in a local sense. Hence (2) indicating exchange, succession, for, instead of (something). Dana and Mantey [op. cit., p. 100] say in this connection: There is conclusive proof now that the dominant meaning for anti in the first century was instead of. Professor Whitesall (Chicago) made a study of anti in the Septuagint and found thirty-eight passages where it is rightly translated instead of in the Revised Version. Since anti is used in two atonement passages in the New Testament, such a translation needs careful consideration. Notice the following: Genesis 22:13, "and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of (anti) his son"; Genesis 44:33, "Let thy servant, I pray thee, abide instead of (anti) the lad a bondsman to my lord"; Numbers 3:12, "I have the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of (anti) all the firstborn." These three sentences unmistakably deal with substitution. This translation applies especially to the following: Matthew 2:22; Luke 11:11; 1 Corinthians 11:5; and Hebrews 12:2, "Jesus...who instead of (anti) the joy that was set before him endured the cross." The New Testament: An Expanded Translation by Kenneth S. Wuest has also adopted this rendering [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1959].
An excellent illustration of the use of the Greek word anti with the meaning of "instead of" but translated by the English word for will be found in the King James Version at Isaiah 61:3 which reads, "To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes...the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." The Septuagint Greek version has here translated literally this as: "Glory instead of ashes...the garment of glory instead of a spirit of heaviness." Bagster's edition of the Septuagint so translates the first phrase but then adopts the English word for in the second, presumably for the sake of avoiding reiteration.
In the Hebrew of Isaiah 61:3 the words "glory for ashes" are represented by the Hebrew word tachath. It is a pity that in The New Testament in Hebrew and English, published by the Trinitarian Bible Society and chiefly the work of Louis Ginsberg I believe, the translator was influenced and misled, I regret to say, by the English versions. Instead of being guided by the Septuagint usage where the Hebrew tachath meaning "instead of" is replaced in Greek by anti, Ginsberg replaced the Greek anti in Hebrews 12:2 by a Hebrew word ba'abor, which means "because of" or "on account of."
Actually, in the Hebrew original of Isaiah 61:3 tachath occurs three times. In each case Rotherham has rendered it "instead of," as is proper.
The Greek word anti is frequently used in the Septuagint with this meaning. See for example, Genesis 2:21; 4:25; 9:6: 22:13; 29:27; 30:2; 36:33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; 44:33; 47:17; etc. This is not to say that the Hebrew word and its Greek equivalent anti never have the sense of "because of," but only that the meaning "instead of" where ever it is found in the Hebrew regularly requires the form tachath, which the Septuagint has then replaced by anti. A particularly good illustration of how the English word for could be misinterpreted, is to be seen in Genesis 47:17 where the King James Version made the meaning explicit by inserting the words "in exchange for" in its first occurrence. The verse therefore reads as follows:
"And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for their horses, and for the flocks and for the cattle of the herds and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year."
If the King James Version had not inserted the words "in exchange for," the transaction could have been interpreted to mean that Joseph supplied feed for the animals. This is not the intention of the exchange: it was the owners, not the animals, who were supplied with food. They traded their cattle for bread. Verse 18 makes this clear, for although they managed to save their lives, they lost all their possessions in so doing. All they had left to barter for bread was their land and themselves as slaves (v. 19). And in the end, these too became Pharaoh's possessions (v. 23).
It therefore seems entirely appropriate to translate anti in Hebrews 12:2 by the words "instead of." To render it any other way requires an unnatural and unlikely exegesis. Can one really suppose that the Lord faced the eternity of that ordeal of separation from the Father in a spirit of joyful anticipation because of the prospect at the end of it, when such a prospect was just as certain whether He subjected Himself to such a frightful ordeal or not? Would He not have been joyfully received into glory even if He had not suffered the penalty on the cross?
118. Coon, Carleton, S., The Story of Man, N.Y., Knopf, 1962, p. 67.
119. Skutch, Alexander, "The Parental Devotion of Birds," Sci Mon., April, 1946, p. 369.
120. Hirst, J. Crowther, Is Nature Cruel?, London, James Clark & Co., 1899. This work is a most valuable assessment of the amount of pain actually inflicted on their victims by predators. It is based on studies of some 60 individuals mauled severely by wild animals. Almost without exception they experienced no pain at the time. Interestingly, the same has now been reported for those attacked by sharks. A good summary of Hirst's findings (which may be more accessible to most readers than his book) will be found in the British Spectator, 3 June, 1899, p. 782, 783.
121. Plankton: Fred Bodsworth, The Natural History of Canada: the Pacific Coast, Toronto, McClelland, 1970, p. 97.
122. There is some evidence now that the sperm which do not actually fertilize the ovum nevertheless contribute by their disintegration to the total environment in which the fertilized ovum will survive and develop in its earliest stages by forming some essential part of its nourishment [B. Baccetti and B. A. Afzelius, The Biology of the Sperm Cell, Monographs in Developmental Biology, #10, Basel, Karger, 1976, p. 78].
123. In recent years the concept of the inherent immortality of excised tissue in vitro has been challenged by the findings of Leonard Hayflick who reported that cells derived from human foetal lung tissue cultured under rigidly controlled conditions would survive only 50 + 10 doublings [Exper. Cell Res., 25, 1961, p. 585]. These findings were reported in great detail and were confirmed by others later. (See also L. Hayflick, "The Limited in Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains," Exper. Cell Res., 37, 1965, p. 614-636.)
In 1974 Hayflick contributed a paper under the title "Cytogerontology" in Theoretical Aspects of Aging in which he again summed up his findings to that date. In this same volume S. Gelfant and C. L. Grove wrote, with reference to Hayflick's findings: "These studies originally reported by Hayflick and Moorehead in 1961 showed that normal animal cells cannot be maintained in vitro indefinitely, but rather have a limited life span. The life span is expressed in the proliferative capacity of the cells in culture and it is also directly related to the age of the donor from which the cultured cells were taken. The maximum life span of human diploid cells in vitro is about ten months. This life span represents approximately 50 cell population doublings, and it applies to cells taken from the youngest possible tissue, that is, from foetal tissue. By comparison, shorter life spans and progressively fewer cell population doublings are observed in cultures originating from adult and old human tissue." [Theoretical Aspects of Aging, ed. M. Rockstein, N.Y., Academic Press. 1974, p. 107, 108].
David E. Harrison, on the basis of Hayflick's reported results, confidently asserted that "his work refuted the fifty-year-old dogma that normal cells could be immortal in tissue culture" [Letter to the Editor, Science, 192, 1976, p. 614 under a heading "Hayflick's Achievements"]. Harrison clearly had in mind such experiments as those conducted by Alexis Carrel L., J. [Exp. Med., 15, 1912, p. 516] and A. H. Ebeling [ibid., 17, 1913, p. 273] in which chicken tissue cells were maintained for years until the experiment was terminated by failure of the equipment.
It is important to note that Hayflick's experiments involved normal diploid cells. Under certain conditions of cell culture abnormal (heteroploid) cells may suddenly appear for some reason, and these cells are capable of maintaining their viability indefinitely.
Hayflick is careful to note in his paper "Cytogerontology" that "the in vitro end point measured by us as loss of capacity for division is simply a very convenient and reproducible system, but may have little to do with the actual cause of in vivo aging" [in Theoretical Aspects of Aging, p. 94].
It should also be noted that Hayflick himself, in 1968. had reported:
"Restudy of the experiments in culturing mouse cells has brought to light a highly interesting fact. It has been found that when normal cells from a laboratory mouse are cultured in a glass vessel, they frequently undergo a spontaneous transformation that enables them to divide and multiply indefinitely. This type of transformation takes place regularly in cultures of the fibroblasts (i.e. cells of connective tissue) of man and other animals. These transformed cell populations have several abnormal properties but they are truly immortal: many of the mouse derived cultures have survived for decades" ["Human Cells and Aging," Sci. Amer., Mar., 1968, p. 32].
There are therefore at least two possible explanations for Alexis Carrel's findings and for the findings of a number of others since: the culture medium may have contributed something to the extended survival of the cells which was lacking in Hayflick's experiments, or the cells themselves may have spontaneously transformed to an abnormal condition. It was for this reason that Hayflick later underscored that his cells were normal. He specifically states that they are not the same as the HeLa cells from cervical tissue which George O. Gey of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine had started with in 1952 and which were still growing and multiplying in glass cultures in 1968, and may even yet be flourishing. These exceptional cells did not have the usual 46 chromosomes of a normal human cell but anywhere from 50 to 350 per cell. They were cells that sometimes behaved like cancer cells and would form tumors when implanted in live animal tissue.
Rona Cherry and Lawrence Cherry, under the heading "Uncovering the Secrets of a Longer Life," noted that while cells from fetuses died around the fiftieth division, cells from young adults divided about fifty times before dying, and those from mature adults only about twenty times [The New York Times Magazine, 12 May, 1974]. This circumstance seems a clear validation of Hayflick's findings that cells so cultured in vitro do have a limited life span.
Accordingly, Hayflick considers that normal animal cells are programmed with a limited life. This may be true of animals by divine design, to prevent over-population. It may be true of human beings now because of the penalty imposed on man for his sin. It need not have been true of Adam as created.
Paul T. Libassi notes that if Hayflick's experiments reflect aging in the whole organism, "man's biological clock is wound for about 110 - 115 years" [The Sciences, New York Academy of Sciences, 14, (9), 1974, p. 7]. This seems remarkably close to a statement made in Genesis 6:3 that after the Flood man's life span should not be allowed to exceed 120 years. To take the words to mean that God would grant the old world only 120 years of grace before the Flood would destroy it, is - in Kalisch's view - "utterly at variance with the context." Kalisch has a long note on this passage that pretty well covers (and invites rejection of) all the then current alternative interpretations [Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, M. M. Kalisch, London, Longmans, 1858, p. 175ff.].
August Weismann, with extraordinary foresight, addressed the same question of whether there is really a limit placed upon cell multiplication many years ago when he wrote: "The hypothesis upon the origin and necessity of death leads me to believe that the organism did not finally cease to renew the worn-out cell-material because the nature of the cells did not permit them to multiply indefinitely, but because the power of multiplying indefinitely was lost when it ceased to be of use" [op. cit, ref. #33, Vol. 1, p. 25]. Unicellular forms seem to have no such limitations imposed upon them, so that the base of the food chain is virtually guaranteed so long as conditions that will support life are maintained.
One criticism of Hayflick's experiment may have to do with the nature of the culture medium. In a special report under the title "Cellular Theorics of Senescence" [Science, 186,1975, p. 1105, 1106], Jean L. Marx noted that "Lester Packer of the University of California, Berkeley, and James R. Smith of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Martinez, California, added vitamin E to cultured Wl-38 cells. These cells which they obtained from Hayflick are the same human embryonic cells that normally have an in vitro life span encompassing only about 50 divisions. But in the presence of vitamin E, an antioxidant that can interfere with reactions mediated by free radicals, the cells continued to divide and to have youthful characters for about 120 population doublings: after that they, too, became senescent and died out. Packer and Smith estimate that the concentration of the vitamin in the enriched culture medium is approximately the same as that in serum in vivo. Packer said that these results do not necessarily conflict with Hayflick's hypothesis that the cells have a built-in 'biological clock' that determines the number of population doublings. He thinks that they may have such a programmed potential but that it is not always attained. Addition of antioxidants to the (cell) environment may allow the cells to reach their full potential for dividing and thus achieving an apparently lengthened life span."
Here, then, we have the same cells treated with a culture medium that more nearly approaches the medium in which cells would be bathed in a healthy body with a proper diet, living not for 50 doublings but for 120. If modern man has a life potential of, say 70 years, the new potential for cell population doublings should ideally give him a theoretical life span of approximately 170 years - which comes close to the Vilcabamba, Azerbaijan, etc. people. Moreover, it should be remembered that these cells are taken from human tissue of man as he now is, not as he once was in pre-Flood time - and certainly not as he was before he fell.
Indeed, it now appears that the so-called "Hayflick limit" may, in a sense, be an artifact, that is to say, "the inevitable consequence of normal culturing procedures." It should in fact be quite possible to produce "an immortal steady state culture." Such a population "might be propagated indefinitely." [See R. Holliday, et al., "Testing the Commitment Theory of Cellular Aging," Science, 198, 1977, p. 366f.]
Even more recently, E. Bell and co-workers have questioned whether the Hayflick phenomenon is a sign of aging or whether it is not rather evidence of cell differentiation. They observe: "The notion that diploid cells age in vitro is based on the observation that they undergo only a limited number of population doublings...In this article we examine these assumptions and provide evidence for an alternative interpretation - namely, that cessation of proliferation of diploid cells...represents a step of differentiation and not one of senescence.
Hayflick's technique of subculturing is seen to be an "upsetting" factor in cell culture which "forces" the cells to "exchange immortality for specialization." They conclude that "cells of organisms need not be programmed intrinsically to die." ["Loss of Division Potential in Vitro: Aging or Differentiation?", Science, 202,1979, p. 1158 - 1163].
124. Gershon, Drs. Harriet and David, Technion-Israel Inst. of Technology, Dept. Biol., Haifa: "Inactive Enzyme Molecules in Aging Mice: Liver Aldolase," Proc. of Nat. Acad. Sci., 70, 1973, p. 909. Dr. Clive Wood of Oxford has suggested that the appearance of "errors" in cell reproduction is under direct genetic control. "The cell carries its own aging program which ultimately results in programmed death" ["Longevity - Catalyst of Social Revolution," New Scientist, 24 May, 1973, p. 470]. The word "error" must, therefore, be used in a rather special sense.
125. Many years ago Sir William Dawson remarked upon this both for plants and animals. From a study of post-Pliocene mollusks and other fossils he concluded that "new species tend rapidly to vary to the utmost extent of their possible limits and then to remain stationary for an indefinite time." [The Story of the Earth and Man, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 360]. It has been found true for birds, according to Ernst Mayr [Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Phila., Wistar Inst. Symposium Monograph, No. 5, 1967, p. 47]. Charles Brues reports the same for insects ["Contributions of Entomology to Theoretical Biology," Sci. Mon., Feb., 1947, p. 130]. Adolph Schultz has confirmed it for primate populations [The Origin and Evolution of Man, Cold Springs Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology, 15,1950, p. 50]. And it has been remarked upon for man by Ralph Linton [The Study of Man, N.Y., Appleton-Century, 1936, p. 26ff.]; LeGros Clark ["Bone of Contention," Huxley Memorial Lecture, J. Anthrop. Inst., 88, 2, 1958, p. 136-138]; and Ralph Goldschmidt ["Evolution as Viewed by One Geneticist," Amer. Scientist, 40, 1952, p. 97]. This built-in variability is an advantage to man, for it allows him to breed lines of domestic animals selectively to suit his own special needs.
126. Muller, H. J., "Life," Science, 121, 1955, p. 8.
127. Edney, E. B. and R. W. Gill, "Evolution of Senescence and Specific Longevity," Nature, 220, 1968, p. 282.
128. Size: see an excellent discussion of this point by J. B. S. Haldane, "On Being the Right Size" in The World of Mathematics, ed. J. R. Newman, N.Y., Simon and Schuster, 1956, Vol. II, p. 952ff. In this connection with man, see a valuable paper by F. W. Went, "The Size of Man," Amer. Scientist, 56, 4, 1968, p. 400 - 413. See also T. McMahon, "Size and Shape in Biology," Science, 179, 1973, p. 1201ff. I have a copy of a diary kept by a Parson for forty years in the latter half of the eighteenth century. He tells how he went to see, in Norwich (England), a giant pig which was nine feet long and four feet high! He observes as a by-the-bye that it had to be supported on its legs and when it fell over was unable to raise itself [Woodforde, James, Diary of a Country Parson, ed. John Beresford, Oxford, 1926, in 5 vols., Vol. 1, p. 245].
129. Good, Ronald, in a review of a book by Lee R. Dice, Natural Communities, [Ann Arbor, 1952], in Nature, 11 July, 1953, p. 46. A very refreshing volume.
130. In 1967 The National Academy of Sciences sponsored a special congress to deal with the problem of the cause of the extinction of a great number of species in Pleistocene times. Some sixty-two pages of animals that were extinct are listed, some of these pages covering as many as forty different species, and the total involving at least two hundred genera. The conclusion of the Congress as a whole was that "this global extinction pattern" was the result of over-kill by early man. Other possible causes, such as climatic change, are not considered to be of primary importance. It was concluded, however, that man's over-kill of many species of interest to himself had the effect of depriving other species of their natural source of food so that they, too, suffered extinction indirectly. It appears that man has always been the great disturber indeed and still is. As late as 1627 he killed probably the last of the European aurochs. During the last 2000 years about 200 species of mammals and birds have become extinct, 70 of them within the last 50 years - and the rate is increasing. About 350 species of vertebrates, nearly a third of them mammals, are currently endangered [The Living World of Animals London, Reader's Digest Assoc., 1970, p. 370; Pleistocene Extinctions: The Search For a Cause, ed. Paul S. Martin and H. E. Wright, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, Vol. VI of the Proc. of the VII Congress of the International Assoc. for Quaternary Research, 433 pp; also Lynn White Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, 155, 1967, p. 1203 - 1207].
131. Jones, F. Wood, Trends of Life, London, Arnold, 1953, p. 18.
132. du Nouy, Comte, Human Destiny, N.Y., Longmans Green, 1947, p. 61.
133. An illustration is the peripheral circulation which performs some very important functions in the regulation of man's body temperature and thus his viability. This peripheral circulation is found to be strikingly different in some of the most commonly used experimental animals, including those believed to be nearest to man in their biological make-up [R. H. Fox and O. G. Edholm, "Peripheral Circulation in Man," Brit. Med. Bull., 19, 1963, p. 112]. J. D. Hardy remarks particularly upon the differences between man and some species of monkey in the matter of body temperature regulation. In fact he concludes one of his reports by saying: "In summary, although the monkey was selected originally for this type of experimentation because it was hoped that its physiology in respect to temperature regulation might be nearer to man than that of the domestic cat or dog, it would seem that the monkey does not simulate man in its method of regulating body temperature" ["Control of Heat Loss and Heat Production in Physiological Temperature Regulation," Harvey Lecture Series, XLIX, N.Y., Academic Press, 1953A, p. 242-270]. See also the author's "Is Man An Animal?" in Evolution or Creation, Vol. 1, Doorway Papers Series, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1976, p. 208-320, which deals at some length with these questions.
134. Sherrington, Sir Charles, Man on His Nature, Cambridge, 1963, p. 33, 34.
135. The nations of antiquity often have traditions that seem to be reflections of the two Trees in the Garden of Eden, though the role of the two trees is sometimes reversed. There was in the old world in classical times a very widespread association in certain festivals between the drinking of an alcoholic beverage (which might be seen as a recollection of the forbidden fruit) and the acquisition of immortality (which would seem to be related rather to the Tree of Life). The ancient gods of Greece and Rome drank fermented wine (nectar) or ate a food associated with such wine (ambrosia) to preserve their immortality.
Ambrosia was commonly described as the "food of the gods," and nectar as the "drink of the gods." There is no question that both were related and sometimes the terms were used interchangeably, or reversed in meaning. The ancient Greek Poetess, Sappho (seventh century B.C.) and Anaxandridas (d. 520 B.C.) both say that ambrosia was a drink. Homer refers to it however as like an ointment or an oil for anointing the bodies of the dead to preserve them from corruption, whereas he describes nectar as resembling red wine and states that its continued use brings immortality [Iliad, XIV, 170; and XIX, 38].
The word ambrosia is held by some authorities to be of Greek origin, composed of a (not) and brotos (mortal), i.e., not mortal, immortal. Liddell and Scott suggest an etymological connection with the Latin root MORT-.
Homer also refers to ambrosia as being an unguent for the treating of wounds, an observation again reflected in the widespread use of fermented wine in the same connection. This practice is observed in Luke 10:34, where the good Samaritan treated the severely wounded man that he found beside the road on his way to Jericho by "pouring oil and wine" into his wounds.
Ambrosia was a central element in several Festivals observed in Greece (and elsewhere) in connection with Dionysus, "the god of peasants." It was a time of celebration for the grape harvest and, according to Johannes Tzetzes (c. 1120-1183) a Greek author who wrote commentaries on Homer and Hesiod, it was held when the must of the newly harvested grapes had fermented. Other non-Hellenic peoples adopted these festivals but turned them into orgies which the more sober Greeks felt were "scandalous."
Hindu mythology has a drink termed Amrita, believed to be derived from Sanskrit a- (not) and a root word related to the Latin mort-, and the Greek brot-. The gods of the Scandinavian pantheon preserved their perpetual youth by eating apples guarded by one named Idun. It is tempting to see this guardian figure as a corruption of the word Eden!
Clearly, there has been preserved among the nations a certain connection between alcohol and immortality, a reversal of the biblical connection obviously, and perhaps an illustration of just the kind of reversal that mythology experienced when it made the serpent the symbol of health.
136. Wasson, Gordon R., "Fly Agaric (Amenita muscaria) and Man," in Ethnopharmacological Search for Psycho-Active Drugs, ed. Daniel H. Efron, published U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, Public Health Services Pub., No. 1465, 1967, p. 413.
137. Horsley, Sir Victor, Alcohol and the Human Body, London, Macmillan, 1908, p. 54.
138. Carlson, H. J. and V. Johnson, op. cit., (ref. #51), p. 341.
139. Watson, George, Nutrition and Your Mind, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1972, p. 104.
140. Seixas, Frank A., "Medical Consequences of Alcoholism," Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 252, 1975, p. 5.
141. Williams, Kenneth, "Medical Consequences of Alcoholism," Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 252, 1975, p. 296.
142. Hellman, Robert S., "Medical Consequences of Alcoholism," Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 252, 1975, p. 297.
143. Hellman, Robert S., ibid., p. 304.
144. Lieber, Charles S., "The Metabolism of Alcohol," Sci. Amer., Mar., 1976, p. 25.
145. Dimitrijevic, D. T., "Alcoholism of The Parents in the Pathogenesis of Neuroses in Children," Med. Arch., Sarajevo, 12, 1, 1958, p. 81-85.
146. Ruch, T. C. and J. F. Fulton, Medical Physiology and Biophysics, Phila., Saunders, 1960, p. 809.
147. Everett, Glenn, "Alcoholism: A Matter of Genetics?", a brief note in Christianity Today, 16 Feb., 1973, p. 53.
148. Aamark, C., "A Study in Alcoholism: Clinical, Social, Psychiatric and Genetic Investigation," J. Acta Psychiat., Supplem. 70, Copenhagen, 1951, 283 pp.
149. Kaij, L., Alcoholism in Twins: Studies on the Aetiology and Sequels of Abuse of Alcohol, Stockholm, Imqirst and Wiksell, 1960, 144 pp.
150. Doepfmer, R. and H. J. Hinckers, "On the Question of Germ Cell Damage in Acute Alcohol Intoxication," Z. Haut-U., Geschlechstkr, 39, 1965, p. 94 - 107.
151. Lemere, F., et al., "Heredity as an Etiologic Factor in Chronic Alcoholism," Northwest Med., Seattle, Wash., 42, 1943, p. 110-111.
152. Popham, Robert E., "A Critique of the Genetotrophic Theory of the Etiology of Alcoholism," Quart. J. of Studies on Alcohol, 14, 1953, p. 228-237.
153. Singh, J. A. L. and R. M. Zingg, Wolf Children and Feral Man, N.Y., Archon Books, Harper and Row, 1966, p. 294.
154. Protti, Giocondo, "The Luminous Woman: The Mystery of Anna Monaro," Ill. Lon. News, 19 May, 1934, p. 780.
155. It has been found that vitamins (especially A, C and thiasnine), antibodies, products of metabolism, the sulfonamide compounds and other drugs cross the placental membranes. It has also been found that penicillin and streptomycin administered to the mother appear rapidly in human foetal blood. It has been reported that hormones, narcotics and chemotherapeutic agents are transmitted across the placental barrier.
In a brief note in the New Scientist (8 Dec., 1977, p. 632) it was recently reported: The US Food and Drug Administration wants to have alcoholic drinks labeled to warn pregnant women that excessive alcohol consumption could harm their babies. According to one US federal organization, The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, something like 1500 babies born in the US each year may be mentally or physically damaged because their mothers drank too much alcohol when they were pregnant. Dr. Donald Kennedy, the FDA Commissioner, says that two glasses of wine or one and a half (imperial) pints of beer a day is an excessive alcohol intake.
Another recent report in New Scientist (11 Jan., 1979, p. 76) indicates that the strictly poisonous nature of alcohol in human tissue is being increasingly recognized. Under the somewhat undignified heading "Mother's ruin is baby's downfall," it is noted that evidence has now clearly indicated the often severely detrimental effect on the unborn and newly born of the mother's alcohol intake. The number of pregnant mothers studied is very substantial and the evidence confirms experiments with animals that there is a marked foetal effect of alcohol poisoning via the mother. The effect of alcohol poisoning appears to be direct and not indirect.
At least 20 different patterns of drinking can lead to some form of congenital damage. But it is not yet clear precisely how alcohol disrupts embryonic development, nor whether it is a poison in its own right or disrupts the flow of nutrient to the embryo. Whether by direct or indirect action, its effects on the embryo are "strikingly toxic."
156. Konowalchuk, J. and J. I. Speirs reported their findings in the Journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 32, 1977, p. 757. Polio, herpes simplex, echo, and coxsackie viruses were all suppressed or inhibited. Polio virus infectivity was reduced by a factor of 1000 when incubated at 40C at pH7 for 24 hours with grape juice. Wines were less effective.
The authors believe that the amount of inhibition exercised by the juices is related to the concentration of tannin-like phenolic compounds present. Inhibitory activity is confined to the extract from the skin of the grape rather than the pulp. The mechanism of inhibition probably depends on the phenolics' ability to bind especially to virus protein, upon which the ability to infect depends.
157. Richard J. Harrison and William Montagna in their book Man remarked upon the necessity of death and the potential hazard it would be to life as a whole if the majority of creatures were not "programmed" to die [N.Y., Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969, p. 354f]:
"One can conceive that under ideal circumstances tissues could remain unchanged and animals live forever. This 'foreverness' seems to be man's goal in studying the aging processes. Had this goal been achieved in the past, the numbers of each species would, eons ago, have exceeded the limits of their natural ecological niches. The total inhabitable surface of the earth and the oceans, lakes, and streams would have long ago been overpopulated, and the competition for survival would have been magnified to such an extent that the destruction of life might have resulted...
"It is singularly true of animals with a circumscribed reproductive function that when this function ceases the individual dies, as if nature had ordained that organisms that are no longer useful in genetic succession are ipso facto useless and must be eliminated. Some justification can be found for such belief when one analyzes the situation in all vertebrates except man [emphasis mine]. The perpetuation of each species, after all, can only be assured by reproductively vigorous animals. Hence the elimination of those no longer able to reproduce seems to establish a natural order of things."
All this is true provided that the only purpose in the system is that each species shall survive. The question of what a species is to survive for is unasked. If individual worth has some significance, then the mere serving of a reproductive function in the life of the species is not enough to determine how long an individual organism is to survive. To die off as soon as reproductive capacity is ended, does indeed suggest that life was allocated only for this purpose. But man may live long after he is no longer reproductive. His life therefore must serve some further objective.
Animals would, if given unlimited longevity, soon swamp every available nook and cranny of the globe. But man was never originally planned to come to an end by dying but by being "graduated" to another sphere of living without passing through death. In such an order of life, the earth would never have been "knee deep in human bodies." This signifies that he is something more than just a reproductive machine. But translation of animals below man does not seem to have been part of the plan, and death for them must therefore have been programmed. Yet there is still no hard evidence that life per se has to be terminated in death as a natural process of wearing out by the exhaustion of its vital resources. It is simply that the longer an animal lives the greater are its chances of being killed. All life had to be constituted with the possibility either of dying or of being translated, otherwise there is no safety valve against overpopulation.
158. Maatman, Russell W. (Dept. Chemistry, Dordt College, Sioux Centre, Iowa), "Inerrancy, Inspiration and Evolution: the Position of Russell W. Maatman," J. Amer. Sci Affil, 24, 2, 1972, p. 88.
159. Blum, Harold, Time's Arrow and Evolution, NJ., Princeton, 1951, p. 76.
160. Sciama D W S quoted by R. E. D. Clark from Sciama's The Unity of the Universe (1959) in The Christian Stake in Science, Exeter, Paternoster Press, 1967, p. 113.
161. Wheeler, John A., "Our Universe: the Known and the Unknown," Amer. Scientist, Spring, 1968, p. 18.
162. Huxley, Sir Julian, quoted by E. L. Mascall, The Importance of Being Human, N.Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1958, p. 6.
163. Huxley, Sir Julian, ibid., p. 7.
164. Simpson, C. C., "Some Cosmic Aspects of Evolution" in Evolution and Hominuation, ed. Gottfried Kurth, Stuttgart, Fischer, 2nd ed., 1968, p. 2.
165. Bennant, Gordon, "Human Sexual Development," Science, 180, 1973, p. 588.
166. Price, Dorothy, quoted by Graham Chedd, "Struggling into Manhood," New Scientist, 5 June, 1969, p. 524. As Chedd notes, it is now believed that maleness is dependent not merely upon the presence of the Y chromosome but, at two critical points, upon two masculinizing substances, one as yet unidentified and the other testosterone or something very like it. It is virtually certain that these two substances appear only in the presence of the Y chromosome but apparently they may not be manufactured by the developing organism at the appropriate time and when this happens the fetus becomes feminized instead.
Ursula Mittwoch, an outstanding authority in this area in Great Britain, observed: "It is now accepted that the embryonic testis plays a major role in mammalian sexual development. If testes are present in the young embryo, a male phenotype will develop, whereas if the embryonic testes are removed the phenotype will resemble that of a female whatever the chromosomal sex of the embryo" [emphasis mine: "Do Genes Determine Sex?", Nature, 1 Feb., 1969, p. 446]. From which we conclude that not only does the human embryo have the capability of developing into either a male or a female regardless of the presence of the X or Y sex chromosomes but the genetic male may rather easily emerge as a female if certain irregularities in sequential development occur.
The same author in another paper on the subject underscores the now apparent indeterminacy of the X and Y chromosome by saying, "Indeed, the assumption of sex-determining genes is beset with difficulties. Furthermore, the facts of embryology suggest an inherent bisexuality" ["Sex Differentiation in Mammals," Nature, 6 May, 1967, p 554]. Mittwoch quotes Korens in Berlin as having stated that there can be no question of the segregation of genes for sex differences during gamete formation, but that on the contrary the gametes transmit the hermaphrodite condition on which the characteristics of one or the other sex are imprinted during subsequent development. It is because the potentialities for both sexes are present in both male and female determining germ cells, that Korens postulated the existence of some additional sex determinants ["Do Genes Determine Sex?", Nature, 1 Feb., 1969, p. 446].
This is a point which has been emphasized also by A. D. Jost who says: "The concept has been progressively developed that in the absence of any sex gland the body is fundamentally neutral sex, and that maleness or femaleness is imposed by male and female hormones produced by the sex glands....As early as 1913, E. Steinach was convinced that the early embryo was neither unisexual nor bisexual but asexual or indifferent until sex is imposed by the sex glands." And later he adds, "I have come to the conclusion that the simplest explanation of gonadal differentiation would accept that some mechanism - perhaps the production of a special local hormone, correlated with the presence of the Y chromosome in the male [which Jost elsewhere terms an 'inducer' substance] - triggers an early and rapid development of the testis in the rudimentary sex organ which otherwise would follow the slow pattern of development characteristic of the ovary" ["Development of Sexual Characteristics," Sci. J., June, 1970, p. 67, 70].
In a similar vein, R. G. Edwards wrote: "The essential unanswered question about primary sexual differentiation is the mechanism which causes switching of the gland into male or female development. Various theories have been expounded involving the more rapid synthesis of DNA and cell division due to the smallness of the Y chromosome, the heterochromatic regions of the X and Y chromosome, and balance between the medullary and cortical regions of the gonad. Early in differentiation, an inducer-like substance evidently determines whether development will be ovarian or testicular. Once determined, the gonad will evidently not support the growth of germ cells of the other sex" ["Sex and the Developing Embryo," Sci J., Sept., 1969, p. 89].
167. Ideally, it appears that the X or Y chromosome initiates the programmed development of the appropriate sex glands internally (ovaries or testes) and the external genitalia as well as the accessory organs of the whole reproductive mechanism. While the gonads are developing into paired ovaries or testes, the germ cells are migrating to these glandular structures in which they will be housed and further prepared for later presentation as ova or spermatozoa. Migration of the germ cells is believed to take place at first through the vasculature by amoeboid movement [R. G. Edwards, "Sex and the Developing Embryo," Sci. J., Sept., 1969, p. 89].
According to C. R. Austin, primordial cells "are seen first in tissue that originates from the fertilized egg but lies outside the true body of the embryo and are thus said to have an extra-embryonic origin. Shortly, in the course of embryonic development, the cells migrate from this site into the body of the embryo and move towards the genital ridges, regions in which the future gonads, the ovaries or testes, are to develop" ["The Egg and Fertilization," Sci J. ,June, 1970, p. 37].
So we have first, genetic or chromosomal sex determination. This is followed by a gonadal determination whereby either testes or ovaries are formed. These gonads produce hormones which stimulate development of the appropriate reproductive organs of either sex. Finally, by visual inspection of the external organs, the sex of the neonate is assigned by the attending physicians or by the parents and the child is thus cast in a special role by society which hopefully will reinforce, and be in harmony with, the physiological constitution.
168. Fritz Kahn observed.- "In all mammals including man, the sex gland is very often accompanied by more or less well defined elements belonging to a gland of the opposite sex...On the one hand, it is not uncommon to find children whose external genitalia exhibit such a combination of male and female structures at birth that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to decide whether the infant is a boy or a girl. A child is born with a closed genital cleft like a boy but the ostensible penis is small like a clitoris, and the sex glands (testes) cannot be found because they have remained in the abdominal cavity. Or, on the other hand, two glands have become prominent like a boy's testicles but the genital cleft has remained open like a vagina and one faces the question as to whether the child is a girl with descended ovaries or a boy whose scrotum has remained open" [Man in Structure and Function, N.Y., Knopf, 1960, Vol. II, p. 734]. This helps to point up the difficulties which may face an attending physician who, for various social reasons, must make a quick decision.
D. R. Keller of Basel, writing on hermaphroditism, remarked, "From our discussion, it is clear that while sex when fully differentiated is easy enough to recognize, it is rather difficult to define biologically. Indeed, according to Lillie, there is no such thing as sex but rather several dimorphous states with contrasting characters. It is evident that this applies to all living creatures" [Ciba Symposium, 2, 3, 1940, p. 485].
The number of individuals who experience a conflict between their inner drives and their assigned sex and role in society seems to be on the increase. Peter Scott, in an article entitled "Identifying Gender," and speaking of the newborn whose sex is not easy to determine, observes: "Most of these babies are normal females (that is, their sex chromosomes are those of a female) who have been to some extent masculinized by male hormones which have either arisen within the baby's body or within the mother's body or have been administered to her during pregnancy." He lists at least six criteria that under ideal conditions might be used, but in real life are not all of them useful either because they are applied too late in life or because they delay assignment of sex too long. These are: (1) internal organs (there is not usually time for this kind of examination); (2) external genital organs (fully formed breasts would be identified too late to correct an error in assignment of sex at birth); (3) type of sex chromosome; (4) characteristic hormones; (5) assigned sex by the physicians or parents; and (6) gender role in society [New Scientist, 24 July, 1969, p. 182].
169. According to Hamilton, Boyd and Mossman: "True hermaphroditism is very rare, and among humans there are only twenty proven cases" [W. J. Hamilton, J. D. Boyd, H. W. Mossman, Human Embryology, Baltimore, Willams & Wilkins, 1945, p. 220]. This was given on the authority of H. H. Young, Genital Abnormalities: Hermaphroditism and Related Adrenal Diseases, written in 1937. In 1946 Charles W. Hooker noted five new cases reported during that single year and states that this brought the total known to him up to 35 or 36 at the time ["Reproduction" in Annual Review of Physiology, 8, p. 470]. In 1957 John L. Morris describes a number of cases of confused sex in some of which both male and female gonads were present in the same individual, and some clearly structurally opposing their chromosomal pattern. He notes that there were by then at least 50 histological cases reported. Some of the subjects underwent surgery to correct the malfunction of both internal and external organs and were able to bear normal children thereafter ["Intersexuality," J. Amer. Med. Assoc., 163, 7, 1957, p. 538-542].
M. Bobrow and M. H. Cough of the Medical Research Council in England reported in Lancet a number of cases of otherwise completely normal young men with no testes whatever, the vas deferens ending "blind" behind the bladder. It has been estimated that as high as two or three in every thousand are biologically neither straightforward males nor females. Rarely are such individuals able to have children... ["Bilateral Absence of Testes," Lancet, 14 Feb., 1970, p. 366]. And now we learn from John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt that over the last twenty years more than 900 cases of hermaphroditism and related reproductive and psychosexual disorders have been seen in the psychohormonal research unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore [Science, 180, 1973, p. 586]. And this is only one reporting agency.
As a matter of fact, Morris' opening statement is: "While the differences between the sexes are the subject of considerable emphasis, male and female are not mutually exclusive, and both have certain anatomic and endocrinal characteristics of the opposite sex. The six-week old embryo is ambisexual, with gonads which may develop into either ovaries or testes, and two systems of tubules, the Wolfram and the Mullerian ducts, which develop into the male or female reproductive organs respectively. Sexual differentiation commences about the seventh week, but many rudimentary structures of the opposite sex persist after birth" ["Intersexuality," J. Amer. Med. Assoc., 163, 7, 1957, p. 538]. According to Money and Ehrhardt who probably have more experience in this area than any other researchers, true hermaphroditism by definition is that condition of incomplete external sexual differentiation at birth in which both testicular and ovarian structures are represented internally in the gonads. There may be one ovary and one testis, or even a pair of each: although most frequently both gonads are of mixed structure. That is, they are ovotestes.
An ovotestis is a gonad which has developed both its cortex and its medulla components, where normally either the cortex or the medulla would have developed at the expense of the other. The rule is that when the medulla develops, the cortex gradually disappears until only a trace remains, and the structure becomes a testis: when the cortex develops, the medulla gradually disappears leaving only a trace, and the structure becomes an ovary. When both medulla and cortex develop equally, an ovotestis results, in which the medulla produces spermatocytes (later to become spermatozoa) while the cortex simultaneously produces oocytes (later to become ova). [L. John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, Baltmore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972, p. 38, 39].
It is thus apparent either that the incidence of confused sexuality is actually increasing (possibly due to the widening use of denatured foods and/or inappropriate medication during pregnancy [See Isabel W. Jennings, Vitamins in Endocrine Metabolism, London, Heinemann, 1970, 148 pp.]), or existing cases are receiving greater publicity. The news media in recent years have reported a number of instances of surgical intervention which has successfully corrected previous sexual indeterminacy, suggesting a changing attitude on the part of the public towards this unfortunate condition.
In the New Testament the word eunuch is used to signify a male castrated according to the practices of the nations at the time: but it is also used in the spiritual sense to signify an individual, man or woman, who has deliberately sacrificed all that is involved in sex life in order to dedicate himself or herself entirely to the Lord's service. When the Lord refers to this circumstance in Matthew 19:12, He also notes that in the physical sense there are some who are actually born eunuchs, i.e., born without sex organs. Such abnormalities are not solely a modern phenomenon.
170. Whether there is a positive effect of such twin prenatal influence in humans or not, is perhaps an open question. The case is quite otherwise with animals, where such effects are well-known. D. R. Keller in an article entitled "Hermaphroditism in the Animal Kingdom," mentions pigs and cows as among the more familiar examples. He observes: "Especially in the pig have a relatively large and varied number of cases of hermaphroditism been observed and studied for a long time." Of cows he says, "A particular form of abnormal hermaphroditism designated at present as hormonal intersexuality, occurs when cows bring forth twins of different sex. The female animal may then exhibit marked male characteristics. Such 'Freemartins' have been known to farmers and animal breeders from time immemorial. The origin is ascribed to hormonal action arising from the male embryo, stimulating the female fetus to develop in a masculine direction. Embryologists have demonstrated that the production of testicular hormone can begin earlier than that of ovarian hormone, because the testis in mammals begins to differentiate in an earlier developmental stage than the ovary. Consequently the testicular hormone can exert an inhibitory effect on the development of the genital apparatus in the female twin. Such Freemartins may exhibit varying degrees of intersexuality owing to the circumstance that the two placentas can fuse at various times during embryonic life" [Ciba Symposium, June, 1940, p. 478].
P. K. Basrur et al have reported similar abnormalities in a horse which was registered as a male at birth but exhibited several intersexual aberrations of internal and external genitalia. This was attributed to an interchange of blood cell precursors and primordial germ cells between heterosexual twins through vascular anastomoses in the foetal membranes during pregnancy ["Further Studies on the Cell populations of an Intersex Horse," Can. J. of Comparat. Med., Oct., 1970, p. 294-296].
Such disturbing hormonal influences may reach the fetus from the mother where hormones are administered in treatment of threatened abortion. Money and Ehrhardt refer to data on genetic females whose mothers were given large pregnancy-saving doses of progestin. All these infant girls suffered from progestin induced hermaphroditism (androgenization) of the external genitalia which was surgically corrected. The authorities state that these girls nevertheless retained in some aspects the masculinization which the operation was intended to correct against [Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972, p. 95ff., especially p. 99 on Tomboyism in girls].
Operational intervention is not usually thought of as upsetting the normal sexual development, but rather correcting for it. However, there are cases where normal development has been upset by accident. One such example is that of a child, raised as a girl, though actually a boy "whose penis was completely lost due to clumsy circumcision at seven months" [Money and Ehrhardt, ibid., p. 118].
To my knowledge, the term "parasitic castration" has not yet been applied to man, but it has been found in animals. G. E. and N. MacGinitie state: "Barnacles of the genus Sacculina are among the most unusual parasites in the animal kingdom. At one stage of its development the barnacle larva attaches itself to a 'hair' on a crab's body and penetrates the covering of the hair and travels down its hollow tube to the interior of the crab. It develops inside the crab, but the only external manifestation of the parasite is a formless reproductive sac that grows in the region of the crab's abdomen. The creeping spreading growth destroys the testes of the host, whereupon organs of the other sex begin to develop and to produce female reproductive hormones. These hormones will initiate the growth of secondary sexual characteristics, such as a wider abdomen and female genital pores. Thus, as a result of parasitism, an almost complete sex reversal occurs. Biologists sometimes call this 'parasitic castration.'" [A Natural History of Marine Animals, N.Y., McGraw, 1968, p. 261-263].
V. H. Mottram. in his Physical Basis of Personality and speaking of a hen which after a year of normal "henny" characteristics had become dominating and cocky in her relations with the rest of her Sisters, notes that she grew feathers, comb and spurs appropriate to a rooster and begat a number of chickens "before her sacrifice on the altar of genetics." Then it was discovered that avian tuberculosis had destroyed her ovaries and that from undifferentiated germinal tissue she had grown testes. Since birds (unlike other animals) are heterosexual, the possession of a V chromosome leads to a female sex and it may therefore be that the female can more easily convert to a male in the way that among other animals species it is the male which can convert to female [London, Penguin Books, 1949, p. 11].
171. Transexualists are people who wish to become members of the opposite sex not merely in behaviour and dress but by operational intervention if possible. Transvestites wish only to dress in the clothing of the opposite sex. According to an editorial in the British Medical Journal [1, 1966, p. 872] under the title "Transexuality," "Transexuality is more frequently reported in man than in woman, the excess varying anywhere from 50:1 to 3:1, according to different estimates." There is a very large difference between these estimates, but the editorial quotes J. H. Schultz as asserting categorically that true transexuality occurs only in man, never in woman [in Intersexuality, ed. Claus Overzeir, London, 1963]. According to R. G. Edwards, development is always female unless a testis is present, when male patterns of differentiation are then imposed on the fetus almost irrespective of the genotype of the fetus, and he refers to the condition known as testicular feminization. In such cases of hermaphroditism the subjects are generally XY and are often found to possess testes (as would be expected) "but the internal and external genitalia are predominately female and the patient behaves as a woman" ["Sex and the Developing Embryo," Sci. J., Sept., 1969, p. 89].
Isabel Jennings observed: "In the presence of functioning pituitary the gonad in the genetic male begins to secrete androgen...Loss of this activity by castration or by chemical means or by parasitism inhibits this process and feminization occurs" [Vitamins and Endocrine Metabolism, London, Heineman, 1970, p. 140]. By contrast, at least in mammals, the gonadectomized female has no such tendency towards the development of male sexual characteristics. I do not recall any report via the news media of an assigned female being operationally transformed into a male, but there are numerous reports of the reverse, and such reports demonstrate clearly that if the social and environmental conditions are favourable, the transformation can be carried through with success. Moreover, such transformations have occurred in men who had already fully matured and had even fathered children successfully. The Toronto Telegram of 6 March, 1954, carried the story in some detail of an ex-Royal Air Force hero who was the father of two children, aged 10 and 12, who is now to all intents and purposes an entirely different individual - different in name (Robert became Roberta), different in sex, different in habits of life, and different in temperament. The medical report states categorically that in spite of having fathered two children and raised them to adolescence, "she is undoubtedly a woman."
They also say that they had known of no previous case where the change had occurred so late in life (at 35 years of age). As we have already noted (see ref. # 169), J. L. Morris reported some instances of hermaphroditic subjects with testicular feminization who underwent surgery and later delivered a normal child, provided only that the ovaries were still present and the vagina not blind ["Intersexuality," J. Amer. Med. Assoc., 163, 7, 1957, p. 540]. Here, then, we have what amounts to a full cycle conversion, male into female and father into mother. Eve who was formed out of Adam became the mother of all living (Gen. 3:29).
172. On this subject, Fritz Kahn has observed: "The male and female sex glands, as well as the male and female hormone, are antagonistic in their actions. If a female sex gland is implanted in a man, it is rapidly destroyed, and the same thing happens to a testicle implanted in the body of a sexually immature woman. Nevertheless, throughout its entire life, every organism retains some genital tissue belonging to the opposite sex...When the sex gland becomes weak in the course of the aging process, it sometimes happens that the tissue of the other sex begins to predominate. This explains the well-known fact that after the menopause women become masculinized to some degree by developing facial hirsutism and acquiring coarser masculine features, a deeper voice, and a gruff manner" [Man in Structure and in Function, N.Y., Knopf, 1960, Vol. II, p. 737,738] . Kahn has a photograph of a woman who had experienced what he terms "a crass case of masculinization." He says of this woman that until a few years previously she had been completely feminine. One day, however, a tumor had developed due to a proliferation of cells which belonged to the opposite sex and which then flooded her body with male hormone.
173. Short, R. V., "Germ Cell Sex" in The Genetics of the Spermatozoon, ed. R. A. Beatty and S. Gleuchlsohn-Waelsch, Edinburgh, International Symposium at Edinburgh University, 1972, p. 325.
174. In this connection, Ursula Mittwoch observes: It is evident that both the evolutionary and the embryological evidence demonstrate that the origin of separate sexes is in hermaphroditism...We may thus picture the evolution of sex chromosomes as having occurred in three stages. During the first stage individuals were hermaphroditic. This was followed by the second stage in which separation of the sexes was achieved by environmental factors such as temperature...Lastly, a pair of unequal chromosomes was set aside under whose influence males and females would develop in equal numbers ["Sex Growth and Chromosomes," New Scientist, 15 July, 1971, p. 127]. This could be viewed as a reflection of what happened at an accelerated rate in the case of Adam and Eve. At first the two sexes were combined in one individual: their separation was effected: and each separated half was then reconstituted as a whole organism in its own right - all this taking place perhaps in a matter of minutes?
175. E. A. Lapham and H. Morowita, speaking of the Dicyemida, point out that these simple creatures develop a structure that may be thought of as a kind of hermaphroditic gonad. This is in a sense the only organ that the Mesozoa possess, and it produces both eggs and sperm. The eggs produced are fertilized by sperm frequently from the same organ ["The Mesozoa," Sci. Amer., Dec., 1972, p. 95]. It is evident that however sexual dimorphism has come about in man, among lower animals the division was sometimes highly uneven. According to V. Geodakyan, in the mountains of Armenia on the shores of Lake Sevan, colonies of lizards exist which are entirely female, laying only unfertilized eggs and hatching them, thus breeding strictly by parthenogenesis ["Why Two Sexes?", Meditsinskyia Gazeta (Medical Gazetteer), Moscow, 23 Mar., 1966 - trans. Joint Publication Research Service, US Dept. Commerce, Washington, and issued as JPRS No. 35321]. There is a small fish known under the name Labroides dimidiatus which is specifically sexed as either male or female but the females have the power of becoming males if the male happens to desert the harem. The most dominant of the ten or so females in the harem begins to change its sex within a few hours of the departure of the male [Ross Robertson, "Sex Changes Under the Waves," New Scientist, 31 May, 1973, p. 538].
176. John Burton observes that parthenogenesis takes place in insects, fishes, reptiles and even birds. He notes that it has been clearly established that the eggs are not being fertilized by any males...though the eggs can be! ["Virgin Birth in Vertebrates," New Scientist, 9 Aug., 1973, p. 334].
Under the heading Hermaphrodite, the Encyclopedia Britannica [Vol. II, 1953, p. 503] makes reference to what is called "functional hermaphroditism in animals, a condition in which both male and female gametes are produced by one and the same individual...occasionally fish and birds have both sex organs, one on each side. Gynandromorphism leads to two half-animals (male and female) united in one....(chiefly in insects)."
More recently the National Institute for Agronomical Research in France reported the breeding of bisexual trout which produce both eggs and sperm. "The breeding process is fairly simple and requires feeding young normal trout with small doses of substances which act on the biological sex differentiation. About 30% of those treated become bisexual within two to three years. Each bisexual trout can produce about 1000 normal trout and experiments are just starting to find out exactly how the process can benefit fish farms by giving rise to trout of superior quality" [New Scientist, 12 Jan., 1978, p. 93].
177. The common earthworm night crawler Lumbricus terrestres is both a complete male and a complete female. It cannot, however, fertilize its own eggs: there is reciprocal cross fertilization in this species. This may be contrasted, therefore, with the behaviour of the Mesozoon Dicyemida which can fertilize itself [H. Armstrong, Creation Res. Soc. Quart., Sept., 1972, p. 132]. This is known as autogamy.
178. Ulam, Stanislaw M., "How to Formulate Mathematically Problems of Rate of Evolution," Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Symposium, Phila., Wistar Institute Press, No. 5, 1967, p. 23.
179. A work was published in 1974 dealing with the clinical, morphologic and cytogenetic aspects of hermaphroditism. The author is Professor W. van Niekerk, Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Tygerberg Hospital, Parow, Cape Province, South Africa. This is perhaps the most complete study of the subject to be published in recent years. Among the case histories in this volume is that of an individual who developed to maturity with a truly hermaphroditic constitution including an active testis and an active ovary. Normal sperm were found in the testis on the left side, and an ovary with numerous follicles and some ova were observed on the right side [True Hermaphroditism, Willem A. van Niekerk, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1974, 200 pp. , especially p. 112].
180. Money and Erhardt point out that girls with Turner's Syndrome are "more extremely feminine" than normal XX females. They conclude from this that masculinity and femininity are not really discrete entities but lie along a unidimensional continuum which would see pure masculinity at one extreme and pure femininity at the other extreme and a continuous graduated series of mixtures in between. Turner's Syndrome, as they interpret the evidence, places the individual further to the feminine pole than the normal female, thus leading to a "purer" sexual type [Review in Science, 180, 1973, p. 587; and Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972, p. 107ff.]
181. Cynecomastia or gynecomazia, a condition where the male mammary glands are well developed and may secrete milk, is a recognized phenomenon, being reported by early writers including Aristotle and referred to by the French as la couvade. More recently, the famous physiologist, John Hunter, records the instance of a sailor who, having lost his wife, took his son to his own breast to quiet him and after three or four days was able to nourish him. He also mentions the case of a man of 50 who shared equally with his wife the suckling of their children. In Franklin's Voyage to the Polar Seas, he quotes the case of an old Chippewa who, on losing his wife in childbirth, had put the infant to his breast and earnestly prayed that milk might flow; he was fortunate enough to eventually produce sufficient milk to rear the child [See further on this G. M. Gould and W. L. Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, N.Y., Julian Press, 6th printing, 1966, p. 395-397].
Under the heading "Milk Hormone Produced at the Slightest Touch," the following observation is made.- "Prolactin is one of the galaxy of peptide hormones secreted by the anterior pituitary gland and its main function has to do with the production of milk in lactating females. Biologists in Washington University School of Medicine have been looking at the way prolactin secretion is initiated in non-lactating individuals - both males and females [my emphasis]. Occasionally milk is produced in individuals following mechanical stimulation of the breasts...Simple stroking of the breast and nipple in the female subjects for five minutes induced a dramatic increase (at least ten times) in the prolactin output of the pituitary. Curiously, when wives manipulated their husband's nipples prolactin output rose." Reference is made in a Note, in Nature, 238, 1972, p. 284; quoted in New Scientist, 10 Aug., 1972, p. 277].
In a Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, there occurred the following observation: "It is not a very uncommon circumstance to find both among human kind and animals, males whose breasts contain milk. Among the lower orders of people in Russia milk in the breasts of men is much more frequent than among the more southern nations..." It may be of interest to note with respect to the last observation that the Scyths who migrated into Russia, according to Hippocrates showed a high incidence of hermaphroditism as though it were almost a racial character, and some skeptics of reports of male breast feeding have suggested that only a hermaphrodite could possibly perform this function. Perhaps Hippocrates' observation sheds some light on this matter. This information was published by the Medical Librarian, Evansville, Indiana, in a local paper dated 2 Aug., 1972.
The San Francisco Chronicle [6 Nov., 1976] reported a billy goat which was observed by two scientists at Garhwal University in the State of Delhi, India, to be producing milk from normal mammary glands, yet all its other sex organs were clearly male.
As Dr. A. E. Wilder Smith points out, both sexes synthesize both male and female hormones. Males synthesize female hormones and females synthesize male hormones. In fact after certain operations it is often necessary to treat the female to prevent the undue expression of the male hormones as a result of the depletion of the female hormone and in old age with the decline of the female glands which produce these hormones, the female body may occasionally assume a number of quite marked male characteristics. Wilder Smith observes wisely that if human ancestry from an evolutionary standpoint is ultimately to be traced through reptiles which do not nurse their young and therefore have no nipples, it is difficult to account for the possession of nipples by the male unless we assume that they served a purpose at some time in the past [Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, Wheaton, Shaw, 1960, p. 105]. For this is how the evolutionists must account for nipples in the female of the species. He therefore concludes that we have to assume that they were at one time functional, or at least potentially so. If Adam were originally bisexual, his nipples would undoubtedly have been routinely functional and only ceased to be so because Eve was taken out of him.
It has more recently been discovered that males also produce relaxin, a substance which softens the pubic bone in the female, allowing the fetus a little more freedom of passage. In the male it is produced by Leydig cells which also produce the male sex hormone, testosterone. This was reported by M. P. Dubois, of the National Institute of Agricultural Research, and Jean-Louis Dacheux of the Laboratory of Comparative Physiology in Tours, France [Cell and Tissue Research, 187, 1978, p. 201].
It should be said that when, for pathological reasons, the genetic male does not respond to the androgen produced by the testes (a condition known as androgen insensitivity) the body develops with essentially female external genitalia and with female sensitivities, and will almost certainly be assigned a feminine sex role. This condition is also termed testicular feminization, for obvious reasons. The male testes therefore produce sufficient estrogen to impress female characters on what should have been a male body.
Thus, a male can give rise to a male or to a female, but a female cannot give rise to a male - or only so rarely that many authorities deny the possibility, and reports of such are probably misrepresentations of the actual facts. Eve can easily be conceived as having been derived out of Adam, but not Adam out of Eve. In 1866, Franz Delitzsch, in his System of Biblical Psychology, made a remarkable observation regarding the forming of Eve. He said: "Eve is certainly not Adam's child, but Adam himself in a different sex" [See p. 133 of the Baker reprint, 1966].
Even in the matter of the external genitalia, it has so far proved impossible to convert a female to a male by surgical intervention or by the administration of hormones, but the reverse operation is now quite successful when it is considered proper. An actual case of the conversion of a true male into a female, an event necessitated only as a result of an unfortunate accident, is given by Money and Ehrhardt [Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972, p. 95-116 and 118f., esp. p. 113].
182. Mowatt, Farley, West Viking, Toronto, Little, Brown, 1965, p. 147.
183. Ciba Symposium, June, 1940, p. 495.
184. Turner, Sharon, The Sacred History of the World, London, Longman, 1837, Vol. II, p. 191, footnote.
185. R. V. Short has a very good summary statement at this point: "In this review I would like to consider the essential differences between sexual and somatic tissues in mammals, and the way in which these two cell lines may be subject to separate genetical control mechanisms.
"Natural sex reversal occurs commonly in a number of lower vertebrates (Chan, 1970), and complete, functional sex reversal can be achieved in fish and amphibia by adding steroidal sex hormones to the water in which they are swimming (Ohno, 1967). There are occasional reports of spontaneous functional sex reversal in birds (Crew, 1923), and if the single ovary of a hen is removed surgically, the contralateral gonadal remnant will develop into a testis and may produce spermatozoa (Miller, 1938). Partial gonadal reversal occurs when male chick embryos are treated with estrogen (Erickson and Pincus, 1966), or when embryos of opposite sex develop within the same egg and acquire extensive vascular interconnections (Lutz and Lutzstertag 1959). In the Virginia opossum, a marsupial, partial gonadal sex reversal can be produced by treating the pouch young with steroids (Burns, 1961). But in mammals, complete functional sex reversal never occurs naturally, and even partial gonadal sex reversal cannot be induced experimentally with steroids (Burns, 1961). It is therefore tempting to conclude that the plasticity of gonadal development in fish, amphibians and birds had to be forsaken in mammals, where the whole embryonic development has to take place within the confines of a uterus which is bathed by maternal hormones. Such a situation demands a much more immutable genetic control if the fetus is to develop its sexuality independently of its mother" ["Germ Cell Sex" in The Genetics of the Spermatozoon, Proceedings of International Symposium at Edinburgh, August, 1971, ed. R. A. Beatty and S. Gluecksohn Waelsch, Edinburgh, 1972, p. 325f.]. His references are:
Chan, S. T. H., "Natural Sex Reversals in Vertebrates," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., London, B. 259, 1970, p. 59-71.
Ohno, S., Sex Chromosomes and Sex-linked Genes, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1967.
Crew, F. A. E., Studies in Intersexuality. II: "Sex-reversal in the Fowl," Proc. Roy. Soc., London, B. 95, 1923, p. 256-278.
Miller, R. A., "Spermatogenesis in a Sex-reversed Female and in Normal Males of the Domestic Fowl, Gollus domesticus," Anat. Rec., 70, 1938, p. 155-189.
Erickson, A. E. and G. Pincus, "Modification of embryonic development of reproductive and lymphoid organs in the chick," J. Embryol exp. Morph., 16, 1966, p. 211-229.
Lutz H. and Y. Lutz-Ostertag, "Free-martinisme spontan chez les Oiseau," Develop. Biol., 1, 1959, p. 364-376.
Burns, R. K., "Role of hormones in the differentiation of sex" in Sex and Internal Secretions, 3rd ed., Vol. 1, Baltimore, Wilkins, Williams, 1961, p. 76-158.
186. The world famous Vienna psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, was convinced that if personalities could be arranged in some kind of order from superior to inferior, at the very top of the list one would have to place those who somehow seem to combine within themselves in almost equal measure male and female personality traits and characteristics. Jung believed that such people under favourable conditions are likely to achieve "the highest human perspective and creative expression. But this gynandromorphic admixture appears to introduce a peculiar delicacy and a hair-trigger emotional intensity into the human machinery" [quoted by W. H. Sheldon, The Varieties of Human Physique, N.Y., Harper Bros., 1946, p. 257]. More recently Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi reported the results of some interesting psychological experiments involving particularly creative people, and came to the following conclusions: "The creative person is not stereotypic in temperament. The male exhibits some of the feminine sensibilities: the female some of the masculine sensibilities. In our own work with artists, the males were more feminine on a sensitivity scale than other males, and the females more masculine on a tough-minded scale than other females" [L. J. W. Getzels and M. Csikszentmihalyi, "Scientific Creativity," Sci. J. 3, 9, 1967, p. 80, 84]. I think this reflects the same situation. There are differences in temperament and in other significant psychological ways between the sexes which are mutually contributory to the total well-being of both. Where they can be combined in one individual, or where two individuals (man and wife hopefully) can pool their best resources, there we ought to find human potential at its highest levels of creative expression. Presumably, in Adam as first created all these potentials were maximized in a single individual. What is at issue here is not physiological function but temperament.
The best explanation of the facts as presently understood seems to me, in the light of Scripture, to be that the earliest forms of life which multiply by propagation rather than by simple division were almost certainly bisexual, each individual combining the organs of both sexes within his own body: in the higher forms each containing both a functional testis and ovary. Perhaps when God planned the organic world, of which man was to be a working member, He introduced this mode of multiplication in anticipation of the time when man should be likewise created bisexual for reasons already intimated.
187. Many of the examples of acquired characters that seem to have become inheritable which are now being discussed by such men as Waddington, seem to me of dubious value because they could be viewed equally well as preadaptations. This is true of the thickening of the soles of the feet in the human fetus. It was noted by Darwin and elaborated upon subsequently by R. Semon [Arch. mikr. Anat., 82,1913, p. 164ff.], and it has since been discussed by C. H. Waddington in an article entitled "The Evolution of Adaptations" [Endeavour, 12 July, 1953, p. 136]. Among evolutionists, it is customary to point to this phenomenon as having resulted from the bipedal locomotion of man which has had the effect of toughening the soles of his feet, an advantageous acquired character which is then inherited after millennia of use. The human fetus now therefore is born already prepared for walking, in this respect, according to this view.
Waddington refers to a similar situation in connection with the ostrich. This bird has two conveniently located callosities on its breast which bear the brunt of friction and pressure when the bird squats on the ground. According to Waddington, these callosities have become inherited and they are therefore found to be already formed during foetal development ["Experiments in Acquired Characteristics," Sci Amer., Dec., 1953, p. 92f.]. However, this particular case is not as straightforward as Waddington makes it appear, for as Sir Gavin de Beer has pointed out, the ostrich is born with other similar callosities which it cannot make use of at all [Embryos and Ancestors, Oxford, 1951, p. 87]. It could therefore be argued that we have here a case of the accidental development of callosities due possibly to some gene mutation, two only of which callosities happen to be of some use to the animal.
A somewhat analogous situation has been observed in man in the form of so-called squatting facets of the Indians of Punjab. These Indians easily assume a restful squatting position which the European finds difficult, because of a modification of the bone structure of the tibia. No such modification is ever found among chair-users, according to Wood Jones [quoted by Kenneth Walker, Meaning and Purpose, London, Penguin, 1951, p. 154], but the Punjabis are born with them. Is this, then, an acquired character that has become inheritable or is it merely that they have made use of a chance modification once they discovered its advantages?
Such proposed examples of inherited acquired characters have, it seems to me, doubtful validity. On the other hand, there is much experimental evidence on the genuine inheritance of acquired characters in many forms of life from the simplest to the more complex which seem most easily to be accounted for by assuming that they are inherited cytoplasmicly rather than via the nuclear genes. Some further observations on this point will be found in a later reference, #217.
One of the most eloquent supporters in recent times of what may be called Neo-Lamarckism was the English naturalist, Professor F. Wood Jones. In his Trends of Life, he has a whole chapter titled, "The Inheritance of Adaptations," which is well worth examining [London, Arnold, 1953]. And in the same year, Dr. Carlos Monge reported an impressive example of what seems clearly to be a case of an acquired character being inherited in man. Monge found that Andean highlanders had developed considerably larger chests, presumably a compensation for the rarefied atmosphere in which they live. The interesting thing is that many of their descendants who came down and have now lived along the sea-coast for many generations, still have the same large deep chests and broad shoulders of the highlanders. If this were simply a superficial response of the highlanders to the need for an increased lung capacity, one would expect it to disappear quickly in their lowland descendants. That it has not done so, seems to indicate that the character became inheritable ["Biological Basis of Human Behaviour" in Anthropology Today, ed. A. L. Kroeber, Chicago Univ. Press, 1953, p. 127ff.]. Why this lung enlargement should become heritable but not the blacksmith's muscular build, is hard to say. The mechanism is obviously not a simple one.
188. Weismann, August, op. cit., (ref. #33), Vol. 1, p. 419ff.
189. Huxley, Sir Julian, "Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics" in Essays in Popular Science, Penguin, 1938, p. 36, 37.
190. Pearl, Raymond, "Biology and Human Trends," Smithsonian Institute Report, Washington, 1935, p. 331.
191. Briggs, Robert and Thomas King, "Nucleoplasmic Interactions in Eggs and Embryos" in The Cell: Biochemistry, Physiology, and Morphology, ed. J. Brachet and A. E. Mirsky, N.Y., Academic Press, Vol. 1, 1959, p. 539.
There is some evidence that some of the body cells retain the full potential of the germ cells. Writing in Science under the heading "Some Characteristics of a Continuously Propagating Cell Derived from Monkey Heart Tissue," J. E. Salk and Elsie N. Wood report that it has been possible by the right techniques to isolate heart tissue cells and induce them to go on multiplying indefinitely [126, 1967, p. 1338]. The phenomenon suggests that some of the potential for immortality which is characteristic of germ cells may have been retained even by the body cells which have differentiated some distance from the originating germ plasm.
Recently MD of Canada reported that Dr. John Gurdon and his coworkers at Oxford had grown fully mature and fertile frogs from single body cells extracted from the intestinal lining of other frogs. With his present technique more than 30% of the intestinal cells could be made to grow at least to the tadpole stage [10, 3, 1969, p. 53]. Neither lines of proliferating cells were human. It must surely be assumed that the fall of man has made his body cells unlike all other animal cells.
192. In a manner of speaking, Weismann was both right and wrong in assuming that differentiating cells lose the totipotency of the initiating ovum to the extent that such cells are no longer individually capable of giving rise to a whole animal but only to specific organs and tissues. In plants, of course, the cells in a slip taken from almost any part of the plant are capable of reproducing the whole organism, roots and all. But experiments have now shown that complex animal forms may also be reproduced by highly refined techniques from cells which have long since differentiated into specific tissues and have lost their identity as germ plasm.
The technique involves extracting the nuclei from tissue cells and transferring them to enucleated cells of germ plasm origin. Such reconstructed cells are evidently capable of initiating the process of cell cleavage and division and proceeding normally through embryological and foetal development to maturity. It no longer seems likely, therefore, that cell differentiation is due to the loss of gene material in the nucleus during earlier stages of cell division but rather to changes in the cytoplasm; although Briggs and King were able to demonstrate that nuclei of cells taken from tissue which has formed later in foetal development less frequently retain their totipotency than do nuclei of cells derived from tissue formed earlier in the developing embryo. It therefore seems likely that even the nucleus may change slightly with time, although it is fairly certain now that the major change occurring within the cell relates to the chemistry or organization or structure of the cytoplasm as successive cell divisions occur. The differentiated cytoplasm interacts with the nucleus and this in turn leads to the emergence of new directions for cell development along specific lines towards the growth of tissues and organs which form the body or housing for the original germ plasm.
Professor Bernard D. Davis, Harvard Medical School, stated: "We now know that all the differentiated somatic cells of an animal (those of muscle, skin, and the like) contain in their nuclei the same complete set of genes. Every somatic cell contains all the genetic information required for copying the whole organism. In different cells, different sub-sets of genes are acting while the remainder are inactive. Accordingly, if it should become possible to reverse the regulatory mechanism responsible for this differentiation, any cell could be used to start the embryo. Though differentiation is completely reversible in the cells of plants (as in the transfer of cuttings), it is ordinarily quite irreversible in the cells of the higher animals. The stability, however, depends on the interaction of the nucleus with the surrounding cytoplasm..." ["Prospects for Genetic Intervention in Man," Science, 170, 1970, p. 1280,1281].
Cell differentiation is therefore mainly the result of modifications of the cytoplasm rather than the nucleus. A. C. Enders and S. J. Schlafke, in a Ciba Foundation Symposium, observe that the cytoplasm of cells, even by the time the blastocyst has formed, is clearly different from the cytoplasm of the ovum. "During the late cleavage stages and the blastocyst stage, the structure of the cytoplasm alters a great deal in most species. Characteristically, there is a diminution and re-organization of the cytoplasmic inclusions..." ["The Fine Structure of the Blastocyst: Some Comparative Studies" in Preimplantation Stages of Pregnancy, ed. G. E. W. Wolstenholme and M. O'Connor, London, Churchill, 1965, p. 45, 47]. Alfred Kuhn puts the matter this way: "It is certain that the nuclei of some tissues need not forfeit some of their talents to reach a certain stage: rather they can replace the egg nucleus, and their derivatives can satisfy all the demands of the developmental steps which the various cells must pass through" [Lectures in Developmental Physiology, tr. Roger Milkman, N.Y., Springer-Verlag, 1971, p. 488]. It seems, therefore, that the cell nuclei retain their totipotency to a far greater extent than the cytoplasm. In the natural order of things, cells do fairly quickly become differentiated and lose their totipotency - except perhaps in plants. While most of the cells to which the totipotent ovum gives rise soon become differentiated cytoplasmicly for the development of body cells, not all of them do. A few remain for the perpetuation of the germ cell line. It is these few that form the thread of continuity from generation to generation.
The following readily accessible articles dealing with this subject are useful: J. B. Gurdon, "Transplanted Nuclei and Cell Differentiation," Sci Amer., Dec., 1968, pp. 24-35; C. H. Waddington, "How Do Cells Differentiate?", Sci. Amer., Sept., 1953, pp. 108-114; Michail Fischberg and A. W. Blackler, "How Cells Specialize," Sci Amer., Sept., 1961, pp. 124-140; Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King, "Changes in the Nuclei of Differentiating Endoderm Cells as Revealed by Nuclear Transplantation," J. Morphology, 100, 2, 1957, pp. 269-311; Lewis Wolpert, "Developing Cells Know Their Place," New Scientist, 14 May, 1970, p. 322f.
193. Raven, Christian P., An Outline of Developmental Physiology, tr. L. de Ruiter, N.Y., McGraw Hill, 1954, p. 62.
194. Weismann, August, "Upon the Eternal Duration of Life," op. cit., (ref. #33), Vol. 1, p. 139.
195. Parthenogenesis is so well established for so many species that it scarcely needs the reinforcement of this note. However, for those who may not be aware of how widely it has been demonstrated below man, the following brief comment may be useful. Few proven cases of mammalian parthenogenesis in nature have ever been clearly established, though as we have already seen (ref. #175) it has been observed for lizards and is common enough among insects and some fish. To the list of insects in which parthenogenesis occurs naturally, B. I. Balinsky adds aphids, phyllopods, and rotifers at certain times of the year, and of course bees in which the fertilized egg produces a female and the unfertilized egg develops into a male [An Introduction to Embryology, Toronto, Saunders, 1970, 3rd ed., p. 126].
The situation is very different in the laboratory where experiment has shown that a very wide range of animal forms can be induced to propagate parthenogenetically. According to Albert Tyler, "Extensive investigations have shown that in practically all the main groups of animals, normal development can be obtained by artificial activation of eggs" ["Artificial Parthenogenesis," Biol Reviews, Cambridge Univ., 16, 1941, p. 292f.]. Reports include such species as silkworms, caterpillars, sea urchins, star fish, frogs, fish (including carp), lizards, birds and rabbits. In 1896 R. Hertwig found that sea urchin eggs could be activated by chloroform or strychnine! ["Ueber die Entwicklung des ubefruchteten Sceigelcies," Festschr. fur gegenbauer, Leipzig, 1896]. H. Spurway reports experimental parthenogenesis in the guppy, Lebistes reticulatus ["Spontaneous Parthenogenesis in a Fish," Nature, 171, 1953, p. 437]. In the case of rabbit ova cultivated in vitro, Dr. Chambly in France almost fifty years ago was probably the first to demonstrate that mammals can give birth to viable offspring parthenogenetically [see Gregory Pincus, "Fertilization in Mammals," Sci. Amer., Mar., 1951, p. 47]. There is some evidence of man-induced parthenogenesis in sheep, though I am not sure how dependable this is [Arthur Koestler, Beyond Reductionism, London, Hutchinson, 1969, p. 199].
196. "A human egg is a spherical cell...which is one of the largest cells in the body, and when placed against a dark background it is just visible to the naked eye...The large size of the egg cell is due mainly to deposits of yolk in the cytoplasm...In contrast to the egg, the sperm is the smallest cell in the body...The volume of an egg cell is about 85,000 times that of a sperm" [Ursula Mittwoch, Genetics of Sex Differentiation, N.Y., Academic Press, 1973, p. 84, 85].
197. It is established that an ovum can be activated without fertilization by the spermatozoon, and in certain cases will go on to full development of a mature female animal, complete with a functioning reproductive system which thus provides the initiating ovum with a mechanism for continuing itself indefinitely. To this extent, the ovum is self-sufficient. The sperm does not appear to be so, under natural conditions.
It was at one time supposed that the limitations imposed upon the spermatozoon was entirely due to lack of energy because of the small amount of cytoplasm surrounding the nucleus. It simply starved before reaching sufficient maturity to extract food from its environment. By reducing its food requirements, at very low temperatures for example, its life can be greatly extended, and certainly in warm-blooded animals the temperature of sperm is quite critical to its survival, and unless the testes descend to the scrotum free from the deep body temperature, they are not viable. Excessive use of hot baths in Japan reduced male fertility.
However, there appears to be some other factor limiting sperm life. George Conner observed. "If an ovum is cut into two pieces, one of which has no nucleus, and the latter is then entered by a sperm, it too will divide and become an embryo, though admittedly not as often as in the case of the unfertilized ovum" [The Hormones in Human Reproduction, N.Y., Atheneum, 1963, p. 19]. This kind of highly sophisticated manipulation of cells in the laboratory is very different from anything that occurs in Nature whereas the variety of treatments that can lead to parthenogenesis of the ovum is so diverse that at least some of them must probably occur under natural conditions.
Dorthea Rudnick, in her article on Embryology in the 1960 edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology [Vol. IV, p. 573], after pointing out that the sperm itself is by no means essential for the activation of the egg, suggests that the mature egg must be thought of as a system containing all the potential factors for development and the sperm essentially as a trigger that sets off the mechanism. It is, of course, also the source of the paternal set of chromosomes. But it seems clear that it is not at all the same kind of self-contained unicellular organism capable of independent existence that the ovum is. Under natural conditions, by itself it will die, whereas the ovum, left alone, is in no necessity of doing so provided only that it is given a suitable environment and an appropriate though remarkably non-specific stimulation to activate it. If the ovum can thus survive by itself, it can hardly be argued that the sperm contains any absolutely essential component for its activation, since apparently the ovum can be activated without it.
198. The ovum can be activated and developed into a fully mature organism by an amazingly diverse range of stimuli. According to Albert Tyler, "It is clear that there is very little specificity in regard to activating agents. Thus eggs of the sea urchin can be activated by such diverse agents as puncture, heat, cold, ultra-violet radiation, radium emanation, acids, bases, isotonic salt solutions, hypertonic and hypotonic solutions, fat solvents and some alkaloids. This contrasts with the high degree of specificity in fertilization (in nature)" ["Artificial Parthenogenesis," Biol Reviews, Cambridge Univ., 16, 1941, p. 318].
To these non-specific stimuli have since been added others, including electric shock. The carp eggs mentioned above (ref. #195) were actually activated by human saliva. Professor Christian P. Raven of the University of Utrecht has added to this growing list of activators such physical treatment as illumination, induction shock and osmotic pressure as well as chemical agents such as urea and saponin [op. cit., (ref. #193), p. 20].
I do not know whether I am reading too much into the evidence, but I think it worth noting that Balinsky observed that most of the agents used are of such a nature that they probably damage the ovum to a greater or lesser degree, and if applied too vigorously they cause the death of the cell. He then adds, "It is reasonable to suppose, then, that activation of the egg involves some kind of sub-lethal damage to the egg cytoplasm" [An Introduction to Embryology, Toronto, Saunders, 1970, p. 127]. Possibly the human sperm fertilizes (and so activates) the ovum but at the same time introduces some type of damage to the cytoplasm which is not merely sub-lethal but lethal. One need only hypothesize that this lethal effect becomes operative only after the original single cell (the ovum) has divided several times into a number of proportionally smaller cells, the proportion of cytoplasm to nucleus accordingly being reduced and presumably modified. It is known that with successive divisions there is a progressive change in the amount of cytoplasm as well as in its internal organization and its chemistry. The nucleus meanwhile retains its original size and constitution. Raven remarks: "The local concentration of certain substances will initiate chemical reactions which previously were unable, or almost unable, to take place because of the dilution of the reagents or because of the presence of inhibiting substances" [op. cit., (ref. #193), p. 63]. Transferred to the present context, this observation could very nicely point the way to the actual mechanism whereby some contribution from the cytoplasm of the sperm cell finally becomes lethal in its effect on the growing organism.
A perceptive reader may discern the importance of the finding of the non-specificity of the activating agent. I think the introduction of the word activate is significant in the present context because it would be such an appropriate word to apply to the "overshadowing" by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). The preparation of the perfect body that was to be animated for the Lord Himself was truly a miracle in that a male child was born. But the stage was clearly already designed for just such a tremendous event, when the event is viewed in its physiological context. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that some creative power must still have been at work to supply the Y chromosome in order that a man child might be born, not a female child as would otherwise have been the case.
199. Where birds are concerned, parthenogenesis is always found to result in males. This is because, for some unknown reason, the sex determining roles of the X and Y chromosomes have been reversed. Thus M. W. Olsen and S. J. Marsden, in reporting on "Natural Parthenogenesis in Turkey Eggs," note that in spite of the fact that there had been no male contribution, all the parthenogenetic embryos carried the diploid chromosome number and all the eggs which reached a sufficient stage of maturity to allow for sex determination were found to be male. Seventy-nine turkey hens were involved in this experiment. Males were rigidly excluded. During the eight week period in question, 2537 eggs were laid, of which 568 showed parthenogenetic development. Forty-nine of these differentiated to the extent that blood vessels were clearly visible. In twenty-seven, embryos were identifiable on gross examination. Four of these allowed sex to be determined. All were male [Science, 120, 1954, p. 545].
Interestingly, Origen (c. 185 - c. 254) in his Contra Celsius [1,37] mentions that in his time, vultures were reputed to raise parthenogenetic young.
200. B. Bacetti and B. A. Afzelius, in their definitive study of the sperm cell [op. cit., ref. #122], have remarked specifically upon the very high percentage of defective sperm. See further on this at reference #217.
201. It is often said that Weismann's views have since been proven in error in certain important respects and that it is therefore unwise to quote him in the light of what we now know. This is unfortunate because the lucidity and insight with which he presented his ideas makes them a most suitable vehicle for communicating some very complex aspects of early embryological events and his contribution to our basic understanding has been tremendous in terms of the stimulus of his powers of description. He appears to have been in error in one of his conclusions, though the error has not otherwise damaged his general thesis regarding the continuity of the germ plasm. In one other matter he was mistaken but only in the sense that he visualized the wrong mechanism for the right results. Thus his questionable contributions are really limited to the two following points: (1) the role of the second polar body or cell which is cast out by the ovum in its earliest stages of preparation for the admission of the sperm and (2) the mechanism by which body cells are differentiated from germ cells, and the claim that only the germ plasm retains all the developmental capability of forming a new organism. [See his "Continuity of the Germ Plasm as the Foundation of a Theory of Heredity," op. cit., ref. #33, Vol. 1, p. 214, 225].
With respect to the role of this second polar body, this small cell is expelled from the ovum immediately prior to the penetration of the sperm, removing from the ovum half its chromosomes and thus reducing it to a haploid cell so that the contribution of the sperm nucleus will restore it as a normal diploid cell rather than overburdening it with supernumerary chromosomes. Weismann surmised that this polar cell probably removed the male component of the heretofore hermaphroditic ovum (no one knew anything at that time about the X and Y chromosomes) and thus opened the way for the sperm's contribution to enter unchallenged. It is not believed at present that this is so.
Weismann believed that the ovum could conceivably be fertilized by this polar body rejoining the ovum, or possibly even before it had broken away and gained its independence. In any case, Weismann may not have committed himself altogether to the view that the nucleus of the ovum was hermaphroditic, but was merely stating that this was the opinion of some of his contemporaries. He had in mind C. S. Minot and F. N. Balfour in particular. The latter had said, "the function of forming polar cells has been acquired by the ovum for the express purpose of preventing parthenogenesis" [A treatment of Comparative Embryology, London, Macmillan, 1880, Vol. 1, p. 63].
With respect to his second point, we have already seen that the nuclei of some somatic cells, contrary to Weismann's surmise, do apparently contain the whole original complement of the germ cells, but in most animal species the cytoplasm of these somatic cells does not. There is therefore a real loss of potential in the cell as a whole. Thus Weismann was effectually correct, only he was wrong about the mechanism.
Bernard D. Davis notes in this connection: "Every somatic cell contains all the genetic information required for copying the whole organism. In different cells different subsets of genes are active, while the remainder are inactive. Accordingly, if it should become possible to reverse the regulatory mechanism responsible for this differentiation, any cell could be used to start an embryo" ["Prospects for Genetic Intervention in Man," Science, 170, 1970, p. 1280]. In some species body cells of some organs do seem to retain the potential of acting as germ cells for a new organism. In frogs, for example, it has been demonstrated that some body cells have retained the totipotency of the germ cells. To this extent therefore Weismann was mistaken in supposing that the nuclei of the germ cells lost some of their character in the formation of somatic cells. The nucleus of the germ cell loses nothing except the power to express itself fully, surrendering this totipotency in response to changes in cytoplasmic determinants. This cytoplasmic change has been termed 'chemodifferentiation.' As Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King conclude, the process of organogenesis appears to be due to the localized development "of certain cytoplasmic materials...The zygote nuclei play no specific role in this localization" [op. cit., ref. #191, p. 540]. Thus the nucleus, whatever its potency per se, is evidently subservient to the cytoplasm and will generate what the cytoplasm allows.
Balinsky points out that Weismann has been chiefly criticized for his observation that it is the "unequal fission of the nuclear material which introduces differentiation in developing tissues" [An Introduction to Embryology, Toronto, Saudners, 1970, p. 139]. But one only need correct this to read "unequal fission of the cytoplasmic materials" instead of nuclear materials in order to make it a perfectly valid statement. In the circumstances, this is a small error and a remarkable tribute to Weismann's insight. His basic concept of the continuity of the germ plasm remains essentially unchallenged.
202. Walker, Kenneth, op. cit., ref. #32, p. 63.
203. Pearse, A. S., General Zoology, N.Y., Henry Holt, 1930, p. 379.
204. Huettner, Alfred F., Fundamentals of Comparative Embryology of the Vertebrates, N.Y., Macmillan, rev. ed., 1968, p. 6,7.
205. Sherrington, Sir Charles, Man on His Nature, Cambridge, 1950, p. 94, 95.
206. The number of cells which initially retain the full potential of the germ plasm at the moment when the first specialized cells begin to appear as body cells varies in different species, but thus far it appears that it is remarkably small. According to M. Fischberg and A. W. Blackler, the beginning of differentiation of cells in the gall midge, Afayetiola destructor, must be placed about the third division when there are only eight cells ["How Cells Specialize," Sci. Amer., Sept., 1961 p. 134].
207. Kuhn, Alfred, Lectures in Developmental Physiology, tr. Roger Milkman, N.Y., Springer-Verlag, 1871, p. 481.
208. Money, John and A. A. Ehrdardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972, p. 37. The once active controversy as to neogenesis (the origination of oocytes de novo) in post-natal life seems to have been laid to rest by a general consensus of opinion that there is an unrenewable stock of oocytes at birth. On this point, see P. L. Krohn, "The Biology of Aging," Nature, 11 Jan., 1958, p. 74; and Gregory Pincus, "Reproduction" in Ann. Rev. of Physiol., 24, 1962, p. 57. Ursula Mittwoch observes, "Cell division in human oogonia occurs only during foetal life ... At the time of birth the oogonia have already been transformed into primary oocytes" [op. cit., ref. #196, p. 87].
209. Michie, Donald, in A Century of Darwin, ed. S. A. Barnett, London, Heineman, 1958, p. 57.
210. Hardy, Sir Alister, This Living Stream, London, Collins, 1965, p. 76.
211. Fischberg, M. and A. W. Blackler, "How Cells Specialize," Sci Amer., Sept., 1961, p. 134.
212. Kahn, Fritz, Man in Structure and Function, N.Y., Knopf, 1960, Vol. II, p. 704, 705.
213. McClung, C. E., quoted by Susanne Langer, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967, Vol. 1, p. 408 fn.
214. Mottram, V. H., The Physical Basis of Personality, London, Penguin, 1949, p. 25.
215. An editorial comment in the world renowned medical journal, Lancet, under the heading, "Parthenogenesis in Mammals?" has this observation: "The possibility that a woman might become pregnant without at least one spermatozoon having entered the uterus is not one which 'reasonable men' would likely entertain. Scientific opinion for several centuries has sided with the reasonable man; but today, biologists and cytogeneticists in particular would be less dogmatic in discussing such a possibility" [5 Nov. 1955, p. 967].
The writer then notes the number of species of animals in which parthenogenesis has been observed to have occurred in nature or under laboratory conditions, and asks, "In view of this, we may have to re-examine the justification for our belief that spontaneous parthenogenesis is rare in vertebrates and absent in mammals. If it were rare in mammals but occasionally present would it in fact be noticed?"
Subsequently he observes further: "There are sound reasons which might lead biologists, if not to expect parthenogenesis occasionally in mammals, at least to look out for it." He suggests that "man is clearly the mammal in which parthenogenesis would be least likely to pass unnoticed." But I submit that this is a questionable assumption. I think it was Sir Peter Medawar, Director of the Medical Research Council in England, who said that the claim by an unwed mother of a fatherless child would not be believed, and in a married woman would not be noticed. I think he was correct, human nature being what it is. But the editorial comment does point out that immunological make-up of a parthenogenetic child would be such that "it could be recognized with absolute certainty" by appropriate medical techniques. The point is that being so born, such a daughter would theoretically share the genetic constitution of the mother completely, and it should be possible therefore to make a skin graft from the daughter back to the mother with complete success. There would be other possible tests of a like nature also.
Subsequent correspondence stirred up enough interest in England at the time that an invitation went out publicly to any woman who believed she had given birth to a parthenogenetic daughter to submit to supervised medical examination along such lines. Later correspondence in Lancet of June 30 of the following year (1956) indicated that nineteen corespondents had presented themselves for examination.
Dr. Helen Spurway, Lecturer in Biometry and Eugenics at University College, London, was invited to conduct these tests. And to make a long story short, of these nineteen pairs of mothers and daughters, eleven were eliminated after interview for various reasons, and blood tests eliminated another four. Of the remaining four, three were eliminated due to such factors as incompatible eye or hair colour, etc. This left only one mother-daughter pair as a genuine test case.
A battery of tests were conducted between these two which, for the most part favoured the mother's claim. However, a skin graft from the daughter to the mother began to show signs of rejection after six weeks and was later easily wiped off with damp cotton wool. Spurway points out that the daughter would not be completely genetically identical with the mother, since during meiosis the ovum would have made a selection of only 50% of the original genes in the mother's body cells and the daughter could not therefore have a completely identical constitution. It is possible, as a consequence, that even this test may not be sufficiently valid by itself.
Spurway concluded, therefore, that "rigorous proof is impossible, though it remains true that all the evidence obtained from serological and special tests is consistent with what would be expected in a case of parthenogenesis." As she noted, the absence of any knowledge on the woman's part of such a possibility "adds to the probability of such a claim being well founded. This mother's claim must not only be considered seriously but it must also be admitted that we have been unable to disprove it."
216. de Beer, Sir Gavin, review appearing in Sci. Amer., Sept., 1962, p. 268.
217. C. L. Prosser observed: "Several types of non-genic inheritance and of indirect effects of environmental selection on the genotype are recognized. Cytoplasmic inheritance is being discovered in more and more groups of organisms, and cytoplasm is more readily influenced by environment than is the nucleus." ["The Origin After a Century: Prospects for the Future," Amer. Scientist, 47, 1959, p. 545]. He instances cytoplasmic particles which may be transmitted - for example, the granules for the Kappa factor in paramecium or the plastidids of certain plants; also cytoplasmic factors are involved in the inheritance of serotypes in ciliates.
In his small but challenging and lucidly written little book, Nucleo-Cytoplasmic Relations in Microorganisms [Oxford, 1953], Boris Ephrussi underscored the fact that body cells can be made to "breed true for a practically indefinite time." We have seen this, of course, in connection with Alexis Carrel's chicken heart tissue [see page 10]. We have already noted that Hayflick's apparently contradictory data may have been at fault through cultivation in an inadequate medium [see ref. #123]. Ephrussi therefore argues that since such cells have precisely the same nuclei that the originating fertilized ovum possessed, these lines of body cells ought to begin to revert to the undifferentiated ovum type of cell if the nucleus alone is providing the blueprint for their development. It has to be concluded, therefore, that these body cells do not revert because some other inheritable blueprint exists in the cell apart from the information in the nucleus. Such information must be contained in the cytoplasm. So muscle cells replicate as muscle cells, for example, because the cytoplasm is instructing them to do so and not because of guidance provided by the nucleus. That muscle cells do not replicate suddenly as some other kind of cell, forces us to believe that each kind of tissue is formed of cells with a unique cytoplasm. But this cytoplasm can be acted upon by the environment and changed in its constitution so that a given type of cell may begin to build a new type of tissue. This has a bearing, probably, on the phenomenon mentioned by Sir Peter Medawar in which a completely functioning ball and socket joint may form in an entirely exceptional location [The Art of the Soluble, London, Methuen, 1967, p. 26].
In view of the fidelity with which particular tissue cells will go on replicating themselves, Ephrussi says: "Here we have identical perpetuation, but in this case the inherited differences can hardly be ascribed to nuclear genes, for the different cell types which make up (the organism) are all derived from the egg cell by equational mitosis. They must therefore all possess the same genotype...The differential must have its seat in the cytoplasm" [op, cit., p. 4].
Ephrussi then proceeds to detail the work done with unicellular paramecia which multiply by conjugation, showing clearly that they can pass on certain modifications (in particular, a kind of mortogenic or "killer" factor) not via nuclear genes but via plasmagenes. As he says: "These studies confirm the view that the cytoplasm, like the genes, is endowed with genetic continuity. The genes are therefore no longer to be regarded as the sole cell-constituent endowed with this property" [p. 6].
Ephrussi sums up his conclusions thus: "Considering that embryonic development results in a restriction (and some widening, too) in different cell lineages of the manifold potentialities originally carried by the egg, we may picture the process of differentiation as consisting, for example, in the segregation or sorting out, of an initially mixed population of cytoplasmic particles. Or we may suppose that the egg, to begin with, contains a mixed population of inactive particles, and that development consists in the activation by nuclear genes of different sorts of lineages" [p. 100].
If we assume the former, it is clear that some foreign substance entering the germ cell cytoplasm at some critical stage of its internal organization, could effect a change that in due time will rob it of its power of endless self replication will, in short, rob it of its potential immortality. This poison may have gained entry in the cytoplasm of the fertilizing spermatozoon. But there is also another possible route.
B. Baccetti and B. A. Afaelius have recently published a work on the Biology of the Sperm Cell [See ref. #122] which reflects the ever growing interest in the cytoplasm, by contrast with the preoccupation with the nucleus which has tended to prevail for some years. They speak of the mitochondria in the sperm cytoplasm which appear to have proteinaceous crystal inclusions that may account for as much as 50% or more of the sperm volume in some species. There is as yet no manifest function for these crystals except possibly as a source of nutrition for the fertilized ovum, somewhat analogous to the yolk granule.
Since the sperm mitochondrion is small compared with the egg volume, and since normally only one sperm, or at the most a few spermatozoa penetrate the egg, the idea seems far-fetched. On the other hand, the spermatozoa that are not taken up by the fertilized ovum perish by the hundred million in the vicinity of it and their cumulative proteinaceous crystal may in the aggregate form a substantial reservoir of nutrient.
We thus have here a situation where the quantity of sperm cytoplasm available to the growing ovum may be quite significant in its influence on the cytoplasm of the ovum, by absorption from its immediate environment. It may well play a significant role in its early stages of development, and it is these early stages of development - the first four or five doublings of the zygote - that the germ line cells are set aside and the body cells begin their differentiation.
There is increasing evidence of the critical importance of the cytoplasm and of changes in its composition after successive cleavages, as soon as the embryo has reached the stage of development which witnesses the initiation of cell differentiation and the formation of body cells as opposed to the mere replication of germ plasm.
A. I. Caplan and C. P. Ordahi have now proposed, as the result of a very elegant series of experiments, that, "The expression of those genes necessary...to give rise to diverse cell types is wholly dependent on exposure of cell nuclei to a small portion of egg cytoplasm. The general state of the cell and the activity of the cell's cytoplasm provide important signals for the developmental programs...The segregation of cytoplasm during cleavage establishes extranuclear environments that are determinants to the developing organism" ["Irreversible Gene Repression Model for Control of Development," Science, 120, 1978, p. 120-130].
It is possible therefore that the poison may remain quiescent and effectively neutralized in the multiplying cells of the fertilized ovum until the cleavage has proceeded to the point of either eliminating a certain quantity of cytoplasm by reduction in cell size, or modifying certain cytoplasmic factors that had hitherto served as neutralizers. Thereafter, the progressive change in the composition of the cytoplasm subjects the cell increasingly to the original protoplasmic poison which renders all body cells mortal as a consequence.
Baccetti and Afzelius point out in their study that many human spermatozoa have bizarre shapes and these are probably the results of faults in the spermiogenesis. For each particular man a sperm sample will show many differently shaped, abnormal spermatozoa, the percentage of which is characteristic of that individual and apparently constant throughout the years. Moreover, a number of diseases such as the common cold can cause a temporary increase in the number of abnormal sperm cells. This demonstrates the fact that the sperm are susceptible to damage from their environment. The authors believe that in spite of the high incidence of defective or abnormal sperm, they actually have little consequence for fertilization itself unless the proportion of normal sperm is exceptionally low. For the defective sperm do not reach the ovum: or they fail to penetrate it. "The many defective spermatozoa are somehow prevented from attaining the fertilizing site" [op. cit., ref. #122, p. 19,158,160].
Thus within the developing ovum in its initial stages, two lines of cells soon appear: germ cells and body cells. The determinant that brings about subsequent differentiation of body cells in accordance with their destiny as various organs and their loss of potency as germ cells, appears to reside in the cytoplasm. When the germ line cells are set aside, it is by a kind of quarantine which permits the body cells to be progressively differentiated by factors in their cytoplasm. The process of differentiation evidently exposes them to some mortogenic factor derived perhaps from their source of nourishment. At any rate there seems little doubt that the differentiating body cell lines are established and maintained by cytoplasmic determinants, because the nuclei in all the cells (germ and body alike) remain unchanged.
That unicellular forms (amoeba for example) which are "by nature" immortal may be mortalized by a change in diet has been demonstrated repeatedly. And the mortalized amoeba are now altered in the composition of their cytoplasm, not in the composition of the nucleus. If mortalized amoeba cytoplasm is transferred to immortal amoeba, the latter become mortalized ["How Immortal Are Amoeba?", a note in Nature, 217, 1968, p. 706, 707]. There therefore seem to be now in operation all the mechanisms we require, theoretically, to account for the situation that exists in the human species for whom physical death comes as an unnatural termination to life.
It might be thought that if animals die and the process of fertilization is very similar, must we not then suppose that the same poison in their case is having the same effect via a similar route? Then do animals die for the same reason that man does...because they, too, have somehow been poisoned? The answer to this may, I think, lie in one of two directions. First, we do not know for certain that death is inevitable for animals, except as a result of "accident." It is statistically certain that every animal will die but it may not be inevitable biologically, as we have seen in Part I; and it is, in my view, certainly not a penalty. So that in the sense in which we speak of death as having "entered" (Rom. 5:12) for man as a result of the Fall, we have no necessary reason to suppose that death as penalty has "entered" into the stream of animal life. The second point is that we do know that Adam and Eve were not subject to death at first. What we may only surmise about animals, namely, that they have a potential for physical immortality, we may know with considerable assurance about man from what we are told in Genesis. He was "killed" by ingesting a forbidden fruit. Thus for man we might expect to find, and I believe we should seriously look for, the mechanism whereby mortality as an acquired character has been transmitted. There is no particular reason to assume that such a mechanism exists among other living things: indeed, we know that for millions of living things such a mechanism does not exist, for they are truly potentially immortal.
218. Hancock, J. L., "The Sperm Cell," Science J, June, 1970, p. 32.
219. Weismann, August, op. cit., ref. #33, Vol. 1, p. 26.
220. On this see a useful and readily accessible statement by R. L. Watterson, Chairman of Biological Sciences, Northwestern University, in the McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 1960, Vol. III, p. 168.
Alfred Kuhn has much to say on this subject: "Only in the germ line through the first germ cell and all the way to mature gametes [the seeds of future generations, ACC] do the chromosomes retain their original integrity. A variety of observations show now that behaviour of the chromosomes depends on the cytoplasm region in which they are found during division...Even the tiniest inequality within the cytoplasm reverberates back and forth, resulting in the most extreme disparities among the resulting cells" [emphasis mine; op. cit., ref. #207, p. 482, 483]. At reference #192 the reader will find part of his discussion on the importance of the ratio between cytoplasmic and nuclear material and the influence of cleavage upon this ratio.
221. In 1893, James Orr published his Christian View of God and the World. In this he laid great stress upon the importance of the body in the constitution of man. He first asked, "Is human death - that crowning evil, which carries so many other sorrows in its train - the result of sin, or is it not?" [N.Y., Scribner, 1893, p. 196ff]. And then he proceeded to show that physical death was never God's original plan for man: that Redemption "is not a Redemption of the soul only, but of the body as well. It is a Redemption of man in his whole complex personality - body and soul together. It was in the body that Christ rose from the dead, in the body that He has ascended to heaven; in the body that He lives and reigns for ever more."
His promise to us, Orr observed, includes a pledge of the resurrection of the body. The truth which underlies this is, that death for man is an effect of sin. It did not lie in the Creator's original design for man that he should die - that these two component parts of his nature, body and soul, should ever be violently disrupted and severed as death now severs them. Death is an abnormal fact in the history of the race; and Redemption is, among other things, the undoing of this evil, and the restoration of man to his normal completeness as a personal being...
"It is a false view of the constitution of human nature to regard the body as a mere appendage to the soul, or to suppose that the human being can be equally complete whether he has his body or is deprived of it...The perfect life for man is a corporeal one; and he is not pure spirit, but incorporated spirit" (emphasis his).
Later he wrote: "It was no part of the Creator's design for man in his ideal constitution that body and soul should ever be separated. The immortality that man was to enjoy was an immortality in which the body was to have its share...True immortality is through Redemption, and this Redemption embraces the resurrection of the body."
Orr considered this physical side of the plan of Redemption to be just as fundamental to it as the spiritual. As he put it (p. 330f.]: "The aim of God as regards believers is summed up in the simple phrase - conformity to the image of the Son...This conformity to Christ includes not only moral and spiritual likeness to Christ, but likeness to Him also in his glorious body; that is, the Redemption of the body, life in a glorified corporeal body.
"The doctrine of Redemption of the body is needful for the completion of the Christian view. It is not an accident, but an essential and integral part of it. It is essential to a complete Redemption as we saw in speaking of immortality, that not the soul only, but man in his whole complex personality, body and soul together, should be redeemed
"The doctrine of the Resurrection of the body is not exposed to some of the objections often made to it. How, it is asked, can the identical body be raised when it is utterly decayed, and the particles of which it is composed are scattered to the winds of heaven...? But the Resurrection does not involve any such belief. The solution lies, I think, in a right conception of what it is which constitutes identity."
Then he extends his view logically by saying: "The doctrine of the Christian Consummation carries with it, further, the idea that, together with the perfecting of the believer, there will be a perfecting or glorification even of outward nature. This is implied in the possession of corporeity of any kind, for that (corporeity) stands in relation to an environment, to a general system of things" [p. 333].
If the body is essential to truly human existence, and the body is to be raised so that man once again lives in the totality of his complex being, he must live in an appropriate environment. Otherwise he has a part of his being (his body) which is totally foreign to any new universe that does not share its corporeality. Thus the promise of Scripture is not merely a new heaven but a new earth also (Rev. 21:1)!
Apropos of the present interest in unidentified flying objects and visitors from outer space, and apropos of the present discussions among biologists about the possibility of other worlds of intelligent beings, it is interesting to read the following words written by Orr so many years ago: "The question still remains even if all these bright worlds were inhabited...by rational beings like to man himself, - are they sinful? Sin retains its awful significance in the universe, no matter how many worlds there may be. If this world alone is sinful, then it is worthy of God to redeem it...The scope of God's purpose is not confined to this little planet but embraces all the realms of creation" [p. 326, 327].
Because Redemption includes the body, if such intelligences from other worlds have bodies and are essentially as human as we are, then there can hardly be any question that they are as redeemable as we. Yet we do not have any stated evidence in the New Testament that the Lord's sacrifice extends beyond the human race. We only know that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22). It might be argued that perhaps there are such intelligences, but they do not need redeeming because, unlike man, they have not fallen. In which case we have nothing to fear from them - except that they might be corrupted by us! The only passage that I can think of which might open the slightest potential in this direction is in Isaiah 9:7 which reads: "Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end." It is not interminability per se that is here promised, but rather continuous increase: and one has to ask, Increase in what direction? To other worlds than ours?
222. This is a fact of profound theological and biological importance. I say biological because there is a strong movement, even among evangelicals, to abandon the doctrine of the creation of Adam's body. The theory is that so long as he had a specially created spirit (or soul), he had all he needed to qualify as a human being. His body could have been evolved and it would make no difference. This volume demonstrates that to surrender to the demands of evolutionary philosophy would be fatal to evangelical theology.
Many Christians have unthinkingly accepted this "out" - including the Roman Catholic Church which now officially condones it so long as Adam's soul is still held to have been a direct creation. The departure began among evangelicals a long time ago and is to be observed in embryo form in the works of A. A. Hodge [Evangelical Theology, 1890, Banner of Truth reprint 1976, p. 148, 154, 155], A. H. Strong [Systematic Theology, 1906, Phila, Judson Press, reprint 1974, p. 76], and B. B. Warfield [Biblical and Theological Studies, 1911, Phila, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1968, p. 238ff.]. Warfield effectively destroys the chronological framework of Scripture in order to accommodate, surreptitiously, an evolutionary interpretation of the origin of man's body. He thus leaves us with a shadowy figure in some exceedingly remote period of time whom we are called upon to visualize nevertheless (in his unfallen state at least) as the prototype of the Second Adam. The foundations of biblical history are almost hopelessly confused and the rationale of the plan of redemption is accordingly undermined.
The Papal encyclical (Sui Generis), already referred to, supplies all the latitude the orthodox Roman Catholic scholar could ask for in the face of the implacable offensive of evolutionary philosophy. The encyclical does emphasize that evolution is still only a theory - but most readers will not recognize the significance of this cautionary addendum.
223. In some circles there is considerable debate as to whether the Lord's body was identical with ours or only similar. It is argued that if his body was only similar, then He was not a true representative of man. Against this argument it may be said by contrast that we ourselves in our present fallen state are not truly man, and that true Man is to be found only in Adam before he fell. Since the Fall did irreparable and fatal damage to his body, a damage shared by all his natural born descendants, then any human being appearing with such a body as we now have is not a true representative of manhood as originally constituted by God.
Thus it is appropriate that Romans 8:3 should state very specifically that God sent his Son only "in the likeness of sinful flesh" but not actually in the flesh of sin which is ours since the Fall. The Greek is unequivocal. It reads: en homoiomati sarkos hamartuss. The crucial word here is homoiomati which means very precisely "similar to" but not "identical with." The first part of this word is homoi- which is to be most carefully distinguished from homo- (OMO-). The difference lies only in the single letter i (iota in Greek) which though seemingly slight makes all the difference in the world. A Greek scholar will not need elaboration of this, but for the reader not acquainted with Greek, here are a number of examples of this prefixed syllable in its two forms and the difference it makes to the words to which they are prefixed.
homoicides means "of like kind"
homocides means "of the same kind"
homoios means "resembling," "like" (so rendered 47 x in KJV)
homos means "one and the same"
homonoco means "of one mind"
homometrios means "of the same mother" (i.e., true siblings).
The verb homoioo is regularly used to introduce parables: for example, "the Kingdom of heaven is like unto..." [see Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. V, p. 189].
In the article in Kittel on the word homoioma by Johannes Schneider, emphasis is placed upon the above distinctions, and Romans 8:3 is particularly referred to. As Schneider says: "Paul is emphasizing that Christ was really man. He bore a physical body, fashioned according to the human body which is infected with sin. In outward form He was in no way different from other men. But Paul does not say that He came en sarki hamartias [i.e., He did not come in sinful flesh, but only in the likeness of sinful flesh, ACC]. With his words en homoiomati Paul is showing that for all the similarity between Christ's physical body and that of [other] men, there is an essential difference between Christ and men...He became man without entering the nexus [the actual stream, ACC] of human sin" [p. 195].
The distinction between the two groups of words prefixed by homo and homoi- is universally recognized by scholars, and by taking careful note of these distinctive usages in the New Testament many wonderful truths become apparent. For example, that the Lord was tempted in all points like we are, means (according to the Greek) "in a similar manner" but not "in an identical manner" (Heb. 4:15). The Lord "was made in the likeness of men," but not identical with us as fallen creatures (Phil. 2:7). We have been "planted together in the likeness of his death" but obviously not in precisely the same way (Rom. 6:5). Schneider quotes H. Schlier on this verse as saying "the image (or likeness) of his death is like its object but not equivalent" [p. 192]. And he quotes S. Stricker as saying, "It is something similar in another form." Again, "It behooved Him to be made like unto his brethren in all things that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest" (Heb. 2:17) but manifestly not to be made exactly as his brethren are, for then He could never have become our High Priest in the very presence of God.
Students of Church History will recognize the importance of the distinction between the words homo-ousias (of the same substance) and homoi-ousias (of like substance) in the formulation of the Nicene Creed (325-374). The Eastern Church favoured the view that the Lord Jesus was only of like substance with the Father, whereas the Western Church held the view that He was of the same substance ("of one substance") with the Father. The result was a final rupture between the Eastern and Western branches of the Church which remains officially to this day. This fundamental division was over an iota, the difference between homo- and homoi-. Yet this iota was crucial to the preservation of the Christian faith! It is interesting that the Lord should have said "not one jot (the Greek iota) shall pass away from the law till all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5:18).
Athanasius himself (c. 296 - 373), who became a great defender of the homo-ousass principle, tells us that in the matter of proving the faith of Christian leaders "homo-ousias became the crucial test of orthodoxy" [The New Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Grand Rapids, Baker, 1969, Vol. 1, p. 345]. And Augustus Neander, in his nine volume General History of the Christian Religion and Church, tells us that it was made the "watch-word" as a bulwark in the Nicene Creed against the Arianism favoured by the Eastern Church at that time [Edinburgh, Clark, 1885, Vol. IV, esp. p. 38ff.].
224. Augustine listed four alternative views regarding the origin of the soul. These four still remain valid today, except that the strict materialist would add that "soul" is a property of matter and appears, not as an addendum but as matter reaches a certain level of organization. These four alternatives are:
(1) All souls are derived (Latin traducere, hence the word traducianism) from the one given to the first man.
(2) Each individual soul is a direct creation (hence the term creationism).
(3) Souls already in existence are sent by divine act into bodies, a form of divinely ordered distribution (pre-existence).
(4) Souls of the departed are reincarnated at their own instigation, or by invitation of the living, or by some ritual manipulation, other than by divine decree (reincarnation).
The two that have been debated most earnestly by the Church are Traducianism and Creationism. Some form of pre-existence and/or reincarnation has at times been seriously defended. The Jewish rabbis tended towards reincarnation, and this is reflected perhaps in their supposition that Elijah had reappeared in John the Baptist (Matt. 16:14; cf. also Matt. 14:2, and also cf. Nicodemus' words in John 3:4). The Alexandrian School under the influence of Origen (185-254 A.D.) was the most forthright defender of pre-existence, but Origen's views were officially condemned by the Catholic Church in 543, by the Canons Against Origen [See G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975, p. 284, fn.8].
In due time the Roman Catholic theologians settled for Creationism, and it is possible that this fact drove Luther to favour Traducianism, although in his later years he seems less certain in this respect. Lutheranism, however, has not deviated from this traducianist position. Luther was greatly influenced in his thinking by Augustine. And in this matter Augustine never seems to have quite made up his mind. This is reflected in his correspondence with Jerome. In his letter [No. CLXVI written in 415 A.D. and titled "On the Origin of the Human Soul" chap. IV, § 8] he wrote: "To avoid unnecessary words, let me refer to the opinion which you, I believe, entertain, viz., that God even now makes each soul for each individual at the time of birth." And then in § 10 he confesses his problem with the opposite view, Traducianism, saying that it seems to him strange and unfair that an innocent babe should inherit a soul already guilty along with a body already defective - and be condemned, unless baptized, on that account.
So he comments, "I am willing that the opinion which you hold should be mine also; but I assure you that as yet I have not embraced it." And it is not clear from his other voluminous works whether he ever did take a firm stand for Creationism.
Traducianism is a very ancient view. From a book now apparently lost, which bore the title The Two Tables of the Covenant (author unknown?), we find the following statement quoted as from page 8, col. 2: "The soul of Adam is the root of all souls, and from him all souls were spread out. for all were by his strength" [See F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, N.Y., Schocken Books, 1968, p. 167].
Traducianism has always seemed the simplest way to explain the universality of man's fallen nature and the explanation for his inheritance of original sin. The concept of Adam as a Federal Head of the race in whom the whole race sinned has appealed to many as the best explanation of Romans 5:18 and 19. Charles Hodge in his Systematic Theology, though holding firmly to the Creationist position, nevertheless frankly admits that this argument for Traducianism is a powerful one [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1973 reprint, Vol. II, chap. 3, §2, p. 69].
Franz Delitzsch leans strongly towards traducianism [System of Biblical Psychology, Grand Rapids, Baker, 1966 reprint, p. 137]. He makes much of the argument that we have a clear precedent in Scripture in Hebrews 7:9, 10 where we are told that Levi paid tithes in Abraham.
Others argue that God is not actively "creating" today: that He ceased his creative activity in Genesis 2:2. That Jesus in John 5:17 assures us that his Father is still actively at work is not taken to be any contradiction since the reference is assumed to be to his active providence, not creativity. Nevertheless, in the matter of the soul or spirit, we cannot overlook the implication of 2 Corinthians 5:17 where creation of a new spirit is clearly indicated - implying that the old spirit was also created.
W. G. T. Shedd held absolutely to a traducianist position. He wrote: "The creation of the soul subsequently to the conception of the body, and its infusion into it, is contrary to all the analogies of nature" [Dogmatic Theology, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1969 reprint, Vol. II, p. 76]. By contrast, Calvin was an equally forthright creationist. A footnote in the McNeill edition of his Institutes sums up his position by saying, "Calvin completely rejects the (traducianist) teaching" [Phila., Westminster Press, 1975 Bk I i 7 fn. 20]. Beza and Turrettin both followed Calvin. In his Institutio [IX. xji. 6], Turrettin wrote: "Some are of the opinion that the difficulties pertaining to the propagation of original sin are best resolved by the doctrine of the propagation of the soul (animae traducem); a view held by not a few of the Fathers and towards which Augustine seems frequently to incline. And there is no doubt that by this theory all the difficulties seem to be removed; but since it does not accord with Scripture nor with sound reason, and is exposed to great difficulties, we do not think that recourse should be had to it."
Augustine could not see how a newly created and perfect spirit could be infused into a corrupted body by which it was itself to be corrupted. And yet he could at the same time give examples of a similar nature, where good seed is sown in bad ground. And he often returned to the question of the justice of condemning innocent children, who had not had the "benefit" of Christian baptism, for a guilt in which they had really never taken any active part personally.
Louis Berkhof asks the pertinent question as to why, if souls are derived immediately from Adam and not immediately by creation, are they held responsible only for Adam's sin in the Garden and not for all the other and later sins of his life? [Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1969, p. 198]. And, one may ask further, why are we not each of us responsible for all the sins of Adam's descendants in the direct line of our own descent? This would have the curious consequence of making each individual soul cumulatively more sinful than all its predecessors as it added its own guilt to theirs!
It is also to be noted that when Eve was brought to Adam he did not exclaim, "This is now flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit" but "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen. 2:23) as though to emphasize that her body was indeed derived from his but not the spiritual component of her being. Perhaps one of the commonest arguments against traducianism is the Lord's statement to Nicodemus in John 3:6, a statement which seems almost to refer back to Genesis 2:23, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."
It is sometimes difficult to know what the Reformed position actually is. Certainly Abraham Kuyper is not a traducianist; yet he held that each man receives his human nature "not directly from God but from God through Adam." Exactly how this is to be understood is not clear, for he statedly chose creationism nevertheless. He held that God creates the soul, in the embryo - the embryo having a predisposition towards a soul predestined for it. The soul is wholly distinct, and human personality originates in the unity of the body and the soul [See on this, C. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975, p. 289]. Berkouwer states Kuyper's position as being that God "directly and instantly creates" the soul but not in an arbitrary form but specifically for the body it is to dwell.
The issue is clearly one that cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Admittedly both sides can produce "proof texts." For myself, it seems that the weight of the evidence is strongly in favour of creationism - particularly Genesis 2:23 by implication and in the light of John 3:6; and such passages as Ecclesiastes 12:1, 7. Genesis 2:2 is counterbalanced by John 5:17 and 2 Corinthians 5:17. The Fall intervened. The only difficult passage, to my mind, is Romans 5:18 and 19. Yet logically, speaking as one with scientific training in a laboratory, I do not think a sound biblical psychology can be built on a traducianist basis, though I acknowledge the work of Franz Delitzsch as a magnificent effort.
225. There is a possibility, though I think it somewhat remote, that the words in Hebrews 2:9, "by the grace of God" may be a transcription error for an original which would then read "apart from God." There are a number of New Testament manuscripts and ancient authorities for this alternative. The meaning would then perhaps be that "He, the Lord Jesus Christ, tasted death but not as God." This is contrary to Scripture (as the following passages show by implication: Acts 20:28; l John 3:16; 1 Timothy 3:16; Luke 17:15, 16; Revelation 1:6, "unto God, and his Father").
The problem is to know how to reconcile the idea that God could not die while yet keeping in view the fact that only One who was God could make an atonement sufficient for the sins of the whole world, as l John 2:2 seems to require.
226. It has been argued that Heli had at least two daughters, for in John 19:25 reference is made to Mary's sister. To have two Marys in the same family seems most unusual unless (as sometimes happens) the later one is named after a sister who has predeceased her. We know this was not true in the present instance for both Marys are spoken of as alive together. An alternative is to suppose that the Mary of John 19:25 was really only a sister-in-law. This is fair enough in so far as she would be called Mary's sister in Jewish terminology. But such a sister-in-law cannot have been the wife of a brother of our Mary because it is virtually certain that any brother of Mary would have been mentioned somewhere in the record. She may have been a sister-in-law by some less direct connection - and this would still account for the wording of John 19:25. There is also the fact that our Mary is called Miriam (Matt. 13:55) whereas the Mary of John 19:25 is called Maria. The fact could be made the basis of an argument for the existence of two daughters of Heli, true sisters with variants of a common Jewish name.
227. Repair of DNA. On this subject see A. M. Srb, Genes, Enzymes and Populations, N.Y., Plenum, 1973, p. 223-235. A more readily accessible paper with some excellent diagrammatic illustrations was published by P. C. Hanawalt and R. H. Haynes, "The Repair of DNA," Sci Amer., Feb., 1967, pp. 36-43. These authors wrote: "Modem industry...involves intensive application of quality-control procedures for the correction of manufacturing errors, since even the best assembly lines can introduce faulty parts at an unacceptable rate...Recent studies have demonstrated that living organisms employ analogous processes for repairing defective parts in their genetic material: deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This giant molecule must be replicated with extraordinary fidelity if the organism is to survive and make successful copies of itself. Thus the existence of quality-control mechanisms in living cells may account in large part for the fact that 'like produces like' over many generations.
"Until recently it has been thought that if the DNA in a living cell were damaged or altered, for example by ionizing radiation, the cell might give rise either to mutant daughter cells or to no daughter cells at all. Now it appears that many cells are equipped to deal with some of the most serious hazards the environment can present...The ability to recover from injury is a characteristic feature of living organisms."
228. It is an over-simplification to say that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was the Roman Catholic answer to this problem, yet essentially this is the case. This doctrine teaches that Mary herself when she conceived was freed by sanctification from the taint of original sin. It is interesting to note that a precedent was believed to exist by reference to Jeremiah 1:5 which speaks of that prophet being sanctified before he "came out of the womb." Why could this not be true also of Mary?
The doctrine was the result of long and deep reflection upon the problem of how the Lord's body escaped this stain; and it was formulated, of course, in the absence of what is now known about the foetal relationship between mother and child. Since that time, the Roman Catholic theologians have at least officially favoured the position that by reason of the immaculate conception of Mary herself, the sinful but not the human connection between Adam's body and the Lord's body was severed so that the latter was free of original sin but truly human. During prenatal development the Lord's body was preserved or was sanctified in the virgin's womb due to the presence of the divine soul which infused it.
Here are some of the "feelings after the truth" that we find from the writings of the earlier Church Fathers and up to and including Reformation times as men struggled with the problem.
Athanasius (c. 296-373), the great champion of orthodoxy against Arianism, held that Christ's body was first redeemed and then sanctified to become the means of our redemption. As he put it: "Although it was only after He was made man for us and became our brother by similitude of body, still He is called (and is) the 'first-born' of us, because all men being lost according to the transgression of Adam, his flesh before all others was saved and liberated as being the body of the Logos [the divine Son]. And henceforth we, becoming incorporate with It, are saved after Its pattern" [Apologia Contra Arianos, Discourse II. lxi, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, N.Y., Scribner, 2nd series, 1913, Vol. IV, p. 381, col. b]. It will be noted that Athanasius did not for one moment suppose that the Lord as Logos needed redemption, but only his body as received from Mary.
Augustine (354 - 430) wrote: "If the soul of Christ be derived from Adam's soul, He, in assuming it to Himself, cleansed it so that when He came into this world He was born of the virgin perfectly free from sin either actual or transmitted. If however the souls of men are not derived from that one soul [of Adam] and it is only by the flesh that original sin is transmitted from Adam, then the Son of God created a soul for Himself just as He creates souls for all other men: but He united it not to sinful flesh but only to the 'likeness of sinful flesh' (Rom. 8:3)" [Letter No. 164, chap. 7, 19, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, N.Y., Scribner, 1st series, 1885, Vol. 1, p. 521].
One observes the influence of Augustine's thought on Roman Catholic theology which also holds that original sin was excluded from the soul of Jesus by the sanctification of it through the divine indwelling presence of the Logos.
In the eighth century, Felix of Urgellis (d.818 in Spain) maintained that the Logos united Himself with a human nature that was not sanctified, and that therefore Christ had a corrupted nature although He never actually committed sin. He believed this was a necessary condition of his incarnation in order that He might be tempted in all points like as we are, that is to say, that He might be tempted from within also [quoted by W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1969 reprint, Vol. II, p. 302].
It is important, as we have already noted, to keep in mind that the words like as (represented in the Greek by homoi-oteta) does not mean in exactly the same way - which would have required some such form as homo-oteta [see ref. #223 on this].
Anselm (1033-1109) in his Cur Deus Homo? [Bk. II, chap. 17] has his companion in conversation arguing that Christ's mother's body was somehow purified "prospectively" by the power of Jesus' death. With this Anselm seems to agree.
John Calvin (1509-1564) wrestled with the problem. In his Institutes [II. xiii. 4] he wrote: "They betray their ignorance who argue that if Christ is perfectly immaculate and was begotten of the seed of Mary by the secret operation of the Spirit, then it follows that there is no impurity in the seed of the woman, but only in that of the man. We do not represent Christ as perfectly immaculate merely because He was born of the seed of the woman unconnected with any man, but because He was sanctified by the Spirit in order that the generation might be pure and undefiled as would have been true before Adam's fall."
If only he had known what we now know, he might have seen how near to the truth was that which he firmly denied!
Zacharius Ursinus (1534-1583) in his Christian Religion (Question 35) wrote: "Mary was a sinner: but the mass of flesh which was taken out of her substance was by the operation of the Holy Spirit at the same instant sanctified when it was taken."
John Owen (1616-1683) in his Discourse on the Holy Spirit [II, published in 1674] wrote: "The human nature of Christ, being thus formed in the womb by a supernatural creative act of the Holy Spirit was in the instant of its conception sanctified and filled with grace...(this) human nature, being not begotten by natural generation, derived no taint of original sin or corruption from Adam."
Francois Turrettin (1623-1687) in his Institutio Theologae Elencticae [XIII. xi. 10] wrote: "The Holy Spirit must prepare the substance cut away from the substance of the virgin by a suitable sanctification...by purifying it from all stain of sin...and this in order that Christ may be born without sin. There is no need of having recourse to the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary (herself)."
John Howe (1630-1705), a non-Conformist Puritan theologian, in his Oracles [II. xxxvii] wrote: "It is a mighty confirmation of the natural descent of sin with the nature of man in the ordinary way, that when God designed the incarnation of his own Son, in order to avoid the corruption of nature descending to Him, He then steps out of the ordinary course; a consideration that hath weight with it, that, if anyone allow himself to think, it must overbear his mind in that matter, that surely there is some secret profound reason in the council of God - whether obvious to our view or not obvious - that the descent of corrupt nature was in the ordinary way unavoidable; that when God had a design to incarnate his own Son, when it was intended that God should be manifested in the flesh, to avoid that contagion and corruption which in the ordinary course is transmitted, He doth in this single instance recede and go off from the ordinary course. Because the human nature had been corrupted if it had descended in the ordinary way, therefore the ordinary course of procreation is declined and avoided: a most pregnant demonstration that in the ordinary course sin is always naturally transmitted" [quoted by W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1969 reprint, Vol. II, p. 2]. For all the complexity of his sentence structure, it is clear that Howe was nearer than most of his predecessors to recognizing the real significance of the virgin conception.
Throughout these centuries men had struggled with the problem. How could the Lord Jesus be truly human without a truly human body, and how could He acquire a truly human body without also acquiring the taint of original sin? Many adopted the view that his body had to be, and indeed was, sanctified either by his own entry into it or by the Holy Spirit before He entered it. At first the relevance of the virgin conception does not seem to have been clearly perceived. One of the earliest of the Church Fathers, Justin Martyr (110-165), illustrates lack of perceptiveness in this regard when he wrote: "And our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, for no other reason [emphasis mine] than that he might destroy the begetting by lawless desire, and might show to the devil that the formation of man was possible to God without human intervention" [Fragments of the Lost Works of Justin on the Resurrection, chap. III, Ante-Nicene Fathers, N.Y., Scribner, 1913, Vol. I, p. 295]. To Justin, the virgin birth was a display of God's miraculous power and a rebuke to Satan. That it could be related to the present issue was not perceived. It was not until considerably later that it began to be realized such a perfect body was not preserved against the inheritance of original sin by some act of cleansing but by the exclusion of natural generation. Thus it slowly became apparent that the male seed had to be by-passed. It is perhaps time now to explore afresh the significance of the necessity of virginal conception in the light of modern knowledge.
229. Aristotle, quoted by Ashley Montagu, Human Heredity, N.Y., World PubI. Co., 1959, p. 19.
230. Wheeler, John A., "Our Universe: the Known and the Unknown," Amer. Scientist, Spring, 1968, p. 18.
231. Huxley, Sir Julian, quoted by E. L. Mascall, The Importance of Being Human, N.Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1958, p. 7.
232. For many years until retirement, I served as Head of the Human Physiology Laboratories of the Defense Research Board in Ottawa (Canada). With highly sophisticated equipment we were engaged in measuring heat stress under various conditions in human volunteer subjects. One of the most important instruments which was developed in the Laboratories was a Sudorimeter for measuring sweating rates at exceedingly low levels, as an index of the body's ability to maintain thermoregulation. I believe that we would have detected very distinctly a fundamental difference in the functioning of the Lord's body in this respect, since sweating in man is clearly linked (in Genesis 3:19) to certain consequences of man's fallen constitution.
The fact is that sweating (by contrast with perspiration) is directly linked to the circumstance that our appetite for food exceeds the body's needs by approximately 200%, and since this food generates heat that is not needed, a back-up system for the removal of heat has to be set in motion. If we ate a quarter of what we normally do, this back-up system would not be triggered nearly so soon - but we should be everlastingly hungry. Appetite and actual need have now been thrown out of adjustment, presumably by the Fall.
This might be considered highly speculative, but we are dealing with what is essentially in this respect a heat-engine that is defective, and the level of its defectiveness is demonstrably related in quantitative terms to its inner state of health when tested under controlled conditions.
233. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, N.Y., Julian Press, 6th printing, 1966, p. 698.
234. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, ibid., p. 697.
235. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, ibid., p. 697.
236. F. R. Tennant observed that it was universally taught by the rabbis that our first parents brought death upon themselves by disobedience. That Adam did not die on the day he ate the forbidden fruit is sometimes explained by the rabbis, as it is in the Book of Jubilees, by taking the day to be a thousand years [Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, N.Y., Schocken Books, 1968 reprint, p. 161].
One deviation from this general view, which is found in the Syriac Baruch-Apocalypse, is that the penalty was not in death itself but in its prematureness. Adam's death was untimely. The Book of Enoch, Pseudo Philo, The Apocalypse of Moses, most copies of Baruch-Apocalypse, and 4 Ezra all assert physical death was caused by the Fall. The Slavonic Book of Enoch attributes the introduction of death to Eve, as does Ecclesiasticus (25:24) which reads: "From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die." The statement is true in a sense, but a far more precise statement is that made by Paul in Romans 5:12.
Another view found among the Church Fathers and in Jewish literature (Pirke di R. Elieser, c. 13) is that Satan was envious of Adam and desired to murder him, by persuading him to poison himself to death. Again, there is a measure of truth here and it is reflected in John 8:44 where the word murderer in the Greek is "man-killer."
Many of the Church Fathers explored the relationship between death and Adam's disobedience. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 AD.), one of the earliest, wrote: "When God formed man at the beginning, He suspended the things of nature on his [man's] will, and made an experiment by means of one commandment. For He ordained that, if he kept this commandment, he should partake of immortal existence; but if he transgressed it, the contrary should be his lot. Man having thus been made, and immediately looking towards transgression, naturally became subject to corruption. Corruption then becoming inherent in nature, it was necessary that He who wished to save should be the One to destroy the efficient cause of corruption." [This is found as a Fragment of the Lost Writings of Justin, in Ante Nicene Fathers, N.Y., Scribner, 1913, Vol. 1, p. 301]. It is not merely a concise observation: it also shows how it came about that the word natural was later applied to man's dying even by those who recognize that it was not part of his original constitution. Augustine sometimes speaks of death as natural for man, in this sense.
Tertullian (c. 160.- 215) said: "We know what was man's origin and boldly assert and persistently maintain that death happens not by way of natural consequence to man, but owing to a fault and defect which is not itself natural; although it is easy enough, no doubt, to apply the term natural to faults and circumstances which seem to have been inseparable to us from our very birth. If man had been directly appointed to die as the condition of his creation, then of course death must be imputed to nature. Now, that he was not thus appointed to die, is proved by the very law which made his condition depend on a warning and made death result from man's arbitrary choice. Indeed if he had not sinned he certainly would not have died. That cannot be nature which happens by the exercise of will after an alternative has been proposed to it, and not by necessity as the result of an inflexible and unalterable condition. Consequently, although death has various forms, in as much as its causes are manifold, we cannot say that the easiest death is so gentle as not to happen by violence to our nature. The very law which produces death, simple though it is, is yet violence. How can it be otherwise, when so close a companionship of soul and body, so inseparable a growth together from their very conception of two sister substances, is surrendered and divided?" ["A Treatise on the Soul," Ante-Nicene Fathers, ibid., Vol. III, p. 229].
Ambrose (c. 339-397), whose influence on Augustine was tremendous, took the view that death really was imposed as a merciful provision rather than a penalty. He wrote: "The Lord did not inflict death as a penalty but as a remedy. And to Adam when he sinned, one thing was appointed as a penalty, another for a remedy, when it is said: 'Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee that of it alone thou should not eat, cursed is the ground in thy labour; in sorrow shalt thou eat of its fruit all thy days of thy life, etc....ill thou return to the earth from which thou wast taken.'" So here are the two effects according to Ambrose: the burden of life (the penalty), and death (the remedy). Ambrose comments further: "So, then, death is not only an evil, but is even a good thing. So that it is sought as a good, as it is written, 'Men shall seek death and shall not find it.' (Rev. 9:6). They will seek it who shall say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us.' (Luke 22:30). That soul, too, shall seek it which has sinned. The rich man lying in hell shall seek it, who wishes that his tongue be cooled with the finger of Lazarus (Luke 16:24). We see then, that this death is a gain and life a penalty, so that Paul says, 'To me to live is Christ and to die is gain' (Phil. 1:21)" ["On the Belief in the Resurrection," Bk. II.37.3].
Much later, Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) was to write: "Death is natural considering our material status, but penal considering how we lost the divine endowment of deathlessness" [Summa Theologica, 2 a - 2 ae, clxiv, ad. 1]
Francois Turrettin (1632-1687) in his Atonement of Christ [p. 81] considered that death was an essential remedy. "There are many other weighty reasons," he wrote, "rendering it necessary that all should die; such as that the remains of sin (i.e., the remaining root left in each of us) may be destroyed." Physical death was, in his view, the only way of destroying the seat of the root of sin, and is the answer to Paul's plea in Romans 7:24.
Augustus H. Strong (1836-1921) in his Systematic Theology wrote: "The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man's sin, it would not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geological history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (cf. Rom. 8:20-23, where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by reason of man's sin)" [Phila., Judson Press, reprint 1974, p. 658]. Death in the animal world before man was therefore a kind of previsionary paradigm of something which was later to be a penalty for man.
Of death for the Christian, A. T. Schofield said, "Death is not an entrance into eternity but an exit from time" ["On Time and Eternity," Trans. Vict. Inst., London, LIX, 1927, p. 284].
237. According to the Gemarah, which is a kind of Jewish history book of this period, the scarlet cloth which marked the scapegoat was supposed to turn white as a sign of God's approval in accordance with Isaiah 1:18. But we are told that this never actually happened during the last forty years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Whether the Jewish people were aware of the significance of this tradition, or indeed whether the change of colour had actually occurred in previous years, or was just a Jewish invention, are questions which cannot be answered now. But it is interesting that the tradition survived in their literature, and yet their religious authorities do not seem to have realized its meaning. The tradition is referred to by Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1972 reprint, p. 312.
238. For treatment of the word Azazel, see Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Grand Rapids, Baker reprint, Vol. I, p. 197. Also Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, N.Y., Scribners, 1905, Vol. 1, p. 207, and Lange's Commentary, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1976 reprint, Vol. 1, at Lev. 16:8, p. 127. Also L. Feinberg, "The Scapegoat of Leviticus 16," Bibliotheca Sacra, 115, Oct., 1958, p. 320-333; The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, sub. Azazel, p. 206; Louis Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews, Phila., Jewish Pub. Assoc. of Amer., 1955, Vol. 1, p. 148 (= a fallen angel); G. F. Ochler, Theology of the Old Testament, N.Y., Funk & Wagnalls, 1883, p. 311; and F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, N.Y., Schocken Books, 1968 reprint, p. 182 (connected with "Fallen Angels").
239. Einstein, Albert, quoted by Philipp Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, N.Y., Knopf, 1947, p. 178 (chap. 8, § 5).
240. Milne, E. A., Some Points in the Philosophy of Physics: Time, Evolution, and Creation, Washington Smithsonian Inst. Annual Report, 1933, p. 236.
241. Karl Menninger observed: "The Quakers thought they were acting in a humane and Christian way when in 1789 they sought to substitute quiet (solitary) incarceration for the floggings, brandings, tongue slicings, ear amputations, and the uncomfortable and humiliating stocks. But these old-time punishments while painful were public and relatively brief. intentionally fearful hardships of incarceration were gradually added and the duration of the imprisonment became longer and longer. Six months was once considered a very long sentence. All American sentences are far greater than in English and Continental practice. An adolescent was recently sentenced by a Texas judge to thirty years' imprisonment for possessing two marihuana cigarettes, presumably for sale" [Whatever Became of Sin, N.Y., Hawthorne Books, 1975, p. 62]. This only shows how the substitution of duration for intensity can lead to absurdity.
242. Elsewhere in the Bible we seem to be presented with another alternative, the alternative of intensity: "few stripes or many" (Luke 12:47, 48), according to the offense. It could be, then, that the biblical term which we have rendered eternal or sometimes everlasting may not really signify duration at all. It could conceivably be a qualitative term which carries rather the idea of intensity or depth, as it most certainly does in reference to eternal life. Eternal life is a different kind of life, a life with a different kind of intensity, a life more abundant (John 10:10), a life that does not lack the component of endless duration but whose distinguishing character is not so much endlessness as depth. Perhaps eternal punishment really means punishment whose intensity cannot actually be conveyed to our time-bound minds except by saying that it will be experienced as though it were endless.
243. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., (ref. #233), p. 519f.
244. Tompkins, Peter, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1971, p. 257.
245. Reclus, Eli, Primitive Folk: Studies in Comparative Ethnology, London, Scott, n.d., p. 204, 308.
246. Macllraith, T., in lectures in the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 1954.
247. The Pharisees believed in resurrection but it was a general resurrection which was to occur only at the very end. This much they were willing to admit, a circumstance which put them in opposition to the Sadducees who did not believe such things. What the Pharisees were afraid of, in the case of the Lord's body was not so much that He would actually be raised from the dead, but rather that the disciples would steal his body by night and then claim that He had been raised from the dead. For in spite of many things which He had said that they professed not to understand, they do seem to have realized that He was claiming that if He were put to death He would actually raise Himself again the third day (John 2:19). In point of fact, the Jews seem to have had more fear of his body being removed than his disciples had faith that it might be resurrected!
249. There is an interesting parallel series of resurrections in the Old Testament which seem to be conveying the same message. The first is found in 1 Kings 17:17-22 which relates the death of the widow of Zarephath's little son. One gathers from the account that this child died while Elijah was present in the house. Elijah restored the child to his mother alive.
The second account is found in 2 Kings 4:18-35. This involved the death of a "grown child," probably due to heat stroke. The Shunammite woman, his mother, had been hostess to Elisha under particularly dramatic circumstances in a time of general famine. When the child died, Elisha was away on Mount Carmel some sixteen miles distant. The Shunammite woman laid the child on Elisha's bed and immediately set out for Carmel. Even under the best of circumstances, it must have taken her five or six hours to make the journey, and presumably the return journey would occupy another six hours or so. This means that before Elisha arrived back at the scene of the child's death, some twelve hours had elapsed. In verses 34 and 35 we learn that by a process perhaps akin to artificial respiration, he restored the child alive to his mother.
The third instance, in 2 Kings 13:20 and 21, is a rather odd case of resurrection, and the circumstances are not exactly clear except that the young man involved was actually about to be interred in the ground. It seems that Elisha had died and while he was being buried, a band of Moabite brigands were seen in the neighbourhood, causing those who were burying him to run for their lives. They had, however, completed the digging of the grave and had laid Elisha's remains in it. Another party happened at the same time to be on their way to bury the young man. When they, too, observed the Moabites in the neighbourhood, they fled (as the others had done) but only after rather unceremoniously dropping the young man's body into Elisha's grave. To their amazement, as soon as the corpse touched the body of Elisha, the young man was instantly restored to life, stood up on his feet, and presumably scrambled out of the grave and joined them in their flight.
It is difficult to know exactly why the Lord has seen fit to give us this parallel sequence of revivals of the dead after what appears to be an increasing interval of time had passed since death. But it does seem to be a remarkably similar series of events: revivals being witnessed in one just dead, dead some hours, and dead and effectively buried.
250. Tacitus says of the Christians, whom Nero blamed for the burning of Rome, that their orginator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberias' reign by the Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate [Annals of Imperial Rome, XV. 43, tr. M. Grant, Penguin ed., 1961, p. 354].
251. Saidas: from F. A. Jones, The Dates of Genesis, London, Kingsgate Press, 1912, p. 114.
252. Clerke, A. M., Encyclopedia Britannica, 1953 ed., article, Astronomy.
253. Free, Joseph P., Archaeology and Bible History, Wheaton, Ill., Scripture Press, pub., 1962, p. 32.
254. Pannekoek, Antone, "The Origin of the Saros," Proc. Roy. Acad., Amsterdam, 20, communicated by W. de Sitter, 29 Sept., 1918, pp. 943-955.
255. Sarton, George, op. cit., ref.#110, p. 119.
256. Sarton, George, op. cit., ref.#110, p. 120.
257. Pannekoek, Antone, op. cit., ref. #254, p. 943.
258. Meek, T. 3., "Magic Spades in Mesopotamia," Univ. Toronto Quart., 7, 1938, p. 243, 244.
259. Halley, Henry H., Pocket Bible Handbook, Chicago, 1951, p. 71.
260. Barton, George, op. cit., ref. #108, p. 325.
261. Pritchard, James B., ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, 1969, p. 265.
262. 2 Peter 2:5 - It is customary to say that in this passage the phrase "the eighth" (ogdoon) is a convenient way in the Greek of implying "with seven others," as though the writer really had in mind a phrase such as "he, being the eighth of a party." G. Abbott-Smith, in his Manual Greek Lexicon, agrees, but observes that the Greek word auto is usually added. This has not been done in the present instance, though I find that other biblical passages of a similar construction (including 2 Macc. 5:27) also omit the atro, although the meaning is clearly "with nine others." Young's Literal Translation has followed the Authorized Version, as has also the Concordant Version and that of Ferrar Fenton. It seems more likely to me that the meaning is strictly "the eighth," the definite article being used (cf. Luke 1:59). Since this is not so in 2 Peter 2:5, it is probable that the meaning is simply "with seven others."
263. Stroud, William, The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, N.Y., Appleton, 1871, 422 pp.
264. Engel, George L., "Sudden and Rapid Death During Psychological Stress," Ann. Internal Medicine, 74, 5, 1971, p. 771-783 with extensive bibliography.
265. Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum, Memorabilium, Bk. IX. 12.
266. Titus Livius, History of Rome, Bk. XXII. 7.
267. Gaius Pliny, Bk. VII (on Man), § 7.
268. Galen: quoted by Gould and Pyle, op. cit., ref. #233, p. 524.
269. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, (130.180 A.D.), Bk. 111.15.
270. Donatus, Marcellus, De Medica Historia Mirabili, Libri Sex. 4, Mantua, 1586.
271. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., ref. #233, p. 524.
272. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., ref. #233, p. 625.
273. MD of Canada, 14, 10, Oct., 1973, p. 62.
274. O'Rourke, Michael, reporting in Lancet, 21 July, 1973, p. 124.
275. Fischer, Daniel, The London Medical Repository, Vol. XI, p. 422-427.
276. The London Medical Repository, Vol. XII, 1819, p. 164-168.
277. Portal: quoting Dr. Baillie, "Treatise on Morbid Anatomy," Anatomie des Krankhaften Baucs, etc., Berlin, 1794, tr. by Soemmering.
278. Krumbhaar, E. B. and C. Crowell, "Spontaneous Rupture of the Heart, A Clinical Pathological Study," Amer. J. Med. Sci, 170,1928, p. 828f.
279. Karsner, Howard T., Human Pathology, Phila, Lippincott, 1938, p. 379.
280. Zimmerman, J. G., On Experience in Physic (tr. from German), London, 1782, Vol. II, p. 268f.
281. Friedberg, Charles K., Diseases of the Heart, Phila, Saunders, 1966, p. 854f.
282. Friedberg, Charles K., ibid., p. 1691f.
283. Burns, Allan, On Diseases of the Heart, Edinburgh, 1809, p. 181.
284. Barnes, Albert, Notes on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Kregel pub., 1962, p. 1260 op. sit.
285. Shelley, W. B. and H. J. Hurley, "Methods of Exploring Human Apocrine Sweat Gland Physiology," Arch. Dermat. and Syph., 66, 1952, p. 156-161.
286. Rothman, Stephen, Physiology and Biochemistry of the Skin. Chicago Univ. Press, 1955, p. 187.
287. Bogoras: quoted by Alexander Goldenweiser, Anthropology, N.Y., Crofts, 1945, p. 251.
288. Stroud, William, op. cit., ref. #263, p. 97.
289. Maldonatus, Joannes, Commentary on the Four Gospels, Paris, 1639, p. 601.
290. Schenck, Joannes, Rarer Medical Observations (Observ. Medicac Rariores), Frankfort, 1609, Bk. III, p. 458.
291. Tissot, S. A. D., Traites des Nerfs, Avignon, 1800, p. 279, 280.
292. Voltaire, F. M., Complete Works, Basic, 1785, Vol. 18, p. 531-532.
293. de Mezeray, Histoire d'France, Paris, 1685, Vol. III, p. 306.
294. Gould, G. M. and W. L. Pyle, op. cit., ref. #233, p. 388-391.
END
Corrections, May 22, 1997.
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