Note 87 — Chapter V · RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AND THE CHILD.

Works in religious criticism would naturally find their place in the school and college libraries. They might be supplemented by a more or less extensive museum of religious curiosities, beginning with the fetiches of savage tribes and extending down to the present day.

To the mass of the French public the solid results already achieved by an independent criticism of the Bible constitute a terra incognita; they must be disseminated. M. Lenormant’s effort might serve as an example for other efforts of the same kind. In order to make it apparent at a glance how the Pentateuch has been formed, by the combination and fusion of the earlier sets of documents, M. Lenormant undertook to publish a translation from the Hebrew, in which he distinguishes the extracts from the respective sets of documents by different kinds of type. Thus one has before one the natural explanation of the way in which all the episodes in Genesis are presented in the two parallel versions, sometimes juxtaposed, sometimes mingled.