543; see also George Smith, Chaldean Accounts of Genesis, Sayce's edition, pp.

36, 72, and 93; also for similar legends in other ancient nations, Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, pp.

17 et seq.; for mediaeval representations of the creation of man and woman, see Didron, Iconographie, pp.

35, 178, 224, 537.
The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two conflicting creation legends in Genesis literally, and then, having done their best to reconcile them with each other and to mould them together, made them the final test of thought upon the universe and all things therein.

At the beginning of the fourth century Lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of subordinating all other things in the study of creation to the literal text of Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being created "is called man because he is made from the ground--homo ex humo." In the second half of the same century this view as to the literal acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St.Ambrose, who, in his work on the creation, declared that "Moses opened his mouth and poured forth what God had said to him." But a greater than either of them fastened this idea into the Christian theologies.