A majority of commentators on the trial deliberately exclude everything in Bryan's answer which is shown here in red; and the reasons aren't hard to find.
If Bryan had said something like "yes, I think it is all literally true," then (so these people seem to imagine) when he stated that the six days of creation were not necessarily six days of 24 hours, that must have been an admission by Bryan that the Bible should not be taken entirely literally. In which case Darrow, depending on which account you read, "trapped", "tricked" or simply "led" Bryan into denying his own beliefs. But that isn't what Bryan said, and this distortion is wrong on two counts:
We cannot know at this late date what Darrow had in mind, but it seems quite possible that he was confused by a single word. The Bible actually says (Jonah 1:17) that God "prepared" a fish to swallow Jonah, which Darrow may have construed as meaning that God made the fish especially for that purpose. Bryan, having a fair idea of the meanings of the original texts from which the Bible has been translated, seems to have understood that in this context, the original Hebrew word manah means "assigned" to the task rather than "created" for that purpose.
Did the Earth Stand Still?
Having established that Bryan believed in miracles, the questioning over Joshua and the sun "standing still" in the sky seems to have been completely redundant.
It is quite clear that Darrow wanted to demonstrate that the author of the story must (from a "scientific" perspective) have been ignorant of the fact that it is the earth that moves round the sun, and not the sun which moves round the earth so that, according to Darrow, if the story were true it would have to be the earth that stood still, rather than the sun (which would only appear to stand still).
Bryan's answer was basically that he believed that whoever wrote the original account was acting under divine inspiration and wrote the story in a way that would make sense to the people for whom it was written.
Bryan - |
He [God] was using language at the time the people understood. |
Darrow - |
And that you call "interpretation"? |
Bryan - |
No, sir; I would not call it interpretation. |
Bryan's first answer in this exchange surely amounted to a statement that the story was "interpreted" for a given audience, and Darrow appeared to have made his case, but then he threw it all away by trying to prove how much smarter he was than Bryan:
Darrow - |
Now, Mr. Bryan, have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it stood still? |
Bryan - |
No.. |
Darrow - |
You have not? |
Bryan - |
No, the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr. Darrow. |
Darrow - |
I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly? |
Bryan - |
No.? |
Darrow - |
Don't you know it would have been converted into a molton mass of matter? |
This may seem unanswerable, and is perhaps one reason why, even at the time, commentators believed that Darrow had exposed Bryan's lack of scientific knowledge:
"Darrow succeeded in showing that Bryan knows little about the science of the world."
(Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 21st, 1925)
Yet Darrow's comments were actually just so much hot air - quite possibly furnished by professor of geology Kirtley Mather during their rehearsals over the previous weekend.
In the first place, Darrow has once again overlooked the importance of the language used. In this instance he has not mistaken the meaning of the original wording, instead he has overlooked the fact that even in the 21st century, let alone in 1925, even the most educated Westerners regularly refer to the daily passage of sun as though it went round the earth - but only because we have inherited certain figures of speech. Not because we actually believe that what we are saying is factually correct.
Thus we talk about "sunset," "sun rise," "at the going down of the sun," "as the sun sank slowly in the West," etc. without ever supposing that the rules of astronomy have suddenly changed and the sun now goes round the earth.
So, if I may play devil's advocate for a moment, why shouldn't the people this story was written for be in much the same position - using expressions that implied that the Sun moved round the Earth whilst knowing perfectly well that it was the Earth which moved around the Sun?
Secondly, Darrow fails to address the fact that this is very clearly a miracle, not a run of the mill event. Indeed, immediately after describing how "the sun stood still in the midst of heaven," we are told that:
"...there was no day like that before it or after it..."
It is true that Darrow succeeded in getting Bryan sufficiently flummoxed on this point that he briefly agreed that the Earth must have stood still rather than the Sun - but only briefly, And the truth of the matter is that Darrow's argument actually holds no water, for in practice neither the earth nor any other planet is ever likely to suddenly stand still of its own accord.
Thus Bryan made perfectly good sense - within the context of his own beliefs - because it is entirely "reasonable" to suppose that any being who can stop the sun and/or a planet in its tracks is also capable of controlling the consequences of that act.
Darrow's response, on the other hand, showed little or no intelligent thought.
Firstly, Darrow insisted that, in order for the sun to appear to stand still, it was actually the earth which must stand still. So long as we're playing with "what if" scenarios, however, if the earth went round the sun at the appropriate speed, it could rotate on its own axis as normal, yet still keep the same area pointing toward the sun and thus the Sun would effectively "stand still" as far as any eye-witnesses were concerned.
Secondly, since no planet will "naturally" stand still, suddenly or otherwise, it is irrational to ask questions about what would "naturally happen" if it did.
Thirdly Darrow once again demonstrated his intellectual immaturity by his inability to understand any view except his own (it isn't necessary to agree with someone else's views in order to understand them). He clearly neither liked nor agreed with Bryan's beliefs, and he clearly had no comprehension of the world view that accommodates such beliefs. Yet by taking such a blinkered position he actually rendered himself powerless to challenge those beliefs other than by saying, in effect, "I don't agree, and I'm right and you're wrong."
After which he changed tack.
The Flood
At this stage of the proceedings what had been merely tedious actually managed to take a nose dive.
Darrow - |
You believe the story of the flood to be a literal interpretation? |
Bryan - |
Yes, sir. |
Darrow - |
When was that flood? |
Bryan - |
I would not attempt to fix the date. The date is fixed, as suggested this morning. |
Now that seems like a pretty fair answer - if the purpose of the examination was simply to discover what Bryan believed. But it wasn't nearly enough for Darrow, who embarked on a lengthy and pointless series of questions about the dating of various events mentioned in the Bible. Pointless because Bryan had already said he didn't know the date. And pointless because, as Bryan explained, any attempt to fix dates for these events would only produce an estimate:
Darrow - |
About 4004 B.C.? |
Bryan - |
That has been the estimate of a man that is accepted today. I would not say it is accurate |
Darrow now began to fog the issue; seemingly one of his favourite ploys:
Darrow - |
That estimate is printed in the Bible? |
Bryan - |
Everybody knows, at least I think most people know, that was the estimate given. |
From here on Darrow (deliberately?) confuses the text of the Bible with whatever additional material - in this case an estimate of the date of the Flood, and later Bishop Ussher's calculation of the date of the Creation - happens to be included in a particular edition in the form of margin notes, etc.
The questioning then led into one of the best known exchanges from the trial when Bryan helped things along with a remarkably ill-advised piece of banter (it doesn't pay to tell jokes when your assailant already has his hands round your throat):
Just a couple of questions later Darrow tries to pull a rather blatant fast one on Bryan:
As we've just seen, it was Darrow who used the phrase "from the generations of man," not Bryan. In fact Bryan answered quite categorically: "I would not want to say that" (italics added).
Chief prosecutor Tom Stewart chose this moment to make his first attempt to have the confrontation brought to a close:
Raulston, as ever, defers to Bryan, and Bryan makes it quite clear why he is prepared to take this verbal battering from Darrow:
A few moments later, in answer to objections by both McKenzie and Stewart, Bryan makes his first statement about what he believes to be the true motives of the defense lawyers for getting involved in the Scopes case. And Raulston gives the first indication that his patience is not unlimited: