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![Britain they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one
of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its
first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others
apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries
from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round
barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the
kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They
are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor [29]:
[29] Greenwell, British Barrows; Taylor, Origin of the Aryans.
They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and
somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or
mounds with interior chambers and passages; some of these are as
much as 400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there
can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves
when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the
long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great
importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the
dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little
pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time
domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These
people are now identified with the people of the south and west of
England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the
cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in
various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in
the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of
Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters
connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central
France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the
Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the
term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language
was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a
new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation
over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-56-320.jpg)
![THE PALANTHROPIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF
HISTORY
The time was when the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures
stood almost alone in their notices of the creation and antediluvian
times, and when critics could quietly take for granted that they were
altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from
the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable before
proceeding farther to glance for a moment at some of the recent
corroborations, if they may be so called, of the Bible history from
altogether unexpected quarters.
In the first place, there can now be no doubt that the order of
creation, as revealed to the author of the first chapter of Genesis,
corresponds with the results of astronomical and geological research
in a manner which cannot be accidental. [30] This old document thus
stands in the position of a prophecy which has been fulfilled in its
details. Besides this, the discovery of the similar though not identical
Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side-
light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are
unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older
documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But
they and the Genesis narrative are independent of each other.
Neither can have been copied from the other. Thus there must have
been a still more ancient common source of the narrative, and, as I
have elsewhere urged, [31] the greater simplicity and monotheistic
character of the Hebrew document entitle it to the palm of the
higher antiquity.
[30] For evidence of this I may be permitted to refer to my work,
The Origin of the World.
[31] Modern Science in Bible Lands.
With reference to the antediluvian age and the Deluge, while the
Bible is here only in accord with almost universal tradition, and this
in reference to an event which if it occurred at all must have fixed](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-58-320.jpg)
![the extreme scepticism of modern criticism is not justified, that the
materials on which the history of Israel has been based may, and
probably do, go back to an early date, and that much which the
"higher" critics have declared to be mythical and impossible was
really possible and true.'
In point of fact a much stronger position might be held in favour
of Genesis, and we shall find in comparing it with the monuments of
the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages that its statements
vindicate themselves as derived from original contemporary
documents, which were under no obligations to the literature or
philosophy of those later times, to which they have been relegated
by some of the critics.
Let us inquire a little more in detail into the general features of
these early historic notices.
For the purposes of this inquiry we may content ourselves with
the consideration of the ancient Hebrew documents incorporated in
the Book of Genesis, and the remains which have been preserved of
the old Chaldean literature. Both of these represent an antediluvian
period of long duration. [32] Both refer the primitive seats of
population to the Euphratean region of Western Asia. Both terminate
the antediluvian age with a great diluvial catastrophe. These are
sufficient points of general agreement to make it probable that both
originated in one fundamental history, or at least were based on
attempts to describe the same events. Otherwise there are great
differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix iteration, which
makes it probable that they were prepared for popular and liturgic
use, and may not fairly represent the original documents in
possession of the priestly class. They also naturally introduce all the
personnel of the Chaldean pantheon, and as this must have been a
thing of gradual growth it gives them an air of recency, though we
know that they are very old. The Hebrew version, on the other hand,
is monotheistic, and has an aspect of severe simplicity in striking
contrast to the florid and popular Chaldean version.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-61-320.jpg)
![[32] Hommel has proved (Journal of the Society of Biblical
Archæology, 1893), what has always been suspected, that the ten
patriarchs of Berosus are the same with those of the Sethite line
in Genesis.
We may first notice what history can tell of the palanthropic age,
supposing this to be the same with that historically known as
antediluvian. The account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis
is altogether general, and has no local colouring. It evidently refers
to the whole history of the making of the earth. The second chapter,
on the other hand, begins at verse 4 the special history of man, and
opens with a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, a
repetition of the previous general account of creation, and still less
contradictory to it, but a statement that immediately before the
introduction of man the earth had been in a desolate and
comparatively untenanted state, that state to which we know it had
been reduced by the glacial cold and submergence.
Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, that in which he
appears in his chronological position in the general development,
and that in which he takes a first place, as introductory to his special
history, are not contradictory, but complementary to each other; and
the latter refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with
him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no
doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name
Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the
special one. The failure of so many critics to notice this distinction,
which must have been so plain to the primitive historian himself, is a
marked illustration of the blindness of certain nineteenth-century
savants, so full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless of
science and common sense.
It would even seem that this distinction appeared in the
Chaldean Genesis as well; for fragments of what has been called a
second Chaldean Genesis have been found which seem to
correspond with the statements of the second chapter of Genesis.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-62-320.jpg)
![The following is an extract from this second Chaldean or
Akkadian Genesis as translated by Pinches: [33]
1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious
place had not been made;
2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been
created;
3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped;
4 A house had not been built, a city had not been
constructed;
5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been
made glorious;
6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been
constructed;
7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed;
8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been
constructed;
9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat
had not been made—
10 The whole of the lands were sea.
This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew verses
following:
And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.
And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.
For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth.
And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-63-320.jpg)
![And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered the
surface of the ground.
[33] Expository Times, December 1892
This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the great
Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene submergence, and before
the appearance of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same
region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic
cities of a later time. This difference alone would induce us to
suppose that the Hebrew record may be a better guide for our
present comparison.
The Hebrew writer in the first place gives us to understand that a
period of comparative desolation preceded the appearance of man, a
great winter of destruction preparatory to a returning spring. He
then proceeds to localise primeval man by placing him in Eden, the
Idinu of the Chaldean accounts, which we also recognise by the
geographical indications of the Euphrates and Tigris as its rivers,
with two companion streams which can scarcely be other than the
Karun and the Kerkhat. Thus the Bible and the Chaldean account
agree in their locality for the advent of man, for Idinu was the
ancient name of the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to this
locality that much of this region is low and swampy, and has only
recently become land by the encroachment of the rivers on the head
of the Persian Gulf. But if our Biblical authority really refers to
palanthropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-glacial
period the continents were higher than now, and the Babylonian
plain must have been a dry and elevated district, in all probability
forest-clad. We must also bear in mind that Eden was a region of
country, and that the 'garden' or selected spot 'eastward in Eden'
may have been some rich wooded island surrounded by the river
streams, and producing all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for
food. In any case the modern objections to the site are based on
entire ignorance of its geological history, and only serve to show how](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-64-320.jpg)
![much better informed the ancient writer was as to antediluvian
geography than his modern critics. [34]
[34] See, for full discussion of this, Modern Science in Bible
Lands, by the author.
It is scarcely necessary to say that this Biblical environment of
primitive man corresponds with the requirements of the case. In a
genial climate and sheltered position, and supplied with abundance
of food, the first men would have the conditions necessary for
comfortable existence and for multiplying in numbers.
We have also in the description of one of the rivers of Eden a
hint as to a few of the wants of early man beyond mere food and
shelter. We are told that the district traversed by this river produced
gold, bedolach, and the shoham stone. I have elsewhere shown that
this river must be the Karun, draining the Luristan mountains, and
that the productions indicated must have been 'native gold and
silver, wampum beads, and jade and similar stones suitable for
implements.' [35] Thus we have here a picture which may well
represent the origin and early condition of our palæocosmic men.
But the parallel does not end here.
[35] Modern Science in Bible Lands.
According to the history, man falls, and is expelled from Eden, is
clothed with skins, and becomes an eater of animal food. Next we
find murderous violence, and a consequent separation of the
primitive people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a distance
from the other and adopts different modes of life. Finally, we have a
mixture of the two races, leading to a powerful and terrible race of
half-breeds, or metis, who filled the earth with violence. [36]
[36] Genesis vi. 1-6.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-65-320.jpg)
![tablets recovered from the libraries of Nineveh by George Smith, the
calculations of Prestwich and others respecting the recency of the
glacial period, and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we find
ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, or may
congratulate ourselves on having adhered to it all along, even when
the current of opinion tended strongly to turn us away.
In illustration of the present aspects of the question I make two
extracts, one from Lenormant's Beginnings of History, another from
a recent work of my own.
'We are,' says Lenormant, 'in a position to affirm that the account
of the Deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human
family, with the sole exception of the black race, and a tradition
everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred
to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmogonic myth possesses
this character of universality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence
of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an
impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species
that their descendants could never forget it. This cataclysm took
place near the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the
separation of the families from whom the principal races were to
descend, for it would be altogether contrary to probability and to the
laws of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly similar
in character could have been reproduced at so many different points
on the globe as would enable one to explain these universal
traditions, or that these traditions should always have assumed an
identical form, combined with circumstances which need not
necessarily have suggested themselves to the mind in such a
connection.' [37]
[37] Les Origines de l'Histoire. Brown's translation.
On the geological side, the following may be accepted as a
summary of facts: [38]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-70-320.jpg)
![[38] Modern Science in Bible Lands, 1888, pp. 244, 245, 251,
252.
'If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves,
men of the mammoth age or of the palæolithic or palæocosmic
period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible
antiquity. They colonised the continents immediately after the
elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the
pleistocene or glacial period, or in what has been called the
"continental" period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands
then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we now
have. We have some measures of the date of this great continental
elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the
Falls of Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting power as
equal to one foot per annum. He calculated the beginning of the
process, which dates from the post-glacial elevation, to be about
thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the
rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that
a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river
since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge
becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other
indications of similar bearing are found both in Europe and America,
and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could
have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These
facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations based on
the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which
have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time.
'If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with the oldest men
known to geological and archæological science, the parallelism is
somewhat marked in physical characteristics and habits of life, and
also in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance from
Europe and Western Asia, along with several of the large mammalia
which were their contemporaries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as
historical, and if a similar great break interrupts the geological
history of man, separating extinct races from those which still
survive, why may we not correlate the two? If the Deluge was](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-71-320.jpg)
![misused in the early history of geology, by employing it to account
for changes which took place long before the advent of man, this
should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, with reference to
the early human period. It is evident that if this correlation be
accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as to the
antiquity of man. In that case the modern gravels and silts, spread
over the plateaus between the river valleys, will be accounted for,
not by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by the
abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character.
Further, since the historical Deluge must have been of very limited
duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing
the remains of palæocosmic men from those of later date would in
like manner be accounted for, not by the slow processes imagined by
extreme uniformitarians, but by causes of a more abrupt and
cataclysmic character.' [39]
[39] See also Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood, and papers
by Professor Prestwich in Journal Geol. Society and Trans. Royal
Society and by Andrews, Winchell, and others in America.
We may proceed to inquire as to whether the position which we
have now reached is likely to be permanent, or may represent
merely one shifting phase of opinion. For this purpose we may
formulate these conclusions in a few general statements, merely
referring to the evidence on which they are based, as any complete
discussion of this would necessarily be impossible within the limits of
this work. We may first summarise the present position of the matter
as indicated by historical and scientific research, altogether
independently of the Bible. [40]
[40] See articles by the author in The Contemporary Review,
December 1889, and in The Magazine of Christian Literature,
October 1890.
1. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge tablets has again
directed attention to the statements of Berosus respecting the
Babylonian tradition of a great flood, and these statements are
found to be borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-72-320.jpg)
![3. The prevalence among geologists of an exaggerated and
unreasonable uniformitarianism, which refused to allow sufficient
prominence to sudden cataclysms arising from the slow
accumulation of natural forces, and which was a natural reaction
from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has caused the idea
to be generally entertained that the age of palæocosmic men was of
vast duration, and passed only by slow gradations and a gradual
transition into the new conditions of the modern period. This view
long was, and still is, an obstacle to any rational correlation of the
geological and traditional history of man. Recently, however, new
views have been forced on geologists, and have led many of the
most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that the palanthropic
period is much nearer to us than we had imagined. The arguments
for this I have referred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate
them, here. A few leading points may, however, be noted. One of
these is the small amount of physical or organic change which has
occurred since the close of the palanthropic period. Another is the
more rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in the modern
period than had previously been supposed. Another is the striking
fact that a large number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly
rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously with the
palæocosmic men, and this by some sudden catastrophe. [41] It has
also been shown by Pictet and Dawkins that all the extant mammals
of Europe already existed in the post-glacial age, but along with
many others now altogether or locally extinct. Thus there seems to
have been the removal over the whole northern hemisphere of a
number of the largest mammals, while a selected number survived
and no additions were made. Again, while at one time it was
supposed that the remains of palæocosmic man and his
contemporaries were confined to caverns and river alluvia, it is now
known that they occur also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in
beds of gravel and silt which must have been deposited there under
conditions of submergence and somewhat active current drift,
perhaps in some cases aided by floating ice. [42] Lastly, while, as
must naturally be the case, in some places the remains of ancient](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-74-320.jpg)
![and more modern men are mixed, or seem to pass into each other,
in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon caves and in the
superficial deposits, there is a distinct separation, implying an
interval accompanied by physical change between the time of the
earlier and later men.
[41] Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood.
[42] Prestwich on deposits at Ightham, Kent, Journal Geological
Society, May 1889.
Such considerations as these, the force of which is most strongly
felt by those best acquainted with the methods of investigation
employed by geologists and archæologists, are forcing us to
conclude: (1) That there are indicated in the latest geological
formations two distinct human periods, an earlier and a later,
characterised by differences of faunæ and of physical conditions, as
well as by distinct races of men. (2) That these two periods are
separated by a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature of
submergence, or by a series of changes locally sudden and generally
not long-continued. (3) That it is not improbable that this greatest of
all revolutions in human affairs may be the same that has so
impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to form the basis
of all the traditions and historical accounts of the Deluge.
This being the state of the case, it becomes expedient to review
our ideas of the ancient Hebrew records, from which our early, and
perhaps crude, impressions of this event were derived, and to
ascertain how much of our notions of the Deluge of Genesis may be
fairly deduced from the record itself, and how much may be due to
more or less correct interpretations, or to our own fancy. In
connection with this we may also be able to obtain some guidance
as to the value to be attached to the Hebrew document as a
veritable and primitive record of the great catastrophe.
The key to the understanding of the early human history of
Genesis lies in the story of the fall of man, and its sequel in the
murder of Abel by his brother Cain, the beginning of that reign of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-75-320.jpg)
![violence which endures even to this day. From this arose the first
division of the human race into hostile clans or tribes, the races of
Cain and Seth, on which hinges the history, characteristics and fate
of antediluvian man; and, as we shall see in the sequel, from this
arose profound differences in religious beliefs, which have tinged the
theology and superstitions of all subsequent times. Of course, in
making this statement I refer to the history given in Genesis, without
special reference to its intrinsic truth or credibility, but merely in
relation to its interpretation in harmony with its own statements.
It is further evident that this tragic event must have occurred in
that Tigro-Euphratean region which was the Biblical site of Eden [43]
and that while the Sethite race presumably occupied the original
home of Adam, and adhered to that form of religion which is
expressed in the worship of Jahveh, the coming Redeemer and the
expected 'Seed of the Woman,' the other race spread itself more
widely, probably attained to a higher civilisation, in so far as art is
concerned, in some of its divisions, and sank to a deeper barbarism
in others, while it retained the original worship of God the Creator
(Elohim). Hence the Sethite race is designated as the sons of Adam
(Beni ha Adam), the true and legitimate children of the first man,
and the Cainites as Beni Elohim, or sons of God. [44] The mixture of
these races produced the godless, heaven-defying Nephelim, the
Titans of the Old Testament, whose wickedness brought on the
diluvial catastrophe. These half-breeds of the antediluvian time were
in all probability the best developed, physically and perhaps
mentally, of the men of their period; and but for the Deluge they
might have become masters of the world.
[43] Modern Science in Bible Lands, chap. iv.
[44] That this is the true meaning of the expressions in Genesis
vi. I cannot doubt. See discussion of the subject in the work cited
in previous note.
This question of different races and religions before the Flood is,
however, deserving of a little farther elucidation. The names Elohim](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-76-320.jpg)
![and in this the whole Godhead under its combined aspects of Elohim
and Jahveh takes a part. A similar view has caused the Chaldean
narrator to invoke the aid of all the gods in his pantheon to effect
the destruction of man.
These considerations farther throw light on the double character
of the Deluge narrative in Genesis, which has induced those
ingenious scholars who occupy themselves with analysis or
disintegration of the Pentateuch to affirm two narratives, one Elohist
and one Jahvist. [45] Whatever value may attach to this hypothesis,
it is evident that if the history is thus made up of two documents it
gains in value, since this would imply that the editor had at his
disposal two chronicles embodying the observations of two
narrators, possibly of different sects, if these differences were
perpetuated in the postdiluvian world; and farther, that he is enabled
to affirm that the catastrophe affected both the great races of men.
It farther would imply that these early documents were used by the
writer to produce his combined narrative almost without change of
diction, so that they remain in their original form of the alleged
testimony of eye-witnesses, a peculiarity which attaches also to the
Chaldean version, as this purports to be in the form given by
Hasisadra, the Chaldean Noah, himself. [46]
[45] See, for a very clear statement of these views, Professor
Green in Hebraica, January 1889, along with Dr. Harper's résumé
of the Pentateuchal criticism in the previous number.
[46] Translation of G. Smith and others. With reference to the
preservation of this and the Hebrew narrative in writing, we
should bear in mind that writing was an art well known in Chaldea
and Egypt immediately after the Deluge, or at least between 2000
and 3000 B.C., and that the Chaldean narrator speaks of
documents hidden by Noah at Sippara before the Deluge.
Let us now inquire into the physical aspects of the Deluge, as
they are said to have presented themselves to the ancient witness or
witnesses to whom we owe the Biblical account of the catastrophe,
and endeavour to ascertain if they have any agreement with the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-78-320.jpg)
![history derived from their Chaldean or Mesopotamian ancestors, or
because they continued to regard the ark as rather a great box than
a ship properly so called. On the other hand, it is likely that the
particulars in the Chaldean account came from later manipulation of
the narrative, after commerce and navigation on the Euphrates and
Persian Gulf had become familiar to the Chaldeans. Thus in this as in
other respects the Hebrew narrative is the more primitive of the two,
and is consistent with the necessity of Divine instructions to Noah,
which, if he had been familiar with navigation, would not have been
necessary. [47]
[47] See also the evidence of an inland position of the writers in
the record of creation in Genesis i., as stated in my work cited in
previous note.
As in the Chaldean version, the Biblical history begins with the
specification of the ark. On this (Elohist) portion it is only necessary
to say that the dimensions of the ark are large and well adapted to
stowage rather than to speed, and that within it was strengthened
by three decks and by a number of bulkheads, or partitions,
separating the rooms or berths into which it was divided. Without, it
was protected and rendered tight by coats of resinous or asphaltic
varnish (copher), and it was built of the lightest and most durable
kind of wood (gopher or cypress). Only two openings are mentioned,
a hatch or window above, and a port or door in the side. There is no
mention of any masts, rigging, or other means of propulsion or
steerage. The Chaldean history differs in introducing a steersman,
thus implying the means of propulsion as in an actual ship.
Noah is instructed, in addition to his own family, to provide for
animals, two of every kind; but these very general terms are
afterwards limited by the words uph, bemah, and remesh, which
define birds, cattle, and small quadrupeds as those specially
intended. Noah's ark was not a menagerie, but rather like a cattle-
ship, capable perhaps of accommodating as many animals as one of
those steamers which now transfer to England the animal produce of
Western fields and prairies. The animals portrayed on the ancient](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-80-320.jpg)
![monuments of Egypt and Assyria, however, inform us that, in early
post-diluvial times, and therefore probably also in the time of Noah,
a greater variety of animals were under the control of man than is
the case in any one country at present. [48] In the passage referring
to the embarkation, only the cattle and fowls are mentioned, but
seven pairs are to be taken of the clean species which could be used
as food. [49] The embarkation having been completed on the very
day when the Deluge commenced, we have next the narrative of the
Flood itself. Here it is noteworthy that God (Elohim) makes the
arrangements, and Jahveh shuts the voyagers in.
[48] Houghton, Natural History of the Ancients, and Transactions
of the Society of Biblical Archæology; also representations of
tame antelopes, &c., on Egyptian monuments.
[49] This has been considered a later addition; but the practice of
all primitive peoples has sanctioned the distinction of clean and
unclean beasts, which is merely defined in the Mosaic law, not
instituted for the first time.
The first note that our witness enters in his 'log' relates to his
impressions of the causes of the catastrophe, which was not effected
supernaturally, but by natural causes. These are the 'breaking up of
the fountains of the great deep' and the 'opening of the windows of
heaven.' These expressions must be interpreted in accordance with
the use of similar terms in the account of creation in Genesis i., the
more so that this statement is a portion regarded by the composite
theory as Elohistic. On this principle of interpretation, the great deep
is that universal ocean which prevailed before the elevation of the
dry land, and the breaking up of its fountains is the removal of that
restriction placed upon it when its waters were gathered together
into one place. In other words, the meaning is the invasion of the
land by the ocean. In like manner, the windows of heaven, the
cloudy reservoirs of the atmospheric expanse, or possibly
waterspouts, or even volcanic eruptions, and not necessarily
identical with the great rain extending for forty days, as stated in the
following clause. The Chaldean record adds the phenomena of
thunder and tempest, but omits the great deep; an indication that it](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-81-320.jpg)
![His next experience is of a gale of wind, accompanied or followed
by cessation of the rain and of the inflow of the oceanic waters. [50]
The waters then decreased, not regularly, but by an intermittent
process, 'going and returning'; but whether this was a tidal
phenomenon or of the nature of earthquake waves we have no
information. At length the ark grounded, apparently on high ground
or in thick weather, for no land was visible; but at length, after two
months, neighbouring hill-tops were seen.
[50] Genesis viii. 1, 2: 'And Elohim made a wind to pass over the
earth, and the waters abated,' &c.
The incident of sending out birds to test the recession of the
waters deserves notice, because of its apparently trivial nature,
because it appears with variations in the Chaldean account, and
because it has been treated in a remarkably unscientific manner by
some critics. It indicates the uncertainty which would arise in the
mind of the patriarch because of the fluctuating decrease of the
waters, and possibly also a misty condition of the air preventing a
distinct view of distant objects. The birds selected for the purpose
were singularly appropriate. The raven is by habit a wanderer, and
remarkable for power of flight and clearness of distant vision. So
long, therefore, as it made the ark its headquarters, 'going and
returning' [51] from its search for food, it might be inferred that no
habitable land was accessible. The dove, sent out immediately after
the raven, [52] is of a different habit. It could not act as a scavenger
of the waters and go and return, but could leave only if it found land
covered with vegetation. As a domesticated bird also, it would
naturally come back to be taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth
at intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf when it found
tree tops above the water, and remaining away when it found food
and shelter. The Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow—a
perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into the ark at all,
would from its habits of life be incapable of affording any
information. This addition is a mark of interpolation in the Chaldean
version, and proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-85-320.jpg)
![by popular superstition to the swallow, or from the familiar habits of
the bird suggesting to some later editor its appropriateness.
Singularly enough, the usually judicious Schrader, probably from
deficient knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate all this,
and after a long discussion prefers the Babylonian legend for
reasons of a most unscientific character, actually condemning the
perfectly natural and clear Biblical story as artificial and due to a
recent emendation. He says: 'When the story passed over to the
Hebrews, the name of the swallow has disappeared,' and 'it is only
from the Babylonian narrative that the selection of the different birds
becomes clear.' This little disquisition of Schrader is, indeed, one of
the most amusing instances of that inversion of sound criticism
which results when unscientific commentators tamper with the plain
statements of truthful and observant witnesses.
[51] Margin of Authorised Version; less fully, 'to and fro' in the
text.
[52] There is no reason to suppose, as some have done, a hiatus
here in the narrative.
The uncertainty indicated by the mission of the birds seems to
have continued from the first day of the tenth to the first day of the
first month, when Noah at length ventured to remove the covering
of the ark and inspect the condition of the surrounding country, now
abandoned by the waters, but not thoroughly dried for some time
longer. Still, so timid was the patriarch that he did not dare without a
special command to leave his place of safety. I am aware that if the
two alleged documents are arbitrarily separated it is possible to see
here some apparent contradiction in dates; but this is not necessary
if we leave them in their original relation. [53]
[53] See Green, Hebraica, l. c.
It will be observed that a narrative such as that summarised
above bears unmistakably stamped upon it the characteristics of the
testimony of an eye-witness. By whomsoever reduced to writing and
finally edited, it must, if genuine, have come down nearly in its](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-86-320.jpg)
![present form from the time of the catastrophe which it relates. It
follows that the narrator leaves no place for the current questions as
to the universality of the Deluge. It was universal so far as his
experience extended, but that is all. He is not responsible for what
occurred beyond the limits of his observation and beyond the fact
that man, so far as known to him, perished. If, therefore, as some
have held, [54] Balaam in his prophecy refers to Cainite populations
as extant in his time, or if Moses declines to trace to any of the
postdiluvian patriarchs the Rephaim, Emim, Zuzim and other
prehistoric peoples of Palestine, we may infer, without any
contradiction of our narrative, that there were surviving
antediluvians other than the Noachidæ, whatever improbability may
attach to this on other grounds, and more especially from the now
ascertained extension of the post-glacial submergence over nearly all
parts of the northern hemisphere.
[54] Motais, Déluge Biblique.
Let it also be noticed that beyond the prophetic intimation to
Noah, and the one expression, Jahveh 'shut him in,' which may refer
merely to providential care, there is, as already remarked, nothing
miraculous, in the popular sense of that term; and that mythical
elements, such as those introduced into the Babylonian narrative,
are altogether absent. The story relates to plain matters of fact,
which, if they happened at all, any one might observe, and for the
proof of which any ordinary testimony would be sufficient. It may be
profitable, however, to revert here to the probable relation of this
narrative to the geological facts already adverted to, and also its
bearing on the mythical and polytheistic additions which we find in
the Deluge stories of heathen nations.
Regarding the Biblical Deluge as a record of a submergence of a
vast region of Eur-Asia and Northern Africa, at least, while no similar
catastrophe has been recorded subsequently, it is unquestionable
that submergences equally important have occurred again and again
in the geological history of our continents, and have been equally
destructive of animal life. It is true that most of these are believed to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1088304-250609014045-04f6ccde/85/Silverlight-2-Unleashed-1st-Edition-Laurent-Bugnion-87-320.jpg)
Silverlight 2 Unleashed 1st Edition Laurent Bugnion
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- 6. Table of Contents Copyright.....................................................................................................1 Foreword.................................................................................................... 4 About the Author......................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgments....................................................................................... 6 We Want to Hear from You!........................................................................ 7 Introduction............................................................................................... 9 About Code in This Book................................................................................................................................................................ 9 One Year Older.............................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 1. Introducing Silverlight.............................................................. 11 Where Does Silverlight Come From?............................................................................................................................................ 12 Using Third-Party Plug-Ins........................................................................................................................................................... 15 Running on Multiple Platforms..................................................................................................................................................... 17 Making the Web Application Secure............................................................................................................................................. 18 Introducing Silverlight.net............................................................................................................................................................ 19 What Do You Need to Run Silverlight?......................................................................................................................................... 19 Updating Your Runtime—Automatically..................................................................................................................................... 20 Trying Silverlight Demos.............................................................................................................................................................. 20 What Do You Need to Develop Silverlight?.................................................................................................................................. 24 Reading the Documentation......................................................................................................................................................... 25 Looking into Silverlight’s Future.................................................................................................................................................. 27 Summary....................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 2. Understanding XAML.............................................................. 29 Using XML for Data...................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Using XML for User Interfaces..................................................................................................................................................... 31 Understanding XML Namespaces................................................................................................................................................ 31 Defining Additional Namespaces................................................................................................................................................. 32 Creating a Canvas with Children.................................................................................................................................................. 33 Attaching Properties: Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top..................................................................................................................... 34 Documenting Your Markup with XML Comments...................................................................................................................... 35 Testing XAML Markup................................................................................................................................................................. 35 Setting Properties in XAML.......................................................................................................................................................... 38 Changing Brushes......................................................................................................................................................................... 40 Composing Scenes in XAML........................................................................................................................................................ 40 Saving Typing, Saving Space......................................................................................................................................................... 42 Summary....................................................................................................................................................................................... 43 Chapter 3. Playing with XAML Transforms and Animations..................... 45 Transforming Visuals.................................................................................................................................................................... 45 Types of Transforms...................................................................................................................................................................... 47 Composing Transforms................................................................................................................................................................. 52 Creating a Basic Animation.......................................................................................................................................................... 54 Understanding the Animation’s Elements................................................................................................................................... 55 Adding a Scale Animation............................................................................................................................................................. 57 Using Other Types of Animations................................................................................................................................................ 58 Deploying the Scene to a Web Page.............................................................................................................................................. 60 Summary....................................................................................................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 4. Expression Blend..................................................................... 61 The Expression Studio in Short.................................................................................................................................................... 61 Installing Expression Blend.......................................................................................................................................................... 62 Starting Expression Blend............................................................................................................................................................ 62 Setting Options.............................................................................................................................................................................. 63 Creating a New Project................................................................................................................................................................. 64 Understanding the Panels............................................................................................................................................................. 65 Looking at the Files....................................................................................................................................................................... 66 Silverlight 2 Unleashed
- 7. Executing in theWeb Browser...................................................................................................................................................... 67 Working with Shapes.................................................................................................................................................................... 67 Using the Properties Panel........................................................................................................................................................... 68 Using the Color Picker.................................................................................................................................................................. 69 Creating a 3D Border Effect Using RadialGradientBrush............................................................................................................ 71 Resetting Properties to Their Default Value................................................................................................................................. 72 Composing the Elements Hierarchy............................................................................................................................................. 72 Summary....................................................................................................................................................................................... 73 Chapter 5. Using Media............................................................................. 75 Mixing Colors................................................................................................................................................................................ 75 Seeing Through the Transparency Channel.................................................................................................................................. 77 Seeing Through the Opacity.......................................................................................................................................................... 79 Using Vector Graphics.................................................................................................................................................................. 80 Adding Media to Your Scenes....................................................................................................................................................... 82 Controlling Sound and Video....................................................................................................................................................... 88 Checking the Other Properties...................................................................................................................................................... 91 Using Media to Write.................................................................................................................................................................... 92 Transforming Media..................................................................................................................................................................... 94 Using Web-Based Media............................................................................................................................................................... 94 Summary....................................................................................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 6. Blending a Little More.............................................................. 97 Creating Transforms..................................................................................................................................................................... 97 Creating an OpacityMask.............................................................................................................................................................. 98 Using Paths................................................................................................................................................................................. 100 Clipping Path............................................................................................................................................................................... 102 Grouping Controls....................................................................................................................................................................... 103 Making a User Control................................................................................................................................................................ 106 Working on the Thumbnails Gallery.......................................................................................................................................... 109 Summary...................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 Chapter 7. Deploying to a Web Page......................................................... 115 Creating a Test Page..................................................................................................................................................................... 115 Understanding the object Tag...................................................................................................................................................... 117 Detecting Silverlight.................................................................................................................................................................... 122 Integrating Silverlight in an Existing Web Page......................................................................................................................... 123 Getting Web Space...................................................................................................................................................................... 128 Getting Started with FTP............................................................................................................................................................ 130 Copying Your Silverlight Application.......................................................................................................................................... 132 Summary...................................................................................................................................................................................... 134 Chapter 8. Programming Silverlight with JavaScript............................... 137 Learning the Basics..................................................................................................................................................................... 138 Understanding the Concept of Objects....................................................................................................................................... 144 Using the Literal Notation JSON................................................................................................................................................ 146 Static Members............................................................................................................................................................................ 148 Loading Scripts in a Web Page.................................................................................................................................................... 149 Understanding the Context......................................................................................................................................................... 150 Integrating Silverlight in an Existing Web Page Using JavaScript............................................................................................. 151 Debugging.................................................................................................................................................................................... 158 Summary...................................................................................................................................................................................... 159 Chapter 9. Understanding .NET............................................................... 161 History of .NET............................................................................................................................................................................ 161 Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2008....................................................................................................................... 164 Creating a Silverlight 2 Application in Visual Studio 2008....................................................................................................... 164 Intellisense................................................................................................................................................................................... 170 Programming C# with Basic Constructs..................................................................................................................................... 171 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 182 Chapter 10. Progressing with .NET.......................................................... 183 Programming with Objects in C#............................................................................................................................................... 183 Adding Interactivity to the Thumbnails Application.................................................................................................................. 189 Silverlight 2 Unleashed
- 8. Overloading Methods.................................................................................................................................................................. 193 RaisingEvents and Using Delegates........................................................................................................................................... 194 Storing Data on the Client........................................................................................................................................................... 198 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 205 Chapter 11. Progressing with Animations................................................ 207 Animating Elements in Blend..................................................................................................................................................... 207 Synchronizing Animations.......................................................................................................................................................... 212 Reversing a Storyboard............................................................................................................................................................... 214 PointAnimation........................................................................................................................................................................... 214 Starting and Stopping the Animation......................................................................................................................................... 216 Working on the Thumbnails Gallery........................................................................................................................................... 218 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 229 Chapter 12. Encoding Videos with Expression Encoder........................... 231 Before We Start............................................................................................................................................................................ 231 Introducing Expression Encoder................................................................................................................................................ 232 Setting Options............................................................................................................................................................................ 232 Understanding the Panels........................................................................................................................................................... 233 Importing a Video....................................................................................................................................................................... 234 Saving your Changes................................................................................................................................................................... 235 Specifying the Output Type......................................................................................................................................................... 235 Testing Before Encoding............................................................................................................................................................. 239 Setting Metadata......................................................................................................................................................................... 240 Encoding the Video for Silverlight.............................................................................................................................................. 243 Checking the Result.................................................................................................................................................................... 244 Advanced Parameters................................................................................................................................................................. 245 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 246 Chapter 13. Progressing with Videos....................................................... 247 Why Streaming?.......................................................................................................................................................................... 247 Publishing on Your Own Website............................................................................................................................................... 248 Adding an Overlay....................................................................................................................................................................... 249 Letting Your Users Choose the Player........................................................................................................................................ 253 Publishing on Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Servers............................................................................................................. 258 Adding the Application in an Existing Web Page...................................................................................................................... 260 Firing Script Commands (and Catching Them)......................................................................................................................... 262 Modifying the Player Template in Blend.................................................................................................................................... 264 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 267 Chapter 14. Letting .NET and JavaScript Talk.......................................... 269 Making .NET Available to JavaScript......................................................................................................................................... 269 Handling .NET Events in JavaScript.......................................................................................................................................... 271 Calling JavaScript Methods from .NET...................................................................................................................................... 275 Calling .NET Methods from JavaScript...................................................................................................................................... 277 Adding a “Login” Dialog to the Thumbnails Application........................................................................................................... 278 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 297 Chapter 15. Digging into Silverlight Elements......................................... 299 Exploring the Class Hierarchy.................................................................................................................................................... 299 Choosing XAML or Code-Behind................................................................................................................................................ 301 Packing and Laying out with Panels........................................................................................................................................... 304 Scrolling and Bordering............................................................................................................................................................... 315 Using Pop-Ups............................................................................................................................................................................. 318 Drawing Shapes........................................................................................................................................................................... 319 Summary...................................................................................................................................................................................... 321 Chapter 16. Digging Deeper into Silverlight Elements............................. 323 Understanding the Control Class................................................................................................................................................ 323 Discovering Basic Controls......................................................................................................................................................... 325 Picking Dates with Calendar and DatePicker............................................................................................................................. 333 Writing with Ink.......................................................................................................................................................................... 335 Making a Simple Drawing Application....................................................................................................................................... 336 Presenting Data with ItemsControls.......................................................................................................................................... 343 Silverlight 2 Unleashed
- 9. Deep Zooming YourImage Collection........................................................................................................................................ 345 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 348 Chapter 17. Using Resources, Styling, and Templating............................ 349 Storing Items in Collections....................................................................................................................................................... 350 Using ResourceDictionaries in Silverlight.................................................................................................................................. 351 Styling a Control.......................................................................................................................................................................... 356 Styling the Thumbnails Application........................................................................................................................................... 360 Embedding Fonts in the Application.......................................................................................................................................... 362 Templating the Lookless Control................................................................................................................................................ 364 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 369 Chapter 18. Data Binding and Using Data Controls.................................. 371 Understanding Data Binding...................................................................................................................................................... 371 Digging in the Binding Class....................................................................................................................................................... 377 Setting the DataContext.............................................................................................................................................................. 378 Using Data Controls.................................................................................................................................................................... 380 Using XML Data Sources............................................................................................................................................................ 394 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 394 Chapter 19. Creating User Controls and Custom Controls....................... 395 Creating a Thumbnails Viewer User Control............................................................................................................................. 395 Creating the Items and Designing a DataTemplate................................................................................................................... 405 Creating a MediaInfoDisplay Custom Control........................................................................................................................... 413 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 422 Chapter 20. Taking Silverlight 2 One Step Further.................................. 423 Creating a Default Template for the MediaInfoDisplay Control............................................................................................... 423 Using the MediaInfoDisplay Control.......................................................................................................................................... 425 Scrolling the Items...................................................................................................................................................................... 430 Creating a New RepeatButton Template.................................................................................................................................... 433 Exporting Classes to an External Assembly and Refactoring.................................................................................................... 437 Talking About the Application Object........................................................................................................................................ 442 Using Generics............................................................................................................................................................................ 444 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 445 Chapter 21. Taking Silverlight 2 Even Further......................................... 447 Registering Multiple JavaScript Event Handlers....................................................................................................................... 448 Finding Silverlight Elements in JavaScript................................................................................................................................ 449 Accessing the HTML Page From .NET....................................................................................................................................... 451 Exchanging Data Between .NET and JavaScript........................................................................................................................ 453 Passing Initialization Parameters............................................................................................................................................... 461 Attaching .NET Events to HTML Elements............................................................................................................................... 462 Publishing Directly from Visual Studio...................................................................................................................................... 465 Debugging Your Silverlight Application..................................................................................................................................... 466 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 473 Chapter 22. Connecting to the Web.......................................................... 475 Creating and Loading an XML File............................................................................................................................................. 475 Loading a Zip File and Showing Progress.................................................................................................................................. 488 Making Requests to WCF Services............................................................................................................................................. 496 More Connectivity....................................................................................................................................................................... 505 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 506 Chapter 23. Placing Cross-domain Requests and Handling Exceptions... 507 Placing Cross-domain Requests................................................................................................................................................. 507 Communicating with Third-Party Services................................................................................................................................. 511 Placing POST Requests............................................................................................................................................................... 524 Throwing and Catching Exceptions............................................................................................................................................ 525 Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................... 533 Chapter 24. Silverlight: Continuing the Journey...................................... 535 Updating a Service Reference..................................................................................................................................................... 535 Killing a Process.......................................................................................................................................................................... 536 Silverlight 2 Unleashed
- 10. About Protecting YourWork...................................................................................................................................................... 538 Binding in Special Configurations.............................................................................................................................................. 539 Using the ASP.NET Controls Silverlight and MediaPlayer........................................................................................................ 544 Creating Unit Tests for Silverlight.............................................................................................................................................. 549 Making or Buying XAML Resources........................................................................................................................................... 557 Using Third-Party Controls and Libraries................................................................................................................................. 560 Reading Silverlight-Related Blogs.............................................................................................................................................. 561 Summary...................................................................................................................................................................................... 561 Silverlight 2 Unleashed
- 11. Silverlight UNLEASHED 800 East 96thStreet, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA Laurent Bugnion Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 1 Return to Table of Contents
- 12. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Copyright© 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/). ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33014-8 ISBN-10: 0-672-330148 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bugnion, Laurent. Silverlight 2.0 unleashed / Laurent Bugnion. -- 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-672-33014-8 1. Silverlight (Electronic resource) 2. Multimedia systems. 3. User interfaces (Computer systems) 4. Application software--Development. I. Title. QA76.575.B84 2008 006.7--dc22 2008040836 Printed in the United States of America First Printing October 2008 Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Sams Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Warning and Disclaimer Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possi- ble, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an “as is” basis. The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book. Bulk Sales Sams Publishing offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales. For more information, please contact U.S. Corporate and Government Sales 1-800-382-3419 corpsales@pearsontechgroup.com For sales outside of the U.S., please contact International Sales international@pearson.com Editor-in-Chief Karen Gettman Executive Editor Neil Rowe Development Editor Mark Renfrow Managing Editor Patrick Kanouse Project Editor Mandie Frank Copy Editor Geneil Breeze Indexers Tim Wright Brad Herriman Proofreader Deborah Williams Technical Editors J. Boyd Nolan Martha Rotter Publishing Coordinator Cindy Teeters Designer Gary Adair Compositor Bronkella Publishing, LLC Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 2 Return to Table of Contents
- 13. Dedication How to writethis book without your never-ending, ever patient support, Chi Meei… This was once again a crazy project, and I couldn’t have done it without your approval and your help. By your constant support and the energy and dedication you put into shield- ing me from the small worries of life, you made this book possible. I love you. To Alise and Laeticia, my two princesses. Before you appeared in my life, I thought I was happy. Now I know something big was missing. I love you both so much. Un jour sans danser est un jour perdu Maurice Béjart Je ne sais pas ce qui est beau, mais je sais ce que j’aime et je trouve ça amplement suffisant. Boris Vian Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer; Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées, Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher. Baudelaire – L’Albatros Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 3 Return to Table of Contents
- 14. Foreword There are twoundeniable trends in the software development world. The first is toward web style deployment of applications. The web is quickly maturing as an application delivery platform, and increasingly, web applications are seen as the right solution for many styles of applications. The second is toward richness of applications. User experi- ence is becoming increasingly important; consumer-facing applications attracting and retaining users has never been harder and even small usability improvements often make the difference. In business applications, CIOs are realizing that if they can save even a few seconds on every transaction by making employees more effective they can save millions of dollars. Not surprisingly, Silverlight 2 sits squarely in this sweetspot. Silverlight 2 is a web application technology. The Silverlight runtime itself is smaller than the average Britney Spears song and is seamless to install on any browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and so on) and on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Silverlight applications are small and fast to deploy and have zero impact on the client machine. There is no install or uninstall step for Silverlight applications, and all these applications run in a sandbox that ensure they cannot harm user machines or other applications. Silverlight 2 enables building great user experiences. Through the power of the conver- gence around video, vector graphics and a powerful developer framework, Silverlight is the ideal platform for UX. Developers have full expressiveness with the power of the CLR under the hood in Silverlight. The C# and VB languages allow developers to be productive today without learning new languages and development tools. The XAML markup allows designers to use Expression and other design tools to build great transitions and anima- tions so that applications look and feel great. All of this together enables Silverlight appli- cations to deliver more productive experiences to end users helping them get their jobs done faster. This book unleashes Silverlight for you. Laurent not only has a deep understanding of Silverlight, where it is now and where it is going, but he also deeply understands real world programming concerns. This book will make learning Silverlight fun. I can’t wait to see what you build with it. Brad Abrams Product Unit Manager Microsoft Corporation http://blogs.msdn.com/brada September 2008 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 4 Return to Table of Contents
- 15. About the Author LaurentBugnion works as a senior software developer and architect in Switzerland, where he lives with his wife, Chi Meei, and his two daughters, Alise (2001) and Laeticia (2004). Originally an electronics engineer from the Engineering School of Yverdon (Switzerland), his interests quickly moved to software, and he achieved a post-graduate degree in soft- ware engineering in 1999 in the Engineering School of Rapperswil (Switzerland). Currently, his interests are very much set on WPF, Silverlight, and other .NET 3.5 tech- nologies, which he helped introduce, teach, and coach at Siemens for the past three years. Prior to that, he first wrote embedded C/C++, and then moved to desktop computers in Java, JavaScript, and eventually .NET (WinForms and ASP.NET). After more than 12 years spent developing various software products at Siemens, Laurent is employed since December 2008 by IdentityMine, one of the world’s leading firms in WPF and Silverlight development and design. Privately, Laurent has also been active, developing websites and web applications in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ASP, and currently ASP.NET. He has done his best to contribute to various developers communities, first in the JavaScript newsgroups, and then in Microsoft’s forums related to ASP.NET, C#, WPF, and Silverlight. He blogs regularly on http://blog.galasoft.ch and publishes articles, prototypes, and demos related to the mentioned technologies. Laurent became a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in 2007 for ASP.NET and then in 2008 for Client Application Development. In 2008, he also earned an MCTS for Windows Presentation Foundation. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 5 Return to Table of Contents
- 16. Acknowledgments A book abouta to-be-released technology cannot be written without strong support from the community, both within Microsoft and outside it. Making a complete list of all the people who encouraged me and helped me in this daunting task is impossible, but I want to mention and thank some people (and for some of them, friends) explicitly (and in no particular order): . At Microsoft: Scott Guthrie, Tim Sneath, Ian Ellison-Taylor, Brad Abrams, Rob Relyea, Tim Heuer, Adam Kinney, Peter Blois, Unni Ravindranathan, Joe Stegman, Mike Harsh, Karen Corby, Kathy Kam, Corrina Barber, Beatriz Costa, James Clarke, John Gossmann, Karsten Januszewski, Adam Nathan, Christian Schormann, Mark Feinholz, Ted Hu, Jeff Wilcox, Justin Angel, and many others from the Dev Div, for building the stuff my dreams are made of (and for writing about it!). I’ve seen the “new Microsoft” at work, and I like it! . In the Silverlight and WPF community: Josh Smith, Jonathan Russ, Brennon Williams, Karl Shifflett, Marlon Grech, Corrado Cavalli, Grant Hinkson, Nathan Dunlap, Josh Wagoner, Robby Ingebretsen, Kevin Moore, Shawn Wildermuth, Dave Campbell, Jon Galloway, Grant Hinkson, John Papa, and all the WPF Disciples for teaching me all I know (or so it feels). . The team at Sams and especially Neil Rowe, Mark Renfrow, Mandie Frank, and Geneil Breeze for their patience and support for this first-time author. . The whole MVP community and especially the Client Application Development members, for welcoming me and making me feel worth it. . All my friends, online and offline, who had to bear with me being either working on the book or talking about the book or thinking about the book or, you know, sleeping (and probably dreaming about the book). A very special thanks to Brennon Williams who gave me such invaluable comments and advice; to J. Boyd Nolan for reviewing and editing, and for converting this book’s exam- ples from C# in VB.NET; to Adam Nathan who advised me about the book’s outline before I even started writing it; to Shawn Wildermuth for pulling me out of many a tech- nical hole; to Peter Blois for listening patiently to my bug reports and proposing solu- tions; to Tim Heuer and Adam Kinney, for clearly showing that Silverlight is more than just a job to them; to all the Silverlight Insiders for the always interesting and often life- saving discussions. Software engineering is a passion. To all of you whom I learn from everyday, and to whom I try to teach a little through my blog, my site, or in conferences, thank you for making this more than a job: a way of life. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 6 Return to Table of Contents
- 17. We Want toHear from You! As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to pass our way. You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books stronger. Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and that due to the high volume of mail I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message. When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your name and phone or email address. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book. E-mail: webdev@samspublishing.com Mail: Neil Rowe Executive Editor Sams Publishing 800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA Reader Services Visit our website and register this book at www.informit.com/title/9780672330148 for convenient access to any updates, downloads, or errata that might be available for this book. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 7 Return to Table of Contents
- 18. Silverlight 2 UnleashedPage 8 Return to Table of Contents
- 19. Introduction With the releaseof Windows Presentation Foundation (a new graphical user interface framework for Windows desktop applications) in 2006 and of Silverlight in 2008, client application development took a turn for the best. Microsoft boldly decided to abandon some concepts and technologies that had been used since the first release of Windows and to do something new and better. While it sometimes seems difficult to keep up with the pace of change imposed on software developers, this one is really worth it. Microsoft’s bet on Silverlight and WPF is huge, and it cannot fail. These technologies represent the future of client application development. Because it runs on multiple platforms in a web browser plug-in that will soon be available on most of the rich clients accessing the Internet, because it can be deployed as easily as any web content and be served from any web server without additional infrastructure, and because of the rich graphic interfaces it allows to be built and the amazingly easy connectivity to remote services that it offers, Silverlight will be a major player in the world of rich interactive applications (RIA). Silverlight is also a gateway to Windows Presentation Foundation, the client application technology that represents the future of Microsoft Windows programming for desktop computers. In a World Wide Web where Adobe Flash currently has a leading edge, Silverlight repre- sents much more than just an alternative: It is the .NET way! Every .NET programmer will feel at home with Silverlight, because the libraries, the programming languages (C#, VB.NET, Ruby, Python), and the development environment (Visual Studio, Expression Studio) are the same. In addition, new concepts developed and refined in Windows Presentation Foundation are made available to Silverlight programmers, such as data binding, separation of behavior and looks, lookless controls that can be styled and templated at will in powerful design tools such as Expression Blend, a rich animation system, media integration, and so on. XAML, the new XML-based Application Markup Language developed by Microsoft, can be leveraged as a bridge between developers and designers to enable new workflows. This book is not and was never intended to be a complete reference of the Silverlight plat- form. Honestly, I am not even sure that you need a book for this: The Internet is at your disposal and has a better, more complete, and more actual reference base than any book can ever offer. No, this book is here to help you discover why programming is fun and why Silverlight is even more fun, and to contaminate you with the Silverlight virus. Complex concepts are explained in simple terms, with many hands-on demos and figures so that beginners as well as advanced developers quickly will feel at home. About Code in This Book We tried to keep formatting as consistent as possible throughout the book and to make the code look like it does in Visual Studio. The code is color coded to help you work faster Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 9 Return to Table of Contents
- 20. and recognize keyconcepts in XAML, C#, JavaScript, and HTML in Studio and in Expression Blend. The source code lines are only numbered where it is relevant, for example, when the text makes explicit reference to a line number. The whole source code for this book is available online at www.galasoft.ch/SL2U/Code. For C# code, a translation in VB.NET is also available, courtesy of this book’s technical editor, J. Boyd Nolan. One Year Older I started working on this book in September 2007, and I am now exactly one year older. Professionally speaking, it has been the most interesting year of my life. Since I started working as a developer in 1996, I have worked with many client technologies and programming languages, including C, VB, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET, Windows Forms and finally Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight. In all these years, I have never been as excited about a new programming platform. Writing a book is hard, and it’s a lot of work. But it was also fun and so interesting that I always felt right doing it. If I had to do it again, I would sign without hesitation. And now that it’s going to be published, I can’t wait to see what you, the reader, will create in Silverlight. Software has much to do with art, and Silverlight is the richest palette you can imagine. So grab the book and your computer, start coding and designing, and show the world what you can do. I will be waiting. Happy coding! Laurent Introduction 2 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 10 Return to Table of Contents
- 21. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight Itall started when Microsoft presented its revolutionary user interface (UI) framework, Windows Presentation Foundation, to an enthusiastic crowd of graphics designers, software developers, and businessmen in March 2006 at the new MIX conference in Las Vegas. Microsoft also added one session about a lesser-known technology with the rather barbarian name Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or WPF/E. There was nothing much to see yet, but the abstract was enticing: “With WPF/E you’ll be able to build rich, interactive experiences that run in major Web browsers on major platforms as well as on mobile devices.” A little more than a year later, at the second edition of the same MIX conference, Scott Guthrie (general manager at Microsoft, responsible for most of the .NET teams) climbed on stage and gave the crowd an amazing software demon- stration. The barbarian WPF/E was gone; in its place was Silverlight (see Figure 1.1). A bright new logo revolved on the screens. Gradients and animations were all over the place. Planes flew over the web browser’s window, connecting US cities while Scott was planning his next trips; a chess application let the browser’s JavaScript engine play against .NET, demonstrat- ing without any doubt the superior power of the compiled .NET application over JavaScript’s interpreted code. Yes, the browser was running .NET!—not only in Internet Explorer but also on Firefox! And yes, even on a Macintosh computer. IN THIS CHAPTER . Where Does Silverlight Come From? . Using Third-Party Plug-Ins . Running on Multiple Platforms . Making the Web Application Secure . Introducing Silverlight.net . What Do You Need to Run Silverlight? . Updating Your Runtime— Automatically . Trying Silverlight Demos . What Do You Need to Develop Silverlight? . Reading the Documentation . Looking into Silverlight’s Future Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 11 Return to Table of Contents
- 22. It was anintense hour! Later that day, more demos of the new Expression Encoder were presented, which allows users to produce movies and run them in the web browser, after having copied them to a streaming (or to a nonstream- ing) web server. Even better, with the Expression Encoder you can now change the look and feel of the video player completely, basing your work on prede- fined templates, but also changing everything from colors to shapes in Expression Blend. These first demos were only the start of an amazing three days packed with Silverlight content. In a little less than a year, Silverlight had made it from little-known side attrac- tion to major technology with a huge potential. Where Does Silverlight Come From? A little history can be interesting to understand where Silverlight came from, and how it is positioned among the many UI technologies available today. Depending on your past experience, you may be well aware of the facts presented in the next sections. In that case, feel free to skip ahead (the next interesting section for you will probably be “Running on Multiple Platforms”). If you don’t want to skip ahead, or if you feel like refreshing your memory, keep reading as this section and the next few sections fast forward from the antiquity of the World Wide Web to the magic of today. Web pages have been around for a long time. In fact, HTML was presented to the world as early as 1992. (You know the old line about dog years being equal to seven human years? Well, 1992 in computer years is, like, Middle Age for humans!) Of course, HTML was limited in the beginning. Web pages were simple, composed mostly of text and hypertext (the most revolutionary idea of HTML, and the origin of the name Hypertext Markup Language). Very quickly, however, the inventors of HTML saw the need for richer content to be made available in web pages. The first step in that direction was the invention of the IMG tag, allowing images to be placed inline. The basis for richer content was there, and the first popular web browser, Mosaic, displayed these pages. Automating Web Pages with JavaScript The next big step forward in the quest for rich content was the addition of a JavaScript engine running in the web browser. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 4 FIGURE 1.1 Microsoft Silverlight logo N O T E All the sessions presented at MIX 2006, 2007 and 2008 can be viewed online at http://sessions.visitmix.com. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 12 Return to Table of Contents
- 23. This programming language(added in 1995 to the Netscape web browser, and then in 1996 in Microsoft Internet Explorer) enabled a much richer interac- tion with the user. Earlier, the only possible user action was through a post- back to the web server, meaning that any data entered by the user had to be sent back to the server for handling, and the result was returned as a response. Obviously, this model was slow, espe- cially at the time of dial-up connections. With JavaScript, it was possible to provide a basic treatment of data on the client directly, without postback. A first obvious use for this client-side technology was a prevalidation of data, making sure that the user was not sending useless information to the server, wasting bandwidth and valu- able server time. With JavaScript enabled, errors could be caught early, and faulty data would never leave the client. Of course, as soon as a web server interaction was needed, for example, to retrieve data, for complex calculations, to authenticate users, and so on, a postback was needed. This model still prevails in many websites even today. Cascading Style Sheets Another big step forward in the creation of rich web content has been the creation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Finally a separation of content and layout was made possible. The look and feel of a web page could be extracted from the page itself and governed by the use of rules placed in external files. This model has many advantages: . The responsibilities can easily be shared by various teams, depending on their skills. Graphics designers can be in charge of the look, developers of the functionality, while marketing is in charge of the content. . In smaller projects, the developer can concentrate on the page’s structure and func- tionality first, and create the look later, after the content is fully known. This way of working is much more efficient than doing everything at the same time. . The page’s look can be changed easily without touching the page itself. . Same styles can be reused over and over again without having to rewrite the code. Classes can be located in a central location and referenced anywhere. In fact, it’s even possible to have styles on a central server and be used on other web servers, related or not. As CSS became more and more sophisticated, the pages became more and more beautiful, to a point where the aspect of the pages, in some cases, becomes as important as the Where Does Silverlight Come From? 5 1 N O T E There are many names for this scripting language, from Netscape’s JavaScript to Microsoft’s JScript to the standard ECMAScript. In this book, the term “JavaScript” will be used without distinction. WA R N I N G Client-side validation can easily be side tracked, and it is always necessary to vali- date data on the server too! Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 13 Return to Table of Contents
- 24. content itself. Onecan argue endlessly whether that’s a good thing (after all, content is what users are really looking for, isn’t it?), but if you can choose between boring content and beautiful content, surely the beauty will make the experience more pleasurable. Progressing to DHTML As the JavaScript and CSS engines became more advanced, some interaction was made possible between them. DHTML (Dynamic HTML) was born. Actually, DHTML is not a technology; it’s a combination of JavaScript and CSS used in the context of HTML. Using JavaScript as a programming language, it is possible to access elements of the page itself (content and style), and to modify them. Since this is client-side technology, no interaction with the server is required for this kind of effect. Because CSS allows the setting of an element’s opacity, it is possible to create fade-in/ fade-out effects. With the possibility to set an element’s position in an absolute manner, JavaScript allows you to move an element across the screen. In addition to “just” adding some kind of intelligence and good looks to the web pages, the interaction between CSS and JavaScript enabled the creation of richer, smoother web pages. Although this all sounds nice, DHTML is rather limited: . Opacity is not supported in all browsers, and the ones that support it don’t use a standard syntax, making it kind of a maintenance nightmare. . Moving elements across the screen can only be done at limited speed and is not as smooth as you would want. . It is impossible to rotate elements. If you want to show a rotated button, you need to simulate this using multiple images, and the effect will not be smooth. . Text (such as a title, in a logo, etc…) can only be rotated by using images. In that case, the localization becomes a nightmare, because you need to translate each image in each language you want to support. . The “hit test area” for any element is always square. In other words, even if you have an image of a round button with a transparent background, you may activate the action even if you click outside the round area. The mouse cursor will turn to a hand even though the mouse is still on the transparent area. Thankfully, Silverlight corrects all these shortcomings, and since it can be “blended” among HTML elements, it offers a real possibility to graphically enrich a web page. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 6 WA R N I N G Although CSS allows creating beautiful pages, it also allows creating ugly looks. Unfortunately, the technology has no taste; only the developer/designer has some (or hasn’t any). That’s true for Silverlight (and any UI technology) as well. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 14 Return to Table of Contents
- 25. Communicating in aRicher Way with AJAX In addition to enabling DHTML, JavaScript brought a huge improvement to client-server communication, and to creating a smoother user experience: Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX), a cumbersome name for a great technol- ogy. In short, AJAX allows JavaScript to send a request to the web server, and to get the response without the web page being refreshed. Instead of using the normal post- back mechanism, the whole communication occurs in the background, and the user doesn’t notice it. With this technology, the user can get additional information from the server without losing the context he is working in. The user experience is also much smoother, because new information gets loaded without the “traumatic” reloading of the page and the temporary white screen caused by it. Using Third-Party Plug-Ins With the limitations of DHTML, various third-party additions to the web browser have been created with the explicit intent to enhance the user experience. The most notorious technologies are probably Java applets, ActiveX controls, and Flash applications. This section reviews the advantages and shortcom- ings of these technologies to understand better how Silverlight compares. Using Java Applets Java applets were extraordinarily popular for a short time and then became unpopular. While some web pages still use the Java technology, their number is decreasing. The main problem with Java is that the runtime is very slow to start. When you load a page with a Java applet on it, the initial loading time makes it a painful experi- ence. On the plus side, Java is a great programming language. It paved the way for .NET, and many of the best features of C# are greatly inspired by the Java language. It also enables advanced graphical effects, such as the famous ripple effect. Limited Java-to-JavaScript and JavaScript-to-Java communication is possible. However, the interface used for this communication is not supported by all the web browsers that Java runs into. Also, the syntax is not easy to learn, and communication is awkward. Using Third-Party Plug-Ins 7 1 T I P AJAX is not very easy to program. Like you will see later, Silverlight 2 offers a great deal of improvement in this area too and makes background communication much easier. N O T E An annoying shortcoming of all the technolo- gies described in this section is that it is impossible to place HTML content in front of a third-party plug-in. The Java applet, ActiveX control, or Flash application will always be in the top level. Silverlight corrects this problem and makes it possible to have HTML content blending with Silverlight content. Also, the HTML–JavaScript–Silverlight interac- tion is better than with any of these older technologies. The boundaries are thinner than ever. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 15 Return to Table of Contents
- 26. Java makes itpossible to open alterna- tive communication ways to the web server. For example, it enables the server to “talk” directly to the client, which is impossible with classic web communica- tion. While this can be a huge techno- logical advantage in certain scenarios, it can also, under certain circumstances, represent a security threat. Because of this, the acceptance of Java applets by big, security-sensitive corporations has been slow and has pretty much “killed” Java in the web browser. Using ActiveX Controls When Microsoft introduced the COM technology in 1993, it also made it possible to create so-called ActiveX controls, “packing” pieces of software and communicating with the external world using the COM interfaces. With this, it is possible to develop controls using classic Windows technology (including fast C++ code), and to place it in a web browser. It is even possible to have some limited interaction with JavaScript and through this to the web page. The major shortcoming of ActiveX is that it uses an obsolete, almost 15-year-old technol- ogy. Also, ActiveX controls can only be used in Internet Explorer on Windows. Using Flash Applications Adobe Flash is probably the most popular third-party plug-in currently available. On the plus side, it allows advanced graphical effects, and it’s not rare to find websites programmed entirely in Flash. While Flash content is often called “Flash movies,” it’s probably fairer to call them “applications.” Flash’s major shortcoming is that it is difficult to program. A (commercial) editor is needed to create the front-end user interface. Additionally, the code- behind can only be programmed in a language called ActionScript, which is a subset of JavaScript. The fact that Flash has been created primarily for graphics designers makes it difficult for software developers to use the tools and to create compelling content and functionality. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 8 N O T E Every book about web technology should make one thing clear: Java and JavaScript have strictly no relationship. When you program JavaScript, you do not program Java. WA R N I N G Programming a website entirely in Flash (or in Silverlight) is not a good idea. Many plat- forms (especially mobile phones, PDAs, and so on) do not allow accessing such sites (or only in a limited manner). This type of tech- nology should only be used to enhance the content of a website, not to replace it completely. N O T E Microsoft doesn’t advertise Silverlight as a Flash “killer.” This strategy would probably be doomed anyway, considering how many Flash designers there are, and how much Flash content is available online. Since both tech- nologies can run safely side-by-side, there is really no need to start a religion war about which is the best! Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 16 Return to Table of Contents
- 27. A limited interactionbetween the Flash application and the containing HTML page is possible through JavaScript. Some interaction between the Flash application and the containing HTML page is possible through JavaScript. Running on Multiple Platforms One important factor when you develop a third-party web technology is to run it on as many platforms as possible. The Web is, by definition, ubiquitous, and it is not rare to find Internet-enabled devices of every shape and power. Adobe Flash is a good example of this: The plug-in is available for a great number of browsers on a great number of operat- ing systems. This makes Flash a powerful platform, and Microsoft understands the need for Silverlight to run in multiple browsers too. As said earlier, at the time of this writing, the Silverlight runtime is avail- able for Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows, and for Firefox and Safari on Macintosh. A version for Linux is in preparation. The real challenge is to offer consistent interfaces on all the platforms on which Silverlight runs. So far, this goal has been very successful, and is a great achievement in the quest for a unified web environment. Some prototypes of Silverlight for smartphones have also been presented, but not much is known about what will be supported on these limited devices. A first version of Silverlight for mobile phone (running on Windows Mobile and also on Nokia mobile phones) should be released by the end of 2008. This should support Silverlight 1 applications, including video. Because Silverlight runs on so many platforms, some limitations in the functionality (compared to the full .NET platform) are unavoidable. Many factors must be considered: . The goal is to keep the runtime small, so that it can easily be installed over Internet connections. The goal in the foreseeable future is to keep it under (or equal to) 5MB. When you compare to the size of the full .NET runtime (and even if you remove all the server-side bits), it’s obvious that not everything can be implemented. . Features requiring a lot of hard- ware acceleration (especially 3D animations) will probably be too hard to implement consistently on multiple platforms (not even mentioning small limited mobile devices). . Various platforms use various underlying graphic technologies, and some of these technologies Running on Multiple Platforms 9 1 N O T E In order to run Silverlight on many platforms in a consistent way, Microsoft is also collabo- rating with Novell and the makers of the open source .NET framework “Mono.” T I P Hardware acceleration is the process through which some of the complex calculations are executed by hardware processors specializ- ing in graphics (as opposed to software). Hardware graphic processors are much faster than anything that software can calcu- late. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 17 Return to Table of Contents
- 28. may not allowall the desired effects. It’s already pretty amazing to see how consis- tent the implementation is on both Windows and Macintosh. For Silverlight to be viable, it is imperative that it remain totally compatible on all supported platforms and browsers. All these reasons create a lot of intense discussions to decide what will make it to Silverlight and what won’t. It will be interesting to observe the development of the plat- form! CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 10 T I P Microsoft is listening to you! Don’t hesitate to contact evangelists and other Silverlight devel- opers, either through the Silverlight forums (http://silverlight.net/forums), or through their blogs (check the section titled “Reading Silverlight-related blogs” in Chapter 24, “Silverlight: Continuing the Journey”). Let them know what you do with the technology, and what your expectations are. Just like third-party developers influenced the way WPF is growing, the same process is true for Silverlight! Let them hear your voice! Making the Web Application Secure Security in web applications is a huge challenge. Even though Microsoft has more often than any other company been the target of virulent criticisms because some of their applications or operating systems were not secure enough, it’s fair to say that any popular web technology is exposed and has had security issues (Java, Firefox, the Linux operating system, the new Google Chrome web browser and many others have all been the target of attacks). Microsoft is taking the security of Silverlight-based applications very seriously. Silverlight applications run in a “sandbox” that limits the functionality of the application and protects the computer it runs on against attacks. Every time a feature is allowed by the sandbox, it is carefully tested to make sure that the change doesn’t present a hole for a potential attack. If humanity was intrinsically good, programming would be easier, but of course, security is not just a matter of attackers, it also has a lot to do with bad code, memory corrup- tions, and so on. Thankfully, the .NET programming platform (the so-called “managed code”) is a secure way of programming. Unlike older unmanaged C++ code, many bugs are eliminated already at the source by the much safer managed programming languages. Memory corruption is almost impossible; memory is automatically freed by the Garbage collector when it is not used anymore, making memory leaks much more infrequent. Obviously it would be naive to believe that Silverlight will never be attacked, or that Silverlight applications will never crash. However, thanks to the experience gathered by the .NET teams, thanks to the managed programming languages, and thanks to the Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 18 Return to Table of Contents
- 29. extra attention investedby Microsoft into that matter, Silverlight should provide a very safe environment. Introducing Silverlight.net The community website http://silverlight.net contains a collection of valuable informa- tion about Silverlight, including quickstarts, samples, tutorials, and so on. Maybe the most interesting section is the gallery, available at http://silverlight.net/community/ communitygallery.aspx. Here you will find a lot of samples, made by Microsoft and third-party developers. This is a good starting point to get an idea of what Silverlight is capable of. Currently, the gallery is divided into two subsections: Silverlight 1.0 (with JavaScript) and Silverlight 2 (with .NET). However, if you install Silverlight 2 (as we recommend), you can still execute older applications. What Do You Need to Run Silverlight? Silverlight is an add-on to the web browser. It gets installed separately and adds function- ality to your web pages. It is currently available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on the Windows XP and Vista operating systems; it is also available for Firefox and Safari on the Macintosh. At the time of this writing, a version for Linux is in preparation, following a historical agreement between Microsoft and Novell. To run Silverlight applications, you need a compatible web browser. When you point a Silverlight-capable web browser to a web page with Silverlight content, you get a small Install Microsoft Silverlight icon, as shown in Figure 1.2, instead of the Silverlight content. . Click on the icon to be taken to a Microsoft web page where you can download and install the Silverlight runtime on your PC. . After installing Silverlight in Internet Explorer, you don’t even need to restart your web browser. In Firefox, you might have to, but it’s not that big a deal. Alternatively, you can install Silverlight 2 from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted. What Do You Need to Run Silverlight? 11 1 FIGURE 1.2 The Install Microsoft Silverlight icon WA R N I N G If you worked with Silverlight before and you already installed a version older than the one required by the current application, you will also see the “Install Microsoft Silverlight” button. You can check the Silverlight version by right-clicking on any Silverlight application, choosing the Silverlight Configuration menu, and selecting the About tab. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 19 Return to Table of Contents
- 30. Updating Your Runtime—Automatically Oncethe runtime is installed, the Silverlight content will automatically be started. Also, a version check will happen when Silverlight is started; if a newer version is available, you can choose to install it automatically. This can be set up in the Silverlight configu- ration dialog by following these steps: 1. Navigate to http://silverlight.net/ samples/1.0/Page-Turn/default. html. This starts one of the earlier Silverlight demos created by Microsoft: The PageTurn sample application. 2. Right-click on the Silverlight appli- cation and choose Silverlight Configuration. 3. Click on the Updates tab. 4. Choose the options you want (see Figure 1.3). CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 12 T I P You can turn pages by clicking and dragging your mouse on the bottom-right corner of the photo album. If you click on the small open book icon on the bottom right, you see a list of thumbnails. FIGURE 1.3 Silverlight configuration Trying Silverlight Demos The cool thing with Silverlight is that it’s so easy to deploy: Simply put the files on a web server, and anyone in the world with a Silverlight-capable browser can see the applica- tions. N O T E Silverlight gets installed only once, and then runs in Firefox or IE (on the Mac, on Safari and Firefox) with the same runtime. If you change the options in Firefox, it will be valid in the other browser installed on the same PC too! Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 20 Return to Table of Contents
- 31. The applications developedby Microsoft for demo purposes are also available online. Additionally, third-party developers can also publish their own sample applications to the Silverlight.net website. As mentioned previously Microsoft used two demo applications when they first introduced Silverlight to the public: the Chess application and the Silverlight Airline sample. Playing Chess Against Silverlight At the time of writing, the Chess demo (see Figure 1.4) is not available yet for Silverlight 2. You can, however, see a video illustrating this application at http://on10.net/blog/tina/ Microsoft-Silverlight-Chess. Also, keep checking the Silverlight.net gallery where the demo and its source code should be posted soon. Trying Silverlight Demos 13 1 FIGURE 1.4 Chess application In this application, you get a chance to play against the machine: The Human button is selected on the bottom. On the top, you can choose to play against another human (booooring), against JavaScript (remember, JScript is Microsoft’s name for its implementa- tion of the technology) or against .NET. The implementation for the chess engine is exactly the same in JavaScript and in .NET. So the most interesting thing to do in that application is to let JavaScript play against .NET: 1. On top, make sure that the .NET button is selected. 2. On the bottom, select the JScript button. 3. Observe how both engines are playing against each other. The most interesting data is the number of nodes per second calculated by each engine. This is an indication of how fast each engine can process data. Typically, .NET calculates approximately 1,000 times faster than JavaScript! Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 21 Return to Table of Contents
- 32. Running this applicationalways leads to the same result: .NET wins over JavaScript, because it is just so much faster. This is a good proof (if it was needed) of some of the advantages we will encounter when we use .NET for advanced calculations instead of the JavaScript engine. Planning Your Trips with the Airline Application The airline application shown in Figure 1.5 was also shown on stage at MIX07 and presents what could be an airline reservation system in the (near) future. Here too, the demo is not yet available for Silverlight 2 at the time of writing but should be updated soon in the Silverlight.net gallery. A video showing this application is available at http://on10.net/blogs/tina/Microsoft-Silverlight-Airlines. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 14 FIGURE 1.5 Airline application 1. Click and hold the departure city. Then, still holding down the button, move the cursor to the target city. You can release the mouse now. 2. Select a date for your trip in the Calendar on the right. 3. The system calculates a number of possible itineraries for your trip. They are shown under the map. Pass your mouse cursor over one itinerary to see it drawn on the screen, and to see a small plane fly from city to city. This example is interesting, because strictly speaking, Silverlight doesn’t offer new functionality here. Online reserva- tion systems are already available today. However, the user interface is better with Silverlight and makes the user experience better and more attractive. N O T E Thanks to the goodness of vector-based graphics, you can also resize the window and note how the whole user interface gets resized to fit the screen. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 22 Return to Table of Contents
- 33. DeepZooming into theHard Rock Café At MIX08, probably the most exciting demo was given by the Hard Rock Café and its memorabilia collection of rock souvenirs: How would you like to be able to see high reso- lution pictures of all the souvenirs normally exposed in various Hard Rock Cafés around the globe (see Figure 1.6)? Even better, how would you like to be able to select them by artist, year, type, and so on? And the most awesome feature of all: Zoom smoothly into the pictures until you are able to see every detail, like small scratches or a handwritten dedication on a guitar! Navigate to http://memorabilia.hardrock.com to try it yourself. Trying Silverlight Demos 15 1 FIGURE 1.6 Hard Rock Memorabilia This application is enabled by a feature introduced in Silverlight 2, named DeepZoom. A very high resolution picture is prepared by a tool and divided in multiple, lower-resolu- tion pictures. A Silverlight control is loading these images dynamically (according to the level of zoom chosen) and displays them. Additionally, you can pan the image simply by clicking and dragging the mouse, with a lifelike movement. All these seemingly very complex features are made rather easy thanks to Silverlight 2 (though one should not underestimate the value of the developers and designers having created this application!). Finding More Demos Many more samples and demos are available online. Make sure to browse through the Silverlight.net gallery and play with demos to see what Silverlight can do at http://silverlight.net/community/communitygallery.aspx. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 23 Return to Table of Contents
- 34. What Do YouNeed to Develop Silverlight? The term “Silverlight” also qualifies the programming platform, which is developed in parallel to .NET 3.5. Since Silverlight is in development now, not all the .NET classes are available yet. In fact, some of them will never make it to Silverlight, as mentioned earlier. However, because the .NET basis is stable now, we can expect to see big improvements in Silverlight in the coming months as Microsoft releases new versions. We are not going to create standalone applications here. We will only create applications embedded in a web page and unable to run on their own. The nice thing with this way of programming is that distributing (deploying) your application is as easy as copying some files to your web server. If you are adding Silverlight content to an existing web page, you probably already have a web server. If you don’t, you will need to get web server space eventually to publish your application. During development, however, you will be able to use the web server IIS built in the Windows operating system. Even better, if you use Expression Blend or Visual Studio 2008, starting a web appli- cation is as easy as pressing F5! You learn more about deploying web appli- cations in Chapter 7, “Deploying to a Web Page.” Developing Silverlight can be done with just a text editor. Notepad (or its Mac equivalent) is an option, seriously. You can write your XAML markup (a new programming language we will introduce later) in there, and then run it in the web browser to see the result. However, developing this way can be painful. Fortunately, we now have the support of great tools to make that experience a real pleasure. The best place to start and install the development environment for Silverlight is from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted. Expression Studio When Microsoft announced WPF, it also gave us a new suite of tools named the Expression Studio. Included are three important tools for the Silverlight devel- oper: Expression Design, Expression Blend, and Expression Encoder. This book uses these tools to create Silverlight content. Expression Blend is studied more in detail in Chapters 4, “Expressing Yourself with Expression Blend,” and 6, “Blending a Little More” (and throughout the book). This great tool is located at the border between designers and developers and is used by both professions. It is an almost unavoidable tool when you create WPF and/or Silverlight content. Unfortunately, at the time of writing there is no free edition of Expression Blend. A fully functional demo version can be downloaded from the Microsoft Expression website at www.microsoft.com/expression. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 16 WA R N I N G Even though the Silverlight runtime is avail- able for multiple platforms, the development environment described in this book (program- ming, designing, compiling, debugging) is available only for the Windows operating system. There is also a development environ- ment for Linux (Moonlight). N O T E Expression Studio also contains Expression Web (used to develop web pages) and Ex- pression Media, a tool used to manage media collections (pictures, videos, and so on). Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 24 Return to Table of Contents
- 35. In addition toExpression Blend, we will be using Expression Encoder in this book. This application can also be downloaded from the Microsoft Expression website. Expression Design can be used to create XAML-based “assets” (pieces of design). Later, you can import these elements in your Silverlight application. We will talk about this in Chapter 24. Visual Studio 2008 Additionally, we will enjoy a better programming tool than Notepad: The powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Visual Studio 2008 is the tool of choice to program Silverlight applications. In this book, we will use mostly Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend to program Silverlight applications. A fully functional 90-day demo version can be downloaded at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/ cc268305.aspx. In addition to Visual Studio, you must also install the Silverlight tools available from the “Get Started” page at http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/. You learn more about Visual Studio 2008 in Chapters 9, “Understanding .NET” and 10, “Progressing with .NET” about .NET, and in following chapters, where we will use these tools to create C# code-behind. Microsoft released so-called Express editions of Visual Studio. Each Express edition presents a limited set of features targeted at a specific type of software development (for example, web applica- tions, C#, VB.NET, and so on). These limited editions are free to download and install. According to Microsoft, you will be able to use these Express editions to program Silverlight. At the time of writing, however, an exact release date was not public. Reading the Documentation This book does not contain a full reference documentation about Silverlight but will give you a great head start in this technology. In addition, you will use the Silverlight docu- mentation, available in various forms. Reading the Documentation 17 1 T I P If you are a MSDN subscriber, Expression Blend is included in the premium edition of MSDN, so you don’t need to purchase it. N O T E Even though Silverlight supports VB.NET and other managed languages, the examples in this book are written in C#. I want to person- ally apologize for this to all the VB.NET devel- opers interested in Silverlight. A translated version of the source code is available on the book’s website at www.galasoft.ch/ SL2U/Code. In addition to C# and VB.NET, Silverlight supports the so-called dynamic languages IronRuby and IronPython. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 25 Return to Table of Contents
- 36. Browsing the OnlineReference The official Silverlight reference is found on MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) online. You can start at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404710(VS.95).aspx (for Silverlight 1.0) and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404700(VS.95).aspx (for Silverlight 2). Finding More Documentation With the number of classes available in the .NET framework (and even in the Silverlight subset), and with the number of members that each class contains, a comprehensive documentation is a key factor when you program against this framework. Microsoft released a Silverlight 2 Software Development Kit (SDK). It contains technical documenta- tion, libraries and tools to help you in your Silverlight experience. 1. Navigate to the Get Started page at http://silverlight.net/GetStarted 2. Scroll down until you see the link to Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK. Follow this link and download the SDK setup file. 3. Execute the file “silverlight_sdk.exe” you just downloaded. This will extract the content to C:Program FilesMicrosoft SDKsSilverlightv2.0 4. For more information about the SDK, technical documentation, links to external resources, etc., check the “Welcome” page. You find it in your Start menu, under “All Programs / Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK”. The Silverlight documentation is also available as a compiled HTML file that can be installed locally (see Figure 1.7). The download link is on the SDK welcome page. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 18 FIGURE 1.7 Silverlight documentation The Search tab allows you easy access to a specific topic. The documentation contains many interesting topics, and it is absolutely worth browsing through it. Learning with Tutorials Many tutorial websites are available for WPF, Silverlight, and Blend. The community website Silverlight.net has already been mentioned. Another exciting and innovative site is the Nibbles Tutorials website at www.nibblestutorials.net. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 26 Return to Table of Contents
- 37. This website doesan amazing job of presenting and teaching the technology. Using small, bite-sized tutorials, the Nibbles website allows you to test some of the knowledge acquired in this book. Additionally, the website’s author, Celso Gomes, is a talented graphics designer working for Microsoft, and his tutorials give you the designer’s point of view on Silverlight (while this book gives you the developer’s point of view). Looking into Silverlight’s Future Web technologies are evolving fast, and any attempt to look into the future and predict where they are heading in the long term will result in mortifying failure for the psychic…Silverlight is no exception. It’s almost impossible to predict where the technol- ogy will be five or ten years from now. One thing is sure, though: Microsoft is putting a lot of effort in Silverlight and porting the .NET framework to multiple platforms. Mobile Silverlight will “hit us” in the very close future. And because so many developers are already active on the .NET platform, we will see more and more Silverlight content soon. It is also safe to write that Silverlight and WPF will become always more compatible with each other. Silverlight 2 is already delivering a great number of WPF-compatible classes. Learning either WPF or Silverlight will offer an easy passage to the other. Is ASP.NET/HTML/JavaScript Dead? With the advent of Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) made with Silverlight or Flash, one can wonder if classic ASP.NET will still be available in the future. One thing is sure: ASP.NET is a very strong and important pillar of Microsoft’s client application strategy. In fact, Microsoft also released updates to the ASP.NET framework with its .NET framework 3.5 this year. With “classic” ASP.NET (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) for “thin clients,” Silverlight for RIAs and WPF for desktop applications, you cover the whole range of client applications. And since all these platforms run .NET, you can use the same programming language of your choice (amongst C#, VB.NET and many others) to create your libraries. So in short: No, ASP.NET is definitely not dead, and HTML-based web pages will continue to entertain and inform us on the Internet for many years to come. Looking into Silverlight’s Future 19 1 WA R N I N G The “Nibbles” website doesn’t display any content if Silverlight is not installed. Install Silverlight before you navigate to this site! Like we mentioned before in this chapter, Silverlight-only websites are not recom- mended because they are only visible on Silverlight-compatible web browsers which speaks against the principles of the World Wide Web. N O T E At MIX08, in March 2008, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft to deliver the Silverlight mobile platform on the Nokia mobile phones. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 27 Return to Table of Contents
- 38. Summary In this chapter,we took a preliminary look at Silverlight and understood where it comes from and what technologies are its “ancestors.” We also started playing with demo appli- cations and installed the development environment. Now it is time to start getting our hands dirty, and to write code. The next chapters intro- duce you to the new programming language XAML and give you the occasion to write markup and to see your creations running. Gradually, we will build knowledge and help you create more elaborate code. Eventually, we will build applications together, bringing your knowledge of Silverlight to a productive level. CHAPTER 1 Introducing Silverlight 20 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 28 Return to Table of Contents
- 39. CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML Whatwould software development be without acronyms? Let’s meet XAML, also known as eXtensible Application Markup Language (and pronounced “Zammel”). Located at the border between graphics designers and soft- ware developers, this language enables new workflows and allows the designers to implement markup instead of working on static screenshots. Optimized for tools like Expression Blend, but still readable (and writable) by humans (with the help of Visual Studio), XAML is a really fascinating new language that admittedly comes with a learning curve. Don’t be afraid, though, soon you will have fun mastering this markup language! Using XML for Data XAML is based on XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. Sometimes we say that XAML is an XML dialect. What does it mean? Data used to be stored in databases, a special type of file handled by a database system or application. Databases are efficient when it comes to storing and retrieving data. They are fast. But they are complex. Managing a database is so complex that there are engineers who dedicate their job to doing just this. Even the simplest database applications (such as Microsoft Access) are complex, and accessing the stored data from an application can be difficult. XML, on the other hand, is simple to handle: It’s just a text file. If you open an XML file in a text editor, you will see something like the markup shown in Listing 2.1. In fact, a IN THIS CHAPTER . Using XML for Data . Using XML for User Interfaces . Understanding XML Namespaces . Defining Additional Namespaces . Creating a Canvas with Children . Attaching Properties: Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top . Documenting Your Markup with XML Comments . Testing XAML Markup . Setting Properties in XAML . Changing Brushes . Composing Scenes in XAML . Saving Typing, Saving Space Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 29 Return to Table of Contents
- 40. standard text editorwill not color-code the XML file. More advanced XML editors like the one integrated into Visual Studio use color with XML tags, attributes, strings to make it easier to read. The samples in this book follow this practice and all the XML and XAML samples are color coded for clarity. LISTING 2.1 XML File for Data Storage <!--MyLibrary.xml - All my books--> <MyLibrary> <Authors> <Author Name=”Zola” FirstName=”Emile”> <Books> <Book ReleaseYear=”1883”> <Title>Au bonheur des dames</Title> </Book> <Book ReleaseYear=”1885”> <Title>Germinal</Title> </Book> </Books> </Author> <Author Name=”Balzac”> <Books> <Book ReleaseYear=”1831”> <Title>La Peau de chagrin</Title> </Book> </Books> </Author> <Author Name=”Flaubert” /> </Authors> </MyLibrary> Let’s review the main characteristics of an XML document: . XML is a hierarchic language, where nodes contain children nodes. Every node has a parent, except the top one, called the root node. . In addition to containing 0 or more children, each node can also have attributes. For example, the ReleaseYear is an attribute of the Book node. . A node may be empty; for example the author “Flaubert” is defined, but the library doesn’t contain any of his books. Instead of writing an opening tag <Author> and a closing tag </Author>, which would have been possible and allowed, the node is “self-closed” to make the markup more readable and shorter. . Similarly, not all attributes are compulsory. In Listing 2.1, the attribute FirstName is defined only in one of the Nodes. It is an optional attribute. CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 22 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 30 Return to Table of Contents
- 41. When you havedata in an XML file, you must parse the file to retrieve the data. Parsing a file is a long and error-prone process. Thankfully, many programming platforms (includ- ing JavaScript and .NET) offer built-in ways to handle XML files in a much easier way. If you pass a valid XML file to an XML parser, you can get an object, containing all the nodes, organized in collections just like they are defined in the XML file. XML files can be used as lightweight databases, containing information without the heavy infrastructure of a database system. Using XML for User Interfaces Another use for XML is to describe a user interface (UI). The idea of using a markup language for this purpose is not new. The most famous UI markup language is without a doubt HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), but there are other XML-based UI languages, for example, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), XUL (XML User Interface Language, a Mozilla project), and so on. However, HTML is not fully compliant with XML. Trying to load an HTML file with an XML parser will most probably result in errors. But HTML proved that a hierarchic markup language is good at describing complex user interfaces. XAML obeys stricter rules than HTML. This is a good thing, really. Like XML, XAML must be parsed, and as mentioned already, parsing is a long and error-prone process. If you apply loose rules, the parser must accept many different text strings, and sometimes try to imagine what the programmer actually meant. This is why it is so difficult to write web pages that work the same in different web browsers: The rules of HTML allow too many variations, so the parser implementations use different interpretations, and the same markup can mean different things, depending on which browser loads it. Understanding XML Namespaces In XAML as in XML, the rules are defined in namespaces. You may have heard this term in relation to .NET, but this is not the same, so don’t be confused. .NET namespaces are discussed later in this book. Take a look at the simplest Silverlight file in Listing 2.2: LISTING 2.2 Simplest Silverlight File Ever <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” /> The Canvas element in this (too simple) XAML file uses one XML namespace. Note that the address used here does not correspond to a website. If you enter it in a web browser, you will get a “File Not Found” error (go on, try it!). It is only a URI (Unique Resource Identifier) used to designate a uniquely named Understanding XML Namespaces 23 2 WA R N I N G If you already took a look at a WPF XAML file, you’ll notice that the default namespace is not the same! This is because Silverlight- XAML is a subset of WPF-XAML; different rules must be used for WPF than for Silverlight. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 31 Return to Table of Contents
- 42. resource, in thiscase the schema in which the XAML structure is defined. The schema is used by the XML parser to validate the file (to make sure that the file complies with the rules). Later, we will see that the schema is also used by XML editors to offer assistance to the user when she is typing XML (and XAML) to make this task easier and to reduce the number of errors. When a XAML file is loaded into the Silverlight engine, the schema is loaded and checked to see whether a Canvas element is defined. If that is the case, the element is read and used to instantiate (create) a Canvas object. Defining Additional Namespaces The “X” in XML and in XAML stands for “eXtensible.” One XML document can refer to multiple XML namespaces, making it possible to mix multiple schemas and to extend the document with elements coming from other sources. There can be, however, only one default namespace. Additional namespaces must define a prefix. For example, XAML typically uses an additional namespace as shown in Listing 2.3: LISTING 2.3 Additional Namespace <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” /> The second namespace is assigned to the x prefix (that’s just a convention; the prefix can be any word as long as it is a valid XML identifier according to XML rules for naming elements that can be found online at www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml). If you want to use elements defined in this second namespace, you must prefix the element’s name with x. For example, the x namespace in Silverlight defines general purpose attributes: . Name—Gives a name to the element, used to identify it in the code associated to this markup. . Key—When an element is defined in a resource dictionary (a collection of objects), it is identified by a key. This allows retrieving the object later to use it in the code. . Class—Used to link a XAML file with a .NET code file. See Chapter 9. . Other attributes—These are discussed in the next chapters when needed. Knowing this, it is easy to assign a name to the root Canvas, allowing this object to be referenced in the code later, as shown in Listing 2.4: LISTING 2.4 Naming the Canvas <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” x:Name=”MyCanvas” /> CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 24 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 32 Return to Table of Contents
- 43. This syntax allowsadding many more namespaces, and these are used later when we create user controls (reusable XAML structures), or when we want to use our own .NET classes in the XAML markup. This is where the XML namespaces meet the .NET name- spaces: WPF and Silverlight make it possible to use your code-behind classes in XAML files, like in Listing 2.5! However, we will not use this particular feature before we start using .NET to program Silverlight. LISTING 2.5 Referencing external assemblies <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” x:Name=”MyCanvas” xmlns:src=”clr-namespace:MyOwnClrNamespace” xmlns:external=”clr-namespace:MyOtherClrNamespace;assembly=MyAssembly” /> Creating a Canvas with Children An empty Canvas is not very useful, however, so Listing 2.6 presents a more complete example. LISTING 2.6 Canvas with Children <!--SimpleExampleWithChildren.xaml - a simple Canvas with children--> <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Background=”Red” Width=”500” Height=”300”> <Ellipse Width=”400” Height=”200” Fill=”Yellow” Stroke=”Orange” StrokeThickness=”4” Canvas.Left=”50” Canvas.Top=”50”/> <TextBlock Text=”Hello world” FontSize=”36” Foreground=”Blue” Canvas.Left=”150.763” Canvas.Top=”122.34”/> </Canvas> Creating a Canvas with Children 25 2 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 33 Return to Table of Contents
- 44. This Canvas hasthree attributes: . Background is a brush; in that case, we use a plain red color to “paint” the back- ground of the Canvas. We will see later that there are various types of brushes. . Width and Height define the dimension of the Canvas. The Canvas also has two children: . An Ellipse, also with the following attributes: . Width and Height—Define the Ellipse’s dimensions. . Fill—Like the Canvas’s background, it is also a brush; in that case we use a plain yellow color to paint the Ellipse’s insides. . Stroke—This is again a brush, used to draw the outside border of the Ellipse. In this case, we use a plain orange. . StrokeThickness—Defines the thickness of the outside border of the Ellipse. . Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top—These are special, and are discussed later in the chapter. Another element has been placed in the Canvas: a TextBlock. Because it appears after the Ellipse, the TextBlock will be drawn on top of it. The TextBlock also defines a few attributes: . Text—The string that will be written when the TextBlock is rendered. . FontSize—This element is self-explanatory. . Foreground—This is (again) a brush, in this case a plain blue, used to draw the text. Attaching Properties: Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top The Ellipse element doesn’t define a Left or Top attribute. These attributes are specified in the Canvas element and “attached” to the Ellipse (and later to the TextBlock). That’s why these properties are called attached properties in WPF and in Silverlight. These two specify the location of the Ellipse on the Canvas, relative to the top-left corner, with the X axis pointing to the right and the Y axis pointing down (as is usual in UI development). There are multiple benefits to using attached properties: Instead of defining a Left and a Top in the Ellipse object, and another Left and another Top inside the TextBlock object, they are implemented only on the Canvas object. Because a Canvas can contain a lot of various elements, defining these properties on the Canvas and attaching them to the target element are easier. Also, Left and Top make sense for a Canvas, a simple type of panel. But Silverlight supports other types of panels (for example, Grid, StackPanel, and CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 26 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 34 Return to Table of Contents
- 45. so on). Forthese panels, Left and Top don’t make sense, so why define these two proper- ties on the children elements? It makes more sense to define them only on the Canvas panel and to attach them when we add children to it. Documenting Your Markup with XML Comments XML allows entering comments in the markup. The comments will be parsed, but they do not have any effect on the resulting objects. Commenting your markup (and also your source code as we will see later) is important and is a good programming practice, because: . You will sometimes read markup written by other people, and their way of thinking isn’t always the same as yours (yes, yours is better, but still…). . You will sometimes read your own code years later and need to remember what the heck you were trying to do. Writing comments in the XAML markup will help you a lot when you are confronted with these scenarios. XML comments use the following syntax: <!--This is a comment--> Testing XAML Markup That was a lot of theory; now we can put this in practice and experiment with XAML. There are many ways to execute XAML markup. Of course, you can create a Silverlight application (for example, with Expression Blend like we will do later), but that’s a bit heavy if you just want to test a few simple (or even not so simple!) XAML constructs. Thankfully, we have other tools at our disposal. Using SilverlightPad Point your browser to the following URL to start the SilverlightPad application, shown in Figure 2.1: http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Silverlight-Pad/default.html. SilverlightPad is a Silverlight sample application, available on the community website Silverlight.net. It can either run online (if you are connected to the Internet) or can be installed locally, with the following steps: 1. Navigate to the Silverlight 1.0 gallery website at http://silverlight.net/community/ communitygallery.aspx. 2. Click on View All 1.0 Samples. 3. Locate the SilverlightPad application (see Figure 2.2). Testing XAML Markup 27 2 T I P In XML editors, XML comments are usually rendered in green. This makes them easy to recognize. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 35 Return to Table of Contents
- 46. FIGURE 2.1 SilverlightPad CHAPTER2 Understanding XAML 28 FIGURE 2.2 View or Download SilverlightPad 4. Click on Download It. This triggers the download of a Zip file. Open the file or save it to your hard disk. 5. Extract the Zip file content to a folder on your disk. 6. Navigate to this folder and start index.html in your favorite browser. If you run SilverlightPad online, you can see sample XAML files on the left, useful to learn complex constructs. In the bottom, you can see (and type) XAML markup. There is also a JavaScript tab, used to attach JavaScript code to the XAML elements. The XAML markup you type is parsed when you click on the Parse button on the bottom right, and the corresponding UI is rendered in the Scene pane. Note also the Zoom controls on the top-right corner. This allows testing the “zoomability” of vector graphics (we’ll talk more about that in Chapter 5, “Using Media”). Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 36 Return to Table of Contents
- 47. SilverlightPad also allowsrunning animations; for example, if you click on the Blocks XAML file (available if you run SilverlightPad from the Silverlight.net website), you’ll see that the blocks are moving. We will program XAML animations in Chapter 3, “XAML Transforms and Animations.” Using KaXaml SilverlightPad is a great application to train your XAML skills, but it is limited to Silverlight 1. To dig deeper in Silverlight 2 and its XAML markup, you can use the excellent KaXaml created by Robby Ingebretsen. 1. Navigate to the website http://kaxaml.com. 2. Click on the “Download” button and run the installer file. 3. After the installation is complete, run KaXaml from your Start menu. KaXaml appears like in Figure 2.3. Testing XAML Markup 29 2 WA R N I N G SilverlightPad can be run in any web browser supporting Silverlight 1. However, KaXaml is a Windows application, and can only run on Windows systems. FIGURE 2.3 KaXaml 4. On the right hand side, KaXaml has a XAML markup pane (in the bottom), in which you can type or paste Silverlight markup. 5. On the right hand side, top, the visual rendering of the XAML markup will be displayed. 6. In addition, utilities are available on the left hand side: . A collection of “snippets,” small pieces of XAML markup that can be dragged to the XAML markup pane. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 37 Return to Table of Contents
- 48. . A “Find”dialog handy to look for information in big XAML files. . A Color picker including a Color palette. . A Snapshot utility, copying the current visual to a PNG image file. . A XAML “Scrubber,” a utility cleaning up the XAML markup according to user- defined settings. KaXaml is a very useful tool to learn XAML, and a very fast way to visualize the results of your XAML experiments. Setting Properties in XAML Most properties can be set using the XML attribute syntax, but sometimes it is not enough. That’s why there is also an expanded syntax in XAML. For example, copy Listing 2.7 in SilverlightPad. Then don’t forget to click the Parse button to trigger SilverlightPad to render your markup. LISTING 2.7 Red Canvas <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Background=”Red” Width=”500” Height=”300”> </Canvas> This creates an empty, red rectangle. It’s red because you set the Background property using the string “Red”. Now, modify the markup to look like Listing 2.8: LISTING 2.8 Another Red Canvas <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Width=”500” Height=”300”> <Canvas.Background> <SolidColorBrush Color=”Red”/> </Canvas.Background> </Canvas> The result is exactly the same. How is that possible? In the first case, using the attribute syntax (also called simple property syntax), when the XAML markup is parsed and objects are created, the string “Red” will be converted into an object (of type SolidColorBrush), and assigned to the Background property. Converters in XAML are powerful. They do their CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 30 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 38 Return to Table of Contents
- 49. best to understandthe programmer’s intentions and to create the object best suited to reflect the markup. In the second case, the one with the expanded property syntax, the markup is straightfor- ward. We tell the parser exactly what we want to happen: Create a SolidColorBrush object and assign it to the Background property of the Canvas. Note that one converter is still involved: The one converting the string “Red” in a Color object, so that this object can be assigned to the Color property of the SolidColorBrush. Sometimes, you have to use the expanded property syntax, because it is not possible to define complex objects in just one string so that the converters can create the correspond- ing objects, as shown in Listing 2.9 and in Figure 2.4. LISTING 2.9 LinearGradientBrush <!--RainbowBrush.xaml - a simple LinearGradientBrush--> <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Width=”500” Height=”300”> <Canvas.Background> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint=”0,0” EndPoint=”1,0”> <GradientStop Color=”Red” Offset=”0”/> <GradientStop Color=”Orange” Offset=”0.25”/> <GradientStop Color=”Yellow” Offset=”0.5”/> <GradientStop Color=”Green” Offset=”0.75”/> <GradientStop Color=”Blue” Offset=”1”/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Canvas.Background> <TextBlock Text=”Start” TextWrapping=”Wrap” Canvas.Top=”8” Canvas.Left=”8”/> <TextBlock Text=”End” TextWrapping=”Wrap” Canvas.Top=”8” Canvas.Left=”465.717”/> </Canvas> This markup creates another type of brush, a LinearGradientBrush. It produces a gradient, starting in the top-left corner (x=0, y=0) and ending in the top-right corner (x=1, y=0). The expanded syntax may seem complicated at first, but once you get used to it, you’ll notice that it is in fact very logical and well structured. Setting Properties in XAML 31 2 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 39 Return to Table of Contents
- 50. FIGURE 2.4 LinearGradientBrush ChangingBrushes How can you assign an object of type SolidColorBrush to the Background property, and later change that to an object of type LinearColorBrush? When we check the documenta- tion online, we see that the Background property of a Canvas object is of type Brush: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738074.aspx (Canvas.Background) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb188310.aspx (Brush) In fact, the Brush class is abstract, meaning that you cannot directly create an object of this type. But there are derived types, for example SolidColorBrush. Since SolidColorBrush and LinearColorBrush both inherit the Brush class, you can say that the SolidColorBrush is a Brush, and the LinearColorBrush is also a Brush. This concept is important when you do so-called Object Oriented Programming (OOP), and is called polymorphism. Composing Scenes in XAML XAML being XML, it is based on the composition of objects. This means that every object has a parent (except the topmost one), and a parent may have 0 or more children, as shown in Listing 2.10 and Figure 2.5. LISTING 2.10 Composing a Scene <!--ComposedScene.xaml - Hierarchical scene--> <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Background=”Red” Width=”500” Height=”400”> <Rectangle Width=”240” Height=”150” Fill=”Yellow” Margin=”40”/> <Grid Width=”330” Height=”250” CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 32 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 40 Return to Table of Contents
- 51. LISTING 2.10 Continued Canvas.Left=”120”Canvas.Top=”110” Background=”#CCFFFFFF”> <Ellipse Width=”200” Height=”140” Fill=”Orange” HorizontalAlignment=”Right” VerticalAlignment=”Bottom” Margin=”20” /> </Grid> </Canvas> Composing Scenes in XAML 33 2 FIGURE 2.5 Composing a scene In Figure 2.5, the yellow Rectangle is one of the children of the red Canvas. There is also a white Grid, defined as another child of the red Canvas. You might wonder why you can see through this white Grid: The Background is set to #CCFFFFFF, which creates an 80% transparent white color. You learn more about transparency in Chapter 5, which deals with media in general and colors in particular. T I P Grid and Canvas are two Panels, with different functionalities. The various panels available will be reviewed in detail in Chapter 15, “Digging into Silverlight Elements.” . A Grid is a Panel in which you can define rows and columns, a little like a table (or a grid, for that matter). . A Canvas is another Panel, like a piece of paper, on which you can draw objects with Top and Left coordinates. Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 41 Return to Table of Contents
- 52. The red Canvashas two children, one of them a Rectangle and the other one a Grid. The half white Grid has a child, the orange Ellipse. So the XAML markup can be represented as a tree: . Red Canvas . Yellow Rectangle . Half white Grid . Orange Ellipse This tree is called the logical tree and plays an important role in Silverlight. Another important thing is that the children of a Grid or a Canvas appear on top of each other, depending on the order in which they appear in the tree. In Figure 2.5, the yellow Rectangle appears under its sibling, the half-white Grid. The first child in the tree has a lower ZIndex than the second one, which in turn has a lower ZIndex than the third one, and so on. You can also change the ZIndex in the markup, changing the superposition effect. Change the Rectangle markup as in Listing 2.11: LISTING 2.11 Changed ZIndex <Rectangle Width=”246” Height=”152” Fill=”Yellow” Canvas.ZIndex=”2”/> This causes the Rectangle to appear on top of the half-white Grid, as shown in Figure 2.6, (because the ZIndex of the Rectangle is set to 2, which is higher than the default value of 0 assigned to the half-white Grid). Note also that ZIndex, like Left and Top, is an attached property of the Canvas class, thus the syntax Canvas.ZIndex. CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 34 FIGURE 2.6 Rectangle in front Saving Typing, Saving Space As you already found out, typing XAML can take some time. In fact, XAML was not created for humans. It was created for computer tools (like Expression Blend or Visual Studio), to be used as a storage medium, and then later optimized so that humans can Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 42 Return to Table of Contents
- 53. type it anywaywithout too much pain. In further chapters, we will see how a good editor can help you save time, using a technology called Intellisense, automatic tag completion, and so on. One such improvement is that for each class, one of the properties can be defined as the default property. In Silverlight, we talk about the Content Property. It doesn’t need to be explicitly mentioned when you type XAML markup, to save typing and space. For each object in Silverlight, the most used property may be marked as the Content Property by the developer. For example, the Children property of each Panel is the Content Property, so you can add elements in a Canvas without having to use the Canvas.Children syntax like in Listing 2.12. LISTING 2.12 Setting the Canvas.Children Explicitly <!--Children.xaml--> <Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” Width=”640” Height=”480”> <Canvas.Children> <Ellipse Width=”400” Height=”200” Fill=”Yellow” Stroke=”Orange” StrokeThickness=”4” Canvas.Left=”50” Canvas.Top=”50”/> <TextBlock Text=”Hello world” FontSize=”36” Foreground=”Blue” Canvas.Left=”150.763” Canvas.Top=”122.34”/> </Canvas.Children> </Canvas> Summary This chapter gave you a first contact with XAML and some important features of this new language. XAML comes with a learning curve, especially for developers or designers not used to XML. This learning curve can be a little frightening sometimes, but as time goes by, you will learn how to master this language and be productive with it. Summary 35 2 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 43 Return to Table of Contents
- 54. In the nextchapter, we continue to work with XAML and learn more complex constructs, adding movement to our applications without writing one line of C# or JavaScript. Later, we introduce Expression Blend, a tool that allows you to visually edit the XAML markup. This is where XAML gives us the best of both worlds: a great visual designer and the possibility to act on markup level if we prefer. CHAPTER 2 Understanding XAML 36 Silverlight 2 Unleashed Page 44 Return to Table of Contents
- 55. Other documents randomlyhave different content
- 56. Britain they foundin it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by Greenwell and Taylor [29]: [29] Greenwell, British Barrows; Taylor, Origin of the Aryans. They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with interior chambers and passages; some of these are as much as 400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.
- 57. At the timeof the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different people, supposed to be identical with the Celtæ of the Romans. They were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion, and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and Belgæ, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the British Islands. CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet) CHAPTER VIII
- 58. THE PALANTHROPIC AGEIN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY The time was when the earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures stood almost alone in their notices of the creation and antediluvian times, and when critics could quietly take for granted that they were altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable before proceeding farther to glance for a moment at some of the recent corroborations, if they may be so called, of the Bible history from altogether unexpected quarters. In the first place, there can now be no doubt that the order of creation, as revealed to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, corresponds with the results of astronomical and geological research in a manner which cannot be accidental. [30] This old document thus stands in the position of a prophecy which has been fulfilled in its details. Besides this, the discovery of the similar though not identical Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side- light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But they and the Genesis narrative are independent of each other. Neither can have been copied from the other. Thus there must have been a still more ancient common source of the narrative, and, as I have elsewhere urged, [31] the greater simplicity and monotheistic character of the Hebrew document entitle it to the palm of the higher antiquity. [30] For evidence of this I may be permitted to refer to my work, The Origin of the World. [31] Modern Science in Bible Lands. With reference to the antediluvian age and the Deluge, while the Bible is here only in accord with almost universal tradition, and this in reference to an event which if it occurred at all must have fixed
- 59. itself in thememory of the survivors, it is in remarkable accordance with very ancient Chaldean writings commemorative of the same event. Some principal points of this accordance are the following. The Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods, or some of them, against an evil race of men was the cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal character, so far as the sphere of observation extended. It represents the survivors as saved in a ship or ark. It represents Hasisadra, its Noah, as sending out birds to ascertain the subsidence of the waters. In all these points and many others the Chaldean account agrees with the Biblical in representing antediluvian men, or some of them, as civilised, possessing domestic animals, and competent to construct large ships. When we leave the Deluge and come to the postdiluvian or neanthropic period, similar coincidences occur. The foundation of a primitive Cushite or Akkadian kingdom in the Euphratean valley, the dispersion of men according to their families and their languages, the early kingdoms contemporary with Abraham, mentioned in the narrative of his campaign to recover the captives taken from the cities of the plain, the extremely early use of the arrow-headed characters in Asia, of the hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, and of a proto-Phœnician or early Hebrew alphabet among the Mineans of ancient Arabia, tend at once to vindicate the Bible history, and to show how at a very early period this history may have been rendered permanent in written documents. On all these grounds scientific archæologists are beginning to attach more value than formerly to the Hebrew annals, and to recognise them as true historical accounts of the times to which they relate. It may seem rash to make such a statement at a time when it is well known that many divines of repute avow themselves as believers in the theory that the earlier Biblical books are of comparatively late composition. But Science will have her way in a matter of this kind, whatever literature or criticism may say, and she is beginning strongly to lift her voice against the destructive criticism of the Pentateuch. In a recent article, Professor Sayce, one of the
- 60. best-informed experts inthese subjects, uses the following language: 'Naturally, the "higher criticism" is disinclined to see its assumptions swept away along with the conclusions which are based upon them, and to sit humbly at the feet of the newer science. At first, the results of Egyptian or Assyrian research were ignored; then they were reluctantly admitted, so far as they did not clash with the preconceived opinions of the "higher" critics. It was urged, unfortunately with too much justice, that the decipherers were not, as a rule, trained critics, and that in the enthusiasm of research they often announced discoveries which proved to be false or only partially correct. But it must be remembered, on the other side, that this charge applies with equal force to all progressive studies, not excluding the "higher criticism" itself. 'The time is now come for confronting the conclusions of the "higher criticism," so far as it applies to the books of the Old Testament, with the ascertained results of modern Oriental research. The amount of certain knowledge now possessed by the Egyptologist and Assyriologist would be surprising to those who are not specialists in these branches of study, while the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has poured a flood of light upon the ancient world, which is at once startling and revolutionary. As in the case of Greek history, so too in that of Israelitish history, the period of critical demolition is at an end, and it is time for the archæologist to reconstruct the fallen edifice. 'But the very word "reconstruct" implies that what is built again will not be exactly that which existed before. It implies that the work of the "higher criticism" has not been in vain; on the contrary, the work it has performed has been a very needful and important one, and in its own sphere has helped us to the discovery of the truth. Egyptian or Assyrian research has not corroborated every historical statement which we find in the Old Testament, any more than classical archæology has corroborated every statement which we find in the Greek writers; what it has done has been to show that
- 61. the extreme scepticismof modern criticism is not justified, that the materials on which the history of Israel has been based may, and probably do, go back to an early date, and that much which the "higher" critics have declared to be mythical and impossible was really possible and true.' In point of fact a much stronger position might be held in favour of Genesis, and we shall find in comparing it with the monuments of the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages that its statements vindicate themselves as derived from original contemporary documents, which were under no obligations to the literature or philosophy of those later times, to which they have been relegated by some of the critics. Let us inquire a little more in detail into the general features of these early historic notices. For the purposes of this inquiry we may content ourselves with the consideration of the ancient Hebrew documents incorporated in the Book of Genesis, and the remains which have been preserved of the old Chaldean literature. Both of these represent an antediluvian period of long duration. [32] Both refer the primitive seats of population to the Euphratean region of Western Asia. Both terminate the antediluvian age with a great diluvial catastrophe. These are sufficient points of general agreement to make it probable that both originated in one fundamental history, or at least were based on attempts to describe the same events. Otherwise there are great differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix iteration, which makes it probable that they were prepared for popular and liturgic use, and may not fairly represent the original documents in possession of the priestly class. They also naturally introduce all the personnel of the Chaldean pantheon, and as this must have been a thing of gradual growth it gives them an air of recency, though we know that they are very old. The Hebrew version, on the other hand, is monotheistic, and has an aspect of severe simplicity in striking contrast to the florid and popular Chaldean version.
- 62. [32] Hommel hasproved (Journal of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1893), what has always been suspected, that the ten patriarchs of Berosus are the same with those of the Sethite line in Genesis. We may first notice what history can tell of the palanthropic age, supposing this to be the same with that historically known as antediluvian. The account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is altogether general, and has no local colouring. It evidently refers to the whole history of the making of the earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, a repetition of the previous general account of creation, and still less contradictory to it, but a statement that immediately before the introduction of man the earth had been in a desolate and comparatively untenanted state, that state to which we know it had been reduced by the glacial cold and submergence. Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, that in which he appears in his chronological position in the general development, and that in which he takes a first place, as introductory to his special history, are not contradictory, but complementary to each other; and the latter refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. The failure of so many critics to notice this distinction, which must have been so plain to the primitive historian himself, is a marked illustration of the blindness of certain nineteenth-century savants, so full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless of science and common sense. It would even seem that this distinction appeared in the Chaldean Genesis as well; for fragments of what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have been found which seem to correspond with the statements of the second chapter of Genesis.
- 63. The following isan extract from this second Chaldean or Akkadian Genesis as translated by Pinches: [33] 1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made; 2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created; 3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped; 4 A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed; 5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been made glorious; 6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been constructed; 7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed; 8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been constructed; 9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made— 10 The whole of the lands were sea. This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew verses following: And no plant of the field was yet in the earth. And no herb of the field had yet sprung up. For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth. And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.
- 64. And there wentup a vapour from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground. [33] Expository Times, December 1892 This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the great Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene submergence, and before the appearance of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic cities of a later time. This difference alone would induce us to suppose that the Hebrew record may be a better guide for our present comparison. The Hebrew writer in the first place gives us to understand that a period of comparative desolation preceded the appearance of man, a great winter of destruction preparatory to a returning spring. He then proceeds to localise primeval man by placing him in Eden, the Idinu of the Chaldean accounts, which we also recognise by the geographical indications of the Euphrates and Tigris as its rivers, with two companion streams which can scarcely be other than the Karun and the Kerkhat. Thus the Bible and the Chaldean account agree in their locality for the advent of man, for Idinu was the ancient name of the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to this locality that much of this region is low and swampy, and has only recently become land by the encroachment of the rivers on the head of the Persian Gulf. But if our Biblical authority really refers to palanthropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-glacial period the continents were higher than now, and the Babylonian plain must have been a dry and elevated district, in all probability forest-clad. We must also bear in mind that Eden was a region of country, and that the 'garden' or selected spot 'eastward in Eden' may have been some rich wooded island surrounded by the river streams, and producing all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food. In any case the modern objections to the site are based on entire ignorance of its geological history, and only serve to show how
- 65. much better informedthe ancient writer was as to antediluvian geography than his modern critics. [34] [34] See, for full discussion of this, Modern Science in Bible Lands, by the author. It is scarcely necessary to say that this Biblical environment of primitive man corresponds with the requirements of the case. In a genial climate and sheltered position, and supplied with abundance of food, the first men would have the conditions necessary for comfortable existence and for multiplying in numbers. We have also in the description of one of the rivers of Eden a hint as to a few of the wants of early man beyond mere food and shelter. We are told that the district traversed by this river produced gold, bedolach, and the shoham stone. I have elsewhere shown that this river must be the Karun, draining the Luristan mountains, and that the productions indicated must have been 'native gold and silver, wampum beads, and jade and similar stones suitable for implements.' [35] Thus we have here a picture which may well represent the origin and early condition of our palæocosmic men. But the parallel does not end here. [35] Modern Science in Bible Lands. According to the history, man falls, and is expelled from Eden, is clothed with skins, and becomes an eater of animal food. Next we find murderous violence, and a consequent separation of the primitive people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a distance from the other and adopts different modes of life. Finally, we have a mixture of the two races, leading to a powerful and terrible race of half-breeds, or metis, who filled the earth with violence. [36] [36] Genesis vi. 1-6.
- 66. MAP SHOWING THEGEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE SITE OF EDEN AS DESCRIBED IN GENESIS In one point only have we reason to doubt whether this old history fairly represents the palanthropic age. It notes the invention of musical instruments, the use of metals, the domestication of animals as already existing in the antediluvian period. Of these we have little or no archæological evidence. The only musical instrument of this period known is a whistle made of one of the bones of a deer's foot, and capable of sounding a tetrachord or four
- 67. notes, and wehave no certain evidence of metals or domesticated animals. We must bear in mind that there may have been more civilised races than those of the Cro-magnon type, and that the latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope for development may have led to great results. The native metals must have been known to man from the first, though they must have been rare or only locally common; and many semi-barbarous nations of later times show us that it is only a short step from the knowledge of native metals to the art of metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian civilisation can account for the fact that in the dawn of postdiluvian history we find the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile already practising so many of the arts of civilised life. In connection with this we may place the early dawn of literature. Without insisting on the documents which the Chaldean Noah, Hasisadra, is said to have hid at Sippara before the Deluge, we have the known fact that in the earliest dawn of postdiluvian history the art of writing was known in Chaldea and in Egypt. This at once testifies to antediluvian culture, and shows that the means existed to record important events. There is, perhaps, no one of the vagaries now current under the much abused name of evolution more opposed to facts, whether physical or historical than the notion that, because 3000 years B.C. we have evidence of an advanced civilisation in Chaldea and in Egypt, this must have been preceded by a long and uninterrupted progress through many thousands of years from a savage state. Two facts alone are sufficient to show the folly of such a supposition. First, the intervention of that great physical catastrophe which separates the palanthropic and neanthropic periods; and secondly, the testimony of history in favour of the arts of civilisation originating with great inventors, and not by any slow and gradual process of evolution. According to all history, sacred and profane, many such inventors existed even in the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages, and transmitted their arts in an advanced state to later times.
- 68. The Book ofGenesis testifies to this in its notices of Tubal Cain and Jubal; and the monuments of Chaldea and Egypt show that metallurgy, sculpture, and architecture were as far advanced at the very dawn of history as in any later period. It is true that Genesis represents its early inventors as mere men, albeit 'sons of God,' while they often appear as gods or demi-gods in the early history of the heathen nations; but the fact remains that then, as now, the rare appearance of God-given inventive genius is the sole cause of the greater advances in art and civilisation. Spontaneous development may produce socialistic trades' unions or Chinese stagnation, but great gifts, whether of prophecy, of song, of scientific insight, or of inventive power, are the inspiration of the Almighty. We have in the closing part of the Bible story of the antediluvian age even an intimation of the deterioration of climate and means of subsistence towards the end of the period. Lamech, we are told, named his son Noah—rest or comfort—in the hope that by his means he should be comforted, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse provoked by the sons of man he may have recognised as fulfilled in the gradual deterioration of the climate toward the close of the palanthropic age. There are here surely some curious coincidences which might be followed farther, did space permit. We now come to the close of the whole in the Deluge; and as this has been made in our own time the subject of much discussion, and as it contains within itself the whole kernel of the subject, it merits a separate treatment. CHAPTER IX THE DELUGE OF NOAH
- 69. To the oldermen of this generation, who have followed the changes of scientific and historical opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is, has passed through a variety of phases like the changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an instructive illustration of the modifications of belief in other, and some of them to us more important, matters, whether of history or of religion, which have presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may be variously viewed in the future. As children we listened with awe and wonder to the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and received a deep and abiding impression of the enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later, though the idea that all the fossil remains imbedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge had passed away from the minds of the better informed, we read with interest the wonderful revelations of the bone-caves described by Buckland, and felt that the antediluvian age had become a scientific reality. But later still all this seemed to pass away like a dream. Under the guidance of Lyell we learned that even the caves and gravels must be of greater age than the historical Deluge, and that the remains of men and animals contained in them must have belonged to far-off æons, antedating perhaps even the Biblical creation of man, while the historical Deluge, if it ever occurred, must have been an affair so small and local that it had left no traces on the rocks of the earth. At the same time Biblical critics were busy with the narrative itself, showing that it could be decomposed into different documents, that it bore traces of a very recent origin, that it was unhistorical, and to be relegated to the same category with the fairy-tales of our infancy. Again, however, the kaleidoscope turns, and the later researches of geology into the physical and human history of the more recent deposits of the earth's crust, the discoveries of ancient Assyrian or Chaldean records of the Deluge, and the comparison of these with the ancient history of other nations, rehabilitate the old story; and as we study the new facts respecting the so-called palæolithic and neolithic men, the clay
- 70. tablets recovered fromthe libraries of Nineveh by George Smith, the calculations of Prestwich and others respecting the recency of the glacial period, and the historical gatherings of Lenormant, we find ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to it all along, even when the current of opinion tended strongly to turn us away. In illustration of the present aspects of the question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant's Beginnings of History, another from a recent work of my own. 'We are,' says Lenormant, 'in a position to affirm that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black race, and a tradition everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmogonic myth possesses this character of universality. It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the imaginations of the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget it. This cataclysm took place near the primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the separation of the families from whom the principal races were to descend, for it would be altogether contrary to probability and to the laws of sound criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly similar in character could have been reproduced at so many different points on the globe as would enable one to explain these universal traditions, or that these traditions should always have assumed an identical form, combined with circumstances which need not necessarily have suggested themselves to the mind in such a connection.' [37] [37] Les Origines de l'Histoire. Brown's translation. On the geological side, the following may be accepted as a summary of facts: [38]
- 71. [38] Modern Sciencein Bible Lands, 1888, pp. 244, 245, 251, 252. 'If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the mammoth age or of the palæolithic or palæocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity. They colonised the continents immediately after the elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, or in what has been called the "continental" period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we now have. We have some measures of the date of this great continental elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the Falls of Niagara as a chronometer, estimating their cutting power as equal to one foot per annum. He calculated the beginning of the process, which dates from the post-glacial elevation, to be about thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have shown that the rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other indications of similar bearing are found both in Europe and America, and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonised the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations based on the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data which have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time. 'If we identify the antediluvians of Genesis with the oldest men known to geological and archæological science, the parallelism is somewhat marked in physical characteristics and habits of life, and also in their apparently sudden and tragical disappearance from Europe and Western Asia, along with several of the large mammalia which were their contemporaries. If the Deluge is to be accepted as historical, and if a similar great break interrupts the geological history of man, separating extinct races from those which still survive, why may we not correlate the two? If the Deluge was
- 72. misused in theearly history of geology, by employing it to account for changes which took place long before the advent of man, this should not cause us to neglect its legitimate uses, with reference to the early human period. It is evident that if this correlation be accepted as probable, it must modify many views now held as to the antiquity of man. In that case the modern gravels and silts, spread over the plateaus between the river valleys, will be accounted for, not by any greater overflow of the existing streams, but by the abnormal action of currents of water diluvial in their character. Further, since the historical Deluge must have been of very limited duration, the physical changes separating the deposits containing the remains of palæocosmic men from those of later date would in like manner be accounted for, not by the slow processes imagined by extreme uniformitarians, but by causes of a more abrupt and cataclysmic character.' [39] [39] See also Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood, and papers by Professor Prestwich in Journal Geol. Society and Trans. Royal Society and by Andrews, Winchell, and others in America. We may proceed to inquire as to whether the position which we have now reached is likely to be permanent, or may represent merely one shifting phase of opinion. For this purpose we may formulate these conclusions in a few general statements, merely referring to the evidence on which they are based, as any complete discussion of this would necessarily be impossible within the limits of this work. We may first summarise the present position of the matter as indicated by historical and scientific research, altogether independently of the Bible. [40] [40] See articles by the author in The Contemporary Review, December 1889, and in The Magazine of Christian Literature, October 1890. 1. The recent discovery of the Chaldean deluge tablets has again directed attention to the statements of Berosus respecting the Babylonian tradition of a great flood, and these statements are found to be borne out in the main by the contents of the tablets.
- 73. There is thusa twofold testimony as to the occurrence of a deluge in that Babylonian plain which the Old Testament history represents as the earliest seat of antediluvian man. As Lenormant has well shown, the tradition exists in the ancient literature of India, Persia, Phœnicia, Phrygia, and Greece, and can be recognised in the traditions of Northern and Western Europe and of America, while the Egyptians had a similar account of the destruction of men, but apparently not by water, though their idea of a submerged continent of Atlantis probably had reference to the antediluvian world. Thus we find this story widely spread over the earth, and possessed by members of all the leading divisions of mankind. This does not necessarily prove the universality of the Deluge, though every distinct people naturally refers it to its own country. It shows, however, the existence of some very early common source of the tradition, and the variations are not more than were to have been expected in the different channels of transmission. 2. Parallel with this historical evidence lies the result of geological and archæological research, which has revealed to us the remains and works of prehistoric men, racially distinct from those of modern times, and who inhabited the earth at a period when its animal population was to a great extent distinct from that at present existing, and when its physical condition was also in many respects different. Thus in Europe and Asia, and to some extent also in America, we have evidence that the present races of men were preceded by others which have passed away, and this at the same time with many important species of land animals, once the contemporaries of man, but now known only as fossils. These ancient men are those called by geologists later pleistocene, or post- glacial, or the men of the cave and gravel deposits, or of the age of the mammoth, and who have been designated by archæologists palæolithic men, or, more properly, palæocosmic men, since the character of their stone implements is only one not very important feature of their history, and implements of the palæolithic type have been used in all periods, and indeed are still used in some places.
- 74. 3. The prevalenceamong geologists of an exaggerated and unreasonable uniformitarianism, which refused to allow sufficient prominence to sudden cataclysms arising from the slow accumulation of natural forces, and which was a natural reaction from the convulsive geology of an earlier period, has caused the idea to be generally entertained that the age of palæocosmic men was of vast duration, and passed only by slow gradations and a gradual transition into the new conditions of the modern period. This view long was, and still is, an obstacle to any rational correlation of the geological and traditional history of man. Recently, however, new views have been forced on geologists, and have led many of the most sagacious observers and reasoners to see that the palanthropic period is much nearer to us than we had imagined. The arguments for this I have referred to in previous pages, and need not reiterate them, here. A few leading points may, however, be noted. One of these is the small amount of physical or organic change which has occurred since the close of the palanthropic period. Another is the more rapid rate of erosion and deposition by rivers in the modern period than had previously been supposed. Another is the striking fact that a large number of mammals, like the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, seem to have perished simultaneously with the palæocosmic men, and this by some sudden catastrophe. [41] It has also been shown by Pictet and Dawkins that all the extant mammals of Europe already existed in the post-glacial age, but along with many others now altogether or locally extinct. Thus there seems to have been the removal over the whole northern hemisphere of a number of the largest mammals, while a selected number survived and no additions were made. Again, while at one time it was supposed that the remains of palæocosmic man and his contemporaries were confined to caverns and river alluvia, it is now known that they occur also on high plateaus and water-sheds, in beds of gravel and silt which must have been deposited there under conditions of submergence and somewhat active current drift, perhaps in some cases aided by floating ice. [42] Lastly, while, as must naturally be the case, in some places the remains of ancient
- 75. and more modernmen are mixed, or seem to pass into each other, in others, as in the Swiss, Belgian and Lebanon caves and in the superficial deposits, there is a distinct separation, implying an interval accompanied by physical change between the time of the earlier and later men. [41] Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood. [42] Prestwich on deposits at Ightham, Kent, Journal Geological Society, May 1889. Such considerations as these, the force of which is most strongly felt by those best acquainted with the methods of investigation employed by geologists and archæologists, are forcing us to conclude: (1) That there are indicated in the latest geological formations two distinct human periods, an earlier and a later, characterised by differences of faunæ and of physical conditions, as well as by distinct races of men. (2) That these two periods are separated by a somewhat rapid physical change of the nature of submergence, or by a series of changes locally sudden and generally not long-continued. (3) That it is not improbable that this greatest of all revolutions in human affairs may be the same that has so impressed itself on the memory of the survivors as to form the basis of all the traditions and historical accounts of the Deluge. This being the state of the case, it becomes expedient to review our ideas of the ancient Hebrew records, from which our early, and perhaps crude, impressions of this event were derived, and to ascertain how much of our notions of the Deluge of Genesis may be fairly deduced from the record itself, and how much may be due to more or less correct interpretations, or to our own fancy. In connection with this we may also be able to obtain some guidance as to the value to be attached to the Hebrew document as a veritable and primitive record of the great catastrophe. The key to the understanding of the early human history of Genesis lies in the story of the fall of man, and its sequel in the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, the beginning of that reign of
- 76. violence which endureseven to this day. From this arose the first division of the human race into hostile clans or tribes, the races of Cain and Seth, on which hinges the history, characteristics and fate of antediluvian man; and, as we shall see in the sequel, from this arose profound differences in religious beliefs, which have tinged the theology and superstitions of all subsequent times. Of course, in making this statement I refer to the history given in Genesis, without special reference to its intrinsic truth or credibility, but merely in relation to its interpretation in harmony with its own statements. It is further evident that this tragic event must have occurred in that Tigro-Euphratean region which was the Biblical site of Eden [43] and that while the Sethite race presumably occupied the original home of Adam, and adhered to that form of religion which is expressed in the worship of Jahveh, the coming Redeemer and the expected 'Seed of the Woman,' the other race spread itself more widely, probably attained to a higher civilisation, in so far as art is concerned, in some of its divisions, and sank to a deeper barbarism in others, while it retained the original worship of God the Creator (Elohim). Hence the Sethite race is designated as the sons of Adam (Beni ha Adam), the true and legitimate children of the first man, and the Cainites as Beni Elohim, or sons of God. [44] The mixture of these races produced the godless, heaven-defying Nephelim, the Titans of the Old Testament, whose wickedness brought on the diluvial catastrophe. These half-breeds of the antediluvian time were in all probability the best developed, physically and perhaps mentally, of the men of their period; and but for the Deluge they might have become masters of the world. [43] Modern Science in Bible Lands, chap. iv. [44] That this is the true meaning of the expressions in Genesis vi. I cannot doubt. See discussion of the subject in the work cited in previous note. This question of different races and religions before the Flood is, however, deserving of a little farther elucidation. The names Elohim
- 77. and Jahveh areused conjointly throughout the Book of Genesis except in its first chapter, and their mode of occurrence cannot be explained merely on the theory of two documents pieced together by an editor. It has a deeper significance than this, and one which indicates a radical diversity between Elohists and Jahvists even in this early period. In the earliest part of the human history, as distinguished from the general record of creation, the two names are united in the compound Jahveh-Elohim, but immediately after the fall Eve is represented as attributing to, or identifying with, Jahveh alone the birth of her eldest son—'I have produced a man, the Jahveh,' and which may mean that she supposed Cain to be the promised manifestation of God as the Redeemer. Accordingly Cain and Abel are represented as offering sacrifice to Jahveh, and yet it is said in a verse which must be a part of the same document, that it was not till the time of Enos, a grandson of Adam, that men began to invoke the name of Jahveh. It would seem also that this invocation of Jahveh was peculiar to the Sethites, and that the Cainites were still worshippers of Elohim, the God of nature and creation, a fact which perhaps has relation to the so-called physical religion of some ancient peoples. Hence their title of Beni ha Elohim. Thus the division between the Cainite and Sethite races early became accentuated by a sectarian distinction as well. We may imagine that the Cainites, worshipping God as Creator, and ignoring that doctrine of a Redeemer which seemed confined to the rival race of Seth, were the deists of their time, and held a position which might, according to culture and circumstances, degenerate into a polytheistic nature-worship, or harden into an absolute materialism. On the other hand, the Sethites, recognised by the author of Genesis as the orthodox descendants of Adam, and invoking Jahveh, held to the promise of a coming Saviour, and to a deliverance from the effects of the Fall to be achieved by His means. It is clear that, from the point of view of the author of Genesis, the chosen seed of Seth should have maintained their separation from a wicked world. Their failure to do this involves them in the wrath of Jahveh and renders the destruction of mankind necessary,
- 78. and in thisthe whole Godhead under its combined aspects of Elohim and Jahveh takes a part. A similar view has caused the Chaldean narrator to invoke the aid of all the gods in his pantheon to effect the destruction of man. These considerations farther throw light on the double character of the Deluge narrative in Genesis, which has induced those ingenious scholars who occupy themselves with analysis or disintegration of the Pentateuch to affirm two narratives, one Elohist and one Jahvist. [45] Whatever value may attach to this hypothesis, it is evident that if the history is thus made up of two documents it gains in value, since this would imply that the editor had at his disposal two chronicles embodying the observations of two narrators, possibly of different sects, if these differences were perpetuated in the postdiluvian world; and farther, that he is enabled to affirm that the catastrophe affected both the great races of men. It farther would imply that these early documents were used by the writer to produce his combined narrative almost without change of diction, so that they remain in their original form of the alleged testimony of eye-witnesses, a peculiarity which attaches also to the Chaldean version, as this purports to be in the form given by Hasisadra, the Chaldean Noah, himself. [46] [45] See, for a very clear statement of these views, Professor Green in Hebraica, January 1889, along with Dr. Harper's résumé of the Pentateuchal criticism in the previous number. [46] Translation of G. Smith and others. With reference to the preservation of this and the Hebrew narrative in writing, we should bear in mind that writing was an art well known in Chaldea and Egypt immediately after the Deluge, or at least between 2000 and 3000 B.C., and that the Chaldean narrator speaks of documents hidden by Noah at Sippara before the Deluge. Let us now inquire into the physical aspects of the Deluge, as they are said to have presented themselves to the ancient witness or witnesses to whom we owe the Biblical account of the catastrophe, and endeavour to ascertain if they have any agreement with the
- 79. conditions of thegreat post-glacial Deluge of geology. Let it be observed here that we are dealing not with prehistoric events but with a written history, supposed by some to have been compiled from two contemporary documents, and corroborated by the testimony of the ancient Chaldean tablets copied by the scribes of Assurbanipal, apparently from different originals, preserved in very ancient Chaldean temples. The preparation of an ark or ship, and the accommodation therein, not only of Noah and his family, but of a certain number of animals, is a feature in which most Deluge narratives agree. This implies a considerable advance in the arts of construction and navigation, but not more than we have a right to infer from the perfection of these arts in early postdiluvian times, when it can scarcely be supposed that the new communities of men had fully regained the position of their ancestors before the destruction caused by the great Flood. Lenormant, however, remarks here: 'The Biblical narrative bears the stamp of an inland nation, ignorant of things appertaining to navigation. In Genesis the name of the ark, Têbâh, signifies "chest," and not "vessel"; and there is nothing said about launching the ark on the water; no mention either of the sea, or of navigation, or any pilot. In the Epopee of Uruk, on the other hand, everything indicates that it was composed among a maritime people; each circumstance reflects the manners and customs of the dwellers on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Hasisadra goes on board a vessel, distinctly alluded to by its appropriate appellation; this ship is launched, and makes a trial-trip to test it: all its chinks are calked with bitumen, and it is placed under the charge of a pilot.' This remark, which I find made by other commentators as well, suggests, it seems to me, somewhat different conclusions. The Hebrews when settled, either in Egypt or in Canaan, were near to the sea-coast, and familiar with boats and with the ships of the Phœnicians. If, therefore, they persisted in calling Noah's ark a 'chest,' it must have been from unwillingness to change an old
- 80. history derived fromtheir Chaldean or Mesopotamian ancestors, or because they continued to regard the ark as rather a great box than a ship properly so called. On the other hand, it is likely that the particulars in the Chaldean account came from later manipulation of the narrative, after commerce and navigation on the Euphrates and Persian Gulf had become familiar to the Chaldeans. Thus in this as in other respects the Hebrew narrative is the more primitive of the two, and is consistent with the necessity of Divine instructions to Noah, which, if he had been familiar with navigation, would not have been necessary. [47] [47] See also the evidence of an inland position of the writers in the record of creation in Genesis i., as stated in my work cited in previous note. As in the Chaldean version, the Biblical history begins with the specification of the ark. On this (Elohist) portion it is only necessary to say that the dimensions of the ark are large and well adapted to stowage rather than to speed, and that within it was strengthened by three decks and by a number of bulkheads, or partitions, separating the rooms or berths into which it was divided. Without, it was protected and rendered tight by coats of resinous or asphaltic varnish (copher), and it was built of the lightest and most durable kind of wood (gopher or cypress). Only two openings are mentioned, a hatch or window above, and a port or door in the side. There is no mention of any masts, rigging, or other means of propulsion or steerage. The Chaldean history differs in introducing a steersman, thus implying the means of propulsion as in an actual ship. Noah is instructed, in addition to his own family, to provide for animals, two of every kind; but these very general terms are afterwards limited by the words uph, bemah, and remesh, which define birds, cattle, and small quadrupeds as those specially intended. Noah's ark was not a menagerie, but rather like a cattle- ship, capable perhaps of accommodating as many animals as one of those steamers which now transfer to England the animal produce of Western fields and prairies. The animals portrayed on the ancient
- 81. monuments of Egyptand Assyria, however, inform us that, in early post-diluvial times, and therefore probably also in the time of Noah, a greater variety of animals were under the control of man than is the case in any one country at present. [48] In the passage referring to the embarkation, only the cattle and fowls are mentioned, but seven pairs are to be taken of the clean species which could be used as food. [49] The embarkation having been completed on the very day when the Deluge commenced, we have next the narrative of the Flood itself. Here it is noteworthy that God (Elohim) makes the arrangements, and Jahveh shuts the voyagers in. [48] Houghton, Natural History of the Ancients, and Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology; also representations of tame antelopes, &c., on Egyptian monuments. [49] This has been considered a later addition; but the practice of all primitive peoples has sanctioned the distinction of clean and unclean beasts, which is merely defined in the Mosaic law, not instituted for the first time. The first note that our witness enters in his 'log' relates to his impressions of the causes of the catastrophe, which was not effected supernaturally, but by natural causes. These are the 'breaking up of the fountains of the great deep' and the 'opening of the windows of heaven.' These expressions must be interpreted in accordance with the use of similar terms in the account of creation in Genesis i., the more so that this statement is a portion regarded by the composite theory as Elohistic. On this principle of interpretation, the great deep is that universal ocean which prevailed before the elevation of the dry land, and the breaking up of its fountains is the removal of that restriction placed upon it when its waters were gathered together into one place. In other words, the meaning is the invasion of the land by the ocean. In like manner, the windows of heaven, the cloudy reservoirs of the atmospheric expanse, or possibly waterspouts, or even volcanic eruptions, and not necessarily identical with the great rain extending for forty days, as stated in the following clause. The Chaldean record adds the phenomena of thunder and tempest, but omits the great deep; an indication that it
- 82. is an independentaccount, and by a less informed or less intelligent narrator. It is worthy of note that our narrator has no idea of any river inundation in the case. At this stage we are brought into the presence of the question: Is the Deluge represented as a miraculous or a merely natural phenomenon? Yet, from a scientific point of view, this question has not the significance usually attributed to it. True miracles are not, and cannot be, contraventions or violations of God's natural laws. They are merely unusual operations of natural powers under their proper laws, but employed by the Almighty for effecting spiritual ends. Thus, naturally, they are under the laws of the material world, but, spiritually, they belong to a higher sphere. In the present case, according to the narrative in Genesis, the Flood was physically as much a natural phenomenon as the earthquakes at Ischia, or the eruption of Krakatoa. It was a miraculous or spiritual intervention only in so far as it was related to the destruction of an ungodly race, and as it was announced beforehand by a prophet. Had the approaching eruption of Krakatoa been intended as a judgment on the wicked, and had it been revealed to anyone who had taken pains to warn his countrymen and then to provide for his own safety, this would have given to that eruption as much of a miraculous character as the Bible attaches to the Deluge. In the New Testament, where we have more definite information as to miracles, they are usually called 'powers' and 'signs,' less prominence being given to the mere wonder which is implied in the term 'miracle.' Under the aspect of powers, they imply that the Creator can do many things beyond our power and comprehension, just as in a lesser way a civilised man, from his greater knowledge of natural laws and command over natural energies, can do much that is incomprehensible to a savage; and in this direction science teaches us that, given an omnipotent God, the field of miracle is infinite. As signs, on the other hand, such displays of power connect themselves with the moral and spiritual world, and become teachers of higher truths and proofs of Divine interference. The true position of miracles as signs is remarkably brought out in that argument of Christ, in which He says, 'If ye
- 83. believe not Mywords, believe Me for the works' sake.' It is as if a civilised visitor to some barbarous land, who had been describing to an incredulous audience the wonders of his own country, were to exhibit to them a watch or a microscope, and then to appeal to them that these were things just as mysterious and incredible as those of which he had been speaking. Returning to the Deluge, we may observe that such an invasion of the great deep is paralleled by many of which geology presents to us the evidence, and that our knowledge of nature enables us to conceive of the possibility of greater miracles of physical change than any on record, such as, for instance, the explosion of the earth itself into an infinity of particles, the final extinction of the solar heat, or the accession to this heat of such additional fierceness as to burn up the attendant planets. All this might take place without any interference with God's laws, but merely by correlations and adjustments of them, as much within His power as the turning on or stopping of a machine is in the power of a human engineer. Further, such acts of Divine power may be related to moral and spiritual things, just as easily as any outward action resulting from our own will may be determined by moral considerations. The time is past when any rational objection can be made on the part of science to the so-called miracles of the Bible. To return to the passengers in the ark. This must have been built on high ground, or the progress of the Deluge must have been slow, for forty days elapsed before the waters reached the ship and floated it. It is not unlikely that the ark was built on rising ground, for here supplies of timber would be nearer. It has puzzled some simple antiquarians to find dug-out canoes of prehistoric date on the tops of hills; but they did not reflect that the maker of a canoe would construct his vessel where the suitable wood could be found, since it would be much easier to carry the finished canoe to the shore than to drag thither the solid log out of which it was to be fashioned. So Noah would naturally build his ark where the wood he required could be procured most easily. The Chaldean narrator
- 84. seems to haveoverlooked this simple consideration, for he mentions a launching and trial-trip of the ship, a sure mark that he is a later authority than the writer in Genesis. The inmates of the ark now felt that it was moving on the waters, a new and dread sensation which must have deeply impressed their minds, and they soon became aware that the ark not merely floated, but 'went,' or made progress in some definite direction. Remark the simple yet significant notes—'The ark was lift up from the earth,' and 'the ark went upon the face of the waters.' The direction of driftage is not stated, but it is a fair inference, from the probable place of departure in Chaldea and that of final grounding of the ark, that it was northward or inland, which would indicate that the chief supply of water was from the Indian Ocean, and that it was flowing inward toward the great sunken plain of interior Asia, which, however, the ark did not reach, but grounded in the hilly region known to the Hebrews as Ararat, to the Chaldeans as Nisr. A curious statement is made here (Elohist) as to the depth of the water being fifteen cubits. Even in a flat country so small a depth would not cover the rising grounds; but this is obviously not the meaning of the narrator, but something much more sensible and practical. It is not unlikely that the measure stated was the water- draught of the loaded ark, and that as the voyagers felt it rise and fall on the waves, they may have experienced some anxiety lest it should strike and go to pieces. It was no small part of the providential arrangement in their case that in the track of the ark everything was submerged more than fifteen cubits before they reached it. Hence this note, which is at the same time one of the criteria of the simple veracity of the history. The only other remark in this part of the narrative relates to the entire submergence of the whole country within sight, and the consequent destruction of animal life; and here the enumeration covers all land animals, and the terms used are thus more general than those applied to the animals preserved in the ark. The Deluge culminated, in so far as our narrator observed, in one hundred and fifty days.
- 85. His next experienceis of a gale of wind, accompanied or followed by cessation of the rain and of the inflow of the oceanic waters. [50] The waters then decreased, not regularly, but by an intermittent process, 'going and returning'; but whether this was a tidal phenomenon or of the nature of earthquake waves we have no information. At length the ark grounded, apparently on high ground or in thick weather, for no land was visible; but at length, after two months, neighbouring hill-tops were seen. [50] Genesis viii. 1, 2: 'And Elohim made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters abated,' &c. The incident of sending out birds to test the recession of the waters deserves notice, because of its apparently trivial nature, because it appears with variations in the Chaldean account, and because it has been treated in a remarkably unscientific manner by some critics. It indicates the uncertainty which would arise in the mind of the patriarch because of the fluctuating decrease of the waters, and possibly also a misty condition of the air preventing a distinct view of distant objects. The birds selected for the purpose were singularly appropriate. The raven is by habit a wanderer, and remarkable for power of flight and clearness of distant vision. So long, therefore, as it made the ark its headquarters, 'going and returning' [51] from its search for food, it might be inferred that no habitable land was accessible. The dove, sent out immediately after the raven, [52] is of a different habit. It could not act as a scavenger of the waters and go and return, but could leave only if it found land covered with vegetation. As a domesticated bird also, it would naturally come back to be taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth at intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf when it found tree tops above the water, and remaining away when it found food and shelter. The Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow—a perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into the ark at all, would from its habits of life be incapable of affording any information. This addition is a mark of interpolation in the Chaldean version, and proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached
- 86. by popular superstitionto the swallow, or from the familiar habits of the bird suggesting to some later editor its appropriateness. Singularly enough, the usually judicious Schrader, probably from deficient knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate all this, and after a long discussion prefers the Babylonian legend for reasons of a most unscientific character, actually condemning the perfectly natural and clear Biblical story as artificial and due to a recent emendation. He says: 'When the story passed over to the Hebrews, the name of the swallow has disappeared,' and 'it is only from the Babylonian narrative that the selection of the different birds becomes clear.' This little disquisition of Schrader is, indeed, one of the most amusing instances of that inversion of sound criticism which results when unscientific commentators tamper with the plain statements of truthful and observant witnesses. [51] Margin of Authorised Version; less fully, 'to and fro' in the text. [52] There is no reason to suppose, as some have done, a hiatus here in the narrative. The uncertainty indicated by the mission of the birds seems to have continued from the first day of the tenth to the first day of the first month, when Noah at length ventured to remove the covering of the ark and inspect the condition of the surrounding country, now abandoned by the waters, but not thoroughly dried for some time longer. Still, so timid was the patriarch that he did not dare without a special command to leave his place of safety. I am aware that if the two alleged documents are arbitrarily separated it is possible to see here some apparent contradiction in dates; but this is not necessary if we leave them in their original relation. [53] [53] See Green, Hebraica, l. c. It will be observed that a narrative such as that summarised above bears unmistakably stamped upon it the characteristics of the testimony of an eye-witness. By whomsoever reduced to writing and finally edited, it must, if genuine, have come down nearly in its
- 87. present form fromthe time of the catastrophe which it relates. It follows that the narrator leaves no place for the current questions as to the universality of the Deluge. It was universal so far as his experience extended, but that is all. He is not responsible for what occurred beyond the limits of his observation and beyond the fact that man, so far as known to him, perished. If, therefore, as some have held, [54] Balaam in his prophecy refers to Cainite populations as extant in his time, or if Moses declines to trace to any of the postdiluvian patriarchs the Rephaim, Emim, Zuzim and other prehistoric peoples of Palestine, we may infer, without any contradiction of our narrative, that there were surviving antediluvians other than the Noachidæ, whatever improbability may attach to this on other grounds, and more especially from the now ascertained extension of the post-glacial submergence over nearly all parts of the northern hemisphere. [54] Motais, Déluge Biblique. Let it also be noticed that beyond the prophetic intimation to Noah, and the one expression, Jahveh 'shut him in,' which may refer merely to providential care, there is, as already remarked, nothing miraculous, in the popular sense of that term; and that mythical elements, such as those introduced into the Babylonian narrative, are altogether absent. The story relates to plain matters of fact, which, if they happened at all, any one might observe, and for the proof of which any ordinary testimony would be sufficient. It may be profitable, however, to revert here to the probable relation of this narrative to the geological facts already adverted to, and also its bearing on the mythical and polytheistic additions which we find in the Deluge stories of heathen nations. Regarding the Biblical Deluge as a record of a submergence of a vast region of Eur-Asia and Northern Africa, at least, while no similar catastrophe has been recorded subsequently, it is unquestionable that submergences equally important have occurred again and again in the geological history of our continents, and have been equally destructive of animal life. It is true that most of these are believed to
- 88. have been ofmore slow and gradual character than that recorded in Genesis, but in the case of many of them this is a very uncertain inference from the analogy of modern changes; and it is certain that the post-glacial submergence, which closed the era of palæocosmic man and his companion animals, must have been one of the most transient on record. On the other hand, we need not limit the entire duration of the Noachic submergence to the single year whose record has been preserved to us. Local subsidence may have been in progress throughout the later antediluvian age, and the experience of the narrator in Genesis may have related only to its culmination in the central district of human residence. Finally, if man was really a witness of this last great continental submergence, we cannot be too thankful that there were so intelligent witnesses to preserve the record of the event for our information. It is needless, then, to enter into further details, though these are sufficient to fill volumes if desired, in proof of the remarkable convergence of history and geological discovery on the great Flood, which now constitutes one of the most remarkable illustrations of the points of contact of science proceeding on its own methods of investigation and Divine revelation, preserving the records of ancient events otherwise lost or buried under accretions of myth and fancy. I have already endeavoured to show that the earliest race of palæocosmic men, that of Canstadt, very fairly corresponds with what may have been the characteristics of the ruder tribes of Cainites, and that if we regard the Truchère skull as representing the Sethite people, we may suppose the Cro-magnon race to represent the giants, or Nephelim, who sprung from the union of the two pure types. I have also referred to the possibility that the Truchère race, so little known to us as yet, may have been a prot-Iberian people, possessing even before the Flood domestic animals, agriculture, and some of the arts of life, corresponding to what we find in the earliest postdiluvian nations. This is, indeed, implied in the fact that the postdiluvian nations present themselves to us at once with a somewhat advanced condition of the arts, especially in Chaldea and in Egypt. Such possibilities may serve to suggest to speculative
- 89. archæologists that theycannot safely assume that all antediluvian or palæolithic tribes were barbarous or semi-brutal, or that there was a continuous development of humanity without any diluvial catastrophe. It is also somewhat rash to carry back the chronology of Egyptians and Babylonians to times when, as we know on physical evidence, the Valley of the Nile was an arm of the sea, and the plain of the Euphrates an extension of the Persian Gulf. It is fortunate for the Bible that such assumptions are not required by its history. CHAPTER X SPECIAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE In studying the literature relating to the Deluge, we are constantly met by questions as to its so-called 'universality.' Was it a local or universal Deluge and if universal in what sense so? This is a point in which neglect or ignorance of the necessary physical conditions has led to the strangest misconceptions. It is obvious that there are four senses in which a catastrophe like the Deluge of Noah may be affirmed or denied to have been universal. 1. It may have been universal in the sense of being a deep stratum of water covering the whole globe, both land and sea. Such universality could not have been in the mind of the writer, and probably has been claimed knowingly by no writer in modern times. Halley in the last century understood the conditions of such universality, though he seems to have supposed that the impact of a comet might supply the necessary water. Owen has directed attention to the fact that such a deluge might be as fatal to the inhabitants of the waters as to those of the land. In any case, such
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