The old theologians who were also historians had an interesting take on early history and the Kingdoms that rose up after the flood. They found in them allegorical interpretations of different types of power and the folks who wielded it. The Egyptians would represent the analytical scientific mind that turned science into religion. The Assyrians, Sennacherib from yesterday, represented the worship of rationalism and wisdom. One the old historico/theological folks was a man named Johnathan Bayley who posited the idea that rationalism can become a sin that makes the intellect lawless, and inflated with self-sufficiency, and “then it is like Assyria, boasting and arrogant, sneering, contemptuous, and sarcastic,
insolently defying God”.
“It is a very curious circumstance, and a peculiar feature in our mental history, that while as to every other faculty it is admitted to be its office to perceive as much as it can, and enjoy as much as it can of the objects “which it is fitted to
embrace”,-the rational faculty, with one class of minds, rejoices only in resisting; it closes its eyes, and defies you to make it see; it doubts, doubts, doubts, and keeps trying to say, No; it is ingeniously negative; it will not have a Divine Friend.”
Jonathan Bayley— The Divine Wisdom of the Word of God (1892
