# The shipwreck is not Genesis's chronology

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH05.P025](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH05.P025/#char=2717,2795): "the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world"

The closing shipwreck image should not be read as a literal biblical chronology. Genesis places the prohibition, disobedience, and expulsion within an already created world: the bounty of the garden precedes the forbidden act. Chesterton's sense of happiness depending upon a condition has a concrete biblical analogue in Genesis 2:16–17, followed by the consequences in chapter 3. Yet a ship sunk 'before the beginning of the world' is his figurative representation of humanity's lost inheritance, not the chronology narrated by Genesis. Reading it literally would reverse the story's order: Genesis first calls the creation good, and only subsequently recounts human disobedience. [Genesis 1:31; 2:16–17; 3:6–24, KJV electronic witness](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10).

## Sources

- [The King James Version of the Bible, Project Gutenberg #10](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10), Genesis 1:31; 2:16–17; 3:6–24

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