Legends of Babylon and Egypt in relation to Hebrew tradition Part 8

It may be noted that the character of Aps and Tiamat in this portion of the poem(1) is quite at variance with their later actions. Their revolt at the ordered "way" of the G.o.ds was a necessary preliminary to the incorporation of the Dragon myths, in which Ea and Marduk are the heroes. Here they appear as entirely beneficent G.o.ds of the primaeval water, undisturbed by storms, in whose quiet depths the equally beneficent deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar, were generated.(2) This interpretation, by the way, suggests a more satisfactory restoration for the close of the ninth line of the poem than any that has yet been proposed. That line is usually taken to imply that the G.o.ds were created "in the midst of (heaven)", but I think the following rendering, in connexion with ll. 1-5, gives better sense: When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not bear a name, And the primaeval Aps who begat them,(3) And Mummu, and Tiamat who bore them(3) all,- Their waters were mingled together, ...

Then were created the G.o.ds in the midst of (their waters),(4) Lakhmu and Lakhamu were called into being ...

(1) Tabl. I, ll. 1-21.

(2) We may perhaps see a survival of Tiamat's original character in her control of the Tablets of Fate. The poem does not represent her as seizing them in any successful fight; they appear to be already hers to bestow on Kingu, though in the later mythology they are "not his by right"

(cf. Tabl. I, ll. 137 ff., and Tabl. IV, l. 121).

(3) i.e. the G.o.ds.

(4) The ninth line is preserved only on a Neo-Babylonian duplicate (Seven Tablets, Vol. II, pl. i). I suggested the restoration ki-rib s(a-ma-mi), "in the midst of heaven", as possible, since the traces of the first sign in the last word of the line seemed to be those of the Neo-Babylonian form of sa. The restoration appeared at the time not altogether satisfactory in view of the first line of the poem, and it could only be justified by supposing that samamu, or "heaven", was already vaguely conceived as in existence (op. cit., Vol. I, p. 3, n. 14). But the traces of the sign, as I have given them (op. cit., Vol. II, pl. i), may also possibly be those of the Neo-Babylonian form of the sign me; and I would now restore the end of the line in the Neo-Babylonian tablet as ki-rib m(e-e-su-nu), "in the midst of (their waters)", corresponding to the form mu-u- su-nu in l. 5 of this duplicate. In the a.s.syrian Version me(pl)-su-nu would be read in both lines. It will be possible to verify the new reading, by a re-examination of the traces on the tablet, when the British Museum collections again become available for study after the war.

If the ninth line of the poem be restored as suggested, its account of the Birth of the G.o.ds will be found to correspond accurately with the summary from Berossus, who, in explaining the myth, refers to the Babylonian belief that the universe consisted at first of moisture in which living creatures, such as he had already described, were generated.(1) The primaeval waters are originally the source of life, not of destruction, and it is in them that the G.o.ds are born, as in Egyptian mythology; there Nu, the primaeval water-G.o.d from whom Ra was self-created, never ceased to be the Sun-G.o.d's supporter. The change in the Babylonian conception was obviously introduced by the combination of the Dragon myth with that of Creation, a combination that in Egypt would never have been justified by the gentle Nile. From a study of some aspects of the names at the beginning of the Babylonian poem we have already seen reason to suspect that its version of the Birth of the G.o.ds goes back to Sumerian times, and it is pertinent to ask whether we have any further evidence that in Sumerian belief water was the origin of all things.

(1) {ugrou gar ontos tou pantos kai zoon en auto gegennemenon (toionde) ktl}. His creatures of the primaeval water were killed by the light; and terrestrial animals were then created which could bear (i.e. breathe and exist in) the air.

For many years we have possessed a Sumerian myth of Creation, which has come to us on a late Babylonian tablet as the introductory section of an incantation. It is provided with a Semitic translation, and to judge from its record of the building of Babylon and Egasila, Marduk's temple, and its identification of Marduk himself with the Creator, it has clearly undergone some editing at the hands of the Babylonian priests. Moreover, the occurrence of various episodes out of their logical order, and the fact that the text records twice over the creation of swamps and marshes, reeds and trees or forests, animals and cities, indicate that two Sumerian myths have been combined. Thus we have no guarantee that the other cities referred to by name in the text, Nippur, Erech, and Eridu, are mentioned in any significant connexion with each other.(1) Of the actual cause of Creation the text appears to give two versions also, one in its present form impersonal, and the other carried out by a G.o.d. But these two accounts are quite unlike the authorized version of Babylon, and we may confidently regard them as representing genuine Sumerian myths. The text resembles other early accounts of Creation by introducing its narrative with a series of negative statements, which serve to indicate the preceding non-existence of the world, as will be seen from the following extract:(2) No city had been created, no creature had been made, Nippur had not been created, Ekur had not been built, Erech had not been created, Eanna had not been built, Aps had not been created, Eridu had not been built, Of the holy house, the house of the G.o.ds, the habitation had not been created.

All lands(3) were sea.

At the time when a channel (was formed) in the midst of the sea, Then was Eridu created, Esagila built, etc.

Here we have the definite statement that before Creation all the world was sea. And it is important to note that the primaeval water is not personified; the ordinary Sumerian word for "sea" is employed, which the Semitic translator has faithfully rendered in his version of the text.(4) The reference to a channel in the sea, as the cause of Creation, seems at first sight a little obscure; but the word implies a "drain" or "water-channel", not a current of the sea itself, and the reference may be explained as suggested by the drainage of a flood-area. No doubt the phrase was elaborated in the original myth, and it is possible that what appears to be a second version of Creation later on in the text is really part of the more detailed narrative of the first myth. There the Creator himself is named. He is the Sumerian G.o.d Gilimma, and in the Semitic translation Marduk's name is subst.i.tuted. To the following couplet, which describes Gilimma's method of creation, is appended a further extract from a later portion of the text, there evidently displaced, giving additional details of the Creator's work: Gilimma bound reeds in the face of the waters, He formed soil and poured it out beside the reeds.(5) (He)(6) filled in a dike by the side of the sea, (He ...) a swamp, he formed a marsh.

(...), he brought into existence, (Reeds he form)ed,(7) trees he created.

(1) The composite nature of the text is discussed by Professor Jastrow in his Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, pp. 89 ff.; and in his paper in the Journ. Amer. Or. Soc., Vol. x.x.xVI (1916), pp. 279 ff.; he has a.n.a.lysed it into two main versions, which he suggests originated in Eridu and Nippur respectively. The evidence of the text does not appear to me to support the view that any reference to a watery chaos preceding Creation must necessarily be of Semitic origin. For the literature of the text (first published by Pinches, Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc., Vol. XXIII, pp. 393 ff.), see Sev. Tabl., Vol. I, p. 130.

(2) Obv., ll. 5-12.

(3) Sum. nigin-kur-kur-ra-ge, Sem. nap-har ma-ta-a-tu, lit. "all lands", i.e. Sumerian and Babylonian expressions for "the world".

(4) Sum. a-ab-ba, "sea", is here rendered by tamtum, not by its personified equivalent Tiamat.

(5) The suggestion has been made that amu, the word in the Semitic version here translated "reeds", should be connected with ammatu, the word used for "earth" or "dry land" in the Babylonian Creation Series, Tabl. I, l. 2, and given some such meaning as "expanse". The couplet is thus explained to mean that the G.o.d made an expanse on the face of the waters, and then poured out dust "on the expanse".

But the Semitic version in l. 18 reads itti ami, "beside the a.", not ina ami, "on the a."; and in any case there does not seem much significance in the act of pouring out specially created dust on or beside land already formed.

The Sumerian word translated by amu is written gi-dir, with the element gi, "reed", in l. 17, and though in the following line it is written under its variant form a-dir without gi, the equation gi-a-dir = amu is elsewhere attested (cf. Delitzsch, Handworterbuch, p. 77). In favour of regarding amu as some sort of reed, here used collectively, it may be pointed out that the Sumerian verb in l. 17 is kesda, "to bind", accurately rendered by rakasu in the Semitic version. a.s.suming that l. 34 belongs to the same account, the creation of reeds in general beside trees, after dry land is formed, would not of course be at variance with the G.o.d's use of some sort of reed in his first act of creation. He creates the reed-bundles, as he creates the soil, both of which go to form the first dike; the reed-beds, like the other vegetation, spring up from the ground when it appears.

(6) The Semitic version here reads "the lord Marduk"; the corresponding name in the Sumerian text is not preserved.

(7) The line is restored from l. 2 o the obverse of the text.

Here the Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the primaeval water in much the same way as the early cultivator in the Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The existence of the earth is here not really presupposed. All the world was sea until the G.o.d created land out of the waters by the only practical method that was possible in Mesopotamia.

In another Sumerian myth, which has been recovered on one of the early tablets from Nippur, we have a rather different picture of beginnings. For there, though water is the source of life, the existence of the land is presupposed. But it is bare and desolate, as in the Mesopotamian season of "low water". The underlying idea is suggestive of a period when some progress in systematic irrigation had already been made, and the filling of the dry ca.n.a.ls and subsequent irrigation of the parched ground by the rising flood of Enki was not dreaded but eagerly desired. The myth is only one of several that have been combined to form the introductory sections of an incantation; but in all of them Enki, the G.o.d of the deep water, plays the leading part, though a.s.sociated with different consorts.(1) The incantation is directed against various diseases, and the recitation of the closing mythical section was evidently intended to enlist the aid of special G.o.ds in combating them. The creation of these deities is recited under set formulae in a sort of refrain, and the divine name a.s.signed to each bears a magical connexion with the sickness he or she is intended to dispel.(2) (1) See Langdon, Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sect., Vol. X, No. 1 (1915), pl. i f., pp. 69 ff.; Journ. Amer.

Or. Soc., Vol. x.x.xVI (1916), pp. 140 ff.; cf. Prince, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc., Vol. x.x.xVI, pp. 90 ff.; Jastrow, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc., Vol. x.x.xVI, pp. 122 ff., and in particular his detailed study of the text in Amer. Journ.

Semit. Lang., Vol. x.x.xIII, pp. 91 ff. Dr. Langdon's first description of the text, in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., Vol.

x.x.xVI (1914), pp. 188 ff., was based on a comparatively small fragment only; and on his completion of the text from other fragments in Pennsylvania. Professor Sayce at once realized that the preliminary diagnosis of a Deluge myth could not be sustained (cf. Expos. Times, Nov., 1915, pp.

88 ff.). He, Professor Prince, and Professor Jastrow independently showed that the action of Enki in the myth in sending water on the land was not punitive but beneficent; and the preceding section, in which animals are described as not performing their usual activities, was shown independently by Professor Prince and Professor Jastrow to have reference, not to their different nature in an ideal existence in Paradise, but, on familiar lines, to their non- existence in a desolate land. It may be added that Professor Barton and Dr. Peters agree generally with Professor Prince and Professor Jastrow in their interpretation of the text, which excludes the suggested biblical parallels; and I understand from Dr. Langdon that he very rightly recognizes that the text is not a Deluge myth. It is a subject for congratulation that the discussion has materially increased our knowledge of this difficult composition.

(2) Cf. Col. VI, ll. 24 ff.; thus Ab-u was created for the sickness of the cow (ab); Nin-tul for that of the flock (u-tul); Nin-ka-u-tu and Nin-ka-si for that of the mouth (ka); Na-zi for that of the na-zi (meaning uncertain); Da zi-ma for that of the da-zi (meaning uncertain); Nin-til for that of til (life); the name of the eighth and last deity is imperfectly preserved.

We have already noted examples of a similar use of myth in magic, which was common to both Egypt and Babylonia; and to ill.u.s.trate its employment against disease, as in the Nippur doc.u.ment, it will suffice to cite a well-known magical cure for the toothache which was adopted in Babylon.(1) There toothache was believed to be caused by the gnawing of a worm in the gum, and a myth was used in the incantation to relieve it. The worm's origin is traced from Anu, the G.o.d of heaven, through a descending scale of creation; Anu, the heavens, the earth, rivers, ca.n.a.ls and marshes are represented as each giving rise to the next in order, until finally the marshes produce the worm. The myth then relates how the worm, on being offered tempting food by Ea in answer to her prayer, asked to be allowed to drink the blood of the teeth, and the incantation closes by invoking the curse of Ea because of the worm's misguided choice. It is clear that power over the worm was obtained by a recital of her creation and of her subsequent ingrat.i.tude, which led to her present occupation and the curse under which she laboured. When the myth and invocation had been recited three times over the proper mixture of beer, a plant, and oil, and the mixture had been applied to the offending tooth, the worm would fall under the spell of the curse and the patient would at once gain relief. The example is instructive, as the connexion of ideas is quite clear. In the Nippur doc.u.ment the recital of the creation of the eight deities evidently ensured their presence, and a demonstration of the mystic bond between their names and the corresponding diseases rendered the working of their powers effective. Our knowledge of a good many other myths is due solely to their magical employment.

(1) See Thompson, Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, Vol. II, pp. 160 ff.; for a number of other examples, see Jastrow, J.A.O.S., Vol. x.x.xVI, p. 279, n. 7.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the new text is one in which divine instructions are given in the use of plants, the fruit or roots of which may be eaten. Here Usm, a messenger from Enki, G.o.d of the Deep, names eight such plants by Enki's orders, thereby determining the character of each. As Professor Jastrow has pointed out, the pa.s.sage forcibly recalls the story from Berossus, concerning the mythical creature Oannes, who came up from the Erythraean Sea, where it borders upon Babylonia, to instruct mankind in all things, including "seeds and the gathering of fruits".(1) But the only part of the text that concerns us here is the introductory section, where the life-giving flood, by which the dry fields are irrigated, is pictured as following the union of the water-deities, Enki and Ninella.(2) Professor Jastrow is right in emphasizing the complete absence of any conflict in this Sumerian myth of beginnings; but, as with the other Sumerian Versions we have examined, it seems to me there is no need to seek its origin elsewhere than in the Euphrates Valley.

(1) Cf. Jastrow, J.A.O.S., Vol. x.x.xVI, p. 127, and A.J.S.L., Vol. x.x.xIII, p. 134 f. It may be added that the divine naming of the plants also presents a faint parallel to the naming of the beasts and birds by man himself in Gen.

ii. 19 f.

(2) Professor Jastrow (A.J.S.L., Vol. x.x.xIII, p. 115) compares similar myths collected by Sir James Frazer (Magic Art, Vol. II, chap. xi and chap. xii, -- 2). He also notes the parallel the irrigation myth presents to the mist (or flood) of the earlier Hebrew Version (Gen. ii. 5 f). But Enki, like Ea, was no rain-G.o.d; he had his dwellings in the Euphrates and the Deep.

Even in later periods, when the Sumerian myths of Creation had been superseded by that of Babylon, the Euphrates never ceased to be regarded as the source of life and the creator of all things. And this is well brought out in the following introductory lines of a Semitic incantation, of which we possess two Neo-Babylonian copies:(1) O thou River, who didst create all things, When the great G.o.ds dug thee out, They set prosperity upon thy banks, Within thee Ea, King of the Deep, created his dwelling.

The Flood they sent not before thou wert!

Here the river as creator is sharply distinguished from the Flood; and we may conclude that the water of the Euphrates Valley impressed the early Sumerians, as later the Semites, with its creative as well as with its destructive power. The reappearance of the fertile soil, after the receding inundation, doubtless suggested the idea of creation out of water, and the stream's slow but automatic fall would furnish a model for the age-long evolution of primaeval deities. When a G.o.d's active and artificial creation of the earth must be portrayed, it would have been natural for the primitive Sumerian to picture the Creator working as he himself would work when he reclaimed a field from flood. We are thus shown the old Sumerian G.o.d Gilimma piling reed-bundles in the water and heaping up soil beside them, till the ground within his dikes dries off and produces luxuriant vegetation. But here there is a hint of struggle in the process, and we perceive in it the myth-redactor's opportunity to weave in the Dragon motif. No such excuse is afforded by the other Sumerian myth, which pictures the life-producing inundation as the gift of the two deities of the Deep and the product of their union.

But in their other aspect the rivers of Mesopotamia could be terrible; and the Dragon motif itself, on the Tigris and Euphrates, drew its imagery as much from flood as from storm. When therefore a single deity must be made to appear, not only as Creator, but also as the champion of his divine allies and the conqueror of other G.o.ds, it was inevitable that the myths attaching to the waters under their two aspects should be combined. This may already have taken place at Nippur, when Enlil became the head of the pantheon; but the existence of his myth is conjectural.(1) In a later age we can trace the process in the light of history and of existing texts. There Marduk, identified wholly as the Sun-G.o.d, conquers the once featureless primaeval water, which in the process of redaction has now become the Dragon of flood and storm.

(1) The aspect of Enlil as the Creator of Vegetation is emphasized in Tablet VII of the Babylonian poem of Creation.

It is significant that his first t.i.tle, Asara, should be interpreted as "Bestower of planting", "Founder of sowing", "Creator of grain and plants", "He who caused the green herb to spring up" (cf. Seven Tablets, Vol. I, p. 92 f.). These opening phrases, by which the G.o.d is hailed, strike the key- note of the whole composition. It is true that, as Sukh-kur, he is "Destroyer of the foe"; but the great majority of the t.i.tles and their Semitic glosses refer to creative activities, not to the Dragon myth.

Thus the dualism which is so characteristic a feature of the Semitic-Babylonian system, though absent from the earliest Sumerian ideas of Creation, was inherent in the nature of the local rivers, whose varied aspects gave rise to or coloured separate myths. Its presence in the later mythology may be traced as a reflection of political development, at first probably among the warring cities of Sumer, but certainly later in the Semitic triumph at Babylon. It was but to be expected that the conqueror, whether Sumerian or Semite, should represent his own G.o.d's victory as the establishment of order out of chaos. But this would be particularly in harmony with the character of the Semitic Babylonians of the First Dynasty, whose genius for method and organization produced alike Hammurabi's Code of Laws and the straight streets of the capital.

We have thus been able to trace the various strands of the Semitic-Babylonian poem of Creation to Sumerian origins; and in the second lecture we arrived at a very similar conclusion with regard to the Semitic-Babylonian Version of the Deluge preserved in the Epic of Gilgamesh. We there saw that the literary structure of the Sumerian Version, in which Creation and Deluge are combined, must have survived under some form into the Neo-Babylonian period, since it was reproduced by Berossus. And we noted the fact that the same arrangement in Genesis did not therefore prove that the Hebrew accounts go back directly to early Sumerian originals. In fact, the structural resemblance presented by Genesis can only be regarded as an additional proof that the Sumerian originals continued to be studied and translated by the Semitic priesthood, although they had long been superseded officially by their later descendants, the Semitic epics. A detailed comparison of the Creation and Deluge narratives in the various versions at once discloses the fact that the connexion between those of the Semitic Babylonians and the Hebrews is far closer and more striking than that which can be traced when the latter are placed beside the Sumerian originals. We may therefore regard it as certain that the Hebrews derived their knowledge of Sumerian tradition, not directly from the Sumerians themselves, but through Semitic channels from Babylon.

It will be unnecessary here to go in detail through the points of resemblance that are admitted to exist between the Hebrew account of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis and that preserved in the "Seven Tablets".(1) It will suffice to emphasize two of them, which gain in significance through our newly acquired knowledge of early Sumerian beliefs. It must be admitted that, on first reading the poem, one is struck more by the differences than by the parallels; but that is due to the polytheistic basis of the poem, which attracts attention when compared with the severe and dignified monotheism of the Hebrew writer. And if allowance be made for the change in theological standpoint, the material points of resemblance are seen to be very marked. The outline or general course of events is the same. In both we have an abyss of waters at the beginning denoted by almost the same Semitic word, the Hebrew tehom, translated "the deep" in Gen. i. 2, being the equivalent of the Semitic-Babylonian Tiamat, the monster of storm and flood who presents so striking a contrast to the Sumerian primaeval water.(2) The second act of Creation in the Hebrew narrative is that of a "firmament", which divided the waters under it from those above.(3) But this, as we have seen, has no parallel in the early Sumerian conception until it was combined with the Dragon combat in the form in which we find it in the Babylonian poem. There the body of Tiamat is divided by Marduk, and from one half of her he constructs a covering or dome for heaven, that is to say a "firmament", to keep her upper waters in place. These will suffice as text pa.s.sages, since they serve to point out quite clearly the Semitic source to which all the other detailed points of Hebrew resemblance may be traced.

(1) See Seven Tablets, Vol. I, pp. lx.x.xi ff., and Skinner, Genesis, pp. 45 ff.

(2) The invariable use of the Hebrew word tehom without the article, except in two pa.s.sages in the plural, proves that it is a proper name (cf. Skinner, op. cit., p. 17); and its correspondence with Tiamat makes the resemblance of the versions far more significant than if their parallelism were confined solely to ideas.

(3) Gen. i. 6-8.

In the case of the Deluge traditions, so conclusive a demonstration is not possible, since we have no similar criterion to apply. And on one point, as we saw, the Hebrew Versions preserve an original Sumerian strand of the narrative that was not woven into the Gilgamesh Epic, where there is no parallel to the piety of Noah. But from the detailed description that was given in the second lecture, it will have been noted that the Sumerian account is on the whole far simpler and more primitive than the other versions. It is only in the Babylonian Epic, for example, that the later Hebrew writer finds material from which to construct the ark, while the sweet savour of Ut-napishtim's sacrifice, and possibly his sending forth of the birds, though reproduced in the earlier Hebrew Version, find no parallels in the Sumerian account.(1) As to the general character of the Flood, there is no direct reference to rain in the Sumerian Version, though its presence is probably implied in the storm. The heavy rain of the Babylonian Epic has been increased to forty days of rain in the earlier Hebrew Version, which would be suitable to a country where local rain was the sole cause of flood. But the later Hebrew writer's addition of "the fountains of the deep" to "the windows of heaven" certainly suggests a more intimate knowledge of Mesopotamia, where some contributary cause other than local rain must be sought for the sudden and overwhelming catastrophes of which the rivers are capable.

(1) For detailed lists of the points of agreement presented by the Hebrew Versions J and P to the account in the Gilgamesh Epic, see Skinner, op. cit., p. 177 f.; Driver, Genesis, p. 106 f.; and Gordon, Early Traditions of Genesis (1907), pp. 38 ff.

Thus, viewed from a purely literary standpoint, we are now enabled to trace back to a primitive age the ancestry of the traditions, which, under a very different aspect, eventually found their way into Hebrew literature. And in the process we may note the changes they underwent as they pa.s.sed from one race to another. The result of such literary a.n.a.lysis and comparison, so far from discrediting the narratives in Genesis, throws into still stronger relief the moral grandeur of the Hebrew text.

We come then to the question, at what periods and by what process did the Hebrews become acquainted with Babylonian ideas? The tendency of the purely literary school of critics has been to explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian doc.u.ments wholly within exilic times. If the Creation and Deluge narratives stood alone, a case might perhaps be made out for confining Babylonian influence to this late period. It is true that during the Captivity the Jews were directly exposed to such influence. They had the life and civilization of their captors immediately before their eyes, and it would have been only natural for the more learned among the Hebrew scribes and priests to interest themselves in the ancient literature of their new home. And any previous familiarity with the myths of Babylonia would undoubtedly have been increased by actual residence in the country. We may perhaps see a result of such acquaintance with Babylonian literature, after Jehoiachin's deportation, in an interesting literary parallel that has been pointed out between Ezek. xiv. 12-20 and a speech in the Babylonian account of the Deluge in the Gilgamesh Epic, XI, ii. 180-194.(1) The pa.s.sage in Ezekiel occurs within chaps. i-xxiv, which correspond to the prophet's first period and consist in the main of his utterances in exile before the fall of Jerusalem. It forms, in fact, the introduction to the prophet's announcement of the coming of "four sore judgements upon Jerusalem", from which there "shall be left a remnant that shall be carried forth".(2) But in consequence, here and there, of traces of a later point of view, it is generally admitted that many of the chapters in this section may have been considerably amplified and altered by Ezekiel himself in the course of writing. And if we may regard the literary parallel that has been pointed out as anything more than fortuitous, it is open to us to a.s.sume that chap. xiv may have been worked up by Ezekiel many years after his prophetic call at Tel-abib.

(1) See Daiches, "Ezekiel and the Babylonian Account of the Deluge", in the Jewish Quarterly Review, April 1905. It has of course long been recognized that Ezekiel, in announcing the punishment of the king of Egypt in x.x.xii. 2 ff., uses imagery which strongly recalls the Babylonian Creation myth. For he compares Pharaoh to a sea-monster over whom Yahweh will throw his net (as Marduk had thrown his over Tiamat); cf. Loisy, Les mythes babyloniens et les premiers chaptires de la Genese (1901), p. 87.

(2) Ezek. xiv. 21 f.

In the pa.s.sage of the Babylonian Epic, Enlil had already sent the Flood and had destroyed the good with the wicked. Ea thereupon remonstrates with him, and he urges that in future the sinner only should be made to suffer for his sin; and, instead of again causing a flood, let there be discrimination in the divine punishments sent on men or lands. While the flood made the escape of the deserving impossible, other forms of punishment would affect the guilty only. In Ezekiel the subject is the same, but the point of view is different. The land the prophet has in his mind in verse 13 is evidently Judah, and his desire is to explain why it will suffer although not all its inhabitants deserved to share its fate. The discrimination, which Ea urges, Ezekiel a.s.serts will be made; but the sinner must bear his own sin, and the righteous, however eminent, can only save themselves by their righteousness. The general principle propounded in the Epic is here applied to a special case. But the parallelism between the pa.s.sages lies not only in the general principle but also in the literary setting. This will best be brought out by printing the pa.s.sages in parallel columns.

Gilg. Epic, XI, 180-194 Ezek. xiv. 12-20

Ea opened his mouth and spake, And the word of the Lord came He said to the warrior Enlil; unto me, saying, Thou director of the G.o.ds! O Son of man, when a land sinneth warrior! against me by committing a Why didst thou not take counsel trespa.s.s, and I stretch out but didst cause a flood? mine hand upon it, and break On the transgressor lay his the staff of the bread transgression! thereof, and send famine Be merciful, so that (all) be not upon it, and cut off from it destroyed! Have patience, so man and beast; though these that (all) be not (cut off)! three men, Noah, Daniel, and Instead of causing a flood, Job, were in it, they should Let lions(1) come and diminish deliver but their own souls by mankind! their righteousness, saith the Instead of causing a flood, Lord G.o.d.

Let leopards(1) come and If I cause noisome beasts to diminish mankind! pa.s.s through the land, and Instead of causing a flood, they spoil it, so that it be Let famine be caused and let it desolate, that no man may pa.s.s smite the land! through because of the beasts; Instead of causing a flood, though these three men were in Let the Plague-G.o.d come and it, as I live, saith the Lord (slay) mankind! G.o.d, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate.

Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and beast; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord G.o.d, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered themselves.

Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast; though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord G.o.d, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.

(1) Both Babylonian words are in the singular, but probably used collectively, as is the case with their Hebrew equivalent in Ezek. xiv. 15.

It will be seen that, of the four kinds of divine punishment mentioned, three accurately correspond in both compositions. Famine and pestilence occur in both, while the lions and leopards of the Epic find an equivalent in "noisome beasts". The sword is not referred to in the Epic, but as this had already threatened Jerusalem at the time of the prophecy's utterance its inclusion by Ezekiel was inevitable. Moreover, the fact that Noah should be named in the refrain, as the first of the three proverbial examples of righteousness, shows that Ezekiel had the Deluge in his mind, and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.(1) It may be added that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the metre of the two pa.s.sages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr. Daiches points out, not dissimilar.

(1) This suggestion is in some measure confirmed by the Biblical Antiquities of Philo, ascribed by Dr. James to the closing years of the first century A.D.; for its writer, in his account of the Flood, has actually used Ezek. xiv. 12 ff. in order to elaborate the divine speech in Gen. viii. 21 f. This will be seen from the following extract, in which the pa.s.sage interpolated between verses 21 and 22 of Gen.

viii is enclosed within brackets: "And G.o.d said: I will not again curse the earth for man's sake, for the guise of man's heart hath left off (sic) from his youth. And therefore I will not again destroy together all living as I have done.

(But it shall be, when the dwellers upon earth have sinned, I will judge them by famine or by the sword or by fire or by pestilence (lit. death), and there shall be earthquakes, and they shall be scattered into places not inhabited (or, the places of their habitation shall be scattered). But I will not again spoil the earth with the water of a flood, and) in all the days of the earth seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and autumn, day and night shall not cease ..."; see James, The Biblical Antiquities of Philo, p. 81, iii. 9. Here wild beasts are omitted, and fire, earthquakes, and exile are added; but famine, sword, and pestilence are prominent, and the whole pa.s.sage is clearly suggested by Ezekiel. As a result of the combination, we have in the Biblical Antiquities a complete parallel to the pa.s.sage in the Gilgamesh Epic.

It may of course be urged that wild beasts, famine, and pestilence are such obvious forms of divine punishment that their enumeration by both writers is merely due to chance. But the parallelism should be considered with the other possible points of connexion, namely, the fact that each writer is dealing with discrimination in divine punishments of a wholesale character, and that while the one is inspired by the Babylonian tradition of the Flood, the other takes the hero of the Hebrew Flood story as the first of his selected types of righteousness. It is possible that Ezekiel may have heard the Babylonian Version recited after his arrival on the Chebar. And a.s.suming that some form of the story had long been a cherished tradition of the Hebrews themselves, we could understand his intense interest in finding it confirmed by the Babylonians, who would show him where their Flood had taken place. To a man of his temperament, the one pa.s.sage in the Babylonian poem that would have made a special appeal would have been that quoted above, where the poet urges that divine vengeance should be combined with mercy, and that all, righteous and wicked alike, should not again be destroyed. A problem continually in Ezekiel's thoughts was this very question of wholesale divine punishment, as exemplified in the case of Judah; and it would not have been unlikely that the literary structure of the Babylonian extract may have influenced the form in which he embodied his own conclusions.

But even if we regard this suggestion as unproved or improbable, Ezekiel's reference to Noah surely presupposes that at least some version of the Flood story was familiar to the Hebrews before the Captivity. And this conclusion is confirmed by other Babylonian parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, in which oral tradition rather than doc.u.mentary borrowing must have played the leading part.(1) Thus Babylonian parallels may be cited for many features in the story of Paradise,(2) though no equivalent of the story itself has been recovered. In the legend of Adapa, for example, wisdom and immortality are the prerogative of the G.o.ds, and the winning of immortality by man is bound up with eating the Food of Life and drinking the Water of Life; here too man is left with the gift of wisdom, but immortality is withheld. And the a.s.sociation of winged guardians with the Sacred Tree in Babylonian art is at least suggestive of the Cherubim and the Tree of Life. The very side of Eden has now been identified in Southern Babylonia by means of an old boundary-stone acquired by the British Museum a year or two ago.(3) (1) See Loisy, Les mythes babyloniens, pp. 10 ff., and cf.

S. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, t. II, pp. 386 ff.

(2) Cf. especially Skinner, Genesis, pp. 90 ff. For the latest discussion of the Serpent and the Tree of Life, suggested by Dr. Skinner's summary of the evidence, see Frazer in Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway (1913), pp. 413 ff.

(3) See Babylonian Boundary Stones in the British Museum (1912), pp. 76 ff., and cf. Geographical Journal, Vol. XL, No. 2 (Aug., 1912), p. 147. For the latest review of the evidence relating to the site of Paradise, see Boissier, "La situation du paradis terrestre", in Le Globe, t. LV, Memoires (Geneva, 1916).

But I need not now detain you by going over this familiar ground. Such possible echoes from Babylon seem to suggest pre-exilic influence rather than late borrowing, and they surely justify us in inquiring to what periods of direct or indirect contact, earlier than the Captivity, the resemblances between Hebrew and Babylonian ideas may be traced. One point, which we may regard as definitely settled by our new material, is that these stories of the Creation and of the early history of the world were not of Semitic origin. It is no longer possible to regard the Hebrew and Babylonian Versions as descended from common Semitic originals. For we have now recovered some of those originals, and they are not Semitic but Sumerian. The question thus resolves itself into an inquiry as to periods during which the Hebrews may have come into direct or indirect contact with Babylonia.

There are three pre-exilic periods at which it has been suggested the Hebrews, or the ancestors of the race, may have acquired a knowledge of Babylonian traditions. The earliest of these is the age of the patriarchs, the traditional ancestors of the Hebrew nation. The second period is that of the settlement in Canaan, which we may put from 1200 B.C. to the establishment of David's kingdom at about 1000 B.C. The third period is that of the later Judaean monarch, from 734 B.C. to 586 B.C., the date of the fall of Jerusalem; and in this last period there are two reigns of special importance in this connexion, those of Ahaz (734-720 B.C.) and Mana.s.seh (693-638 B.C.).

With regard to the earliest of these periods, those who support the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch may quite consistently a.s.sume that Abraham heard the legends in Ur of the Chaldees. And a simple retention of the traditional view seems to me a far preferable att.i.tude to any elaborate attempt at rationalizing it. It is admitted that Arabia was the cradle of the Semitic race; and the most natural line of advance from Arabia to Aram and thence to Palestine would be up the Euphrates Valley. Some writers therefore a.s.sume that nomad tribes, personified in the traditional figure of Abraham, may have camped for a time in the neighbourhood of Ur and Babylon; and that they may have carried the Babylonian stories with them in their wanderings, and continued to preserve them during their long subsequent history. But, even granting that such nomads would have taken any interest in traditions of settled folk, this view hardly commends itself. For stories received from foreign sources become more and more transformed in the course of centuries.(1) The vivid Babylonian colouring of the Genesis narratives cannot be reconciled with this explanation of their source.

(1) This objection would not of course apply to M. Naville's suggested solution, that cuneiform tablets formed the medium of transmission. But its author himself adds that he does not deny its conjectural character; see The Text of the Old Testament (Schweich Lectures, 1915), p. 32.

A far greater number of writers hold that it was after their arrival in Palestine that the Hebrew patriarchs came into contact with Babylonian culture. It is true that from an early period Syria was the scene of Babylonian invasions, and in the first lecture we noted some newly recovered evidence upon this point. Moreover, the dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged came originally from the north-eastern border of Canaan and Hammurabi himself exercised authority in the west. Thus a plausible case could be made out by exponents of this theory, especially as many parallels were noted between the Mosaic legislation and that contained in Hammurabi's Code. But it is now generally recognized that the features common to both the Hebrew and the Babylonian legal systems may be paralleled to-day in the Semitic East and elsewhere,(1) and cannot therefore be cited as evidence of cultural contact. Thus the hypothesis that the Hebrew patriarchs were subjects of Babylon in Palestine is not required as an explanation of the facts; and our first period still stands or falls by the question of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, which must be decided on quite other grounds. Those who do not accept the traditional view will probably be content to rule this first period out.

(1) See Cook, The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi, p. 281 f.; Driver, Genesis, p. x.x.xvi f.; and cf. Johns, The Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples (Schweich Lectures, 1912), pp. 50 ff.

During the second period, that of the settlement in Canaan, the Hebrews came into contact with a people who had used the Babylonian language as the common medium of communication throughout the Near East. It is an interesting fact that among the numerous letters found at Tell el-Amarna were two texts of quite a different character. These were legends, both in the form of school exercises, which had been written out for practice in the Babylonian tongue. One of them was the legend of Adapa, in which we noted just now a distant resemblance to the Hebrew story of Paradise. It seems to me we are here standing on rather firmer ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning of our process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites.

Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of Babylonian culture into Palestine. That does not occur till our last main period, the later Judaean monarchy, when, in consequence of the westward advance of a.s.syria, the civilization of Babylon was once more carried among the petty Syrian states. Israel was first drawn into the circle of a.s.syrian influence, when Arab fought as the ally of Benhadad of Damascus at the battle of Karkar in 854 B.C.; and from that date onward the nation was menaced by the invading power. In 734 B.C., at the invitation of Ahaz of Judah, Tiglath-Pileser IV definitely intervened in the affairs of Israel. For Ahaz purchased his help against the allied armies of Israel and Syria in the Syro-Ephraimitish war. Tiglath-pileser threw his forces against Damascus and Israel, and Ahaz became his va.s.sal.(1) To this period, when Ahaz, like Panammu II, "ran at the wheel of his lord, the king of a.s.syria", we may ascribe the first marked invasion of a.s.syrian influence over Judah. Traces of it may be seen in the altar which Ahaz caused to be erected in Jerusalem after the pattern of the a.s.syrian altar at Damascus.(2) We saw in the first lecture, in the monuments we have recovered of Panammu I and of Bar-rekub, how the life of another small Syrian state was inevitably changed and thrown into new channels by the presence of Tiglath-pileser and his armies in the West.