The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends Part 50

Was The Flood A "Sin-Flood"?

That the Flood was a "sin-flood" ("da.s.s die Sintflut eine Sundflut(301) war") among the Babylonians as among the Hebrews has already been stated (p. 112-cf. p. 107, I, II ff.), and with this Prof. Delitzsch, answering the criticisms of Oettli, agrees. Replying to Konig, he energetically repudiates the idea that "the Babylonian hero saves his dead and living property, but in both Biblical accounts there appears, instead of that, the higher point of view of the preservation of the animal-world." He then cites Berosus, according to whom Xisuthros received the command to take into the ark winged and four-footed animals, and quotes the line translated on p. 103: "I caused to go up into the midst of the s.h.i.+p ...

the beasts of the field and the animals of the field-all of them I sent up."

The Dragon And The Serpent-Tempter.

Prof. Delitzsch's notes upon the Dragon of Chaos are exceedingly interesting, as is also the picture which he gives, from a little seal in the form of a long bead, of the G.o.d Merodach "clothed in his majestic glory, with powerful arm, and broad eye and ear, the symbols of his intelligence, and at the feet of the G.o.d the captive Dragon of the primaeval waters." From our point of view the deity does not look very majestic, but it is an exceedingly interesting representation, the more especially as he bears in his left hand (in the drawing) the circle and staff of ama, the sun, showing the correctness of the theory which made Merodach likewise a sun-G.o.d. It is noteworthy, however, that a similar object found by the German expedition to Babylonia shows a figure of Hadad, the wind-G.o.d, as the Babylonians conceived him, and accompanying him are a winged dragon and another creature-indeed, each deity seems to have had his own special attendant of this nature. Are we, therefore, to understand that each deity overcame a dragon or other animal? or may it not be, that Merodach had a kind of dragon as his attendant, and the one depicted sitting by his side, close to his feet, is the creature devoted to him, and not the Dragon of Chaos at all?

The Dragon of Chaos, Tiamtu or Tiawthu, appears in the inscriptions as the representative of the Hebrew _tehom_, which is the same word without the feminine ending. It is also regarded, however, as being represented in the Old Testament by _liwyathan_ (leviathan), _tannin_, and _rahab_, explained as "the winding one," "the dragon," and "the monster" respectively. As far as our knowledge at present goes, none of these names occur in the Babylonian inscriptions, but there is sufficient a.n.a.logy between the Biblical pa.s.sages which contain them and the story of Tiamtu to establish an ident.i.ty between the two sources.

In the pa.s.sage "Awake, awake," etc. (Is. li. 9), the cutting of Rahab in pieces, and the piercing of the dragon, are made into similes typifying the drying up of the Red Sea, so that the Israelites might pa.s.s over, and on this account the words standing for these creatures seem to have become an allegorical way of referring to Egypt, caught, like Tiamtu, in a net (Ezek. x.x.xii. 2, 3). In Job ix. 13 the "helpers of Rahab" are mentioned, recalling the G.o.ds who aided Tiamtu, and in xxvi. 12 "he smiteth through Rahab" is a reminiscence of the piercing of the head of Merodach's opponent.

In Job xli. 3 the words "Lay thine hand upon him; remember _the battle_, and do so no more," evidently refer to leviathan in v. 1, here typical of Tiamtu, the battle being that which Merodach fought with her. "Shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?" in verse 9, recalls the dreadful appearance of Tiamtu and her helpers, whose aspect filled the G.o.ds of the Babylonians with fear. Still another parallel is to be found in the verse "Their (the enemies') wine is the poison of dragons (_tanninim_)," Deut. x.x.xii. 33, reminding us of the monsters created by Tiamtu, whose bodies were filled with poison like blood.

All these pa.s.sages naturally prove that the legend was well known to the Hebrews, and must also have been current among their neighbours. Though they identified her with the sea (_tehom_), they did not, to all appearance, use that word to indicate the Dragon of Chaos, as did the Babylonians-she was a serpent, a dragon, or a monster. Though she may be the type of the serpent-tempter (the difference of s.e.x makes a little difficulty), the compiler of the first two chapters of Genesis rigorously excluded her from the Hebrew Creation-story. The story of leviathan, the dragon, or the monster, was a legend current among the people, and used by the Hebrew sacred writers as a useful simile, but it seems to have formed no part of orthodox Hebrew religious belief.

Prof. Delitzsch has boldly reproduced, on p. 36 of his _Babel und Bibel_ (German edition), what has been regarded in England as the driving of the evil spirit from the temple built at Calah by Aur-na?ir-apli (885 B.C.), but he calls it "Fight with the Dragon." The evil spirit represented is certainly a kind of dragon, but on the original slab in the British Museum the creature is a male, and not a female, as in the Babylonian Creation-story. Identification with the Dragon of Chaos is therefore in the highest degree improbable, and as it would seem from his answer to Jensen, Delitzsch does not regard it as having anything to do with the Creation-story, but a representation of "a fight between the power of light and the power of darkness in general." This seems exceedingly probable, as is also his statement that in such a conception as that of Tiamtu, it may easily be imagined that plenty of room for fancy existed.

The serpent-tempter in Gen. iii. 1 is an ordinary serpent, _na?as_, the type of the evil one. He had no part in the creation, and was to all appearance one of the beasts of the field created by G.o.d. Tiamtu, his Babylonian parallel, on the other hand, does not seem to have been in any sense a tempter-she simply tried to overcome the G.o.ds of heaven, aided by her followers and offspring, among whom were some of the divine beings created by the G.o.ds. That in consequence of this, she may have been regarded as having tempted those of her followers who were the offspring of the G.o.ds of heaven, is not only possible, but probable, and if provable, we should have here the identification of the Dragon of Chaos with the serpent-tempter.

And this leads him to the question as to whether the celebrated cylinder-seal referred to on p. 79 is really intended to be a picture of the circ.u.mstance of the fall of man. Delitzsch points out, that the clothed condition of the figures prevents him from recognizing in the tree the tree "of knowledge of good and evil"-perhaps there glimmers through the Biblical account in Gen. ii. and iii. another and older form of the story, in which only one tree, the tree of life, appeared. The words in ii. 9: "and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," seem, as it were, patched on, and the narrator completely forgets this newly-introduced "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" to the extent, that he even, by oversight, makes G.o.d allow man, in contradiction to iii. 22, to eat of the Tree of Life (ii. 16). All this seems very plausible, but may it not be, that man, before eating of the tree of knowledge, was permitted to eat of the tree of life, which was denied to him after the Fall? If this be the case, there was probably no forgetfulness on the part of the narrator, and the story hangs excellently together. And here it is to be noted that both the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were in the midst of the garden (ii. 9), that the woman seems to be aware of the existence of one tree only (iii. 3), and there is no statement that the man knew the nature of the fruit which his wife handed to him (6), though it may be surmised that, with the prohibition with regard to one of them in his mind, he ought to have inquired. The heaviest punishment therefore falls upon the tempter, the woman coming next, and the man having the lightest though even his is sufficiently severe.

In the design on the cylinder Delitzsch sees a male and a female figure, with a serpent, and in this both Hommel and Jensen agree. Delitzsch, moreover, says: "The distinguis.h.i.+ng of the one figure by horns, which was, in Babylonia, as in Israel, equally the common symbol of strength and victoriousness, I regard as a very delicate device of the artist to introduce into the two clothed human figures the s.e.x-distinction in an unmistakable manner." He is of opinion that nothing very decisive can as yet be p.r.o.nounced concerning the serpent, but one might connect therewith the appearance of Tiamtu, who also, like leviathan in Job iii. 8 and "the old serpent" in the Apocalypse, may be a.s.sumed to have been still existing. (Compare p. 32 of the present work, lines 112 and 113.)

He points out that in a list of rivers, etc., there is one called "the river of the Serpent-G.o.d destroying(302) the abode of life"

(_Id-Sir-tindir-duba_), which is also a confirmation of the theory that the Babylonians possessed the legend of the serpent-tempter. Noteworthy also is the following text, which he refers to "by the way," with a slight indication of the contents:-

"... sin, fixing the command.

... of the ordinance, the man of lamentation.

... the maid, has eaten the evil thing- ... Ama-namtagga has done what is evil The fate of Ama-namtagga is hard(303)- Her fate is hard, her face is troubled with a tear.

She has sat on a glorious throne, She has lain on a glorious couch, She has learned to love aright, She has learned to kiss."

The mutilation of this inscription renders the true interpretation doubtful, but it would seem to be exceedingly probable that there is in it some reference to the fate of our first mother, inherited by all her daughters to the end of time.

Ama-namtagga means "The Mother of Sin," and her having eaten and done what is evil makes an interesting parallel with the case of Eve.(304)

The Cherubim.

Concerning the Cherubs something has been said in this book, pp. 80-82, and to this Prof. Delitzsch adds a few more instances. As others have done, he regards the cherubim of the Babylonians and a.s.syrians as being the winged bulls, with heads of men. As an angel he gives a picture of a winged female figure holding a necklace(305); the demons he depicts are from the slabs in the a.s.syrian Saloon of the British Museum, where two of these beings are fighting with each other; and devils he regards as being typified by a small but mutilated statuette of a creature with an animal's head, long erect ears, and open mouth with threatening teeth. For the existence of guardian-angels he quotes the letter of Abla to the queen-mother: "Bel and Nebo's messenger of grace (_abil ipri a dunqi a Bel u Nabu_) will go with the king of the countries, my lord." Of especial interest, however, is his reference to the inscription of Nabopola.s.sar, in which that founder of the latest of the Babylonian empires states that Merodach "called him to rule over the land and the people, caused a guardian-G.o.d (cherub) to go by his side, and caused all the work which he undertook to succeed." Besides the cherubs or guardian-angels, the Babylonians believed in numerous evil G.o.ds and devils, besides Tiamtu and the serpent-tempter of mankind.

Babylonian Monotheism.

The question of Babylonian monotheism, and of the antiquity of the name Yahweh (Jehovah) attracted a considerable amount of attention, and has been supplemented by Delitzsch very fully in the notes to his first lecture. Upon this point something was said in the present volume (pp. 47 and 58-61), and the author is practically at one with Prof. Delitzsch. As the inscription translated on p. 58 shows, the Babylonians were monotheists, and yet they were not. They believed in all their various G.o.ds, and at the same time identified those G.o.ds with Merodach. Just as, in the beliefs of India, each soul may be regarded as emanating from, and returning to, the Creator, and forming one with Him at the final death of the body, so the G.o.ds of the Babylonians were apparently regarded as parts of, and emanations from, Merodach, the chief of the G.o.ds, who, when they conferred upon him their names, conferred upon him in like manner their being. It is in this way alone that Merodach, the last-born of the great G.o.ds, can be regarded as the father and begetter of the G.o.ds (see pp. 45, 46).

Prof. Delitzsch has therefore done a service in bringing more prominently to the notice of students and scholars the text of which the obverse is printed on p. 58, and mentioning the paper where it first appeared.(306) The study of the religion of the Babylonians and a.s.syrians has been greatly furthered thereby.

With regard to the question, whether besides this tablet, there be other indications that the Babylonians-or a section of them-believed in one G.o.d, Delitzsch quotes, as did also the present author, many names supporting this idea. Thus he gives the following:-

Ilu-ittia, "G.o.d is with me."

Ilu-amta?ar, "I called upon G.o.d."

Ilu-abi, "G.o.d is my father."(307) Ilu-milki, "G.o.d is my counsel."

Yarbi-ilu, "G.o.d is great."

Yamlik-ilu, "G.o.d rules."

Ibi-ina-ili, "He existed through G.o.d."(308) Awel-ili, "Man of G.o.d."(309) Mut(um)-ili, "Man of G.o.d."

Iluma-le'i, "G.o.d is mighty."

Iluma-abi, "G.o.d is my father."

Iluma-ilu, "G.o.d is G.o.d."

umma-ilu-la-ilia, "If G.o.d were not my G.o.d?"

And if more be wanted, to these may be added Ya'kub-ilu, Yasup-ilu, Abdi-ilu, Ya'zar-ilu, and Yantin-ilu, on p. 157; Ili-bandi, "G.o.d is my creator," p. 166; Sar-ili, "Prince of G.o.d," p. 170; Utani-ili, "My G.o.d has made to increase twofold," p. 178; Nur-ili, "Light of G.o.d," p. 184; Arad-ili-remeanni, "The servant of G.o.d, (who) had mercy on me," p. 187; Yabnik-ilu, "G.o.d has been gracious (?)," p. 243; and many others. Remarks upon some of these names will be found on pp. 244, 245. Similar names occurring during the time of the later Babylonian empire will be found on pp. 434, 463 (Aqabi-ilu), 435, 436 (Adi'-ilu and Yadi'ilu), 458 (Baru?i-ilu, probably a Jew, and Idi?i-ilu). It will therefore be seen that names of a monotheistic nature were common in Babylonia at all periods, but as they are greatly outnumbered by the polytheistic ones,(310) their exact value as testimony to monotheism, or to a tendency to it, is doubtful. In certain cases, the deity intended by the word _ilu_ is the family G.o.d, but in the above examples, names implying this have been as far as possible avoided.

"Of what kind and of what value this monothesis was, our present sources of knowledge do not allow us to state, but we can best conclude from the later development of Jahvism." (Delitzsch.)

Jahweh (Jehovah).

Most important of all, however, from the point of view of the history of the religion of the Jews, is what Delitzsch states concerning the name Jahweh (Jehovah). On p. 46 of his first lecture (German edition) he gives half-tone reproductions of three tablets preserved in the British Museum, which, according to him, contain three forms of the personal name meaning "Jahwe is G.o.d"-_Ya'we-ilu_, _Yawe-ilu_, and _Yaum-ilu_. The last of these names we may dismiss at once, the form being clearly not that of Yahweh, but of Yah, the Jah of Ps. civ. 35 and several other pa.s.sages. The other two, however, are not so lightly dealt with, notwithstanding the objections of other a.s.syriologists and Orientalists. It is true that Ya'pi-ilu and Yapi-ilu are possible readings, but Delitzsch's objections to them are soundly based, and can hardly be set aside. The princ.i.p.al argument against the identification of Ya'we or Yawe with Yahwah is, that we should have here, about 2000 years before Christ, a form of the word which is really later than that used by the Jewish captives at Babylon 500 years before Christ, when it was to all appearance p.r.o.nounced Ya(')awa or Yawa (see pp. 458, 465, 470, 471). If, however, we may read the name Ya'wa (Ya'awa) or Yawa, as is possible, then there is nothing against the identification proposed by Delitzsch. That [Cuneiform] was used with the value of _wa_ is proved by such words as _warka_, "after," where the reading _wearka_ seems to be impossible, and the necessary distinction between _ma_ and _wa_ (the former was written with a different character) would be maintained. It is worthy of note that Ya'wa must have been more of a name than Yau, which was a primitive Babylonian word for "G.o.d," it is doubtful whether it could always be written without the divine prefix. As, however, the divine name Ae or Ea, with others, is often written so unprovided, such an objection as this could not be held to invalidate Delitzsch's contention.

The probability therefore is, that Delitzsch is right in transcribing the name as he has done, if we may change the final _e_ to _a_, and he is also probably right in his identification. Nevertheless, we require more information from the records of ancient Babylonia before we can say, with certainty, that the first component of the name Ya'wa-ilu is the Yahweh of the Hebrews, though we are bound to admit that the identification is in the highest degree probable. Delitzsch speaks of the possibility of _ya've_ being a verbal form (it would be parallel to names like Yabnik-ilu), only to reject it, as a name meaning "G.o.d exists" (Hommel and Zimmern) is certainly not what one would expect to find. On the other hand, Zimmern admits the possibility that Yaum may be the name of a G.o.d, and possibly the name Yahu, Yahve may be present in it. As he is against Delitzsch on the whole, this is an important admission.

Additional Notes To ?ammurabi's Laws.

P. 492, --. 8. The "poor man" who is mentioned here and in several other places, is referred to under a Sumerian term translated by the Semitic _mukinu_, Arabic _miskin_, from which the French _mesquin_ is derived (through the Spanish _mezquino_). With the Babylonians, however, the "poor man," as expressed by this term, was only one who was comparatively wanting in this world's goods. That he was able to pay a fine, presupposes that he was the possessor of property, and this is confirmed by a bilingual explanatory list, which reads as follows:

Gi ar kiru Plantation.

gi ar egal kiru ekalli plantation of the palace.

gi ar lugal kiru arri plantation of the king.

gi ar madu kiru mukini plantation of a poor man.

_Mukinu_ is rendered by Winckler "freedman."

P. 493, -- 26 ff. It is difficult to find a satisfactory rendering for the words translated "army-leader" and "soldier." Winckler translates "soldier" and "slinger." Perhaps the latter should be rendered "scout."

P. 495, ---- 43 and 44. The word translated "shall enclose (it)" is in accordance with the meaning given for the root _akaku_ in Delitzsch's _Handworterbuch_. If, however, the rendering "plough" in -- 260 (p. 513), first proposed by Scheil, be correct, then in all probability the translation in the two sections should be "shall plough (it)."

P. 498, l. 12. Literally, "the man the tenancy, the silver of his rent complete for a year, to the lord of the house has given."