The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Part 46

Aruru being a G.o.ddess, it was not so easy to have Marduk take up her role, as he supplanted Bel. Again, Erech and Babylon were not political rivals to the degree that Nippur and Babylon were. Accordingly a compromise was effected, as in the case of Marduk and Ea. Aruru is a.s.sociated with Marduk. She creates mankind with Marduk, and it would seem to be a consequence of this a.s.sociation that the name of Marduk's real consort, Sarpanitum, is playfully but with intent interpreted by the Babylonian pedants as 'seed-producing.'[802]

Our second version thus turns out to be, like the first, an adaptation of old traditions to new conditions. Babylon and Marduk are designedly introduced. In the original form Nippur, Eridu, and Erech alone figured, and presumably, therefore, only the deities of these three places. Among them the work of creation was in some way parceled out. This distribution may itself have been the result of a combination of independent traditions. In any early combination, however, we may feel certain that Marduk was not introduced.

After this incidental mention of Aruru, the narrative pa.s.ses back undisturbed to Marduk.

The animals of the field, the living creatures of the field he created, The Tigris and Euphrates he formed in their places, gave them good names, Soil (?), gra.s.s, the marsh, reed, and forest he created, The verdure of the field he produced, The lands, the marsh, and thicket, The wild cow with her young, the young wild ox, The ewe with her young, the sheep of the fold, Parks and forests, The goat and wild goat he brought forth.

The text at this point becomes defective, but we can still make out that the clay as building material is created by Marduk, and that he constructs houses and rears cities. Corresponding to the opening lines, we may supply several lines as follows:

Houses he erected, cities he built, Cities he built, dwellings he prepared, Nippur he built, E-Kur he erected, Erech he built, E-Anna he erected.

Here the break in the tablet begins.

The new points derived from this second version are, (_a_) the details in the creation of the animal and plant world, (_b_) the mention of Aruru as the mother of mankind, and (_c_) the inclusion of human culture in the story of the 'beginnings.'

Before leaving the subject, a brief comparison of these two versions with the opening chapters of Genesis is called for. That the Hebrew and Babylonian traditions spring from a common source is so evident as to require no further proof. The agreements are too close to be accidental.

At the same time, the variations in detail point to independent elaboration of the traditions on the part of the Hebrews and Babylonians.

A direct borrowing from the Babylonians has not taken place, and while the Babylonian records are in all probabilities much older than the Hebrew, the latter again contain elements, as Gunkel has shown, of a more primitive character than the Babylonian production. This relations.h.i.+p can only be satisfactorily explained on the a.s.sumption that the Hebrews possessed the traditions upon which the Genesis narrative rests long before the period of the Babylonian exile, when the story appears, indeed, to have received its final and present shape. The essential features of the Babylonian cosmology formed part of a stock of traditions that Hebrews and Babylonians (and probably others) received from some common source or, to put it more vaguely, held in common from a period, the limits of which can no longer be determined. While the two Babylonian versions agree in the main, embodying the same general traditions regarding the creation of the heavenly bodies and containing the same general conception of an evolution in the world from confusion and caprice to order, and the establishment of law, the variations in regard to the terrestrial phenomena must not be overlooked. According to the first version, mankind appears as the last episode of creation; in the second, mankind precedes vegetation and animal life.

If we now take up the two versions of creation found in Genesis, we will see that the same differences may be observed. According to the first, the so-called Elohistic version,[803] mankind is not created until the last day of creation; according to the second,[804] the so-called Yahwistic version, mankind is first created, then a garden is made and trees are planted. After that, the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven are called into existence.

The resemblance of the second Babylonian version to the Yahwistic version extends even to certain phrases which they have in common. The opening words of the Yahwist--

And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--

might serve almost as a translation of the second line of the Babylonian counterpart. The reference to the Tigris and Euphrates in the second Babylonian version reminds one of the four streams mentioned in the Yahwistic version, two of which are likewise the Tigris and Euphrates.

Again, Tiamat is mentioned only in the first Babylonian version, and T'hom similarly only in the Elohistic version; while, on the other hand, the building of cities is included in the Yahwistic version,[805] as it forms part of the second Babylonian version. The points mentioned suffice to show that the Elohistic version is closely related to the larger creation epic of the Babylonians, while the Yahwistic version--more concise, too, than the Elohistic--agrees to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree with the second and more concise Babylonian record.

The conclusion, therefore, is justified that the variations between the Babylonian versions rest upon varying traditions that must have arisen in different places. The attempt was made to combine these traditions by the Babylonians, and among the Hebrews we may see the result of a similar attempt in the first two or, more strictly speaking, in the first three chapters of Genesis. At the same time, the manner in which both traditions have been worked over by the Hebrew compilers of Genesis precludes, as has been pointed out, the theory of a direct borrowing from cuneiform doc.u.ments. The climatic conditions involved in the Hebrew versions are those peculiar to Babylonia. It is in Babylonia that the thought would naturally arise of making the world begin with the close of the storms and rains in the spring. The Terahites must therefore have brought these cosmological traditions with them upon migrating from the Euphrates Valley to the Jordan district.

The traditions retained their hold through all the vicissitudes that the people underwent. The intercourse, political and commercial, between Palestine and Mesopotamia was uninterrupted, as we now know, from at least the fifteenth century before our era down to the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and this constant intercourse was no doubt an important factor in maintaining the life of the old traditions that bound the two peoples together. The so-called Babylonian exile brought Hebrews and Babylonians once more side by side. Under the stimulus of this direct contact, the final shape was given by Hebrew writers to their cosmological speculations. Yahwe is a.s.signed the role of Bel-Marduk, the division of the work of creation into six days is definitely made,[806] and some further modifications introduced. While, as emphasized, this final shape is due to the independent elaboration of the common traditions, and, what is even more to the point, shows an independent _interpretation_ of the traditions, it is by no means impossible, but on the contrary quite probable, that the final compilers of the Hebrew versions had before them the cuneiform tablets, embodying the literary form given to the traditions by Babylonian writers.[807]

Such a circ.u.mstance, while not implying direct borrowing, would account for the close parallels existing between the two Hebrew and the two Babylonian versions, and would also furnish a motive to the Hebrew writers for embodying _two_ versions in their narrative.

FOOTNOTES:

[680] The so-called Elohistic version, Gen. i. 1-ii. 4; the Yahwistic version, Gen. ii. 5-24. Traces have been found in various portions of the Old Testament of other popular versions regarding creation. See Gunkel, _Schopfung und Chaos_, pp. 29-114, 119-121.

[681] Gunkel, _ib._ pp. 28, 29. What Sayce (_e.g._, _Rec. of the Past_, N. S., I. 147, 148) calls the 'Cuthaean legend of the creation'

contains, similarly, a variant description of Tiamat and her brood.

[682] Published by Pinches, _Journal Royal Asiat. Soc._, 1891, pp.

393-408.

[683] Complete publication by Delitzsch, _Das Babylonische Weltschopfungsepos_ (Leipzig, 1896) with elaborate commentary.

[684] See Zimmern in Gunkel's _Schopfung und Chaos_, pp. 415, 416, and on the other side, Delitzsch, _Babylonische Weltschopfungsepos_, p. 20.

Zimmern's doubts are justified.

[685] _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._ vi. 7.

[686] _Zeits. f. a.s.syr._ viii. 121-124. Delitzsch, in his _Babylonische Weltschopfungsepos_, pp. 61-68, has elaborately set forth the principles of the poetic composition. See also D. H. Mueller, _Die Propheten in ihrer ursprunglichen Form_, pp. 5-14.

[687] _I.e._, did not exist. To be 'called' or to 'bear a name' meant to be called into existence.

[688] _I.e._, of the waters.

[689] _I.e._, of heaven and earth.

[690] The word used is obscure. Jensen and Zimmern render "reed."

Delitzsch, I think, comes nearer the real meaning with "marsh." See Haupt's translation, _Proc. Amer. Oriental Soc._, 1896, p. 161.

[691] Delitzsch supplies a parallel phrase like "periods elapsed."

[692] Supplied from Damascius' extract of the work of Berosus on Babylonia. See Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, p. 92; Delitzsch, _Babylonische Weltschopfungsepos_, p. 94.

[693] The _o_ is represented in Babylonian by _a_, and the ending _at_ in Tiamat is an affix which stamps the Babylonian name as feminine.

T'hom in Hebrew is likewise a feminine noun, but it should be noted that at a certain stage in the development of the Semitic languages, the feminine is hardly distinguishable from the plural and collective.

[694] Gunkel, _Schopfung und Chaos_, pp. 29-82, 379-398.

[695] For our purposes it is sufficient to refer for the relations existing between Damascius and the cuneiform records to Smith's _Chaldaeische Genesis_, pp. 63-66, to Lenormant's _Essai de Commentaire sur les fragments Cosmogoniques de Berose_, pp. 67 _seq._, and to Jensen's _Kosmologie der Babylonier_, pp. 270-272.

[696] The names are given by Damascius as _Apason_ and _Tauthe_.

[697] Suggested by Professor Haupt (Schrader, _Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament_, p. 7).

[698] Hommel, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, xviii. 19.

[699] See Jensen, _Kosmologie_, pp. 224, 225.

[700] Agumkakrimi Inscription (VR. 33, iv. 50); Nabonnedos (Cylinder, VR. 64, ll. 16, 17).

[701] Cory's _Ancient Fragments_, p. 58.

[702] See above, pp. 198, 199.

[703] See above, pp. 198, 199.

[704] I avoid the term "Sumerian" here, because I feel convinced that the play on Anshar is of an entirely artificial character and has no philological basis.

[705] See below, pp. 421-423.

[706] IIR. 54, no. 3.

[707] For a different interpretation of the phrase, see Jensen, _Kosmologie_, pp. 273, 274.

[708] See p. 107.