534TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.

HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON MONDAY, JUNE 3RD, 1912, AT 4.30 P.M.

LT.-GENERAL SIR HENRY L. GEARY, K.C.B., PRESIDED.

The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. The SECRETARY announced the following elections:

MEMBERS: The Rev. J. Iverach Munro, M.A.; Charles Stewart Campbell, Esq., B.A., I.C.S.

ASSOCIATE: Major H. J. H. de Vismes.

The CHAIRMAN then called upon ARCHDEACON POTTER to read his paper.

THE INFLUENCE OF BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS ON JEWISH THOUGHT.* By THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON POTTER, M.A.

N introducing this question my first duty is to apologize for venturing to undertake to write on it, because the subject is one which needs a master-hand to render it full justice. My excuses must be (1) that I endeavoured to get one who is much better qualified than I to undertake it, but he apparently was unable to find the time; (2) that I think it possible that a person like myself, not an original worker in archæological fields, but only one who studies work accomplished by distinguished men, has some advantage in co-ordinating these results with those attained in other sciences, because his mind being less devoted to one particular study may be more pliable in reconciling the results of several; (3) I have always had an intense conviction, which has grown with years, reading, and thought, that every science is a revealer of God; and that religion gains enormously, and loses nothing in the application

*N.B. The letters, P., J.E., E., in this paper, refer to the different sections in the Old Testament, as distinguished by the Higher Critics, P. being the latest, supposed not to have been completed till the period of the exile; the others being earlier, their completion dating certainly before 750 B.C.

of scientific results to what we call revelation. No doubt all things are shaken in the process; but the result is the making it quite clear what are those permanent Divine and important things which cannot be shaken, and remain.

There can be no more fascinating study than that of the influences which preceded and surrounded the beginning and development of the Jewish religion. This religion is the foundation on which Christianity is built. So that if we desire to understand the real meaning of the latter, we must understand the former.

To gain a true conception of a religion, it is desirable to ascertain the conditions under which it took its rise. Unless we were to assume that the historical and scientific setting in which religious conceptions are enshrined was directly and infallibly revealed to men by God, we may suppose that the conditions under which religious thinkers and prophets were born, and the ideas current, at their time and before, in their country and surrounding countries, would influence their thoughts and writings. And as we find out the amount of that influence, we learn to distinguish between the Divinely revealed and the historically developed elements.

With regard to Old Testament teachings, everyone now knows that they correspond in a very marked way with Babylonian conceptions, ever since Mr. George Smith (following Layard and Rawlinson) unveiled the library of Asur-banipal in 1874. This learned Assyrian king compiled his library in about 670 B.C. But in one of the tablets found at Nineveh occur these words: "according to the copies of the tablets of Assyria and Accad I have written on tablets." The Assyrian tablets were therefore copies of older Assyrian and Babylonian ones; and Babylonian duplicates have since been found at Borsippa and Sippara. "These Babylonian copies are of great importance, as they cannot have been taken from the Assyrian tablets, which were probably buried at the fall of Nineveh, but are from older copies in their own libraries.”* Moreover, the creation tablets found at Nineveh give honour to Merodach, not to Asshur, and consequently are Babylonian, not Assyrian in origin. Also a story of the flood has recently been found, which experts date at before 2000 B.C. And the fight between Merodach and Tiamat was found sculptured upon two limestone slabs in the temple of Ninib at Nimrud. This temple was built between 884 B.C. and 860 B.C., and across the sculpture

* Vide Boscawen.

was inscribed a dedication to Ninib by this king. This dates back the creation legend to at any rate 200 years before the formation of the library. It seems, therefore, clear that the tablets from Nineveh are of much greater antiquity than 670 B.C.

In them the beginning of things is thus described: "At that time the Heavens were unnamed. The chaotic Sea was the mother of all."

In Genesis the deep is called "Tehom." In Babylon, "Tiamat," the dragon conquered by Merodach, was the personification of chaos and darkness. From her body were made the sky and heavenly bodies, like the firmament in Genesis and the lights in it. Consequently, the tablets and Genesis (P.) agree in putting the deep as the first existence. In one tablet Merodach says, "Bone will I fashion." Issamtu is the word used for bone. It corresponds to esem bone in Genesis ii, 23 (J.), where Adam calls Eve "bone of my bones."

This tablet also says that Merodach opened his mouth and spake to Ea, telling him what he had conceived in his heart. This corresponds to Genesis i, 26 (P.), “Let us make man.”

As Merodach was originally a solar deity, his conquering the dragon may be looked on as parallel with the Hebrew narrative (P.) of the existence of light before the creation of the heavenly bodies. And the dividing of the primeval waters by a firmament before the creation of the heavenly bodies agrees with Genesis; and also the culminating act of creation being that of man (as in Genesis (P.) ).*

In the Assyrian tablets, the stars and night came first in the order of creation, then the sun and the day, the reverse being the case in the Hebrew record (P.); this has been attributed to the nomad life of the earlier people; and would point to an early date (viz., during the nomad period) for the Babylonian legendsthe sun, being associated with agriculture, would come first with agriculturists-the moon would come first with persons leading a nomad life.

Another tablet describes the gods calling forth mighty monsters, the cattle and wild beasts by Ea. The lower part of this tablet is mutilated, and it has been supposed might have contained a description of the creation of the human race. And in a hymn to Ea occur these words, "for their redemption did he create mankind, even he with whom is life," and in another tablet occur the words, "may his word be established and not

* Vide King.

forgotten in the mouth of mankind whom his hands have created."

Further in the sixth tablet, which was published, I think, for the first time by Mr. King, the creation of man is narrated (and it agrees largely with the long-known account given by Berosus,* who says that Bel formed mankind from his own blood mixed with earth). The sixth tablet says, "when Merodach heard the words of the gods, he spake unto Ea-my blood will I take, and bone will I fashion. I will create man to inhabit the earth, that the service of the gods may be established, and their shrines built," reminding us of an old Christian conception that man is the priest of nature, made for the purpose of understanding God's works, and praising him for them.

In the mythological tablet, the third of the creation series, occur the words, "the great Gods entered; in sin they join in compact, the fruit they broke, they broke in two. Merodach, their redeemer, he appointed their fate." This reminds us of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit in Eden (J.).

The story of Sargon's birth bears an interesting resemblance to that of the birth of Moses (E.). Sargon was the first Semitic king of Babylonia at a date which Nabonidus, a later learned and accurate king of Babylon, places at a period which would be about 3800 B.C. (King, I find in his Sumer and Accad, puts this at nearly 1,000 years later, and others quote both dates as possible.+ However, the latest date given is nearly 1,000 years before Moses.) A tablet preserved in the British Museum gives the story thus, "My little mother in the city of Atsu Pirani, on the banks of the Euphrates, brought me forth in a secret place. She placed me in a basket of reeds, and closed its mouth with bitumen. She gave me to the river, which did not cover me over, but carried me to Akki the irrigator." By the latter he was brought up as a gardener; the goddess Istar prospered him, and he eventually became king of the land.

The great difference between the Babylonian story of creation and that in Genesis is that the former was mainly polytheistic and the latter monotheistic.

A Babylonian priest, 330-260 B.C.

+ Lehmann considers that a scribe employed to copy the original statement of Nabonidus must have misread one stroke too many in the numerals, and thus made an excess of 1,000 years. Others believe that Nabonidus had no means of judging the date of Sargon.

But as modifying this undoubted distinction, Eerdmanns thinks that polytheism dominated originally all the narratives of which Genesis is composed. He refers to the passages in chapters i, 26, and xx, 13, as ones in which the original polytheism is still apparent and others, as e.g., "blessed be the Lord God of Shem," or "I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac," as recognizing Yahweh as one among many Gods.* Moreover, many Babylonian expressions have a decidedly monotheistic tendency, as e.g., the following: a hymn to the Moon God of Ur and Harran, from which Abraham and his father came, says, " Father long suffering and forgiving, who upholds all living things by his hand; begetter of gods and men, firstborn; omnipotent, whose unfathomable heart none can know; in Heaven and on earth thou alone art supreme. Among the Gods thou hast no rival." This hymn Boscawen considers older than the time of Abraham.

Sinai was called after Sin the Moon God, and it was a sacred place long before Moses communed there with God. Sargon and Naram-Sin conquered Sinai in very early times; in Exodus iii, 1, we read that "Moses was keeping the flock of his fatherin-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he came to the mount of Yahweh, even to Horeb." This seems to infer that the mountain was so called "the mount of God" before Moses visited it. Driver thinks that possibly Israelites had worshipped Yahweh at Sinai before Moses went there. In 1896, at Kurnah, in the funeral temple of Manephthah, were found the words, "Ysiraal is desolated, its seed is not"; this is in a description of this king's victory over enemies in Canaan, and as these words were written before the Exodus, probably there were Israelites in Canaan before the Exodus (possibly left behind after the famine of Joseph).†

If this were so, we can understand Yahweh and Sin having some attributes in common. Sin had been called "the Lord of laws," "he who created law and justice," "the ordainer of the laws of heaven and earth." And Sinai was the place where Moses received God's laws.

* The Rev. H. T. Knight considers that it was not until the time of Isaiah that the higher conception was reached, that Yahweh was not merely a tribal god, but the god of all the world: and he points out that Jephthah regards Chemosh as having a real existence that Ruth is content to follow Naomi, and cleave to her people and her God: and that David, when driven into exile, conceived himself as in a land belonging to other gods.

+ Vide Petrie.