,-'•*■ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 nraun
 
 CROWN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY 
 
 VOL. I. 
 DELITZSCH'S BABEL AND BIBLE
 
 BABEL and BIBLE 
 
 £\vo Xectures 
 
 Delivered before the Members of the Deutsche Orient- 
 Gesellschaft in the presence of the German Emperor 
 
 BY 
 
 FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH 
 
 ORDINARY PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL PHILOLOGY AND ASSYRIOLOOY 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OK BERLIN 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by 
 C. H. W. JOHNS, M.A. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
 I4 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON 
 AND J BROAD STREET, OXFORD 
 
 NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM^ SONS 
 
 iy°3
 
 13 S' 
 
 Introduction 
 
 The announcement that Professor Friedrich 
 
 Delitzsch, the great Assyriologist, had been 
 
 granted leave to deliver a lecture upon the 
 
 relations between the Bible and the recent 
 
 results of cuneiform research, in the august 
 
 presence of the Kaiser and the Court, naturally 
 
 caused a great sensation ; in Germany first, 
 
 and, as a wider circle, wherever men feel 
 
 interest in the progress of Science. The 
 
 lecture was duly delivered on the 13th of 
 
 January 1902, and repeated on the 1st of 
 
 February. 
 
 Some reports of the general tenour of the 
 
 discourse reached the outside world, and it 
 
 was evident that matters of the greatest 
 
 interest were involved. In due course 
 
 v 
 
 1003913
 
 vi Introduction 
 
 appeared a small book with the text of the 
 lecture, adorned with a number of striking 
 pictures of the ancient monuments. This was 
 the now celebrated Babel und Bibel. 
 
 The title was a neat one, emphasizing the 
 close relation between the results of cuneiform 
 studies and the more familiar facts of the 
 Bible. The greater part of these relationships 
 was well known, not only to Assyriologists. 
 hut also to all interested in Biblical Archae- 
 ology. Those who had glanced through the 
 recent aids to Bible study, Hastings' Dictionary 
 of the Bible, the Encyclopaedia Biblica, or 
 even the humbler guides compiled for Sunday 
 School teachers, in this country and in 
 America, felt themselves on very familial- 
 ground. The chief cause for pleasure was 
 that it was all so freshly and temperately set 
 out. No doubt some felt a little disappointed 
 |at so conservative a treatment. Those who 
 were familiar with recent work, such as is 
 so ably summarized in the third edition of 
 Schrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions mxl the Old
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 Testament, felt that the Professor had been 
 rather too sparing of his parallels. But, we 
 reflected, there are limits to what one can 
 put in a popular lecture. Many of us knew 
 the cautious, deliberate way in which Professor 
 Delitzsch had always set out his views, and 
 the reluctance he had always shewn to make 
 use of what he had not discovered, or at least 
 worked out, for himself. Hence we were 
 convinced that he had only stated what he 
 felt to be indisputable. It was very readable, 
 and would, we hoped, be widely read and 
 digested as a preparation for further advance. 
 
 It came, therefore, as a shock of surprise to 
 find that rejoinders were being issued. A 
 rapid succession of articles, reviews, and re- 
 plies appeared in newspapers and magazines, 
 and a whole crowd of pamphlets and books. 
 These regarded the lecture from many varied 
 points of view, mostly with disapproval. The 
 champions of the older learnings assailed it 
 from all sides. Even those who had been 
 forward to admit nothing but a human side to
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 the history and literature of Israel were eager 
 to tall on the new pretender to public favour: 
 and. to the astonishment of many, there arose 
 a literature ;///// Strcit ion Bibel mid Babel. 
 
 As the echoes of this conflict reached our 
 cars, we seemed to gather that the higher 
 critics, usually known for their destructive 
 habits, were now engaged in defending, in 
 so] in- way. the Bible against the attacks of 
 an archaeologist and cuneiform scholar. This 
 seemed a reversal of the order of nature. We 
 had been used to regard the archaeologist, espe- 
 cially the Assyriologist. as one who had rescued 
 much of the Bible history from the scepti- 
 cism of literary critics. Some of the archaeo- 
 logical defences had seemed to yield too much. 
 but we felt that more knowledge would im- 
 prove that Confidence was not much shaken. 
 Had we not in our own British Museum the 
 greatest collection of material in the world 
 lor the elucidation of Scripture, which was 
 being issued as rapidly as the meagre resources 
 devoted to such purposes allow '. Had we not
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 scholars amongst us who were fully cognisant 
 of all that could be said on such points ? They 
 had sounded no note of alarm. They were 
 evidently firmly convinced of the truth of 
 the old familiar watchwords. Could we be 
 disturbed when the chief efforts of the Church 
 were being directed to the support of a govern- 
 ment who would secure to it the ownership 
 of its school buildings ? We could hardly 
 dream that indifference to Church teaching 
 was ultimately due to a conviction of its 
 worthlessness. 
 
 Some of the attacks on the position taken 
 by Professor Delitzsch were so evidently un- 
 fair, and based on such scanty knowledge of at 
 least one side of his argument, that we rather 
 wondered at his silence. The attacks almost 
 answered themselves, yet we wondered at the 
 self-restraint which refrained from scoring an 
 easy victory. Then we learnt the reason. The 
 Professor was in Babylonia itself. When he 
 came back there would be a bad time for some 
 people.
 
 \ Introduction 
 
 So when the great Professor was once more 
 bidden to deliver a lecture in the presence of 
 the Kaiser and the Court, which took place on 
 the 12th of January 1903, we expected to 
 have some hard hitting. But that was. after 
 all. scarcely the place for a polemic, and we 
 must be grateful for the new and valuable con- 
 tributions to knowledge which it contained. 
 One could not fairly expect to know the chief 
 results of German exploration in Babylonia, 
 but there is much that is new and helpful. 
 
 But now reports of a very disquieting nature 
 reached us. Our papers had it from their 
 correspondents that a very direct attack was 
 made on Holy Scripture, and even, it was 
 not obscurely hinted, on the fundamental doc- 
 trines of the Catholic Faith. The storm broke 
 out afresh in Germany, and spread hither also. 
 We learnt, to our amazement, not exactly 
 realizing the Kaisers position as Summits 
 Episcopus, that he had seen Ht to address a 
 letter, the text of which appeared in the Times 
 of February 25th.
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 That lectures, even on such an interesting 
 subject, could lead to measures of such high 
 state policy was a guarantee that the matter 
 had passed beyond the circles of scholarship 
 and research, and was become a matter of 
 national concern. We could not afford to 
 remain longer in ignorance of what had 
 stirred our allies so profoundly. We dared 
 not trust to newspapers alone ; but, failing 
 Blue Books on the subject, had better read 
 for ourselves what Professor Delitzsch had 
 said. Hence the present translation has 
 been called for. 
 
 The reader will not fail to recognize that 
 these are lectures. The opening words of the 
 first lecture evidently join on to some report 
 upon the w r ork done by the German Oriental 
 Society's explorers in the East. Theirs are 
 " these labours." " Babel " is what we ordi- 
 narily call Babylon and Babylonia. Many 
 phrases are not such as one would write in 
 a treatise, and evidently are appropriate to a 
 lecture illustrated by diagrams. The reader
 
 xii Introduction 
 
 will inert with many quotations from the 
 Bible in an unfamiliar form. They are the 
 Professor's own translations direct from the 
 Hebrew, or Greek, into German, retranslated 
 into English. Where, however, the usual 
 version would serve as well, it has been given 
 in place of a fresh rendering. Other familiar 
 tonus are retained, when no mistake is likely 
 to arise. Thus Yahwfe is s () well established 
 in English usage that there seemed no reason 
 to use Jahve, except where the likeness to 
 Jahu, etc., was important. The / in such 
 words as Iasuh is. of course, the German J, 
 our Y. So, too, the v is sounded like our w. 
 The German always writes Sardanapallus for 
 the name of the Assyrian king, son of Esar- 
 haddon. who appears in Ezra iv. 10 as Asnapper, 
 hut has been known in England for many 
 years as Ashur-banipal, a form more elosely 
 recalling the original than the Greek does. 
 The mark under // in such words as Ham- 
 murabi denotes that the letter is sounded like 
 ch in inch, and is often rendered by writing kh.
 
 Introduction xiii 
 
 But in early Babylonian times the sound 
 could hardly have been so distinct, for it is 
 often dropped, e.g. we find also Ammu-rabi. 
 In the Assyrian or Babylonian words s is 
 written for ,9// ; .s- for ts, or st ; k for a sign 
 often rendered q ; and t represents the Hebrew 
 teth, not tau. 
 
 To Professor Delitzsch belongs the high 
 credit of having discerned the true meaning 
 of those fragments of an earlier legislation 
 preserved, in late copies, in the Library of 
 Ashurbanipal. They had been called a Code 
 Ashurbanipal, and Dr. Meissner had already 
 pointed out their great likeness to the con- 
 tracts of the First Dynasty of Babylon. But 
 apart from what was said on p. 35, Professor 
 Delitzsch had already, in December 1901, 
 applied the name Code Hammurabi to them, 
 practically at the very moment when the fuller 
 text of that Code was being unearthed at 
 Susa. Anyone who cares to read the article 
 in the Beitragc zur Assyriologie, iv. pp. 78-87, 
 and compare it with the previous studies there
 
 \i\ Introduction 
 
 referred to, will sec that this was no mere 
 lucky guess ; bul was led up to by a chain of 
 close reasoning, such as gives us the highesl 
 confidence in the results and methods of 
 Assvrioloffv, at least in Professor Delitzsch's 
 hands. He could not then have known of the 
 discovery. The text was not published till 
 October L902. 
 
 When a man has been deeply immersed in 
 an exacting study for many years he has a 
 right to express opinions as well as to register 
 tacts. Whether the qualifications which make 
 a man a successful investigator are always 
 associated with those that enable a man to 
 take a just view <>t* the whole subject and its 
 bearing upon other cognate subjects, may be 
 doubted. Hut if the opinions do not coincide 
 with those formed by others, with more or 
 less acquaintance with the same facts, there 
 is a fail' field for discussion. It will be in the 
 remembrance of most that some facts on 
 which Professor Delitzsch relics for his positions 
 have been used in the past to prove something
 
 Introduction xv 
 
 very different. 1 In fact, if, us some of liis 
 opponents urge, his identifications do not 
 hold, some of ns will have to surrender some 
 favourite bulwarks of the Old Testament. 
 We seem to have a repetition of an old ex- 
 perience. Something is discovered which is 
 first hailed as a remarkable confirmation of 
 Scripture, then seen to be a serious impeach- 
 ment of its accuracy, finally known to be purely 
 independent and unconnected. It is an in- 
 direct testimony to the abiding value of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures that the first question for 
 most people concerning each new discovery 
 is, How does it bear on the Bible ? 
 
 Now, it is not an editor's function to reply 
 to the arguments or opinions advanced in the 
 work he edits, nor even to suppress and 
 modify them, but to endeavour to place them 
 as fairly as can be before the reader. A com- 
 mentator might find it necessary to add 
 
 1 Dr. S. Kinns' Graven in the Rock, Urqu hart's The 
 Bible and Modern Discoveries, Hommel's Ancient Israelite 
 Tradition.
 
 \\i Introduction 
 
 explanatory notes, supplementary information. 
 or even references to other views. These are 
 excluded by the plan of this work. Professor 
 Delitzsch has acted as his own commentator, 
 and in the notes will be found his replies to 
 many critics and a fairly full list of the litera- 
 ture of the controversy. The great aim of 
 this work is to let him speak for himself, and 
 of this introduction to bespeak for him a fair 
 hearing. Hence it must not be considered 
 that this introduction pledges the editor to 
 any view, for or against, any of the positions 
 taken up in the work itself. Speculations as 
 to his sympathies are disavowed in advance. 
 
 The worthy Professor somewhat pathetically 
 complains that the public has hitherto taken 
 but little note of the work done by scholars 
 on the ( )ld Testament. His lecture has had 
 the result of attracting public notice enough. 
 Xot to speak of editions up to 40. 000. replies 
 already in a ninth edition, and a whole litera- 
 ture to itself, Babel mid Bibcl is now a 
 historic event. Whether such publicity brings
 
 Introduction xvii 
 
 joy to the scholar may be doubted, but it is 
 good for the public. Let us hope it may 
 awaken interest in both Biblical study and 
 Oriental exploration. Neither can afford to 
 do without the other. Both need far more 
 general support. 
 
 Some of the criticisms which the controversy 
 has called forth perfectly dazzle our eyes to 
 read. In an age when almost any argument is 
 enough to base a popular cause upon, when 
 men let themselves be led captive by the most 
 specious nonsense, we are used to the publica- 
 tion of tilings as meaningless as the scrawlings 
 of planchette. But even these meet with so 
 much acceptance that they become a peril- 
 ous influence on ill-regulated minds. Con- 
 temptuous silence is accepted as admission 
 of doubt or lack of faith. Hence there is need 
 for men who have knowledge to learn the art 
 of making it available for public use. 
 
 One favourite device of the critics who have 
 replied to Professor Delitzsch has been to 
 fasten on some side issue. Often they attack
 
 wiii Introduction 
 
 Assyriology as if that were the enemy. It 
 was much the same when the New Learning 
 came to pave the way for the Reformation, 
 and Greek was regarded as an invention of 
 the devil. 
 
 There are uncertainties, room for different 
 opinions, in Assyriology, as there were doubts 
 about Greek, some of which still remain. Hut 
 some of the statements about Assyriology are 
 so misleading as to call for vigorous treatment. 
 Thus one reads that inasmuch as the cuneiform 
 script employs some 20.000 sign groups and 
 about 000 single signs, while the Hebrew has 
 but >M signs, there must be a wide field 
 for uncertainty. The numbers are scarcely 
 accurate. Briinnow's Classified Sign List only 
 shews 13,000 sign groups, many of which are 
 single signs, and 410 single signs, some of 
 which arc numerals. That each sign has many 
 tonus, according to the age of the script, may 
 perhaps be the source of the confusion. Hut 
 we do not count Old English, Gothic, and all 
 the modern sorts of type as separate signs.
 
 Introduction xix 
 
 Even grunting the numbers to be correct, 
 what follows ? One might as well object that 
 since in Algebra a sign may denote any 
 quantity whatever, even such as have no real 
 value, therefore no Algebraical result was of 
 numerical value. All depends upon the laws 
 of combination and operation to which they 
 are subjected. Provided all the signs arc 
 known in value, or obey such laws that their 
 value can be readily deduced, their number 
 is no hindrance, but rather a help. The 
 vaunted simplicity of the 37 Hebrew signs is 
 delusive. If they are so readily confounded 
 one with another as textual critics suggest 
 when they emend their texts, one may sigh for 
 •20,000 unmistakable sign groups. Even if 
 they are certain, what reliance can be placed on 
 a script that uses the same signs to write 
 Babel, Bible, and " babble" '. All depends on 
 knowing how the vowels, accents, etc., may be 
 supplied. The cuneiform writes its vowels in 
 full, even marking their length in many cases. 
 Of course, an inscription may be so injured by
 
 w Introduction 
 
 erasure or exposure as to be almost illegible. 
 So may a manuscript he. But here is the con- 
 trast, [f an inscription is really legible its 
 reading is easier, and more certain, than that of 
 any manuscript unvocali/.ed. Who shall say 
 the vocalization is correct in the latter case '. 
 At any rate it is a late tradition. 
 
 When once an inscription is read, there may 
 be lexical and grammatical difficulties. These 
 are not unknown in Hebrew : they are more 
 numerous than many, even good scholars, 
 suspect. That men are conventionally agreed 
 as to the sense of so many words in the Old 
 Testament is often a disguised admission of 
 the smallness of their knowledge. It may be 
 perfect within the limits of their literature, 
 hut it is circumscribed by the limits of that 
 literature. That men are still uncertain of the 
 meaning of so many Hebrew words, after an 
 infinitely larger amount of study bestowed on 
 the language, is a warning to them to adopt 
 fresh methods. That they have anything to 
 teach a science, which by the labour of a few
 
 Introduction xxi 
 
 score men, for the most part unendowed with 
 great means or much leisure for the pursuit 
 of their study, has already attained a greater 
 degree of certainty, is a contention not likely 
 to be long maintained. The test for the un- 
 biassed is to acquire an elementary acquaint- 
 ance with the subject. 
 
 Uncertainty there is, and always must be, 
 about the reading of defaced or fragmentary 
 inscriptions. Hut the continual discovery of 
 duplicates, which preserve entire lost portions 
 of earlier known inscriptions ; the immense 
 amount of material, perhaps 100,000 tablets in 
 the British Museum alone ; the habit cuneiform 
 scribes had of using various ways of writing 
 the same word, a habit which constantly settles 
 and confirms old readings ; the fact that we 
 have now plenty of bilinguals, giving renderings 
 of cuneiform in Aramaic and Greek letters, 
 not one of which has unsettled a reading 
 hitherto accepted ; place the results of cunei- 
 form research in a much stronger position than 
 any which could be deduced from a scries of
 
 wii Introduction 
 
 inscriptions in any mere Semitic alphabet. 
 The only sensible course, then, for a man 
 who doubts the results is to learn how 
 they are obtained, and. it* possible, cheek 
 the process of deduction. lie will find that 
 the period of guesswork is over, and that 
 decipherment is now a matter of the strictest 
 logic. 
 
 That all results are unimpeachable is not 
 true, for such things as hapaoc legomena occur. 
 or phrases which by their invariable context, 
 though often repeated, may be without the 
 elucidation given by a more extended use in 
 a variety of contexts. But, ever and anon, 
 fresh texts present these words or phrases in 
 fresh connections, and something of the old 
 uncertainty gets shaded off, if not entirely re- 
 moved. Hut. as a rule, in the historical texts 
 the language is capable of a more minute 
 grammatical analysis than can be safely applied 
 to Hebrew, Aramaic, or Phoenician inscriptions. 
 The more technical texts, astronomical or 
 astrological, omens, magical or medical, are
 
 Introduction xxiii 
 
 obscure, mainly because the subject itself is 
 remote from our comprehension. 
 
 Much of the present security of cuneiform 
 research is due to Professor Delitzsch. Long 
 a teacher of beginners and a compiler of 
 lexicons and grammar, he was always setting 
 in order the foundations. Only lately has he 
 begun to build upon them. Here, perhaps, it 
 will turn out that he has not displayed sufficient 
 caution. Those will come off best who try to 
 shew that different conclusions may be drawn 
 from his facts. They will not be well advised 
 to quarrel with the facts. How dangerous 
 that may be is seen by the humiliating position 
 in which Professor P. Jensen has placed himself. 1 
 It does not do even for one of the foremost 
 of Assyriologists to assume that he knows all 
 there is behind Professor Delitzsch's assertions. 
 In a formal treatise one demands full proof: in 
 a lecture what is sometimes called the method 
 of English scholarship is demanded, as con- 
 trasted with that of Germany, namely, a clear 
 1 See p. 143, Notes,
 
 wiv Introduction 
 
 dogmatic statement of results, rather than an 
 exhibition of the machinery and process by 
 which they arc reached. In a first presentation 
 of results the so-called German method is 
 preferable. We want to see how they are 
 obtained and so estimate their soundness. In a 
 popular lecture this method is excluded. Few. 
 if any. could attempt it : fewer follow it. 
 What is needed is a clear statement of results 
 and an avoidance of matters of doubtful inter- 
 pretation. For a modest statement of facts it 
 would be difficult to surpass this lecture. The 
 deductions arc subject to revision as more facts 
 are taken into account. But it will not do to 
 assume that the Professor has done a "bit of 
 special pleading" and used up all the facts that 
 suit his view, while leaving others ignored. 
 The Professor could easily swell his list of facts 
 manyfold, and. if he cannot lay his hand on 
 them at once, there are many others who can. 
 Anyone who desires to traverse his position 
 successfully must be prepared with an alterna- 
 tive theory, which will not only fit all the facts
 
 Introduction xxv 
 
 adduced, but innumerable others of the same 
 kind. 
 
 The explanation that men in similar circum- 
 stances hit upon similar devices, and thus 
 reach similar institutions, is true enough. But 
 it has not much point when the actual contacts 
 between Babylonia and the people of Israel 
 are considered. The fundamental assumption 
 that the evolution of religious ideas went on 
 in an orderly sequence in Israel, an assumption 
 used to date the documents, is rudely shaken 
 by the reflection that many ideas may have been 
 adopted from Babylon and that the order of 
 development there was not a synchronous 
 order. Much that has been regarded as 
 Persian in origin may turn out to be older 
 than Abraham. But with such questions we 
 have not to do here, only to note that they ex- 
 plain the antipathy of a school which might have 
 been expected to welcome Delitzsch's work. 
 One thing is certain, the opponent who appeals 
 to authority, whether of the early Church or 
 of the recent critic, will meet short shrift. If
 
 wvi Introduction 
 
 these lectures arc l<> be answered the Professor 
 
 must be met on his own ground, and thai with 
 better knowledge of cuneiform than most of his 
 critics have shewn. The men who know have 
 cither preserved a discreet silence or gently 
 chided him for some immaterial side issue. If 
 the theologians are in future to deal success- 
 fully with such attacks on cherished positions. 
 they must learn, and make provision for the 
 teaching of Assyriology. They must include 
 it in their curriculum. 
 
 The men who claim to decide everything by 
 their own mother-wit have condemned the 
 Professor and tried to influence the public by 
 an appeal to sentiment and prejudice. \\ < 
 wish that the man. his facts and his conclusions. 
 should have a patient hearing. The lectures 
 will at least he found free- of the ill-natured 
 nibcs at us which pass for wit with some of his 
 ciitics. There is no need to swallow every- 
 
 • 
 
 thing whole, nor to toss the Bible on the shell' 
 as antiquated rubbish. If the Bible owes 
 much lo Babylonia, so do astronomy, mathe-
 
 Introduction xxvii 
 
 matics, and medicine. We use still the 
 Babylonian time measures and perhaps also 
 their space measures. The debt of Greece 
 and Rome to Babylon has yet to find its 
 Delitzsch, but he is soon to appear. 
 
 Much has been made of the pain which 
 comes to those who see old beliefs perish. But 
 that is salutary pain. We have all to take 
 pains, or pain. Either we must learn, research, 
 investigate, deduce, conclude, or, if we will 
 not take such pains, we are liable at any time 
 to suffer pain from finding some cherished 
 belief perish, without our being able to defend 
 it, or even give it decent obsequies. As Dr. 
 Kinns of old said, when he had proved to his 
 satisfaction that the ark did not really harbour 
 lions and tigers (in which he proved more a 
 destructive critic than Professor Delitzsch), 
 "It may seem a little too bad to deprive 
 pictures and children's toys of this interesting 
 feature, but there is strong evidence . . . ." ; 
 so when there is strong evidence we can only 
 feel pity for those who have believed many
 
 xxviii Introduction 
 
 things on evidence no better than that which 
 justified the lions and tigers. Whether Dr. 
 Delitzsch has produced strong evidence or not 
 is not for the editor to decide. That would be 
 to step into the shoes of the artist and the 
 toy maker. It is the object of this work 
 to enable the reader to judge for himself. 
 .Men really must learn to have opinions of 
 their own. 
 
 They accepted what they were told as babies. 
 As men they need to put away childish things. 
 They are babes still if they accept what is told 
 them with no more effort to examine and 
 verify. To throw aside all. and henceforth 
 believe nothing, is as childish as before. To 
 such adult infants this book may give the 
 elements of an education such as they sorely 
 need. If their so-called faith be unsettled, a 
 very little more education will very likely 
 settle it again: or. which comes to much the 
 same thing with this sort of faith, they will for- 
 get all about it and believe as much or as little 
 as before, the same things or something else,
 
 Introduction xxix 
 
 with equal complacency. The men of deep 
 religious faith, who alone count for the progress 
 of the race, will rejoice and take courage at a 
 fresh proof that the Father has never left 
 Himself without witness among men, and that 
 even the most unlikely elements have gone to 
 prepare the world for Him who was, and still 
 is, to come. 
 
 C. H. W. JOHNS. 
 
 Queens' College, Cambridge, 
 6th April 1903.
 
 ft. 
 
 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 PREFACE TO LECTl T KK I 
 
 I\ spite of a conscientious examination of the 
 rejoinders and critiques called forth by " Babel 
 und Bibel," with the exception of certain 
 improvements which for the most part aim 
 at greater clearness and the avoidance of 
 ambiguity. I have not found myself called 
 upon to alter the actual contents. The notes 
 appended to this new edition prove this as far 
 as the most important of my statements are 
 concerned.
 
 Lecture i 
 
 What is the object of these labours in distant, 
 inhospitable, and dangerous lands? To what 
 
 Pig, 1. — From the German excavations at Babylon. 
 
 end this costly work of rummaging in mounds 
 many thousand years old, of digging deep down
 
 Babel and Bible 3 
 
 into the earth in places where no gold or silver 
 is to he found ? Why this rivalry among 
 nations for the purpose of securing, each for 
 itself, these desolate hills and the more the 
 better — in which to excavate? And from 
 what source, on the other hand, is derived the 
 
 Fig. 2. —From the German excavations at Babylon. 
 
 self-sacrificing interest, ever on the increase. 
 that is shewn on both sides of the ocean, in 
 the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria? 
 
 To either question there is one answer, 
 which, if not exhaustive, nevertheless to a 
 great extent tells 11s the cause and aim : it is 
 the Bible. The names Nineveh and Babylon, 
 the stories of Belshazzar, and of the Wise .Men
 
 4 Babel and Bible 
 
 who came from the East, have been surrounded, 
 from our childhood up, by a mysterious charm : 
 and however important the long lines of rulers 
 whom we awaken anew to life may be in 
 their bearings on history and civilization, they 
 would not arouse halt' the amount of interest, 
 were not Amraphel and Sennacherib and 
 Nebuchadnezzar, who are familiar to us from 
 our school-days, included among them. With 
 these recollections of our childhood, however, 
 is associated in riper years the struggle for a 
 conception of the world which shall satisfy 
 equally the understanding and the heart — a 
 struggle which in the present day occupies the 
 mind of every thinking man. And this leads 
 us hack again and again to the Bible, primarily 
 to questions concerning the origin and meaning 
 of the Old Testament, with which, however, 
 the New is. from a historical point of view, 
 inseparably linked. It is astonishing to what 
 an extent the Old Testament, that small 
 library of hooks of the most multifarious kind, 
 is being investigated in every direction at the
 
 Babel and Bible 5 
 
 present day, by an almost inconceivable number 
 of Christian scholars in Germany, England, 
 and America — the three Bible-lands, as they 
 have not unjustly been called. The public still 
 continues to take but little notice of this quiet 
 intellectual work. But this at least is certain, 
 when once the sum-total of the new lessons 
 that have been learnt has broken out of the 
 study, and has come forth into life, into the 
 church and into the school, the life of men and 
 of peoples will be more deeply stirred, will be 
 led on to more important advances than by 
 the most noteworthy discoveries in the whole 
 domain of Natural Science. At the same 
 time, however, the conviction is becoming 
 more and more general that it is the results 
 of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria 
 in particular that are destined to inaugurate 
 a new epoch as regards both the way in which 
 we must understand the Old Testament and 
 the estimate we must form of it, and that for 
 all future time Babel and the Bible will remain 
 closely connected.
 
 6 Babel and Bible 
 
 The times have indeed changed! We had 
 David, Solomon, LOOO b.c, .Moses, uoo b.c, 
 and Abraham eight centuries earlier; and 
 even detailed information about all these men! 
 The thing seemed so unique, so supernatural, 
 that the stories from the early beginnings of 
 the world and of mankind were likewise 
 accepted as credible eveu great minds came 
 under the spell of the mystery surrounding the 
 first hook of Moses. Now that the Pyramids 
 have opened and the Assyrian palaces have 
 disclosed themselves to view, the people of 
 Israel with their writings appear one of the 
 youngest among their neighbours. 
 
 Until far into the last century the Old 
 Testament formed a world by itself: it spoke 
 of times to whose latest limits the age of 
 Classical Antiquity only just reaches, and 
 of peoples of whom there is no mention 
 or only a passing reference among Greek 
 and Roman writers. From about 550 B.C. 
 onwards, the Bible was the only source for 
 the history of the Nearer East, and. since
 
 Babel and Bible 7 
 
 its range of vision spreads over the whole of the 
 great quadrilateral between the Mediterranean 
 and the Persian Gulf, from Ararat to Ethiopia, 
 it is full of problems the solution of which 
 would never perhaps have been successfully 
 achieved. Now, at a stroke, the walls that 
 have shut off the remoter portion of the Old 
 Testament scene of action fall, and a cool 
 quickening breeze from the East, accompanied 
 by a flood of light, breathes through and 
 illuminates the whole of the time-honoured 
 Hook — all the more intensely because Hebrew 
 antiquity from beginning to end is closely 
 linked with this same Babylonia and Assyria. 
 
 The American excavations in Nippur have 
 brought to light the business records of the 
 great commercial firm of Murashu & Sons, 1 
 which was established there in the time of 
 Artaxerxes (about 450 B.C.). Tn these records 
 we find the names of many Jewish exiles who 
 remained in Babylon — Nathanael, Haggai, 
 Benjamin. And in connection with the 
 
 1 Set- Note. |>. 93
 
 8 Babel and Bible 
 
 city of Nippur we read also of a canal 
 Kabar; in which the canal Chebar "in 
 the land of the Chaldeans.'" famous <>n 
 account of Ezekiel's vision (Ezek. i. .'*) is 
 recovered. This Grand Canal for that is 
 the meaning of the name may even survive 
 to the present day. 
 
 As the Babylonian bricks nearly always 
 bear a stamp, mentioning, among other details, 
 the name of the city to which the building 
 in question belonged, Sir Henry Rawlinson, 
 as far back as 1849, succeeded in discovering 
 the long-sought city of Ur of the Chaldees, 
 in several passages attested as the home of 
 Abraham, i.e., the tribal ancestors of Israel 
 (.en. xi. 31, XV. 7) -at el-Mukayyar. the 
 mighty mound of ruins on the right-hand bank 
 of the lowest course of the Euphrates (fig. 3). 
 The statements in the cuneiform literature on 
 geographical matters are so clear, that though 
 the city of Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar 
 in no."} b.c. obtained his great victory over 
 Pharaoh Necho (Jer. xlvi. 2) was previously
 
 Babel and Bible 9 
 
 sought, now in one place, now in another, on 
 the banks of the Euphrates, the English 
 Assyriologist George Smith, in March 1S7<'», 
 rode direct from Aleppo down the stream 
 from Birejik, to the district where, according to 
 the cuneiform inscriptions, the old Hittite royal 
 
 Fig. 3. — The ruins of el-Mukayyar (Ur of the Chaldees). 
 
 city must have lain, and at once, with the 
 greatest certainty, identified the ruins of 
 Jerabis — greater than Nineveh, with walls and 
 palace-mounds — with Carchemish, an identi- 
 fication immediately afterwards confirmed 
 by the inscriptions in that peculiar Hittite 
 hieroglyphic script (fig. 4) which were found 
 scattered among the ruins,
 
 IO 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 And as is the case with a large number 
 of the places, so also many of the personages 
 
 named in the Bible now receive colour and 
 life. The hook of Isaiah (xx. 1) mentions, on 
 
 . 1. — Hittite hieroglyphs from Carchemish. 
 
 one occasion, an Assyrian kini>- named Sargon 
 who had sent his field-marshal against Ashdod. 
 When in ] s j.:j the French consul Emile Botta 
 began to dig at Khorsabad, the ruined mound 
 not far from Mosul, and thus at the advice of
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 i i 
 
 a German scholar inaugurated archaeological 
 
 researches in Mesopotamian soil, the very first 
 Assyrian palace to be discovered was that of 
 this Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria. Upon 
 
 Fig. 5. — Sargon II. and his field-marshal. 
 
 one of the magnificent alabaster reliefs with 
 which the w r alls of the palace chambers were 
 adorned, the very person of this mighty warrior 
 conversing with his field-marshal meets our 
 gaze (fig. 5). The Book of Kings (2 Kings
 
 I 2 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 w iii. 1 t sqq.) relates that King Sennacherib, in 
 the south Palestinian city of Lachish, received 
 the tribute of King I [ezekiah of Jerusalem. A 
 
 relief from Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh 
 
 Fig, 6. — King Hammurabi Amraphe] . 
 
 shews us the Assyrian monarch, enthroned be- 
 fore his tent, Pacing a conquered city, and the 
 accompanying inscription states that "Senna- 
 cherib the king of the universe, king of Asshur, 
 seated himself on his throne and inspected the
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 13 
 
 spoil of Lachish." And Sennacherib's Baby- 
 lonian adversary, Merodach-baladan, in his 
 
 turn — who, according to the Bible (2 Kings 
 xx. 12), sent messengers of peace to Hezekiah 
 is shewn ns upon a fine diorite-relief now 
 at Berlin : before the king stands the gover- 
 nor of Babylon, to whom his royal master in 
 
 •V-.' 
 
 Ifebj -SI .*&*£*$ — v 
 
 Fig. 7. — Seal of Darius Hystaspis. 
 
 his graciousness has presented large estates. 
 Even the great king Hammurabi — Amraphel 
 (Gen. xiv.) — the contemporary of Abraham, is 
 now pictorially represented (e.g. fig. 6). Thus, 
 all the men who throughout three thousand 
 years made the history of the world, come 
 to life again ; even their seal-cylinders have 
 survived. Here we have the seal of King
 
 H 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 Darius, the son of Hystaspis (fig. 7): the 
 king lion-hunting under the august protection 
 of Ahuramazda, with the inscription at the side 
 in three Languages: "I am Darius the great 
 king" a veritable treasure belonging to the 
 British .Museum. Here (fig. 8) the state-seal of 
 Sargani-sar-ali. or Sargon I., one of the oldest of 
 
 Fig. 8.— Seal of Sargon I. 
 
 the Babylonian rulers yet known, of the third, 
 probably even the fourth, millennium b.c. 
 
 This is the king who caused the legend to 
 be related of him that he knew not his father 
 for lie died before his birth and that 
 his widowed mother, as his father's brother 
 shewed no care for her, 1 brought him into the 
 world in great distress: ••in Azupiran on the 
 1 See Note, \>. 92.
 
 Babel and Bible i 5 
 
 Euphrates she secretly gave birth to me, put 
 me in a little ark of reeds, closed the opening 
 with bitumen, laid me in the river, that bore 
 me down on its waves to Akki, the water- 
 carrier. In the benevolence of his heart he 
 took me in, brought me up as his child, made 
 me his gardener. Then Ishtar, the daughter of 
 the King of Heaven, conceived an affection 
 for me and raised me up to be king over men." 
 But even whole nations come to life again. 
 When we collect the various ethnical types L 
 from the Assyrian sculptures, and fix our eyes 
 in one case upon the representation of a 
 Judaean from Lachish (fig. 11), and in another 
 upon an Israelite of the time of Jehu (fig. 10), 
 it suggests itself as likely that the other 
 types also— e.g. the Elamite chieftain (9), 
 the Arab rider (13), and the Babylonian 
 merchant (12) — have been accurately observed 
 and reproduced. In particular, the Assyrians. 
 who but six decades ago seemed to have been 
 swallowed up, together with their history and 
 
 1 See Note, p. !).;.
 
 i6 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 9. Elamite. 
 12. Babj I 
 
 ] 1. Judsean. 
 
 10. Israelite. 
 L3. AniK.
 
 Babel and Bible 17 
 
 culture, in the stream of ages, are now known 
 to us through the excavations in Nineveh to 
 the minutest details, and many passages in 
 the prophetical hooks of the Old Testament 
 receive vivid local colour. 
 
 " Behold, they shall come with speed swiftly. 
 None shall be weary nor stumble among them : 
 none shall slumber nor sleep ; neither shall 
 the girdle of their loins he loosed, nor the 
 latchet of their shoes be broken : whose 
 arrows are sharp, and all their hows bent, 
 their horses' shoes shall be counted like Hint, 
 and their wheels like a whirlwind. Their 
 roaring shall be like a lion, and they shall lay 
 hold of the prey and shall carry it away safe, 
 and none shall deliver it." 
 
 Thus does the prophet Isaiah (v. 26 sqq.) in 
 
 eloquent language describe the Assyrian troops. 
 
 Now we see these Assyrian soldiers setting 
 
 out from the camp in the early morn (fig. 14). 
 
 and with battering-rams assaulting the enemy's 
 
 stronghold (fig. 15), whilst on the lower line 
 
 of the relief unhappy captives arc being con- 
 
 3
 
 i8 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 . 14. — Departure of Assyrian troops from the ramp. 
 
 
 I ; r>. r 
 
 M" 
 
 ~ 
 
 "*f 
 
 m *£ <W 
 
 y 
 
 i~r 
 
 ii^ w. »» 
 
 
 Fig. 15. — Assault upon an Assyrian fortress with battering-rams,
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 i9 
 
 ducted on the journey from which there 
 
 is no return. We see (fig. 16) the Assyrian 
 archers and spearmen hurling their missiles at 
 the hostile fortress, and, elsewhere, Assyrian 
 warriors stonning a hill which is defended by 
 the enemy's archers: they draw themselves 
 up to the branches of trees or climb up 
 
 r— r ~' » 1 - » «. ■*•* "* * " -** *' - 
 
 Fig. 16. —Assyrian a.rchers~and spearmen. 
 
 with the help of staffs, whilst others are 
 triumphantly carrying down to the valley the 
 severed heads of the enemy. Thanks to a 
 number of these war-pictures on the bronze 
 nates of Shalmaneser II., as well as on the 
 alabaster reliefs from the palaces of Sargon 
 and Sennacherib, the war-methods of this 
 the first military state in the world, down to
 
 20 
 
 Rabcl and Bible 
 
 the details of arms and equipment and their 
 gradual improvement, arc made known to us. 
 
 Fig. 17.— Assyrian staff-officer ofSargon 11. 
 
 Here (fig. 17) is the representation of one of 
 Sargon's Assyrian staff-officers, whose heard is 
 
 . 18. — Pages in ceremonial procession. 
 
 dressed with a skill that lias not yet been 
 attained even by our officers of to-day. Here 
 are the pages of the royal household making
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 21 
 
 .HI 
 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 Fig. 19. — Pages bearing the royal chariot. 
 
 Fig. 20.— Pages bearing the royal 
 throne. 
 
 Fig. 21. — King Ashur-bani-pa] at the bunt.
 
 -> -> 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 their ceremonial entrance (fig. IS), bearing the 
 royal chariot (fig. 19), or the royal throne 
 (fier. 20). Many beautiful relict's shew us 
 King Sardanapalus (Ashur-bani-pal) out hunt- 
 ing (fig. 21), especially when engaged in his 
 favourite sport, the hunting of lions, of which 
 
 ^n^^H^Bl 
 
 l-'i<_ r . 22.— Ashur-bani-pal lion-hunting on horseback. 
 
 a number of remarkably tine specimens were 
 
 always kept ready tor the (lav of the hunt in 
 i . • 
 
 a park specially reserved for game. 
 
 When King Saul was unwilling to allow the 
 youthful David to set out to fight against 
 Goliath, David reminded him that many a 
 time whilst shepherding his father's Hock.
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 2 3 
 
 Fig. 23. — Ashur-bani-pal hunts the lions from a chariot. 
 
 Fig, 2 1.— Ashur-bani-pal fighting the lion on foot.
 
 24 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 when a lion or bear carried off an animal, he 
 had gone out after it. had smitten it. and 
 wrested from it the prey ; and when the lion 
 had turned against him he had caught it by its 
 
 i i * 
 
 
 fv ' 
 
 :T/\ 
 
 WWriW 
 
 r 
 
 : • 
 
 ~a 
 
 
 :_.._ I \ 
 
 Pigs, 25, 26. — Preparations for the royal table. 
 
 beard and killed it. This was precisely the 
 custom in Assyria. The reliefs, accordingly, 
 shew us King Ashur-bani-pal in combat with 
 a lion : and not only on horseback (fig. 22) 
 and in a chariot (fig. 23) : we also see the king
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 25 
 
 of Asshur fii>'litiiii»* at close quarters on foot 
 (fig. 24), courageously measuring his strength 
 with the king of the desert. We catch a 
 glimpse of the preparations for the royal table 
 (figs. 2.5, 26); we see servants carrying hares, 
 
 Fig. 27. — King and Queen in vine-encircled bower. 
 
 partridges, locusts attached to sticks, besides 
 an abundance of cakes and fruits <>i' all kinds, 
 and holding a small green branch in one hand 
 to keep off flies. Nay more, on a relief from 
 the harem (fig. 27) we are even permitted
 
 26 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 to sec the king and queen refreshing them- 
 selves with choice wine in a vine-encircled 
 bower: the king reclining upon a lofty couch, 
 the queen, gorgeously robed, sitting opposite to 
 
 Fig. 28.— Wife of Ashur-bani-pal. 
 
 Iiim upon a high chair; eunuchs arc cooling 
 them both with fans, whilst, from a distance, the 
 music of stringed instruments Calls upon their 
 c;irs. It is the only extant representation of a 
 queen, and her profile, much better preserved
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 27 
 
 in former years, was rescued for posterity in 
 1807 by a drawing (fig. 28) made by a Prussian 
 lieutenant, afterwards Colonel Billerbeck. It is 
 quite possible that this consort of Ashur-bani- 
 pal was a princess of Aryan blood, and may be 
 imagined with fair hair. 
 
 % 
 
 I An 
 
 Fig. 29. — Procession of gods. 
 
 And much else in Assyrian antiquity that 
 may interest us is pietorially presented to our 
 gaze. The prophet Isaiah (xlv. 20, xlvi. 1) 
 mentions processions of gods 1 ; here (fig. 29) 
 we see a procession of the kind : the goddesses 
 in front, behind them the thunder-god armed 
 with hammer and a sheaf of thunderbolts, 
 whilst Assyrian soldiers have been ordered to 
 
 1 Sec Note. )). .'I.!.
 
 28 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 cany the images of the gods. We see how the 
 heavy colossal hulls were moved from place 
 to place (fig. .'*()). and at the same time get 
 glimpses of every kind into the technical 
 accomplishments of the Assyrians. But above 
 
 Fig. 30. — The conveying of a colossal bull. 
 
 all we may revel again and again in the noble 
 style of their architecture, noble in its simplicity, 
 as shewn to us in the gate of Sargon's palace 
 (fig. 31), excavated by Botta, and we may 
 revd equally in the fine animal-representations, 
 full of the most striking realism, which those 
 " Dutch Masters " of antiquity have created, as,
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 29 
 
 for example, the idyl of the peacefully grazing 
 antelopes (fig. 32), or the dying lioness from 
 
 9u&.&jft.>&-Su-r 
 
 Fig. 31. — Gate of Sargon's palace. 
 
 Fig. 32. — Grazing antelopes. 
 
 Nineveh famed in the annals of art (fig. 33). 
 
 The excavations on Babylonian soil also open
 
 3<d Babel and Bible 
 
 up to us iu exactly the same way the art and 
 culture of this the mother-country of Assyrian 
 civilization, taking us as far back as the fourth 
 millennium, that is to say. to times which the 
 boldest imagination could never have dreamed 
 
 Fig. 33. — The living lioness from Nineveh. 
 
 of reaching again. We penetrate into the age 
 of the Sumerians, that primaeval face, neither 
 [ndo-germanic nor Semitic, whose people were 
 the creators and founders of the great Baby- 
 lonian civilization, and to whom the number 
 sixty (not a hundred) represented the next 
 higher unit after the ten. The Sumerian chief-
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 3* 
 
 priest, whose magnificently preserved head (Ho-. 
 34) is in the Berlin Museum, may certainly 
 be described as a noble representative of the 
 human race at the dawn of history. 
 
 Yet, however instructive and deserving of 
 
 Fig. 34. — Head of a high priest. 
 
 recognition all these features may be, they are 
 but details and, so to say, externals, such as 
 are easily surpassed in importance by the facts 
 now to be mentioned. 
 
 I am not thinking here of the circumstance, 
 of eminent value though it be, that the Baby- 
 lonian-Assyrian chronology, with its strictly 
 astronomical basis — the observation of eclipses
 
 32 Babel and Bible 
 
 of the sun. etc. now allows us to arrange 
 chronologically and in a systematic manner the 
 events recorded in the- biblical books of the 
 Kings (a result for which we should be doubly 
 thankful, since Robertson Smith and Well- 
 hausen have proved that the Old Testament 
 chronology i s conformed to a system of sacred 
 numbers: 480 years from the end of the Exile 
 hack to the Founding of the Temple of 
 Solomon, and again 4<S() years [see 1 Kings 
 vi. 1] from the Founding of the Temple 
 to the Exodus of the Children of Israel 
 from Egypt). Even the far-reaching import- 
 ance which cuneiform research has had for 
 the increasingly better understanding of the 
 text of the Old Testament (thanks to the re- 
 markably elose relationship subsisting between 
 the Babylonian and Hebrew languages and 
 to the vast extent of the Babylonian litera- 
 ture) can here be illustrated by just one simple 
 example: "The Ford bless thee and keep 
 thee: The Ford make his face shine upon 
 thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Ford
 
 Babel and Bible 33 
 
 lift up his countenance upon thee, and give 
 thee peace." How many times, times without 
 number, is this threefold blessing (Num. vi. 24 
 sqq.) spoken and heard ! Yet its meaning has 
 only come to he realized by us in all its pro- 
 fundity now that the Babylonian usage has 
 taught us that "to lift up his face, his eyes, 
 upon or to one' is a particularly favourite 
 expression used of the deity who "bestows 
 his pleasure, his love, upon a chosen man (or 
 place)." 1 Thesuhlinie blessing, accordingly, ask- 
 ing more and more as it proceeds, craves lor man 
 from God blessing and protection, friendliness 
 and grace, and finally, even God's love, closing 
 with the words, " Peace be with thee," that truly 
 beautiful Eastern greeting, of which Friedrich 
 Ruckert, inspired by a verse in the Koran, sings: 
 
 When ye enter any house 
 
 •■ Peace be with you " shall ye say : 
 
 '• Peace !)e yours " ye shall repeal 
 
 Ere ve turn your steps away. 
 Men have uttered many a prayer, 
 None lias breathed a word more fair 
 
 Than " Peace he here In-low . 
 1 See Note, |>. 94. 
 
 3
 
 ^4 Babel and Bible 
 
 Hut even the great help which Babylon 
 unexpectedly brings to the philological under- 
 standing of the Bible must, as regards import- 
 ance, be assigned a second place in view of the 
 considerations that follow. 
 
 One of the most notable results of the 
 archaeological researches on the Euphrates and 
 Tigris is the discovery that in the Babylonian 
 lowland, a district of about the size of Italy, 
 which nature had already made uncommonly 
 fruitful, but which human energy converted 
 into a hothouse of vegetation passing our con- 
 ception, there existed as early as about 2250 
 B.C. 1 a highly-developed constitution, together 
 with a state of culture that may well be com- 
 pared with that of our later Middle Ages. 
 After Hammurabi had succeeded in driving out 
 of the country the Elamites, the hereditary Iocs 
 of Babylonia, and had amalgamated the north 
 and south of the land into one united state, 
 with Babylon as the political and religious 
 centre, his first care was to enforce uniform 
 laws throughout the land. lie therefore pre- 
 
 1 See Note, p. 96.
 
 Babel and Bible 35 
 
 pared a great code which defined the civil law 
 in all its branches. In this code, the relations 
 of master to slave and labourer, of merchant 
 to agent, of landed proprietor to tenant-farmer, 
 are strictly regulated. There is a law to the 
 effect that the agent who pays over money 
 to his principal for goods sold must receive a 
 receipt from the latter; abatement of rent is 
 provided for in the event of damage by storm 
 or Hood : fishing-rights for each village situated 
 on a canal are accurately defined, etc. Babylon 
 is the scat of the supreme court, to which all 
 difficult and contested lawsuits have to be re- 
 ferred for decision. Every able man is bound 
 to serve as a soldier, although Hammurabi 
 took precautions against a too excessive use of 
 conscription, by means of numerous decrees, 
 recognising the privileges of the old priestly 
 families, or exempting shepherds from military 
 service in the interests of cattle-breeding. 
 
 We read of writing in Babylon ; and the 
 extremely eursive nature of the writing points 
 to the widest application of it. In truth,
 
 36 Babel and Bible 
 
 when we find, among the letters which have 
 survived from those ancient times in great 
 abundance, the Letter of a woman to her 
 husband on his travels, wherein, after telling 
 him that the little ones are well, she asks 
 advice on some trivial matter : or the missi\ <_• of 
 a son to his father, in which he informs him 
 that so-and-so has mortally offended him. that 
 lie would thrash the knave, but would like to 
 ask his father's advice first ; or another letter in 
 which a son urges his father to send at last 
 the Long-promised money, offering the insolent 
 inducement that then he will pray for his father 
 again - - all this points to a well-organised 
 system of communication by Letter and of 
 postal arrangements, and shews, also, to judge 
 by all the indications, that streets, bridges, and 
 canals, even beyond the frontiers of Babylon, 
 were in excellent condition. 
 
 Trade and commerce, cattle-breeding and 
 agriculture, were at their prime, and the 
 sciences, e.g. geometry, mathematics, and, 
 above all. astronomy, had reached a degree of
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 37 
 
 development which again and again moves 
 even the astronomers of to-day to admiration 
 and astonishment. Not Paris, at the outside 
 Rome, can compete with Babylon in respect 
 of the influence which it exercised upon the 
 
 I I'J. •>.!. 
 
 The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar (restored . 
 
 world throughout two thousand years. The 
 Prophets of the Old Testament attest in terms 
 full of displeasure the overpowering grandeur 
 and overwhelming might of the Babylon of 
 Nebuchadnezzar (fig. 35). "A golden cup," 
 exclaims Jeremiah (li. 7). "was Babylon in the
 
 38 Babel and Bible 
 
 hand of Yahwe. which hath made the whole 
 earth drunken " ; and even down to the time 
 of the Apocalypse of John, words arc found 
 which quiver with the hateful memory of the 
 great Babel, the luxurious, gay city, the wealth- 
 abonnding centre of trade and art, the mother 
 of harlots and of every abomination upon earth. 
 And this focus of culture and science and 
 literature, the 'brain* of* the Nearer East, and 
 the aU-niling power, was the city of Babylon, 
 even at the close of the third millennium. 
 
 It was in the winter of 1887 that Egyptian 
 lellahin digging for antiquities at El-Amama, 
 the ruins of the royal city of Amenophis [V., be- 
 tween Thebes and Memphis, found there some 
 three hundred clay-tablets of all sizes. These 
 tablets are, as has since been shewn, the letters 
 of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Mesopotamian 
 kings to the Pharaohs Amenophis III. and IV.. 
 and especially the written communications of 
 Egyptian governors from the great Canaanite 
 cities, such as Tyre. Sidon. Acco, Ascalon, to 
 the Egyptian court : and the Berlin Museums
 
 Babel and Bible 39 
 
 arc fortunate enough to possess the only letters 
 from Jerusalem, written even before the immi- 
 gration of the Israelites into the promised land. 
 Like a mighty reflector, this discovery of clay- 
 tablets at Amarna has turned into a dazzling 
 light the deep darkness which lay over the 
 Mediterranean lands — Canaan in particular— 
 and over their politics and culture at about 
 1500-1400 B.c. And the fact alone that all 
 these chiefs of Canaan, and even of Cyprus, 
 avail themselves of the Babylonian writing and 
 language, and write on clay-tablets like the 
 Babylonians, that, therefore, the Babylonian 
 tongue was the official lan»'ua<>'e of diplomatic 
 intercourse from the Euphrates to the Nile-. 
 proves the all-ruling influence of the Baby- 
 lonian culture and literature from 2200 to 
 beyond 1400 B.C. 
 
 When, therefore, the twelve tribes of Israel 
 invaded Canaan, they came to a land which 
 was a domain completely pervaded by Baby- 
 lonian culture. 1 It is a small hut characteristic 
 
 1 See N<»te. p. <»7.
 
 40 Babel and Bible 
 
 feature that, on the conquest and despoiling 
 of the first Canaanite city, Jericho, a Babylonish 
 
 mantle excited the greed of Achan (Josli. vii. 
 •Jl). Vet it was not only the commerce, hut 
 also the trade, law, custom, and science of 
 Babylon that set the fashion in the land. 
 Thus we can at once understand why, for 
 example, the coinage, the system of weights 
 and measures, the outward forms of the law 
 •• if a man does so and so, he shall so and so " 
 are precisely Babylonian, and just as the sacri- 
 ficial and priestly system of the Old Testament 
 is profoundly influenced by the Babylonian, so 
 it is significant that Israelite tradition itself no 
 longer affords any certain information respect- 
 ing the origin of the Sabbath (cf. Exod. xx. 
 11 with Deut. v. 15). 
 
 Hut since the Babylonians also had a 
 Sabbath day {Sabattu)? on which, for the pur- 
 pose of conciliating the gods, there was a 
 festival — that is to say. no work was to be 
 done — and since the seventh, fourteenth, 
 
 i See Note, |» 98,
 
 Babel and Bible 41 
 
 twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of a month 
 
 are marked on a calendar of sacrifices and 
 festivals dug up in Babylonia as days on which 
 "the shepherd of the great nations" shall eat 
 no roast flesh, shall not change his dress, shall 
 not offer sacrifice, as days on which the king 
 shall not mount the chariot, or pronounce 
 judgment, the Magus shall not prophesy, even 
 the physician shall not lay his hand on the 
 sick, in short, as days which "arc not suitable 
 for any affair (business ?)," it is scarcely possible" 
 for us to doubt that we owe the blessings de- 
 creed in the Sabbath or Sunday day of rest in 
 the last resort to that ancient and civilized race 
 on the Euphrates and Tigris. 
 
 Nay, even more! The Berlin Museums 
 have in their keeping a particularly valuable 
 treasure. It consists of a clay-tablet with 
 a Babylonian legend which tells how it 
 happened that the first man came to for- 
 feit immortality. The place where this 
 tablet was found viz., El-Amarna and the 
 many dots in red Egyptian ink found in
 
 4-2 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 different places all oxer the tablet (shewing 
 the pains the Egyptian scholar had taken to 
 make the foreign text intelligible), give ocular 
 proof how eagerly the works of Babylonian 
 literature were studied even at that ancient 
 date in lands as far away as that of the 
 Pharaohs. Is it surprising, then, that the same 
 thing should have happened in Palestine also 
 in earlier as well as in later days, and that now. 
 all at once, a series of Biblical narratives conic 
 to us in their original form from the Baby- 
 lonian treasure-mounds, rising, as it were, out 
 of the night into the light of day? 
 
 The Babylonians divided their history into 
 two great periods: the one before, the other 
 after the Flood. Babylon was in quite a 
 peculiar sense the land of deludes. The 
 alluvia] lowlands along the course of all great 
 rivers discharging into the sea are. of course, 
 exposed to terrible Hoods of a special kind 
 cyclones and tornadoes accompanied by earth- 
 quakes and tremendous downpours of rain. 
 
 As late as the year 1N7<>. a tornado of this
 
 Babel and Bible 43 
 
 kind coming from the Hay of Bengal, accom- 
 panied by fearful thunder and hghtning, and 
 blowing with such force that ships at a distance 
 of .'MO kilometres (nearly !!)() miles) were 
 dismasted, approached the mouths of the 
 Ganges, and the high cyclonic waves, uniting 
 with the then ebbing tide, formed one gigantic 
 tidal wave, with the result that within a short 
 while an area of 141 geographical square miles 
 was covered with water to a depth of 45 feet, 
 and 215,000 men met their death by drowning. 
 The storm raged in this way until the Hood 
 spent itself on the higher ground. When we 
 reflect upon this, we can estimate what a fright- 
 ful catastrophe a cyclone of the kind must have 
 meant when it came upon the lowlands of 
 Babylon in those primaeval days. It is the merit 
 of the celebrated Viennese geologist Eduard 
 Suess to have shewn that there is an ac- 
 curate description of such a cyclone, line for 
 line, in the Babylonian Deluge-story written 
 upon a tablet (see fig. 36) from the- Library of 
 Sardanapalus at Nineveh, of which, however,
 
 ++ 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 a written account had existed as early as 2000 
 B.C. The sea plays the chief part in the story. 
 and the ship of Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, 
 
 
 $B5P&?&& 
 
 •TV 
 
 Fig. 36.— Tablet with the Deluge-story. 
 
 is accordingly cast upon a spur of the moun- 
 tain-range of Armenia and Media: in other 
 respects, however, it is the Deluge-story so 
 well known to us all. Xisuthros receives a 
 command from the god of the ocean depths
 
 Babel and Bible 45 
 
 to build a ship of a specified size, to piteli 
 it thoroughly, and to embark upon it his 
 family and all living seed; the party go on 
 board ship, its doors are closed, it is thrust out 
 into the all-destroying billows until at length 
 it strands upon a mountain called Nizir. Then 
 follows the famous passage : " On the seventh 
 day I brought out a dove and released it ; the 
 dove Hew hither and thither, but as there was 
 no resting-place it returned again." We then 
 read further how that the swallow was released 
 and returned again, until, finally, the raven, 
 finding that the waters had subsided, returned 
 not again to the ship, and how that Xisuthros 
 leaves the vessel, and offers upon the top of 
 the mountain a sacrifice, the sweet savour 
 whereof is smelt by the gods, and so on. The 
 whole story, precisely as it was written down, 
 travelled to Canaan. 1 Hut owing to the 
 new and entirely different local conditions, it 
 was forgotten that the sea was the chief factor, 
 and so we find in the Bible two accounts of 
 
 1 See Note, p. 102.
 
 46 Babel and Bible 
 
 the Deluge, which arc not only scientifically 
 impossible', but, ftirthermore, mutually contra- 
 dictory the one assigning to it a duration of 
 
 365 days, the other of [40 + (3x7)]= <il days. 
 Science is indebted to Jean Astruc, that 
 strictly orthodox Catholic physician of Louis 
 XI \\. for recognising that two fundamentally 
 different accounts of a deluge have been 
 worked up into a single story in the Bible. 
 In the year 1753, Astruc. as Goethe expresses 
 it. first "applied the knife and probe to the 
 Pentateuch." and thereby became the founder 
 of the criticism of the Pentateuch that is to 
 say, of the study which perceives more and 
 more clearly the very varied written sources 
 from which the five Hooks of Moses have been 
 compiled. These arc facts that, as far as 
 science is concerned, stand firm and remain un- 
 shaken, however tightly people on either side 
 of the ocean may continue to close their eyes to 
 them. When we reflect that in time past the 
 Copemican system was offensive even to such 
 men of genius as Luther and .Melanchthon.
 
 Babel and Bible 47 
 
 we must be quite prepared to find only a tardy 
 recognition of the results of Pentateuehal 
 criticism ; but the course of time will surely 
 bring with it light. 
 
 The ten Babylonian antediluvian kings also 
 have been admitted into the Bible, and figure 
 as the ten antediluvian patriarchs, with various 
 points of agreement as to details. 
 
 Besides the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, 
 the eleventh tablet of which gives the Deluge- 
 story, we also possess another beautiful 
 Babylonian poem: the creation-epic, 1 written 
 upon seven tablets. At the very beginning 
 of all things, according to this story, a dark, 
 chaotic, primaeval water,- called Tiamat, 
 existed in a state of agitation and tumult. 
 But as soon as the gods made preparations for 
 the formation of an ordered universe, Tiamat, 
 generally represented as a dragon, but also as 
 a seven-headed serpent, arose in bitter enmity, 
 gave birth to monsters of all kinds— -in parti- 
 cular, gigantic serpents filled with venom — and 
 with these as her allies, prepared, roaring and 
 
 1 See Note, p. 104.
 
 4^ Babel and Bible 
 
 snorting, to do battle with the sods. All 
 
 the gods tremble with fear when they per- 
 ceive their terrible adversary: only the god 
 Marduk. the god of light, the god of the early 
 morning and of spring, volunteered to do battle 
 on condition that the first place among the 
 gods be conceded to him. A splendid scene 
 follows. The god Marduk fastens a mighty 
 net to the east and south, north and west, 
 in order that nothing of Tiamat may escape; 
 then elad in gleaming armour, and in 
 majestic splendour, he mounts his chariot 
 drawn by four fiery steeds, the gods around 
 gazing with admiration. Straight he drives 
 to meet the dragon and her army, and utters 
 the call to single combat. Then Tiamat 
 uttered wild and piercing cries until her 
 ground quaked asunder from the bottom. 
 She opened her jaws to their utmost, but 
 before she could close her lips the god Marduk 
 bade the evil wind enter within her, then seiz- 
 ing the javelin, he cut her heart in pieces. 
 cast down her body and stood upon it, whilst
 
 Babel and Bible 49 
 
 her myrmidons were placed in durance vile. 
 Then Marduk clave Tiamat clean asunder 
 like a fish; out of the one half he formed 
 heaven, out of the oilier, earth, at the same 
 time dividing the upper waters from the lower 
 hv means of the firmament : he decked the 
 heavens with moon, sun and stars, the earth 
 with plants and animals, until at length the 
 first human pair, made of clay mingled with 
 divine blood, went forth fashioned by the hand 
 of the creator. 
 
 As Marduk was the tutelary deity of the 
 city of Babel, we can readily believe that this 
 narrative in particular became very widely 
 diffused in Canaan. Indeed, the Old Testa- 
 ment poets and prophets even went so far as 
 to transfer Marduk's heroic act directly to 
 Yahwr. and thenceforth extolled him as being 
 the one who iii the beginning of time broke 
 in pieces the heads of the sea-monster [liviniln'ui. 
 Vs. lxxiv. 13 sq. ; cf. lxxxix. KM. as the one 
 through whom the helpers of the dragon 
 [rdhdb) were overthrown. Such passages as
 
 50 Babel and Bible 
 
 Is. li. <) : "Awake, awake, put on strength, 
 () arm of Yahwe ! awake, as in the ancient 
 days, the generations of old. Art thou not 
 it that hewed the dragon in pieces, that pierced 
 the monster (tanrdn)V or Job xwi. 12: 
 " By his strength he smote the sea. and by 
 his wisdom he dashed in pieces the dragon, 
 read like a commentary on that small repre- 
 sentation of Mardnk which was found by our 
 expedition. The god is shewn to us clad 
 in majestic glory, with mighty arm and large 
 eye and ear, symbolic of his sagacity, and at 
 his feet is the vanquished dragon of the 
 primaeval ocean (fig. .*J7). The priestly scholar 
 who composed Gen. chap. i. endeavoured, of 
 course, to remove all possible mythological 
 features of this creation-story. 1 Hut the dark, 
 watery chaos is presupposed, and that, too, 
 with the name Tchom (i.e. Tiamat), and is 
 first divided from the light, after which the 
 heavens and the earth emerge. The heavens 
 are furnished with sun. moon, and stars, the 
 
 1 See N'ntc p. [04,
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 5 T 
 
 earth, clad with vegetation, is supplied with 
 animals, and finally the first human pair come 
 forth fashioned by the hand of God; and this 
 being so, the very close connection that exists 
 
 
 and the Babylonian 
 
 Fig. 87.— The god Mar.luk 
 
 between the Biblical 
 creation stories is as clear and iUuminating 
 as are and always will he futile all attempts 
 to bring our Biblical story of the creation into
 
 5^ 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 conformity with the results of Natural Science. 1 
 It is interesting to note that there is still an 
 echo of this contest between Marduk and 
 Tiamat in the Apocalypse of John, where we 
 read of* a conflict between the Archangel 
 Michael and the "Beast of the Abyss, the 
 
 I ig. 38. — The conflict with tin- Dragon. 
 
 Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan." 
 
 The whole conception, also present in the 
 
 story of the knight St. George and his conflict 
 
 with the dragon, a story brought hack by the 
 
 Crusaders, is manifestly Babylonian. For tine 
 
 reliefs (fig. 38), older by many centuries than 
 
 1 See \'<>(c. p. 109.
 
 Babel and Bible 53 
 
 the Apocalypse or the first chapter of Genesis, 
 are found on the walls of the Assyrian palaces. 
 representing the conflict between the power of 
 Lighl and tlu- power of darkness, which is 
 resumed with each new day. with every spring 
 as it begins anew. 
 
 To recognise these connecting links is, how- 
 ever, of still greater importance. 
 
 The command not to d<> to ones neighbour 
 what one does not wish to have done to ones 
 self is indelibly stamped upon every human 
 heart. " Thou shalt not shed thy neighbour's 
 blood, thou shalt not approach thy neighbour's 
 wife, thou shalt not seize upon thy neighbour's 
 garment these requirements of fundamental 
 importance for the self-preservation of human 
 society are found, in the ease of the Baby- 
 lonians, in precisely the same connection as 
 the fifth, sixth, and seventh commandments of 
 the Old Testament. Hut man is also a being 
 destined to live a social life, and on this account 
 the social requirements readiness to help, com- 
 passion, love — constitute an equally inalienable
 
 54 Babel and Bible 
 
 heritage of human nature. When, therefore, 
 the Babylonian Magus, having been called in to 
 see a patient, seeks to know what sins have 
 thrown him thus upon the siek bed. he does 
 not stop short at such gross sins of commission 
 as murder or theft, but asks. " Have you failed 
 to clothe a naked person, or to cause a prisoner 
 to see the light ? " The Babylonians laid stress 
 even upon those postulates of human ethics 
 which stand on a higher level; to speak the 
 truth, to keep one's promise, seemed to them as 
 sacred a duty as to say * Yea ' with the mouth 
 and 'Nay' in the heart was. in their view, a 
 punishable offence. It is not strange, therefore, 
 that to the Babylonians, as to the Hebrews, trans- 
 gressions against these commands and prohibi- 
 tions present themselves in the character of sins ; 
 the Babylonians also felt themselves to be in 
 every respect entirely dependent upon the gods. 
 It is even more noteworthy that they, too, 
 regarded all human suffering, illness in par- 
 ticular, and finally death, as a punishment for 
 
 1 See Note, j>. 1 1 ■'.
 
 Babel and Bible 55 
 
 sins. In Babel, as in the Bible, the sense of 
 sin is the dominating force everywhere. I Inder 
 these circumstances we can understand that 
 Babylonian thinkers pondered over the prob- 
 lem: How it could have been possible for 
 man. who had conic forth into the world as 
 the work of God's hand, and had been made 
 alter God's own likeness, to become the victim 
 of sin and death. The Bible contains that 
 beautiful and profound story of the corruption 
 of the woman by the serpent- again the 
 serpent ? There is certainly quite a Baby- 
 lonian ring about it ! Was it perhaps that 
 serpent, the earliest enemy of the gods, 
 seeking to revenge itself upon the gods of 
 light by alienating from them their noblest 
 creation? Of was it that serpent-god, of 
 whom in one place it is said "he destroyed 
 the abode of life"? The problem as to the 
 origin ol* the Biblical story of the Fall is second 
 to none in significance, in its bearings on the 
 history of religion, and abo\ e all for New Testa- 
 ment theology, which, as is well known, sets
 
 56 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 off against the first Adam, through whom sin 
 and death came into the world, the second 
 Adam. Perhaps we may be permitted to lift 
 the veil a little. May we point to an old 
 Babylonian cylinder-seal (fig. :i\))'. Here, in 
 the middle, is the tree with hanging fruit ; on 
 the right the man. to be recognised by the 
 horns, the symbol of strength, on the left the 
 
 
 
 Fig. 39.— Balrylnnian representation of the Fall. 
 
 woman : both reaching out their hands to the 
 fruit, and behind the woman the serpent. 
 Should there not be a connection between this 
 old Babylonian representation and the Biblical 
 
 story of the Fall '. l 
 
 Man dies, but while his body is laid to rest 
 in the grave, his soul separates from it and 
 descends to the "land without return," to 
 
 1 See Note, p. I l i-.
 
 Babel and Bible 57 
 
 Sheol, I lades, the place, full of (lust and gloom, 
 where the Shades Mutter about like birds, lead- 
 ing a dull and joyless existence: doors and 
 bars are covered with dust, and everything in 
 which the heart of man had once rejoiced has 
 become dust and mould. With such a com- 
 fortless outlook we can easily understand that 
 to the Hebrews, as to the Babylonians, length 
 of days in this lite seemed to be the highest of 
 blessings. And so Marduk's procession street, 
 unearthed by the German expedition in Baby- 
 lon, is paved with large slabs of stone, on each 
 of which is inscribed a prayer of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's, concluding with the words: "O Lord 
 Marduk, grant long lite!" Hut this is remark- 
 able: the Babylonian conception of the under- 
 world is one degree, at any rate, more cheerful 
 than that of the Old Testament. Upon the 
 twelfth tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, which, so 
 far. has only come down to us in fragments, 
 the Babylonian under-world is described with 
 the greatest precision. Here we read of a place 
 within the confines of the under-world, evi-
 
 58 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 dently reserved for those who are pious in a 
 special degree, "in which they (the pious) rest 
 on couches and drink clear water."" Many 
 Babylonian coffins have been found in Warka. 
 Nippur, and Babel. Hut the Department of 
 the Berlin Museums for Antiquities of the 
 Nearer East has recently acquired a small clay 
 
 Fig. 40. — Clay cone from a Babylonian coffin. 
 
 cone ( H*_>-. 40). which is obviously derived from 
 a coffin of the kind, and whose inscription 
 entreats, in touching terms, that whosoever 
 shall rind this coffin may leave it in its place 
 and do it no injury, and the little text con- 
 cludes with words of blessing for whosoever 
 should act thus kindly: "may his name con- 
 tinue to be blessed in the world above; in the
 
 Babel and Bible 59 
 
 world below may his departed spirit drink 
 
 clear water." In Sheol, therefore, there was 
 a place for those who were perfectly pious. 
 where they recline upon couches and drink 
 clear water. Consequently, is it not probable 
 that the rest of Sheol would be strictly 
 reserved lor the not-pious, and as it was not 
 merely dusty but even waterless, or a place 
 that supplied, at the best, "turbid water" 
 would it not. at all events, be a place of 
 thirst '. In the Hook of Job. which betrays 
 a close acquaintance with Babylonian views, 
 we find (xxiv. IS sq.) the contrast between 
 a hot. waterless desert, destined for the wicked, 
 and a garden, with clear, fresh water, for the 
 pious. 1 In the New Testament, too. where 
 this conception is mingled, in a curious 
 manner, with the last verse of the Book of 
 Isaiah, we actually read of a fiery hell, in 
 which the rich man pants lor water, and of a 
 garden (Paradise) with plenty of clear, fresh 
 water for Lazarus. 2 And how much has since 
 1 Sec Note, ]). 1 is. See Not.'. |). 1 1 s.
 
 60 Babel and Bible 
 
 been made of this hell and this Paradise by 
 
 • 
 
 painters and poets, by the fathers of the 
 church and priests, and finally by the prophet 
 Mohammed, is sufficiently well known. Mark 
 yonder poor Moslem who has been left be- 
 hind by the caravan, weak and helpless in the 
 desert, because he is no longer equal to the 
 fatigues of the journey. A small cupful of 
 water is at his side, he is digging with his 
 own hand a shallow grave in the desert-sand, 
 resignedly awaiting death. His eyes brighten, 
 for but a little longer and the angels will 
 come forth from the wide-opened gates of 
 Paradise to greet him with the words: 
 " Selam alaika, thou hast been pious, therefore 
 enter now tor ever into the Garden which 
 Allah has assigned to those who are his." 
 The garden is equal in extent to the heaven 
 and the earth. Gardens decked with dense 
 foliage, abounding in sheltered spots, and 
 richly supplied with low-hanging fruits, are 
 intersected on every side by brooks and 
 springs, and bowers cooled by the breeze rise
 
 Babel and Bible 61 
 
 up on the banks of the rivers of Paradise. 
 
 The lushv of Paradise is reflected in the faces 
 of the blessed, beaming with joy and happiness. 
 They wear green raiment of the finest silk and 
 brocade. Their arms are adorned with gold 
 and silver bracelets. They recline on couches 
 provided with thick mattresses and soft 
 cushions, and at their feet are soft rugs. Thus 
 reclining face to face, they sit at luxuriously 
 furnished tables, that afford whatsoever they 
 desire. A well-supplied goblet is passed round, 
 and youths endowed with immortality, Looking 
 like strewn pearls, make the circle with silver 
 tankards and glass mugs tilled with Main, the 
 finest, clearest water, redolent of camphor 
 and ginger, from the well of Tasnim, from 
 which the archangels drink. And this water 
 is minified with the choicest of old wines. 
 whereof they may drink as much as they will, 
 since it makes not drunken and leaves no 
 headache. Then, in addition to this, there 
 are the Houris. Damsels with a skin as 
 
 delicate as the ostrich egg. with heaving
 
 62 Babel and Bible 
 
 bosoms, and with eves like pearls hidden in 
 the shell, eves like the gazelle's, full of modest 
 yet heart-ensnaring glances. Seventy-two of 
 these Houris may each of the blessed ones 
 seleet in addition to the wives which he lias 
 had on earth, provided he desires to retain 
 them (and the good man will always have 
 good desires). All hatred and jealousy has 
 vanished from the breast of the blessed : no 
 gossip, no falseness is to be found in Paradise: 
 " Selam, selam i% rings out everywhere, and all 
 speech dies away with the words: el-hamdu 
 lilldhi rabbi-l- ( alamin, "praise be to God, the 
 Lord of all created things." Such is the picture 
 which is finally developed out of the simple 
 Babylonian idea of the clear water which is 
 enjoyed in Sheol by those who are perfectly 
 pious. And countless millions of people at the 
 present day are still dominated by these ideas of 
 the torments of hell ' and the bliss of Paradise. 
 As is well known, the idea that the deity 
 employs messengers, angels — of whom the 
 
 1 Sec Note, j). 1 1 ft.
 
 Babel and Bible 63 
 
 Egyptians are ignorant is essentially Baby- 
 lonian; and the conception of Cherubim and 
 Seraphim, and of guardian angels attending 
 upon man. is also to be traced hack to Baby- 
 lonia. A Babylonian ruler required an army 
 of messengers to carry his commands into 
 every land ; so. too. the gods must have a 
 legion of messengers or angels, always ready 
 to do them service: messengers with the 
 intelligence of men, and therefore of human 
 form, yet withal provided with wings, to allow 
 them to convey the commands of* the deity 
 through the air to the inhabitants of the 
 earth. 1 These angel forms are likewise endowed 
 with the piercing eye and the swift wings 
 of the eagle; whilst those, moreover, whose 
 principal duty was to guard the approach to 
 the deity, were credited with having the nn- 
 conquerable strength of the bull, or the fear- 
 inspiring majesty of the lion, so that the 
 angels of Babylonia and Assyria, like those in 
 Ezekiel's vision, are very often represented as 
 1 See Note, |>. 120,
 
 '+ 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 of* hybrid form — as. for example, the winged 
 bull-shaped Cherubim, with the contempla- 
 tive face of a man (ri^ - . 41). Hut we also 
 meet with other representations of angels, 
 
 such as that from the palace of Ashurnazirpal 
 
 —^ —? 
 
 K 
 
 ■■»■ 
 
 Fig. 42. — Angel. 
 
 (ri«>-. 42), which has the closest possible re- 
 semblance to our conception of angels. We 
 
 shall always keep a warm place in our 
 hearts for these noble and radiant figures 
 which art has made so dear and so familiar 
 to us. Hut demons and devils. 1 whether they 
 
 1 Sec- Note, p. 121,
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 6 5 
 
 hover before us as the enemies of man or as 
 the earliest foes of God, should be banished 
 for ever, once and for all. since we do not 
 profess the dualism of ancient Persia. "lie 
 that maketh the light and createth darkness, 
 
 Combat between two demons. Fig. 11. A devil. 
 
 that maketh welfare and createth misfortune, 
 
 I. Yahwe, am he that doeth all these things" 
 
 so does the greatest of the prophets of the 
 
 Old Testament rightly teach (is. xlv. 7). 
 
 Let demons like those shewn here (fig. W> | 
 
 the picture is not without interest for the 
 
 history of duelling— or distorted (inures like 
 
 5
 
 66 Babel and Bible 
 
 the one in fig. 44, sink hack for ever and 
 for aye into the darkness of the* Babylonian 
 mounds out of which they arose. 
 
 And now to conclude. In the course of his 
 excavations at Khorsabad, Victor Place dis- 
 covered, among other things, the warehouses 
 belonging to Sargon's palace: in one store- 
 room was earthenware of every size and shape, 
 in another, iron utensils. Here, in the neatest 
 order, lay Large supplies of chains, nails, pegs, 
 pickaxes, and mattocks, and the iron was so 
 excellently worked, and so well preserved, that 
 when struck it sounded like a hell as a matter 
 of tact, some of these articles, though five-and- 
 twenty centuries old. could at once he made 
 use of again hv the Arab labourers. 
 
 That such productions of ancient Assyria 
 should thus intrude themselves into our own 
 time 1 in this impressive way strikes ns. of 
 course, as strange, and yet exactly the same 
 has happened in the intellectual world. When 
 we divide the Zodiac into twelve signs and 
 1 See Note, p. L22.
 
 Babel and Bible 67 
 
 style them the Ram, Bull, Twins, etc., when 
 we divide the circle into .'}<>() degrees, the hour 
 into sixty minutes, and the minute into sixty 
 seconds, in all this the Suincrian-Babvlonian 
 culture is still living and operating even at the 
 present day. 
 
 I may perhaps, then, have succeeded in 
 shewing that many a Babylonian feature 
 has attached itself even to our religious ideas 
 through the medium of the Bible. When we 
 have removed those conceptions, which, though 
 derived, it is true, from highly-gifted peoples, 
 are nevertheless purely human, and when we 
 have treed our minds of firmly-rooted prejudice 
 of every kind, religion itself, as extolled by the 
 prophets and poets of the Old Testament, and 
 as taught in its most sublime sense by Jesus, 
 as also the religious feeling of our own hearts, 
 is so little affected, that it may rather be said 
 to emerge- from the cleansing process in a truer 
 and more sympathetic form. And at this point 
 let me be allowed to add one last word on a sub- 
 ject which makes the Bible of such importance
 
 68 Babel and Bible 
 
 in the history of the world — its Monotheism. 
 Here. too. Babel has quite recently opened up 
 a new and unexpected prospect. 
 
 It is curious, but no one knows definitely 
 what our word 'God' (G-ott) originally means. 
 Philologists hesitate between " awe-inspiring " 
 and " that which exercises a spell."' The word 
 which the Semites, on the other hand, coined 
 !*o]- God is clear. Hut it is more than this: 
 it comprehends the idea of the deity in so full 
 an extent, that by this one word alone is 
 shattered the fable which tells us that "the 
 Semites were at all times astonishingly lack- 
 ing in religious instinct." and also the popular 
 modern view which would see, both in the 
 Yahwe-reliinon and in our Christian belief in 
 God, something evolved out of such fetichism 
 and animism as is characteristic of the South 
 Sea cannibals or the Patagonians. 
 
 There is a beautiful passage in the Koran 
 (vi. 7~) sqq.), so beautiful that Goethe wished to 
 sec it treated dramatically. In it Mohammed 
 imagines himself in Abraham's place and traces 
 the probable workings of the patriarch's mind
 
 Babel and Bible 69 
 
 when arriving at the idea of Monotheism. I Le 
 
 says: •• When night had fallen and it was dark. 
 Abraham went out into the darkness, and 
 behold a star shone above him, then he cried 
 joyfully, 'That is my Lord.' Hut when the 
 star began to pale, he said. ' I like not them 
 that become without lustre.' Then, when he 
 saw the moon arise, shedding its light oxer the 
 firmament, he cried overjoyed, 'That is my 
 Lord." Hut when the moon waned, he said. 
 • .Mas. I needs must go astray.' Then in 
 the morning, when the sun rose shining in 
 splendour, he cried. 'This is my Lord, for he 
 is indeed great!' Hut when the sun set. he 
 said. •() my people, I have nought to do with 
 your worship of many gods, I turn my Pace to 
 him who made heaven and earth." 
 
 The old Semitic word (if it may be- called a 
 word) for God, well known to us all from the 
 words Eli, Eli, Ilium azabtani ("My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ? "), is El, 1 and 
 means the Goal the Being to whom as to a 
 goal the eyes of man looking heavenwards are 
 
 1 See Note. |». I 25.
 
 70 Babel and Bible 
 
 turned, "on whom hangs the graze of even 
 man. to whom man looks out from alar" (.Job 
 xxxvi. 25), that Being towards whom man 
 stretches forth his hands, after whom the 
 human heart yearns away from the mutability 
 and imperfection of earthly life this Being 
 the nomad Semitic tribes called El or God. 
 And since the Divine Essence was viewed by 
 them as a unity. 1 we find among the old North 
 Semitic'- tribes who settled in Babylonia about 
 2500 B.C., such persona] names as "God has 
 given," "God with me," "belonging to God," 
 "God! turn again," "God is God," "if God 
 be not my God," etc. But, further, through 
 the kindness of the Head of the Department 
 of Assyrian and Egyptian antiquities at the 
 British Museum, I am able to give a repre- 
 sentation of three small clay-tablets (figs. 
 [.') 47). What is there to be seen on these 
 tablets ? I shall be asked. Fragile, broken clay 
 upon which arc scratched characters scarcely 
 legible! That is true, no doubt, yet they are 
 precious for this reason : they can be dated 
 
 1 See Note., p. 138, - See Note, p. 123.
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 7' 
 
 with certainty, they belong t<> the age of 
 Hammurabi, one in particular to the reign of 
 
 his father Sin-mubalit. Hut they arc still 
 more precious for another reason : they con- 
 tain three names which, from the point of view 
 
 •>•>» 
 
 
 
 !**5 - 
 
 Figs. 15 17. — Three clay-tablets with the name of Yahwe. 
 
 of the history of religion, are of the most far- 
 reaching importance : — 
 
 : ;--<?-«+ 
 
 la- a- ve- ilu 
 
 m\ q- «+ 
 
 la- tv- ilu 
 
 m\ m- ^ «-f 
 
 fa- u- ui/i- i fu 
 
 The names are Yahwe is God. Therefore 
 Yahwe, 1 the Existing, the Enduring one (we 
 
 1 See Note, p. i
 
 72 Babel and Bible 
 
 have reasons for saving that the name may 
 mean this), the one devoid of all change, not 
 like us men. who to-morrow are but a thing of 
 yesterday, but one who, above the starry vault 
 
 • • • 
 
 which shines with everlasting regularity, lives 
 
 and works from generation to generation this 
 • Yahwe' was the spiritual possession of those 
 same nomad tribes out of which after a thou- 
 sand years the children of Israel were to emerge. 
 The religion of the immigrant Semites in 
 Babylonia quickly succumbed ' before the poly- 
 theism which for centuries had been current 
 among the older, and oldest, dwellers in the 
 land — a polytheism, however, from which, as 
 far as its conception of the gods is concerned, 
 our sympathy cannot altogether be withheld. 
 For the gods of the Babylonians are living, 
 omniscient, and omnipresent beings who hear 
 the prayers of men. and, though they be angry 
 with them for their sins, are yet ever ready to 
 be conciliated and to take compassion. The 
 representations, too. which arc given of the 
 
 1 Sic Note. |). 1 l'J.
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 73 
 
 deities in Babylonian art, as. for instance, that 
 of the Sun-god of Sippar, sitting enthroned in 
 his Holy of Holies (fig. 48; cf. also fig. 29), 
 are far removed from all that is unlovely, 
 ignoble, and grotesque. 
 
 The prophel Ezekiel (chap, i.i beholds God 
 
 Fi,u r . 18. — Tlic Son-god of Sippar. 
 
 driving in his living chariot formed of four 
 winered beings, with the lace of a man, a lion, 
 an OX, and an eagle, and resting on the heads 
 of the Cherubim (10) he sees a crystal surface 
 (firmament), and upon this a throne as of 
 sapphire, whereon (i<>d sits in human form,
 
 74- 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 enveloped in a wondrous blaze of light. Now. 
 ;i very old Babylonian cylinder seal (fii*. 49) 
 shows ns a strikingly similar view of God : 
 upon a wonderful ship, whose fore and aft 
 parts taper off in the form of a sitting human 
 
 Fig. 19. — Cylinder-seal recalling Ezekiel's vision. 
 
 figure, two Cherubim are placed hack to hack, 
 hut with the lace which is oi* human form 
 turned towards us. Their position suggests 
 that there arc two others on the other side. 
 On their backs rests a surface, and upon
 
 Babel and Bible 75 
 
 this is set a throne, whereon sits the deity, 
 bearded and elad in a Long mantle, with tiara 
 upon his head, in the right hand, as it would 
 seem, a sceptre and a ring. Behind the throne 
 there stands an attendant of the god, at his 
 beck and call, to be compared with "the man 
 clothed in linen" (Ezek. i.\. .'*. \. '2). who. in like 
 manner, executes the commands of Yahwe. 
 In spite of all this, and notwithstanding that 
 tree and enlightened minds taught openly that 
 Nergal and Nebo, Moon-god and Sun-god, the 
 Thunder-god Ramman, and all other gods 
 were one in Marduk, the god of light, 1 poly- 
 theism -gross polytheism — continued through- 
 out three thousand years to he the Babylonian 
 State religion, a solemn warning and example 
 of the indolence of men and of peoples in 
 religious matters, and of the immense power of 
 an organised priesthood firmly founded upon it. 
 Even the Yahwe-faith. by which, as under 
 a banner. Moses hound together in unit) the 
 twelve nomad tribes of Israel, was. and con- 
 
 1 See Note, |>. I I '.
 
 76 Babel and Bible 
 
 tinned to be, burdened with all kinds of human 
 limitations: with those naive anthropomorphic 
 and anthropopathic views of the deity which 
 are peculiar to the youth of the human race : 
 with a heathen sacrificial cultus : with external 
 forms of law. which did not prevent the 
 people of pre-exilic times from continuous 
 backsliding to the Baal and Astarte worship of 
 the indigenous Canaanites, so that they even 
 offered their sons and daughters as sacrifices to 
 Baal : and, above all, with Israelite eocclusiveness. 
 Nor was that burden lifted until the prophets 
 with admonitions — such as that of Joel, to 
 rend the hearts and not the garments, — and 
 the psalmists with utterances — such as. "The 
 offerings that are pleasing to God are a con- 
 trite spirit and a broken heart" (Ps. li. 17) 
 urged sincerity in religion : until, with the 
 preaching of Jesus, exhorting men to pray to 
 God, the Father of us all. in spirit and in 
 truth, a new era, that of the Xew Testament, 
 dawned upon the world. 
 
 7f * r '" ,:
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 77 
 
 "Babel and the Bible." What has been 
 said represents but to a small extent the 
 meaning of the excavations in Babylonia 
 and Assyria for the history and progress of 
 humanity. May it help to enforce recognition 
 
 50. — The house of the German Expedition in Babylon. 
 
 <>f the fact that it \\;is high time thai Germany 
 too should pitch her tent on the palm-crowned 
 hanks of the river of Paradise! Fig. 50 repre- 
 sents the dwelling of the Expedition scut 
 out bv the German Oriental Society. Out
 
 78 Babel and Bible 
 
 yonder on the ruins of Babylon, it is working 
 ceaselessly, from morning till night, in heal 
 and cold, for Germany's honour, and for 
 Germany's learning. 
 
 We, too, "confess ourselves to be of the 
 race which is struggling out of darkness into 
 light." Sustained, like the archaeological 
 undertakings of the other nations, by the 
 increasing interest of our people, and by the 
 energetic support of our Government, ever 
 animated anew by a feeling of gratitude 
 for the gracious persona] patronage which 
 His .Majesty the King and Emperor has 
 been pleased to grant to it. and for the bene- 
 volent interest he has unceasingly taken in its 
 efforts, the German Oriental Society, which 
 was the last to appear on the field (only three 
 years ago), will, assuredly, secure a place of 
 honour under that sun which rises yonder in 
 the East out of those mysterious hills.
 
 Notes 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 The Lecture published in the preceding pages 
 was delivered for the German Oriental Society 
 on the 13th of January 1 ( .K)'J. in the Academy 
 of Music at Berlin, in the presence of His 
 .Majesty the King and Emperor, and. at the 
 mosl gracious wish of the Emperor, was 
 repealed on the 1st of February in the Royal 
 Palace a1 Berlin. 
 
 The meaning of the title has. will) few 
 exceptions, been quite correctly understood: 
 " Babel as the interpreter and illustrator of the 
 Bible." So the Schlesische Zeitung for 24th 
 January 1902: "Babel and Bible this was 
 the short but comprehensive heading, signi- 
 fying thai the speaker intended to dis- 
 cuss the results of the excavations in Baby-
 
 8o Babel and Bible 
 
 Ionia and Assyria in their bearing on the 
 Bible." 
 
 Out of the multitude of rejoinders and more 
 detailed reviews that have been called forth 
 by " Babel and Bible "'--in so far as they have 
 come to my knowledge since my return from 
 Babylonia, and have proved to be of interest, 
 scientifically or otherwise — attention may be 
 specially called to the following. My own 
 notes, which I have added, are only meant to 
 serve a passing purpose-. Not until the lec- 
 tures on •• Babel and the Bible * have been 
 continued and concluded will the time be ripe 
 for a complete critical review of the replies 
 they have called forth. 
 
 I. 
 
 J. Barth, Babel mid israelitisches Tteligions- 
 wesen. A Lecture. Berlin, 1902 ; 36 pp. 
 
 Prof. Dr. Karl Budde, Das Alte Testament 
 mid die Ausgrabungen. Giessen, 1903. 
 
 (A Lecture-, delivered May 29, 1902, at
 
 Notes 8 1 
 
 the Theological Conference ;it Giessen) ; 
 
 :v.) pages, of which, however, only pp. 
 
 l 10 concern " Babel und Bibel." 
 The following passage in Budde's lecture 
 may be fixed upon here, on account of its 
 bearings (p. 6 sq.) : "At all events, the calm 
 decisiveness with which he emphasises certain 
 truths, which have Long ago been accepted as 
 everyday truths, but which are often still 
 condemned in the leading ecclesiastical circles 
 as dreadful heresies, is deserving of our 
 gratitude. For example, the compilation of 
 the Pentateuch from a scries of 'very different 
 sources.' the dependence upon Babylonian 
 myths of large portions of the primaeval 
 history as given in the Bible— the creation, the 
 Hood, the Sethite genealogy the futility of 
 all attempts to bring the biblical account of 
 the creation into harmony with the results of 
 Natural Science." 
 
 Dr. Johannes Doller, Imperial and Royal 
 
 Court Chaplain and Director of Studies 
 
 (i
 
 82 Babel and Bible 
 
 at the Frintaneum, Vienna, Bibel und 
 Babel oder Babel und Bibel? Eine 
 Entgegnung auf Prof. F. DelitzscK 
 " Babel und Bibel" Paderborn, 1903. 
 
 Prof. Dr. Hommel, Die altorientalischen 
 
 Denkmaler mid das Alte Testament. 
 
 Eine Erwiderung auf Prof. Fr. De- 
 
 UtzscKs " Babel und Bibel." Berlin. 1902 : 
 
 38 pp. 
 " Decidedly the simplest and most con- 
 venient course to take now would be to hold 
 oneself aloof from the whole theory of separate 
 sources. This, however, will not do on 
 account of the various duplicate accounts 
 which, however much one might wish it. are 
 not to be explained away, and which we can 
 observe with special clearness, particularly in 
 the biblical accounts of the creation and 
 deluge" (p. 15). —"It can easily be shewn 
 that the whole account of the creation (Gen. 
 i.-ii. L) is in the closest touch with, a Chaldsean 
 account of the creation which is no longer ex-
 
 Notes 8 3 
 
 hint" (p. IS). "The word sapattu for Sabbath 
 is seen at the first glance to be a word in 
 Babylonian borrowed from the Chaldaean ; if 
 genuinely Babylonian, it must have been sabtu 
 (from wasab, ' to sit. resi ') " (p. L8 .vy. ). 
 
 Dr. Alfred Jeremias, pastor of the Lutheran 
 (. hurch at Leipzig, In/ Kampfe um Babel 
 
 ii ad mini, l'li a Wort zur Verstandigung 
 a ad Abwehr. Third, enlarged edition. 
 Leipzig, 1903 : 15 pp. 
 
 Prof. I). R. Kittel, Die babylonischen 
 Ausgrabungen und die biblische XJrge- 
 schichte. Second, unaltered edition. Leip- 
 zig, \ ( M)'2: .'}(*> ]>p. See also under Sec- 
 tion I [., page 91. 
 
 W. Knieschke, pastor at Sieversdorf, Bibel 
 ii ml Babel, El und Bel. Eine Rcplik 
 <tu J' Eriedrich DeUtzsc/is Babel und 
 Bibel Westend-Berlin, 1902; 64pp. 
 
 Prof. Dr. phil. und theol. Eduard Konig, 
 liiln I und Babel. Eine kulturgeschichtUche
 
 84 Babel and Bible 
 
 Skizze. Sixth, enlarged edition, with 
 reference to the most recent literature on 
 the subject of Babel and Bible. Berlin. 
 1902 : 60 pp. 
 The verdict of P. Keil (cf. p. 90 below) is 
 as follows: •• In general it would appear from 
 Konig's pamphlet that lie is not too much 
 at home in Assyriology. His treatment of 
 Yahve-ilu is but calculated to strengthen this 
 impression. Why venture on the slippery 
 ice of Assyriology?' (op. cit., p. 6). As a 
 matter of fact, hardly anything more mediocre 
 could be imagined than pp. 8-10. 38 sqq., 45 4!> 
 of Konig's essay. God ** is the spiritual reality 
 existing before the world and outliving all its 
 phases, the heart of the world which throbs 
 throughout the world and remains true in all 
 the changes of history" (p. 53). "Harmony 
 between God and man forms the glowing gate 
 of the dawn of (iod's path in history, and har- 
 mony between Cod and man is the flag-decked 
 haven through which (iod's path in history 
 Hows into eternity" (p. 54). "In Babel men
 
 Notes 85 
 
 strove to attain heaven, in the Hiblc heaven 
 descends into the wretched lite of man' (p. 
 .V.»). What a fine resounding tone it all has! 
 And yet it cannot blind us to the i'aet that 
 even Konig denies the verbal inspiration of the 
 Old Testament, accuses the Old Testament of 
 "undeniable errors" (p. 14), and thus strips 
 it of its character of divine revelation, as 
 understood by the Church. A ravening wolf 
 in spite of his sheep's clothing. Note also the 
 review by II. Winckler in the supplement to 
 the Nord-deutsche Allgcmeine Zeitung, Sunday. 
 August .'J. 1902. Konig's pamphlet has now 
 appealed in a seventh, enlarged edition. " with 
 a criticism of Delitzsch's latest utterances on 
 Babel and Bible." 
 
 Prof. I). Sam. Oettli, Der Kavipf um Bibel 
 
 und Babel. Ein reUgwnsgescJdchtUcher 
 
 Vortrag. Second edition. Leipzig, L902 ; 
 
 \V1 pp. 
 
 My citations are from the first edition. 
 
 Oettli, too. observes p. 13) that "according to
 
 86 Babel and Bible 
 
 the almost universally prevailing conviction, 
 the existing state of the text compels us to 
 abandon the overstrained dogma of inspiration, 
 
 which sees in Holy Writ the unerring word 
 of God. inspired even down to its very word- 
 ing." Oettli's protest against the assumption 
 of an original revelation is very significant and 
 acceptable (pp. 12-15); note, in particular, 
 ]). 14 : " That tradition of a concrete knowledge 
 of the world based upon original revelation, 
 whose form in Israel is pure, but everywhere 
 else degenerate, is a pure hypothesis, for which 
 no valid historical proof can be produced. It 
 is. therefore, all the more perverse to wish to 
 stamp acceptance of it as the mark of an 
 unbroken belief in Scripture. It derives its 
 sole strength from the dogma of inspiration, 
 which, although already abandoned, still influ- 
 ences us in a decisive manner from out the 
 dark background of our consciousness. In 
 many cases, indeed, it is born of an interest in 
 the faith that claims our respect, but not of 
 an)' indisputable historical attestation."
 
 Notes S7 
 
 Rabb. Dr. Ludw. A. Rosenthal, Babel und 
 Bibel offer Babel gegen Bibel ? Ein Wort 
 zur Klarung. Berlin, 1902; :si j>|>. 
 Cf. P. Keil (p. <; note): "Rosenthal indulges 
 
 in elaborations as to principles; but his object 
 
 is not quite clear." 
 
 II. 
 
 Prof. Beuno Baentsch, Jena, Babel mul 
 Bibel. Eine Prufung des unter diesem 
 Titel erschienenen Vortrages von Friedrich 
 Delitzsch besonders auf die darin enthal- 
 tenen religionsgescMchtUchen . / usf&hrun- 
 gen, in the Protestantische Monatshefte, 
 edited by I). Julius Wehsky. VI., I Kit 
 s (August 15, L902). Berlin, 1902. Cf. 
 also two articles, signed B. B., " Noch 
 einmal Babel und Bibel" in the Thiiringe 
 Rundschau of the 2nd and ( .>th of March 
 L902. 
 
 Prof. 1). C. II. Cornill, Breslau, Deutsche 
 Litteraturzeitung, 1902, No. 27 (July 5).
 
 88 Babel and Bible 
 
 Heinrich Danneil (Schonebeck a. E.), Babel 
 und Bibel: Magdeburgische Zeitung, No. 
 25, 1902, Beiblatt. 
 
 Privatdocent Dr. W. Engelkemper, .Minister, 
 Babel und Bibel: Wissenschaftliche Bei- 
 lage zur Germania, 1902, Nos. 31 (July 
 31) and .'32 (August 7). Berlin, 1902. 
 
 Influenced by Konig and Jensen. The fol- 
 lowing words of this Catholic theologian may be 
 cited for a specific reason : " Although Christi- 
 anity is founded upon the writings and tradition 
 of the New Testament, the truth of the New 
 Testament is nevertheless most intimately con- 
 nected with that of the Old, and is historically 
 and logically a consequence of the Old." 
 
 Prof. 1). Gunkel, Babylonwche und biblische 
 Urgeschichte. Christliche Welt. XVII.. 
 1903, Xo. <) (Feb. 5), cols. 121-134. 
 
 IVol*. Dr. Peteb Jensen, Babel und Bibel: 
 Die christliche Welt. XVI., 1902, Xo. 21 
 (May 22), cols. 1ST V.)\. 
 Jensen's criticism proves to be sound in no
 
 Notes 89 
 
 single point, and will, therefore, d<> no Lasting 
 
 harm to the cause of truth. 
 
 Franz Kaulen, Bonn. Babel und Bibel: 
 Literarischer Handweiser zunachst fur 
 alle Katholikeri deutscher Zunge. XL.. 
 Nbs. 766 and 767, 1901-2. 
 The notice concludes as follows: "The 
 results of the three years' work of the German 
 Expedition do not as yet come up to our 
 expectations, especially as compared with the 
 results obtained by the American Expedition 
 in the same time. The share which the 
 German people have had in it docs not make 
 up for the deep-rooted harm involved in the 
 tendency of German research to set Science, 
 in this case ' Babylonology, 5 in the place of 
 Divine Revelation. Through Delitzsch, Babel's 
 ineradicable characteristic, that of being the 
 opponent of God and of Divine Revelation, has 
 been destined to be transferred to this record 
 and to the German Oriental Society.'" [pro- 
 test indignantly against this latter aspersion.
 
 90 Babel and Bible 
 
 The German Oriental Society has nothing 
 whatever to do with the views represented in 
 my lectures on " Babel and the Bible : indeed. 
 
 both the Society and myself would be sincerely 
 grateful if other scholars, and above all Franz 
 Kaulen himself, could find the time and 
 inclination to instruct the members of the 
 German Oriental Society on the questions 
 mooted by me. or on kindred ones. 
 
 P. Kkii.. London. Babel uitd Bibel. Pastor 
 bonus. Xeitschrift fur kirchliche Wissen- 
 schaft und Praxis, edited by Domkapitular 
 Dr. P. Einig. XV., parts l. 2, :5 (Oct. 1. 
 Nov. 1. Dec. 1. 1902). 
 ••The uninitiated person has not the faintest 
 idea of the difficulty in interpreting inscrip- 
 tions. In contrast to the .'57 Hebrew char- 
 acters, there are no less than some 20. 000 
 groups of signs and about 600 individual signs. 
 It is. therefore, self-evident what opportunity 
 there is for error in the course of decipher- 
 ment" p. 0. with note). Apart from this
 
 Notes 9 1 
 
 distorted statement, this criticism, by a 
 Catholic priest, evidences a laudable knowledge 
 of Assyriology with which nothing I have me1 
 with in the case of evangelical theologians, 
 Pastor A. Jeremias excepted, can l>e compared. 
 
 Prof. 1). R. Kittel, Leipzig, Jahve in "Babel 
 
 a ml liilnl" : Theologisches LiteraturWatt, 
 
 XXIII.. \<». 17 (April 25, 1902 . 
 
 ( ontains a number of errors, among them 
 
 being the statement that in the three names 
 
 lave-ilu, Iave-ilu, Iaum-ilu, it is a question <>f 
 
 one and the same person. Also. Noch einmal 
 
 Jahve in " Babel una 7 Bibel" : op. e/7.. No. is 
 
 Maj •_'. L902). Also, Der Monotheismus in 
 
 "Babel und Bibel" Allegemeine evangelisch- 
 
 lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 1902, No. 17 
 
 April 25, 1902). 
 
 Distrikts-Rabbiner Dr. S. Meyer, Regens- 
 burg,Zh'< Hypothesi n-glaubigen: Deutsche 
 [sraelitische Zeitimg, XIX.. No. 8 (20th 
 February 1902) ; and Nochmals Babel und 
 Bibel, op. <//.. No, 10 (6th March .
 
 92 Babel and Bible 
 
 Babel mid Bibel: Neue Preussische (Kreuz-) 
 Zeitung, 1902, No. 211 (7th May). Signed 
 l[Lic. theol. Prof. Riedel, Greifswald]. 
 
 Wolff, Babel und Bibel: Evangelische 
 Kirchenzeitung, 1902, No. 28 (cols. 657 
 662). 
 
 P. 7. MruAsiir & Sons. Vide The Baby- 
 lonian Expedition of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania. Series A, Cuneiform Texts. Vol. 
 IX. Business Documents of Murashu & Sons 
 of Nippur, dated in the reign of Artaxerxes I. 
 (464-424 B.C.), by H. V. Hilprecht and A. T. 
 Clay, Ph.D. Philadelphia, 1898. 
 
 P. 14. k * And as his fathers brother took 
 no care for his widowed mother." 
 
 The cuneiform words in question cannot 
 indeed be interpreted with certainty, but the 
 mention of the father's brother in immediate 
 connection with the information that the child 
 had never known its father, that the latter, 
 therefore, had died before its birth, leads me to
 
 Notes 93 
 
 suppose that according to Babylonian custom 
 the brother-in-law of the wife, "the father's 
 brother," had duties towards the wife assigned 
 to him, of a nature somewhat similar to those 
 of the Israelitish b«3. 
 
 P. 16. The types are taken from the work by 
 Henry George Tomkins, Studies on the Times 
 of Abraham. London. Plate V., " Eight 
 typical plates in profile drawn hy the author." 
 
 1*. 27. Processions of the (ions.- We 
 read in Isaiah xlv. 20: "They have no know- 
 ledge that carry their graven image of wood, 
 and pray unto a God that cannot help." and in 
 xlvi. 1 : •• Bel has sunk down. Nebo is bowed 
 down, their idols are fallen to the lot of the 
 beasts and to the cattle, the things {i.e. 
 fabrications) that ye carried about arc made a 
 load. ;i burden to the weary beasts." There 
 can he hut few commentators here who do not 
 think in connection with, these passages of the 
 Babylonian processions of the gods, in which 
 Bel and Nebo wire carried in ceremonious 
 progress through the streets of Babel.
 
 94 Babel and Bible 
 
 According to Jensen (op. cit, col. 488) I am 
 •incorrect in finding a mention of processions 
 
 of gods in Isaiah xlvi. 1. 
 
 P. 33. Aaron's Blessing (Num. \i. 24 
 sqq.). -What I have said as to the meaning 
 
 of the phrase in the blessing of Aaron. 
 " Yahwc lift up his face to thee," i.q., ••turn his 
 favour, his love, towards thee."' holds good in 
 every respect. When spoken of men. "to lift 
 the countenance to anyone or to anything" 
 means nothing more than "to look up at' 
 (so 2 Ki. i\. 32). It is used in .Job xxii. 26 
 (cf. xi. 15), as well as in 2 Sam. ii. 22. with refer- 
 ence to a man who. free from guilt and fault, 
 can look up at God or at his fellow-men. This 
 meaning, of course, is not appropriate if the 
 words are spoken of God. Then it must mean 
 precisely the same thing as the Assyrian, "to 
 raise the eyes to anyone," that is to say, to 
 find pleasure in one, to direct one's love to- 
 wards him : therefore not quite the same as 
 to take heed of one (as in Siegfried-Stade's 
 Hebraisches Worterbuch, p. 441). If it were
 
 Notes 95 
 
 so. •• the Lord lilt up his countenance to thee" 
 would be equivalent to "the Lord keep thee." 
 When Jensen (op. cit., col. 191) lays stress on 
 the fact that the Assyrian expression is literally. 
 not to lift uj) "the lace." but to lilt up "the 
 eyes," he might with equal justice deny that 
 Assyrian hit Amman means the same thing as 
 the Hebrew hue Ammuu. As a matter of 
 tact, whereas the prevailing Hebrew usage is 
 •• if it be right in thine eyes." the Assyrian 
 says in every case, "it' it be right in thy coun- 
 tenance" (ina pdnika ; cf. himma [in<i] pan 
 mrri matwr) : "eyes" and "countenance" inter- 
 change in such phrases as this. In Hebrew 
 we find "to lilt up the eyes to one " used as 
 equivalent to " to conceive an affection for 
 one." only with reference to human, sensual 
 love (Gen. xxxix. 7). The value of the Assyrian 
 phrase, "to lift up the eyes to any one." in its 
 bearing on the Aaronite blessing, rests in the 
 fact that it is used with especial predilection 
 (though not exclusively, as .lenscn imagines) of 
 the gods who direct their love towards a chosen
 
 96 Babel and Bible 
 
 individual or some privileged state-. When 
 Jensen concludes (col. 4i)0) that my choice of 
 this example as a specimen of the advantages 
 to be obtained from Assyrian linguistic analo- 
 gies is •• a failure," I gladly console myself with 
 the reflection that this fact of a deeper meaning 
 in the blessing of Aaron, which we owe to cunei- 
 form literature, obtained many years ago the 
 assent of no less a person than Franz Delit/sch. 
 P. 34. Note the date 2250 B.C., not L050, 
 as was given by a number of journals, follow- 
 ing a printers error in the Berliner Tageblatt. 
 When on page »*54 et seq., speaking of Ham- 
 murabi, I said. "lie prepared a great code, 
 which defined the civil law in all its branches," 
 this was at the time a mere inference, chiefly 
 based upon a number of tablets from the 
 library of Ashurbanipal. This code of law has 
 now actually been found engraved on a block 
 of diorite, uearly 8 feet high, containing, apart 
 from the prologue and epilogue, 282 para- 
 graphs of laws. This unique discovery was 
 made bv the French archaeologist de Morgan
 
 Notes 97 
 
 and V. Scheil Oil the Acropolis of Susa in 
 
 December January L901 02. ('/'. Lecture II. 
 
 P. .'{'.I. Canaan at the time of the Israelite 
 Incursion, a "domain completely pervaded 
 by Babylonian culture." This fact, which .1. 
 Barth attacks on trivial grounds, obtains ever 
 wider recognition. ('/'. Alfred Jeremias in the 
 " Zeitgeist " of the Berliner Tageblati of Kith 
 February 1903: " Further, at the time of the 
 immigration of the 'children of Israel." Canaan 
 was subject to the especial influence of Baby- 
 lonian civilization. About 1450 the Canaan- 
 itcs. like all the peoples of the Nearer East, 
 wrote in the Babylonian cuneiform character, 
 and in the Babylonian language. This fact. 
 proved by the literature of the time, forces us 
 to assume that the influence of Babylonian 
 thought had been exerted for centuries previ- 
 ously. Of late Canaan itself seems to wish to 
 hear witness. The excavation of an ancient 
 
 Canaanite castle by Prof. Sellin lias broughl t<> 
 light an altar with Babylonian genii and trees 
 
 of life, and Babylonian seals."
 
 9 8 Babel and Bible 
 
 It may be briefly recalled here that the reli- 
 gion of the Canaanites with their god Tammuz, 
 and their Asherahs, bears unmistakable marks 
 of Babylonian influence, and that before the 
 
 immigration of the children of Israel a place 
 in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem was called 
 Bit-Ninth, after the Babylonian god Ninib. 
 There may have been actually in Jerusalem 
 itself a bit Ninib, a temple of the god Ninib. 
 See Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, V.. No. 183, 
 15, and cf. Zimmern, in the third edition of 
 Schrader's Die Keilinschriften mid rf<is Alte 
 Testament, second half. p. 411. Cf. also 
 Lecture II.. p. 184. 
 
 P. 40. The Sabbath.- The vocabulary II. 
 K. 32, No. 1. mentions, among divers kinds of 
 'days,' a urn nuh libbi (1. 1<>. a, b), that is to 
 say. a day for the quieting of the heart (sc., of 
 the gods), with its synonym sa-pat-tum. This 
 word, in view of the frequent use of the sign 
 jxtt for bat {e.g., su-pat, var. bat, •dwelling'; 
 Tier. \ i. 94), miffht, and in view of the syllabary 
 82, «•> 1<S. 4159, col. I. 24, where ( 1) (Sumer. //)
 
 Notes 99 
 
 is rendered by sa-bat-tu??i, must be understood 
 as sabattum. The statement in the latter sylla- 
 bary not only at the same time confirms the 
 view that the word sabattum means a day, but 
 it may also explain the sabattum to be the day 
 /car e^oxqv (because the day of the gods ?). 
 Again, neither from 83, 1-8, 1330, eol. 1, 25, 
 where ZUR is rendered by sa-bat-tim (follow- 
 ing immediately upon nuhhu), nor from IV. S. 
 where TE is rendered by sa-bat-tim [why not. 
 as elsewhere, in the nominative ?], may it be 
 inferred with any degree of certainty that 
 sabatt// could mean "appeasement (of the 
 gods), expiation, penitential prayer" (so Jensen 
 in Z. A. iv., 1889, pp. 274 *</</.), or that the verb 
 sabdtu eould mean "to conciliate" or "to be 
 conciliated'' (Jensen in Christliche Welt. eol. 
 492)— the latter all the less since the verb 
 sabdtu is hitherto only attested as a synonym 
 of gamai-u (V. R. 28, 14. e, f). For Sabattu, 
 therefore, the only meaning that may be justifi- 
 ably assumed at present is "ending (of work), 
 cessation, keeping holiday (from work)." It
 
 ioo Babel and Bible 
 
 sccnis to me that the compiler of the syllabary 
 83, 1 s. 1330, arrived at ZUR and TE = sab- 
 batim from the equations 11). ZUR and 11). 
 TE= inn nuhhi or pv$sufii = /'//// Sabattim. 
 
 The Babylonian Sabattu is accordingly the 
 cA/// of the quieting of the heart of the nods and 
 thedayqfthe restingfrom mans work (as will be 
 readily understood, the latter is essential to the 
 former). When, therefore, in the well-known 
 calendar of festivals, IV. K. :i'2. 33, the seventh, 
 fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days 
 of a month are expressly characterized as days 
 whereon every kind of business should rest 
 should we not see in these days no other than 
 the sabattu-d&y '. The words in question in 
 the calendar of festivals may. according to 
 our present knowledge, be rendered thus: 
 "The shepherd of the great peoples shall not 
 eat roasted or smoked (?) flesh ( var. anything 
 touched by fire), shall not change his garment, 
 shall not put on white raiment, shall not offer 
 a sacrifice [arc these the prohibitions of uni- 
 versal application, even as regards the flocks
 
 Notes i o i 
 
 of the shepherd '. the particular prohibitions 
 follow] : the King shall not mount his chariot, 
 as ruler he shall pronounce no judgment ; 
 the Magus shall not give oracles in a secret 
 place (one removed from profane approach), the 
 physician shall not lay his hand on the sick 
 it [the day] is not appropriate for any busi- 
 ness whatever ( '. una kal sib&ti : sib&tu here, it 
 would seem, used like ny, s'bu, in Dan. vi. 1<S: 
 "business, matter"). Accordingly it remains 
 true that the Hebrew Sabbath, "in the last 
 resort," originates in a Babylonian institution. 
 Xo more than this was maintained. When. 
 therefore, Konig emphasises that the Israelite 
 Sabbath received its specific sanction on 
 account of its tending to "the exercise of hu- 
 manity towards those who serve, and towards 
 the brute creation.'" there- is no occasion tor us 
 t(» dispute with him on the subject. The 
 setting apart of the seventh day in particular 
 to be the day in which we are to retrain from 
 business of every kind explains itself, as I 
 shewed years ago, from the fact that the number
 
 io2 Babel and Bible 
 
 seven seemed to the Babylonians, as to others, 
 to be an 'evil' number (whence their descrip- 
 tion of the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first. 
 twentv-eighth days in the above-mentioned 
 calendar as VI). HUL. GAL., i.e., evil days). 
 Allied Jeremias (op. cit, p. 25) aptly recalls the 
 Talmudic story, according to which Moses 
 arranged with Pharaoh a day of rest for his 
 people, and when asked which he thought the 
 most suitable for the purpose, answered : " The 
 seventh, which is dedicated to the Planet Saturn; 
 works done on this day do not. as a rule, pros- 
 per, in any case." 
 
 P. 45. The Deluge. — Oettli says (p. 
 20 sq.): "The Old Testament traditional 
 materials are steeped in an atmosphere 
 of ethical monotheism, and bv this bath 
 are cleansed from the elements that are 
 confused and confusing, whether from the 
 point of view of religion or of ethics. The 
 Hood is no longer the operation of the blind 
 anger of the gods, but a "punishment of a 
 depraved race by the just God, moved by
 
 Notes 
 
 103 
 
 moral considerations." This is not correct. 
 It was already to be inferred from the account 
 of Berossus thai in the case of the Baby- 
 lonians, also, the deluge was a punishment 
 (Siindflut) ; note his words: "the rest cried 
 aloud, when a voice commanded them to be 
 God-fearing, since Xisuthros, onaccount of his 
 piety, was removed to he with the Gods." If 
 it may he interred from this that the Babylonian 
 Noah escaped the judgment ofthe Hood merely 
 on account of his piety, while the rest of man- 
 kind was destroyed on account of their increas- 
 ins sinfulness, the inference is confirmed in 
 the cuneiform account in the words which Ea 
 addresses after the deluge to Bel, who had 
 brought it about : " upon the sinner lay his 
 sins/' etc. Konig (p. 32) observes: "The 
 spirit of the two traditions is totally different. 
 One feature shews this at once: the Baby- 
 lonian hero saves his belongings, dead and 
 alive, hut in the two Biblical accounts we 
 have in its place the higher point of view, the 
 preservation of the brute creation.'" What
 
 104 Babel and Bible 
 
 blind infatuation ! Even Xisuthros, according 
 to the fragments of Berossus, received the 
 command " to take in winged and four-footed 
 beasts."" and the original cuneiform account 
 expressly says. " I embarked on the ship the 
 cattle of the Held, the wild beasts of the field." 
 Accordingly, Konig himself' must recognise 
 the "higher point of view" in the Babylonian 
 story as well. 
 
 P. 50. The Creation. For the Baby- 
 lonian story of creation, see L. W. King, The 
 Seven Tablets of Creation, or the Babylonian and 
 Assyrian Legends concerning the Creation of 
 the World and of Mankind. Vol. I. English 
 translations. London. 1902. " Mythological 
 features" (p. 50, 11. 15 sqq.) within the Biblical 
 account of the creation. As to the assumption 
 of the existence of a state of chaos. Octtli very 
 truly remarks (p. 12): "The conception of 
 original matter, which was not derived from 
 God's creative action, but has rather to be 
 overcome by it. cannot have grown up upon the 
 mother-soil of Israel's religion, which, at any
 
 Notes 
 
 105 
 
 rate at the high level reached by the prophets, 
 
 looks at things from a strictly monotheistic 
 standpoint, and therefore excludes the dual- 
 istie conflict of two opposing primaeval prin- 
 ciples.'" Wcllhausens remark may also be 
 recalled here: "But chaos being granted, all 
 the rest is spun out of it : all that follows 
 is reflexion, systematic construction, which 
 we can easily control from point to point."' 
 Traces of polytheistic traits, also, adhere to 
 the Elohistic story of the creation. In Gen. i. 
 2<i we read, "let us make men in our image, 
 according to our likeness.*" where the assump- 
 tion of a so-called pluraiis majestaticus is. to 
 judge by Hebrew usage elsewhere, certainly 
 not excluded (cf. Isaiah xlvi. 5), hut rather 
 far-fetched. (Observe the words of Yahwe in 
 iii. 22, "See! the man has become as one of 
 us") On this Oettli rightly remarks (p. 10): 
 " It is not easy to bring the use of the plural 
 in a soliloquy, before man had been created, 
 into agreement with the strict monotheism of 
 a later date: nor is the divine likeness in
 
 106 Babel and Bible 
 
 which man is framed easily reconciled 
 with that spirituality of Yahwe, which is so 
 strongly emphasised at a later date: when we, 
 renouncing all exegetical devices, allow the 
 
 © © 
 
 words to bear their simple and most obvious 
 
 meaning : even though we admit that the Ribli- 
 
 © © 
 
 cal writer has given a higher meaning to these 
 originally foreign elements in accordance with 
 his religious attitude." In fact, Gen. i. 26 and 
 Isaiah xlvi. 5 arc irreconcilable contradictions. 
 The polytheistic colouring, distinguishing gods 
 and goddesses, is peculiarly striking in Gen. 
 i. 27. when the three members of the verse are 
 considered in close connection one with the 
 other; "and God created man in his image, in 
 the image of God created he him. male and 
 female created he them."" Hut this cannot be 
 
 regarded as certain. 
 
 © 
 
 P. 56. Oettli, also (p. 11). following 
 Gunkel {Sclitipfung nn<l CJiaos, pp. 29 114), 
 
 comes to a conclusion identical with that 
 on p. 56 : " There are enough allusions in 
 the prophetical and poetical literature of the
 
 Notes 107 
 
 ()1<I Testament to make it palpably clear that 
 the old ["Babylonian 1 creation-myth survived 
 and in a highly-coloured form in the 
 popular conceptions of Israel."' And again, 
 •• There are in fact eases enough where the 
 original mythical signification of the monsters 
 tehdm, Bvyathdn, tannin, rahdb, is unmistakably 
 evident." Oettli cites Job i.\. 13 and Is. li. 9 
 (where, moreover, 'pierced' might be better 
 than 'dishonoured'), [n fact, when Is. li. 10 
 proceeds with the words. " Art thou not it 
 that dried up the sea. the water of the great 
 Tehom, that made the depths of the sea a way 
 lor the ransomed to pass over?' the prophet 
 actually couples "those mythical reminis- 
 cences with the deliverance from Egypt, 
 Yahva's second famous exploit on the waters 
 of Tehom. And it cannot occur to any one 
 who recalls how Yahwc's great achievement, 
 when the children of Israel crossed the Kcd 
 Sea. is elsewhere described and extolled 
 {e.g., Ps. cvi. !) 11. Ixxviii. L3), to apply to 
 any but primaeval times the words in Ps.
 
 io8 Babel and Bible 
 
 Ixxiv. 13 sq. : "Thou brakest the heads of 
 the dragons in the waters, thou didst dash 
 to pieces the heads of the sea-monsters 
 (UvyCithari)." Livyatkdn, according to Job 
 
 iii. 8 also, is the personification of the dark 
 chaotic primaeval Hood, the sworn foe of the 
 light 
 
 If Konig himself is unwillingly obliged to 
 admit (p. 27) that the hook of .Job. in ix. 13 
 ("God turns not his anger, the helpers of 
 rdhdb brake in pieces under him"), and in 
 xxvi. 12 ("in his power he smote the sea 
 and in his wisdom he dashed rdhdb to pieces"), 
 ••alludes, in all probability, to the subjection 
 of the primaeval ocean." Jensen would cer- 
 tainly seem to stand quite alone when he 
 asserts (op. cit., col. 490), "where the Old 
 Testament speaks of a struggle <>n the part 
 of Yahwe against serpents and crocodile-like 
 creatures, there is no occasion to assume with 
 Delitzsch and with a considerable number of 
 other Assyriologists [add : as also with Gunkel 
 and most Old Testament theologians] a con-
 
 Notes 
 
 109 
 
 nection with the Babylonian nivth of a Tiamat- 
 
 * • 
 
 struggle." 
 
 P. .">•_>. Oettli, also, very truly avows (p. L7) 
 that "all subordination of the researches of 
 Natural Science to the Biblical representa- 
 tion is wholly perverse, and is the more un- 
 intelligible as the external details in the second 
 account of the creation and in many other 
 passages in the Old Testament arc conceived 
 in a manner quite unlike the first. Let us. 
 therefore, unreservedly leave to Science that 
 which belongs to it. When, however, he 
 proceeds: "But let us also give to God that 
 which is God's; the world is a creation of 
 God's almighty will, which continuously per- 
 vades it as its living law this the first page 
 of Genesis tells us," it is less possible to 
 concur. Faith claims, and many passages 
 in the Old Testament assert, thai God is the 
 Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, but it 
 is just the first page of Genesis that does uo1 
 ("in the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth and the earth was waste and
 
 i 10 Babel and Bible 
 
 desolate," etc.) ; it leaves unanswered the 
 question, " Whence did chaos originate \ 
 Besides, even among the Babylonians the 
 
 creation of the heavens and of the- earth is 
 ascribed to the gods, and the life of all ani- 
 mate creatures is regarded as resting in their 
 hands. 
 
 To Figures X7 ('the god Marduk') on p. 
 51, and .'J8 ('the conflict with the dragon") on 
 p. 52, Jensen (op cit., col. 4&9) observes with 
 reference to Tiamat : " Berossus calls this 
 creature a woman, she is the mother of the 
 sods, has a husband and a lover, and nowhere 
 throughout Assyrian or Babylonian literature 
 is there to be found even the slightest hint 
 that this creature is regarded otherwise than as 
 a woman without any limitation." Nothing 
 can be more perverse than this assertion, which 
 contradicts not merely what I have said, but 
 also a tact recognised by all Assyriologists. 
 Or is it no longer true that as a woman 
 gives birth to human beings, and young lions 
 are brought forth by lionesses, that, therefore.
 
 Notes 1 1 1 
 
 a creature which gives birth to {itt<il<i(L 
 see Creation-epic, III. 24. and often), sirmahhe, 
 i.e., gigantic serpents, must itself be a great, 
 powerful serpent, a hpaKaiv /xeyas or some 
 serpent-like monster? And, as a matter of 
 fact, is not Tiamat represented in Babylonian 
 art as a great serpent (see. for example. 
 Chevne's English translation of the Hook of 
 the Prophet Isaiah in Haupt's edition of 
 the Bible, p. 206) '. Nor do I by any means 
 see in the scene represented in rii> - . .'J8 a 
 perfectly exact portrayal of Marduk's con- 
 flict with the Dragon, as described to us in 
 the creation-epic ; on the contrary, I speak 
 expressly and cautiously of a conflict between 
 ■•the power of light and the power of dark- 
 ness" in general. It can be realised at once 
 that in the representation of this conflict, 
 especially in that of the monster Tiamat. 
 there was wide scope for the imagination. A 
 dragon could be represented in the most 
 manifold way. such as we see in fig. 38, or on 
 a stone found in Babylon (sec fig. 51 ). or in the
 
 1 I 2 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 form of the sirrusM (or miuh~us$ii), which, in- 
 deed, appeals in the Epic as only one of the 
 eleven monsters called into lite by Tiamat. hut 
 which, according to II. K. l'.». 17 1>. can. and in 
 Babylonian art actually does, represent Tiamat 
 herself. For the beast which is placed at the 
 feet of the god Marduk in fig. >\~. and was 
 declared by me to he a representation of the 
 
 X£ 
 
 
 Pig. 51. Marduk's conflict with the dragon. 
 
 draeron Tiamat. has since been clearly proved 
 to be such hv the German excavations. 
 The representations of the firrus&fi found 
 on the Gate of Eshtar at Babylon in relief. 
 unmistakably correspond to the animal figure 
 familiar to us from our illustration (fig. 
 37). If. in addition to what has been said 
 here, reference is made further to Zim-
 
 Notes i i 3 
 
 mern's exposition in the third edition of 
 Schrader's Die Keilinschrifiten und das Alte 
 Testament, 2nd half, pp. 502 //.. the conclusion 
 will undoubtedly be reached that Jensen's 
 polemic against "Babel und Bibel" in the 
 ChristUche Welt, col. 489 sq., is entirely un- 
 justified. 
 
 To Page .54. My words are by no means 
 intended to suggest that "even the funda- 
 
 C to 
 
 mental laws of the human instinct of self- 
 preservation and morality, such as Love for 
 ones ueighbour, betray Babylonian origin' 1 
 (as was to he read in a number of newspapers, 
 following the Berliner Tageblatt). When a 
 Babylonian priest asks (IV. R. 51, 50 53 a): 
 - lias he broken into the house of his neigh- 
 bour? Has he approached the wife of his 
 neighbour '. Has he shed the blood of his 
 neighbour? Has he taken to himself the 
 garment of his neighbour?" 1 conclude, as 
 I have unambiguously said on |>. 53, simply 
 this, that prohibitions such as these are in- 
 delibly stamped on "every human heart."
 
 1 14 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 The following statement of P. Keil (op. cit., 
 p. .'J sq.) is therefore absolutely incorrect: 
 "Even the moral law, the conception of 
 sin .... originate from Babylon. Delitzsch, 
 
 it is true, does not say it so bluntly, but liis 
 exposition leads us to suppose that in these 
 matters lie admits connections between Babel 
 and the Bible other than those which are 
 purely collateral." 
 
 P. 56. The Fall. Anyone who reads my 
 remarks on p. 55 without bias must admit 
 that in dealing with the representation of a 
 Babylonian seal [fig. .'}'.»). reproduced on p. 56, 
 on the one hand, and with the Biblical story 
 of the Fall, on the other, my only aim was to 
 emphasise the circumstance that the serpent as 
 the corrupter of the woman is a significant feature 
 common to both. The fact that the two Baby- 
 lonian (inures are clothed, naturally prevented 
 me, also, from regarding the tree as the tree " of 
 knowledge of good and evil." It seems to me 
 at least more probable that there may be traced 
 in the biblical narrative in Gen. chap. ii. sq.,
 
 Notes 115 
 
 another and older form which recognized but 
 one tree in the middle of the garden -the 
 Tree ol' Life. Note how in ii. 9 the words, 
 "and the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil," seem to be tacked on, as it were, and 
 how the narrator, busied with the newly intro- 
 duced tree of knowledge, so entirely forgets 
 the tree of life (sec iii. 3), that in ii. 16 he quite 
 inadvertently actually makes God allow man 
 to cat of the tree of life (in contradiction with 
 iii. 22). In regard to the tree, and that alone. 
 I agree with the late C. P. Tiele when he sees in 
 the Babylonian representation, "a god with his 
 male or female worshippers partaking of the 
 fruit of the tree of life'" "a picture of the 
 hope of immortality," as also with Hommel, 
 who observes (p. 23): "the most important 
 point is that it is quite evident that the tree 
 was originally thought of as a conifer a pine 
 or cedar whose fruit increased the power of 
 life and of procreation ; there is. accordingly, 
 an unmistakable allusion to the holy cedar of 
 Eridu, the typical tree of Paradise in the (hal-
 
 1 1 6 Babel and Bible 
 
 daean and Babylonian legends." Jensen, also. 
 (col. 488) decides as follows: " If the repre- 
 sentation has any reference to the story of the 
 Fall, it might most preferably represent a 
 scene in which a god forbids the first-created 
 woman to partake of the fruit of the tree of life." 
 That one of the figures is distinguished by horns, 
 the usual symbol of strength and conquest (see 
 Amos \ i. 13) in Babylonia as also in Israel, 
 is. I take it. a very fine touch on the part of 
 the artist, indicating unmistakably the different 
 sexes of the two clothed human figures; and 
 whoever prefers to see in the serpent behind 
 the woman a "crooked stroke." "an orna- 
 mental dividing line." may do so few will 
 agree with him. 
 
 Many scholars arc of the same opinion as 
 myself. So Hommel, for instance (p. 'J.'i): 
 " the woman and the writhing serpent behind 
 her express themselves clearly enough ; and 
 .Jensen (col. 488) : " a serpent stands or crawls 
 behind the woman." As to the nature of this 
 serpent, nothing definite can be said so long as
 
 Notes I I 
 
 / 
 
 we are dependent upon this pictorial representa- 
 tion alone. One is most disposed to regard it 
 as one of the tonus of Tiamat, who -like 
 Leviathan in Job iii. 8, and "the old serpent 
 in the Apocalypse — would thus be assumed 
 to be still in existence. Hut this is very 
 uncertain, and I have therefore borne in mind 
 II. H. 51, 44, where, doubtless following some 
 as vet unknown mvth, a Rabvlonian canal is 
 named after " the Serpent-god who shatters 
 (destroys) the dwelling of life." This passage 
 seems to me to argue at once against Jensen's 
 view, that we may perhaps sec in the two 
 figures, two gods that dwell by the tree of 
 life, and in the serpent, its guardian. More- 
 over, Zimmern (Die Keilinschriften und <l<is 
 Alii' Testament, <&& ed., second half, p. 504 sq.) 
 takes the serpent -god to be "without 
 doubt ultimately identical with the chaos- 
 monster." It may be noted, in passing, that 
 the text 1). T. (>7. published in Haupt's 
 Akkadische ////</ sumerische KeilschriftteoctCi p. 
 11!>. may deserve consideration in the future
 
 i i 8 Babel and Bible 
 
 tor its bearing upon the biblical narrative of 
 the Fall. It is a bilingual text which tells of 
 a virgin, the " mother of sin."' who. having 
 committed an offence for which she is severely 
 punished, hursts into bitter tears "carnal 
 intercourse hath she conic to know, kisses hath 
 she conic to know ' and whom we find later 
 on lying in the dust smitten by the fatal 
 glance of the deity. 
 
 P. 59. " May his name continue to be 
 blessed." etc. 
 
 In the code of Hammurabi (xxvii. 34 et seg.), 
 we find the sinner cursed with the words : 
 " Mav Ciod forcibly extinguish him from among 
 the living- upon earth, and debar his departed 
 spirit upon earth from fresh water in Hades." 
 
 The last passage also confirms the great 
 antiquity of the Babylonian conception of the 
 condition of the pious after death. 
 
 1\ 59. The passage in Job xxiv. 18 sq. is 
 to be found translated and explained in a 
 satisfactory philological manner in my Das 
 Buck lob (Leipzig, 1902): "cursed be their
 
 Notes i i g 
 
 portion upon earth. He turneth not l>v the 
 way of the vineyards, the wilderness and also 
 the heat shall despoil them, they go astray 
 imploring snow-water. Compassion forgetteth 
 him, the worm sneks at him. he shall be no 
 more remembered," ete. The passage, thus 
 rightly conceived, forms the welcome bridge to 
 the New Testament image of the pit (Hell). 
 glowing with heat, waterless, and lull of tor- 
 ments, and of the garden which the Oriental 
 mind cannot conceive of as lacking water. 
 an abundant How of runnine water. When 
 Cornill (op. tit., col. 1683)remarks: " I believe 
 I also am tolerably acquainted with the Hook 
 of Job .... but there is absolutely nothing 
 of the sort in Job xxiv. 18 .sy/..'" such words 
 only strengthen the pleasant feeling that the 
 philological comprehension of the Old Testa- 
 ment no longer necessarily permeates the com- 
 mentaries of the Old Testament theologians. 
 
 P. (52. The concluding verse of the 
 book of the prophet Isaiah (eh. Ixvi. 24 : 
 ••and they shall go forth and look with joy
 
 i 20 Babel and Bible 
 
 upon the dead bodies of those that have 
 revolted from me: how their worm dieth not, 
 neither is their fire quenched : and they are an 
 abomination to all flesh") implies thai those 
 
 whose bodies are buried in the earth will he 
 everlastingly gnawed by worms, and those 
 whose bodies are burnt with fire shall suffer 
 this death by fire continuously. The passage 
 is important in two respects: in the first place. 
 it shows that cremation is thought of as stand- 
 ing entirely on the same level with inhuma- 
 tion, and that, accordingly, there is not the 
 slightest opposition to cremation from the 
 Biblical side: in the second place, it follows 
 that the words. " where their worm dieth not," 
 in .Mark's account of* the description of hell- 
 tire as L>i\en by .Jesus (eh. i\. 44. 4<J. 48), are. 
 strictly speaking, not quite in place. 
 
 P. 63 sq. Angels. CornilJ {op. cit., col. 
 L682), too, comes to the conclusion that •'the 
 conception of angels is. in every respect, 
 genuinely Babylonian." In speaking of "the 
 protecting angels which attend on men' (cf.
 
 Notes 12 1 
 
 l\s. xci. 11 sq., Matt, xviii. 10), I had in my 
 mind such passages as tli.it in the well-known 
 Babylonian letter of consolation to the queen- 
 mother from Apia (K. 523): "Mother of the 
 king, my lady, be consoled (?) ! an angel of 
 grace from Bel and Nebo goes with the king 
 of the lands, my lord"; or that in the writing 
 addressed to Esarhaddon (K. 948): " May the 
 great gods appoint a guardian of health and 
 life at the side of the king, my lord " (similarly 
 SI. 2 L 75) : or. on the other hand, the words 
 of Nabopolassar, the founder of the Chaldaean 
 kingdom: "To the lordship over the land and 
 people Marduk called me. Me sent a tutelary 
 deity (Cherub) of grace to go at my side, in 
 everything that I did he made my work to 
 succeed' (see Mitteilungen der deutschen 
 Orient-Geselkchqft, No. 10. p. U sq.). 
 
 P. (J4-. Devils. As distinguished from 
 "the Old Serpent which is the Devil and 
 Satan " (p. 52), in which is preserved the 
 ancient Babylonian conception of Tiamat, 
 the primaeval enemy of the gods. Satan, who
 
 122 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 appears several times in the later and latest 
 
 books ot* the Old Testament, and always as 
 the enemy of man. not of God (see Job, ch. i. 
 si/.. 1 Chron. xxi. 1, Zech. iii. 1 sq.), owes his 
 origin to the Babylonian belief in demons, 
 which, also, recognised a ilu limnu or 'evil god 
 and a gallu or ' devil.' 
 
 P. (><). "That such productions of ancient 
 Assyria should thus intrude themselves into 
 our own time." etc. In this connection I 
 should like to draw attention to (t. Hellmann's 
 most interesting communication, Ueber den 
 chaldaischen Ursprung modernen Grewitteraber- 
 glaubens (in the Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 
 June 1896, pp. 236-238), where it is shewn 
 that ancient Babylonian weather-lore survives 
 even at the present day in one of the most 
 popular of Swedish chap-books, Sibyllac 
 Prop/ietia, more particularly in a chapter 
 entitled Tordons marketecken—i.e., signs for 
 the weather and fertility throughout the whole 
 year, taken from the thunder in the separate 
 months.
 
 Notes 1 2 3 
 
 P. 70. ' Canaanites.' ■ -The term, which 
 was used by me in its usual linguistic sense 
 (see, e.g., Kautzsch, Hebraische Grammatik, 
 27th rd.. ]). 2), is now replaced in my 
 lecture by 'North Semites,' simply because it 
 lias been so frequently misunderstood. A 
 proof that the kings of the first Babylonian 
 dynasty, Sumu-abi and his successors, do not 
 belong to that original Semitic stock of Baby- 
 Ionia. Semites mingled with Sumerians, but 
 rather to a later immigrating tribe of Semites, 
 is furnished by the Babylonian scholars them- 
 selves, who considered that the names of the 
 two kings Hammurabi (also Ammurabi) and 
 Ammisad&ga (or Ammizaduga) required ex- 
 planation as being foreign to the language, and 
 rendered the former by Kimta-rapastum, -wide- 
 spread family' (cf.uy^n-], Rehoboam), and the 
 latter by Kimi um-hrthnii. ' uprighl family' 
 (VR. 44, 21, 22, a. h). The representation of 
 the y (in cr. people, family), by // in the name 
 Hammurabi shows that these Semites, unlike 
 the older stock that had been settled for
 
 124 Babel and Bible 
 
 centuries in Babylonia, still actually pro- 
 nounced the y as an y. Moreover, their pro- 
 nunciation of s as s Samsu in Sa-am-su- 
 iluna (cf. also Sumu-abi) as contrasted with the 
 older Babylonian Samsu — no less than the 
 preformative of the third person of the perfect 
 with ia (not i) — in the personal names of that 
 time ( lamlik-ilu, Iarbi-ilu, Iak-bani-ilu, etc. I 
 proves the existence of distinct Semitic tribes, 
 a fact first stated by llommel and Winckler, 
 which, in spite of Jensen's opposition (op. cit., 
 col. 491), remains irrefutable. Linguistic and 
 historical considerations combine to make it 
 more than probable that these immigrant 
 Semites belonged to the Northern Semites. 
 more precisely to the linguistically so-called 
 "Canaanites" (i.e. the Phoenicians, Moabites, 
 Hebrews, etc.). as was first acutely recognised 
 by Hugo Winckler (see his Geschichte Israels). 
 who thus makes a particularly important 
 addition to his many valuable services. The 
 na of Hi) nn (in Siunsit-ilu na), which is taken to 
 mean "our God," is not sufficient to prove
 
 Notes 125 
 
 tribal relationship with Arabia, since, in view 
 of the names Ammi-zad{bga i Ammi-ditana, it 
 is at least equally probable that Huiki repre- 
 sents an adjective (note the personal name 
 I-lu-na in Meissner's Beitrage ~~um altbabyl. 
 Privatrccht, No. 4; cf. fhxl). On the other 
 hand, zadiig, 'righteous,' may point to a 
 "Canaanite" dialect, both lexically (doubtless 
 = pm* : tor the verbal stem. cf. saduk, - he is 
 righteous,' intheAmarna tablets), and phoneti- 
 cally (obscuring of a to 6, u ; cf. aniiM, • I." of 
 the Amarna tablets, etc.): and the same may 
 be said. too. of such contemporary names 
 as la-Su-vh-ilu {cf. Phoen. Ba-a-al-ia-su-bu, 
 \'K. 2, <S4). Is Jensen really in a position "to 
 produce an entirely satisfactory explanation 
 from the Babylonian" of such names as 
 Iusub-ilu (col. 19] ) \ 
 
 P. (i ( .) sq. II S*. God. All Semitic pre- 
 positions were originally substantives. As 
 regards the preposition " s ^. originally //. ••unto. 
 to, towards." it has not been perceived hitherto 
 that the most probable root-meaning is
 
 126 Babel and Bible 
 
 obviously "turning towards, direction," which 
 has survived in Hebrew, in the phrase, "so 
 and so is ^y r bsk, i.e., at the disposal of thy 
 hand, is in thy power." Here b%b is treated 
 precisely like ".;?> in t.«?<. "at thy disposal' 
 (Gen. xiii. 9), and like the frequently occurring 
 Assyrian ina pdni, "at ones disposal." b$ and 
 ob are at times interchanged as synonymous; 
 note the instructive passages, Ps. lxxxiv. 8, on 
 the one hand, and xlii. 3 on the other. The 
 view that s x in the above phrase means 
 "power" may be traditional, like a thousand 
 other errors in Hebrew lexicography, hut it 
 has never been proved, and for this reason it 
 is not correct to maintain, with Konig (p. .'*<s>. 
 that el "certainly has some such meaning as 
 power or strength." The only meaning that 
 admits of proof is "turning towards, direc- 
 tion": by which the concrete meaning, "that 
 towards which a man turns, aim. goal." was 
 at once suggested. CO ipso [cf. NpiB, fear, and 
 object of fear: njipo, desire, and object of 
 •sire, and many others). The Sumerians
 
 Notes 127 
 
 thought of their gods as dwelling up above in 
 that place to which man turns his eyes, in and 
 above the sky (therefore i^- = "heaven" and 
 "God"), and we ourselves, figuratively, say 
 -heaven" for "God" (cf. Dan. iv. 23). A Baby- 
 lonian psalm, too, calls the Sun-god digit 
 irsitim rapaMim, the "goal of the wide earth," 
 i.e., the goal to which the eves of all the in- 
 habitants of the earth are turned : and finally 
 the poet in the book of .Job (xxxvi. 25), in 
 harmony with a number of other passages 
 from Semitic literature, extols God as the 
 one "on whom hangs everyone's gaze, whom 
 man beholdeth from afar." So, in like manner, 
 the oldest Semites gave to thai "God-like" 
 being who was conceived of as dwelling up 
 above in the sky. ruling the heaven and the 
 earth, the name il, el, as that Being to whom 
 their c\ es were directed (compare the analogous 
 use of K > as applied to God and that which 
 appertains to God ; Hos. \i. 7). 
 
 "The point at which the eye aims." such 
 as the sun or the sky. is. in my opinion, the
 
 128 Babel and Bible 
 
 primary and original meaning of the word, and 
 Oettli (p. 23) is therefore wrong when he 
 supposes that I explain el as the "goal for 
 
 which the human heart yearns."' and so " is 
 due to an idea, which is of the nature of a pale 
 philosophical abstraction."' Naturally it could 
 not happen otherwise than that the man who 
 sought the deity above with his eyes should 
 also do so with his hands and with his heart at 
 the same time (cf. Lament, iii. 41). 
 
 Since the meaning "direction, goal" has 
 consequently been proved lor /'/. and the use of 
 this word as an appellation of the deity fully 
 accords with Semitic thought, it is inadmissible. 
 therefore, to assume yet another nomen primi- 
 tivum il; and my statement regarding the 
 divine name el holds good in every respect. 
 It is quite as useless and illegitimate to find a 
 verb for such a nom. prim, as /'/ ( Konig, p. 38) as 
 it is to seek a verbal stem for such other 
 primitive biliteral nouns as Jim, "day. mut, 
 •man." What Konig (p. 38 sq.) adduces be- 
 sides is not worth refuting. I would note in
 
 Notes 1 29 
 
 passing that although I ciU' Lagarde in my 
 argument for e/='aim,' it is easily perceived 
 that I am quite independent of him never 
 having read his treatise to the present day ; 
 consequently what Jensen, for example, writes 
 (col. 4!).'J s<j.) against Lagarde's etymology in 
 no way affects my own argument. 
 
 Hut the etymology of the word /'/. el. is not 
 the most important feature. The main fact 
 remains that those North Semitic tribes, whom 
 we find settled in North as well as in South 
 Babylonia about 2500 B.C., and whose greatest 
 monarch subsequently was Hammurabi (about 
 2250), thought of and worshipped God as a 
 single spiritual Being. ( Note that the reference 
 is to that division of the North Semitic tribes 
 who immigrated to Babylonia and later be- 
 came settled there, not to the Sinnero-Seniitic 
 Babylonians.) 
 
 A number of journals incorrectly attribute 
 tome the view that "even the idea of God 
 among the Jews is to lie traced hack to Baby- 
 lonian conceptions <>(' the universe : and ( )cttli 
 
 i)
 
 130 Babel and Bible 
 
 (j). 4) wrongly says that according to my view 
 even "the name and worship of Yahwe him- 
 self, in conjunction with a more or less clearly 
 developed monotheism, is part of a Babylonian 
 inheritance."" Similarly. Konig's question 
 (p. .'37): "Does the Old Testament mono- 
 theism spring from Babylonia ( " with all that 
 is implied in it. rests upon a misapprehension 
 of the words I used in the first edition (p. 46, 
 11. 11 sqq. ; p. 47. 11. 12-18), which. I venture 
 to suppose, did not admit of being misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 Xow. as regards those persona] names 
 compounded with /"/ which are particularly 
 common during the period of the first Baby- 
 lonian dynasty, it is a fundamental error to 
 maintain with Konig (pp. 40. 42) that in the 
 case of notorious polytheists the names must 
 be translated and interpreted "« (iod has 
 given," or to ask with Oettli (p. 2:J) : "who 
 can prove that those names are not to be 
 understood from a polytheistic point of view : 
 • a God has given,' ' <i God with me'?' Not 
 

 
 Notes 1 1 1 
 
 to mention other reasons, this interpretation is 
 shipwrecked upon such names as llu-amranni 
 "God. regard me!*' Ihi-lurani "God, turn 
 again!" and others. Or are we to suppose 
 that sneh a name as Bdb-ilu no Longer means 
 "God's gate," but "gate of a God"? No! 
 the age of Hammurabi continues to possess 
 those names which are so beautiful and of 
 such importance for the history of religion : 
 Ilu-ittia "God with me.*' Ilu-amtafiar "God I 
 invoke," Ilu-abi, Ilu-milki " God is my father, 
 my counsel," larbi-ilu "great is God," lamlik- 
 ilu "God sits in command."" IbU-ina-ili 
 "through God he came into existence."' 
 AvU-ilu "servant of God."" Mut(um)-ilu "man 
 of Cod' ( = Methushael), Ilmna-lci "God is 
 mighty," Ilitm<i-<il>i - God is my father.' 
 Il&ma-ilu " God is God," Summa-ilu-ld-ilia " if 
 Cod be not my God,"" etc. Obviously the 
 names are to be judged as a whole. In certain 
 cases (cf. also isolated Assyrian names like 
 Xa id-ilii i. •• dod " may certainly be regarded 
 simply as an appellative, somewhal after the
 
 i 72 Babel and Bible 
 
 manner as in the phrase in the Laws of 
 Hammurabi, to declare something makar Hi 
 " before God," or in the phrase to swear "by 
 (.od {ilu) and by the king," which appears 
 
 some hundred times in the contemporary 
 Babylonian contract-tablets (cf. 1 Sam. \ii. 
 .*}. .>. "by Yahwe and by the King"); but 
 viewed as a whole, they make it impossible- 
 it seems to me — for ns to think of ilu as the 
 "God of the city or of the family" (P. Keil. 
 p. 61), or as the "special tutelary deity" 
 (Zimmern in A\/Y'. 3rd ed., second half, 
 p. :i.>4). But it is precisely where "a people 
 who have not been philosophically educated is 
 endeavouring to particularize its terms and con- 
 cepts and to render them as concretely as pos- 
 sible" ( Keil, op. cit.. p. •>!>). that one would neces- 
 sarily expect to find either the specific name of 
 the deity everywhere intended, or —where the 
 tutelary nod of the family or of the newly- 
 born babe is meant the term "my God' or 
 ••his God." An unbiassed and unsophisticated 
 consideration of all these and other names
 
 Notes 133 
 
 of the time of Hammurabi Leads one again 
 and again to suppose rather thai they took 
 their root in religious ideas which differed from 
 the indigenous polytheistic mode ol* thought 
 in Babylonia. The character and value of this 
 monotheism cannot be estimated with our 
 present sources of knowledge, but. at the most, 
 they can be interred from the later develop- 
 ment of " Yahwism.' 
 
 P. 70. On }). 40 sq. of the first edition I 
 had said, "and since this goal can naturally 
 be only one." On mature reflection these 
 words have been altered into "and since the 
 Divine Essence was viewed by them as a 
 unity." 
 
 P. 71. Jahwe. -It must be resolutely 
 upheld that, in the two personal names 
 la-d-ve-ilu (Bu. 91, 5 !>. 314, Rev. ii. see 
 Cuneiform Texts, viii. 20). and la-ve-ilu (Bu. 
 91, .') '.). 544, I. 4, see Cuneiform VV.r/.v. viii. 34), 
 the reading lave is the only possible one in tin 
 question. The opposition to my reading 
 which is incontestable in the present state of
 
 134 Rahul and Bible 
 
 our knowledge has brought to light a lament- 
 able state of ignorance on the part of the 
 critics : and to this also may be ascribed the 
 manifold insinuations in which they have 
 thought they might be allowed to indulge, as. 
 for example, when Prof. Kittel ventures to 
 speak of my reading as "a manoeuvre" with a 
 purpose {((Is einem tendenziosen " 3fanover"). 
 It' only for the sake of checking' this exhibition 
 of ignorance, I should like to submit briefly 
 and plainly to my theological critics, and also 
 to one and all of their Assyriologica] " ad- 
 visers," the following points. According to 
 my Assyrische Lesestiicken, 4th ed., p. '27. 
 No. 223, the sign 57. possesses the following 
 syllabic values : pi ; tdl ; /// ; tarn ; in Baby- 
 lonian, moreover, especially meve: ma yd, a; 
 (7'//) : for which it would be better to say VC ; 
 va ; a : {no. Hut anyone who has made 
 himself even to a slight extent familiar with 
 the writing of the time of Hammurabi, knows 
 (1) that even granted the reading Ia-u-ma, 
 this ma can no longer be viewed as the
 
 Notes i 3 5 
 
 emphatic particle ma (so, quite wrongly, 
 Konig, p. 48 .sy/., Kittei and others) ; this is 
 written, without exception, with the usual 
 sign for ma, §Ej. To interpret the nanus 
 under discussion as "Yes, Yclu is God" is 
 absolutely out of the question. Whoever is 
 disposed to deny this must produce hut one 
 example, where the emphatic particle ma is 
 written with the sign i^-. Moreover, it may 
 be incidentally remarked that the m in la-il- 
 wni-ilu can only be the mimmation, and not the 
 abbreviated ma. (2) The reading favoured by 
 C. Hezold: Ia-a-bi-ilu {'A A xvi., p. 41.5 .sy/.) is 
 also impossible, because while in Hammurabi's 
 time the si ( »-n hi £3 also represents the syllable 
 /;/, conversely, ^Jr>_ is never used also for hi. 
 (•'J) Further reflection shows, too, that the 
 reading I<i-{<( )-pi-iln cannot be considered. 
 The sign ^y>- is certainly used for pi even in 
 Hammurabi's time —so several times in the 
 contracts published by Meissnerin his Beitragc 
 \nni altbabylonischen Privatrecht {eg. Pi-ir- 
 Istar, Pi-ir-huiihippi), and likewise in IJanunu-
 
 136 Babel and Bible 
 
 rabi's Law-book (e.g. upitti) but pi written 
 ^ is incomparably more frequent, as in the 
 seventy-nine letters of that period published 
 by King, where pi is not onee rendered by 
 ^-. but everywhere by %. (There is no 
 need here to touch upon the confused remarks 
 by S. Daiches in ZA xvi.. p. 403 sq.) In addi- 
 tion to the above, it is to be added that a 
 •• Canaanite verbal-form iapi, id-pi. could only 
 be derived from a root nan or the like, but 
 such a root does not exist. Instead of Ia(')ve- 
 ihi. one mini it even conceivably read Ia- 
 Ca ii-) va //- ilu. with radical v, but thereby 
 would at onee rightly think of recognising in 
 it the god nirp, the very view which has been 
 rejected. Consequently my reading Ia-ve-ilu 
 remains, under the circumstances, the most 
 probable, as also the only one that requires to 
 be taken serious account of. 
 
 As regards the meaning of the name 
 IuC rrc-ihi. I would express myself with less 
 posith eness than I have done in the case of 
 
 flu- reading. It is certain that Konig's pro-
 
 Notes 137 
 
 posed interpretation (p. 50 -sy/. ): "may God 
 [why not ' <( God' '.] protect,"' from the Arabic 
 hama "to protect," like Barth's (p. 19) " God 
 grants life" {Ia-ah-ve-ilu), is in the highest 
 degree improbable. As names of foreign 
 origin they must necessarily have been pro- 
 nounced Iahve-ilu, not IcCve-ilu or even Idve-ilu 
 {cf. Ra-hi-im-ili), and only at the last extremity 
 could we venture to accept the view that the 
 pronunciation of these foreign personal names 
 had been gradually adapted to Babylonian, 
 and had thereby at once become quite unin- 
 telligible. No, if any verbal-form can be 
 supposed to lie in Ia've, lave, it is most 
 reasonable to think of the verb mn, the older 
 form of hm, presupposed even in Exod. iii. 14, 
 and, with Hommel (p. 11, cf. also Zimmern 
 in Theol. Liter aturblatt, 1902. No. 17, col. 
 196), to interpret as " God exists." But where 
 in the whole realm of the North Semitic people 
 is there to be found a personal name com- 
 pounded with nin, rvn (w ) ? There is none ! 
 My interpretation " Ja've is God" may con-
 
 i *8 Babel and Bible 
 
 sequently still be in itself bv Par the most 
 probable. 
 
 But the aame of a third man of the same 
 
 period now comes upon the scene. Id-i'i-inii-ilu 
 (Bu. ss, 5 \'2. .'}l >( .>. see Cuneiform Texts, 
 iv. 27). In the interests of our science it can- 
 not he too deeply lamented that Honimel (op. 
 c//.. p. 11) announces to the world the existence 
 of a Hahvlonian ffod " Idu = Ai. the moon." a 
 Babylonian or "old Semitic god, that exists 
 nowhere save in his own imagination. Out of 
 the whole of the Babylonian literature, let 
 Hommel adduce only one single pass:i<_>e where 
 a Hahvlonian ffod ''Id or ,l Ia-u. Ia'u occurs. 
 and as a name of the moon-god ! lie cannot 
 do so. Ia-u-um-illi still remains a name 
 foreign to the language; it belongs to the 
 \orth Semitic (more precisely, Canaanite) 
 tribes, who have been dealt with above at some 
 length in the notes on pp. 123 L29. Among 
 these tribes we find no other god la-u, hut that 
 same god in; ZiaM, whose title is contained in 
 the names la-ii-ha-zi = Tn$rtrr, la-a-Jiu-u-la-M-
 
 Notes 1 3 () 
 
 im, la-hu-u-na-ta-nu (in Hilprecht's Murashii 
 
 & Sons), and others. Now this divine name, 
 lulu), which occurs at the beginning, and 
 especially at the end, of Hebrew personal 
 names, being the shorter form of Iakve, i.e. 
 " the existing one " (so also Stade, Lehrbuch 
 der hebraischen Grammatik, p. 165), pre- 
 supposes the fuller form. And if even to the 
 Jews of the exilie and post-exilie age the name 
 Yah we was by no means a /io/nc// ineffabile— as 
 the many names of that late period show (77/- 
 se--ia-a-va = Wf$NP. ,k Isaiah," Pi-li-ia-a-va = rv 1 ??, 
 etc.) — then surely we may even more cer- 
 tainly say that it was not so in that remote 
 age in which the divine name Vahwe was far 
 from possessing that degree of sanctity which 
 it was afterwards to acquire in Israel. The 
 name Iahum-ilu accordingly presupposes a 
 fuller name Iave-ilu with the same meaning. 
 And when such a name as Ia-'-ve-ilu, Ia-ve-ilu, 
 is actually twice attested, should it not be 
 recognized as such — and the more unreservedly 
 since the failure to recognize it by no means
 
 140 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 nets rid of the existence either of a North 
 Semitic (" Canaanite ") divine name Ialm. in 
 every respect identical with Yahwc. or of a 
 name Iaku-ilu "Yahu is God," equivalent to 
 the Hebrew s x'v (Joel), and a thousand years 
 older than the prophet Elijah's watchword on 
 .Mount Carmel : "Yahw£ is God' (1 Kings 
 xviii. :v.)) \ 
 
 That Barth's leading (p. i<i). Ia-ku-um-ilu, 
 which would he an abbreviation of Ia-ah-we-ilu, 
 is to be rejected a limine requires no proof. 
 Even Jensen (<>/>. cit., col. 491 sq.) notes that 
 it is "certainly in the highest degree probable 
 that both compounds contain the divine name 
 lahvch-Iahu" and rightly adds : " since then the 
 TatVU in the name cannot be Assyrian or Baby- 
 lonian, it is of foreign origin, and consequently 
 the whole name is in all probability 'Canaanite,' 
 and the bearer or bearers of it accordingly 
 • Canaanite(s)." He proceeds, however, to 
 sav : " Hut just as one could scarcely con- 
 elude from the presence of a .Midler or a 
 Schulze in Paris that the Germans were the
 
 Notes 141 
 
 prevailing people there, so the appearance of a 
 lawu-il(u) in Babylonia before 2000 b.c. need 
 not be taken to prove anything beyond the 
 fact that bearers of this name were occasion- 
 ally able to reach Babylonia." Here I may 
 confidently leave the unprejudiced reader to 
 decide whether the tasty analogy of Muller 
 and Schulze is only remotely justified in view 
 of all such names as Tarbi-ilu, lamlik-ilu, etc., 
 mentioned above on p. 70 — not to speak of 
 Hammurabi, Ammi-zaduga, ete. Besides, 
 even Jensen himself, as one can see, cannot 
 help leaving the divine name Iahve (Iahvu) 
 attested even before 2000 b.c ; cf., too, 
 Zimmern (KAT, third ed., p. 408 n. (5): 
 "Though a divine name— as is not unlikely 
 may be embodied in ia-u-um, possibly even the 
 name Iahu, Yahwe" this is sufficient for the 
 present, the acceptance of my reading Ia-(a-)ve 
 and the acknowledgment that my interpreta- 
 tion is correct may follow later. 
 
 Accordingly, it* the equation Ia-u-um = -irp, 
 in*., may stand, we are doubly justified in
 
 142 Babel and Bible 
 
 regarding the contemporaneous names ////- 
 idinnam "God has given," Sd-ili "belonging 
 to Cod. Ilu-amtahar "God I invoke," Ilu- 
 i/'irniii "God, turn again!" etc., as being 
 equivalent, as far as their signification is con- 
 cerned, to the corresponding Hebrew names 
 \r\:?a, bub, rs-rrsi". httiw. 
 
 To P. 72. The religion of the immigrant 
 Canaanite tribes quickly gave way before the* 
 many-membered Pantheon of the inhabitants 
 of the country, which was of Sumerian 
 origin, and had been estabhshed for many 
 centuries. —A similar thing may be observed, 
 almost two thousand years later, in the 
 ease of the subjects of the Kingdom of 
 Judah who were transferred to Babylon. Ii 
 is true that we find often enough in the 
 trade records of Achaemenid times, names of 
 Jewish exiles compounded with lava but 
 when the son of one Malaki-idva is called 
 Nergal-JEtir, or one JaSe'-Idva (Jesaia) names 
 his daughter Tdbat-{il)-I$hir, i.e.. " I shir (or 
 [star) is friendly," it is obvious how great was
 
 Notes 143 
 
 the influence which the native Babylonian 
 polytheism exerted over all who came within 
 its reach. 
 
 1*. 75. " Notwithstanding that free and 
 enlightened minds taught openly that Nergal 
 and Nebo, Moon-god and Sun-nod. the 
 Thunder-god Ramman, and all other gods 
 were one in Marduk, the god of light." 
 
 On these words of mine Jensen (op. (it., col. 
 M)X) felt called upon to make the following 
 remarks, which, as might be expected, have 
 been gladly spread abroad by Konig (p. 4:J ,vy. | 
 and others: "This would, of course, he one 
 of the most momentous discoveries that has 
 ever been made in the history of religion, and 
 it is. therefore, extremely regrettable that 
 Delitzsch conceals from us his authority. 
 Nothing of the kind is to he gathered from 
 the texts to which I have had access that 
 I think I can confidently affirm and we 
 urgently request him. therefore, as soon as 
 possible, to publish word for word the passage 
 which robs Israel of its greatest glory, in the
 
 144 Babel and Bible 
 
 brilliancy of which it has hitherto shone that 
 
 it alone of* all nations succeeded in attaining to 
 a pure monotheism." Provided Jensen abides 
 by what he has said. Israel is now indeed 
 robbed of this its greatest glory by the New- 
 Babylonian cuneiform tablet (81,11 .'J. 111). 
 which has been made known since its publication 
 in lcSiio by Theo. (i. Pinches in the Journal 
 of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. 
 Although only fragmentarily preserved, one 
 of the surviving pieces informs us that all, 
 or at any rate the highest, of the deities in the 
 Babylonian Pantheon are designated as one 
 with, and as one in. the god Marduk. I quote 
 here a few lines only : 
 *Nin-ib Marduk sa alii. 
 
 NSrgal Marduk sa kablu. 
 
 u Za-md-md Marduk Sa tahazi. 
 ,l Bil Marduk sa bch'itu u mitluktu. 
 
 Xuln'i Marduk sa nikasi. 
 
 ''Sin Marduk munammir musi. 
 
 ''Sidihis Marduk sa kindti. 
 
 u Addu Marduk sa zunnu.
 
 Notes 145 
 
 That is to say (<•/! the analogous texts 
 II. R. 58, No. 5 ; II. H. 54, No. 1 : III. R. 
 <>7. No. 1, etc.), the god Marduk is written 
 and called Ninib, as being Possessor of Power ; 
 Nerval or Zamama, as being Lord of the 
 
 Conflict Or Battle ; Bel, as being Possessor of 
 
 Lordship ; Nebo, as being Lord of Business ( ?) ; 
 Sin, as being Illuminator of the Night : Samas, 
 as being Lord of all that is just ; and Addu, 
 as being god of Rain. Marduk. accordingly, 
 is Ninib as well as Nereral, Moon-god as well 
 as Sun-god, and so on the names Ninib and 
 Nergal, Sin and Samas are simply different 
 ways of describing the one god Marduk ; they 
 are all one. with him and in him. Is not 
 this •• [ndo-Germanic monotheism, the doctrine 
 of a unity evolving itself out of an original 
 multiplicity " \ 
 
 Postscript (2nd January 1903). Jensen's 
 
 article: Friedrich Delitzsch und der babylon- 
 
 ische Moiiothcisniiis. in the Christlichc 1f r c/t. 
 
 1903, No. l (1st January), which he himself has 
 
 10
 
 146 Babel and Bible 
 
 just sent me, is wrong from beginning to end. 
 Certainly if the text read Marduk a Nin-ib sa 
 alii Marduk a Nergal sa kablu, etc. But it 
 docs not run s<>! The whole of Jensen's pro- 
 nouncement seems to me to be a hasty 
 retreat. Let the future decide!
 
 BABEL AND BIBLE 
 
 Second Xccturc 
 
 Delivered before the Members of the Detttsche Orient- 
 Geselhehaft in the presence of the German Emperor 
 
 i;v 
 
 FRIED RICH Dl.LITZSCH 
 
 ORDINARY I>KOPF.SSOR OF ORIENTAL PHILOLOGY AND 
 ASSYRIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
 
 PREFACE TO LECTURE II 
 
 Who is this coming from Edom ? in bright- 
 red garments from Bosra '. 
 
 Splendid in his raiment, vaunting himself 
 in the fulness of his strength ? 
 
 •• It is I (Yahwe), that speak in righteousness, 
 that am mighty to save!" 
 
 Why is there red on thy raiment, and thy 
 garments like his that treadeth the wine-press '. 
 
 " The wine-press have I trodden alone, and 
 of the peoples there was no man with me. 
 
 And I trod them in mine anger and trampled 
 them in my fury, 
 
 And their life-stream besprinkled my gar- 
 ments, and all my raiment have I defiled. 
 
 For a day of vengeance was in my mind and 
 my year of release had come. 
 
 147
 
 I4-H Babel and Bible 
 
 And I looked, because there was no helper, 
 and was stupefied, because there was no 
 supporter. 
 
 But mine own arm wrought help tor me, 
 and my fury was my support, 
 
 And 1 trod down the peoples in mine anger, 
 and made them drunk with my fury. 
 
 And spilled their lite-stream on the earth." 
 
 Surely, both in diction, style, and spirit 
 a genuine Bedouin battle-song and ode of 
 triumph. No! This passage (Is. lxiii. 1-6), 
 with a hundred others from prophetical litera- 
 ture that are full of unquenchable hatred 
 directed against surrounding peoples againsl 
 Edom and Moab, Assyria and Babylon, Tyre 
 and Egypt that for the most part, too, are 
 masterpieces of Hebrew rhetoric, must repre- 
 sent the ethical prophets and prophecy of 
 Israel, even at their most advanced stage! 
 The outcome of certain definite events, these 
 outbursts of political jealousy and of a pas- 
 sionate hatred, which, judged from the human 
 standpoint, may. perhaps, be quite natural and
 
 Preface 1 4.9 
 
 comprehensible enough such outbursts on 
 the part of generations long since passed 
 away must still do duty for us children of 
 
 * ** 
 
 the twentieth century after Christ, for the 
 Christian peoples of the West, as a Hook of 
 Religion, for morality, and for edification ! 
 Instead of immersing ourselves in " thankful 
 wonder" at the providential guidance shewn 
 by God in the case of our own people, from 
 the earliest times of primitive Germany until 
 to-day, we persist either from ignorance, 
 indifference, or infatuation in ascribing to 
 those old-Israelitish oracles a ' revealed ' char- 
 acter which cannot be maintained, either in 
 the light of science, or in that of religion or 
 ethics. The more deeply I immerse myself 
 in the spirit of the prophetic literature of the 
 Old Testament, the greater becomes my mis- 
 trust of Yahwc. who butchers the peoples with 
 the sword of his insatiable anger ; who has but 
 one favourite child, while he consigns all other 
 nations to darkness, shame, and ruin : who 
 uttered those words to Abraham (Gen. xii. .'*):
 
 150 Babel and Bible 
 
 •• I will bless those- who bless thee, and those 
 who curse thee will I curse" I take refuge 
 in Him who. in life and death, taught : " Bless 
 those who curse you": and. full of confidence 
 and joy, and of earnest striving after moral 
 perfection, put my trust in the Cod to Whom 
 Jesus has taught us to pray the Cod Who is 
 a loving and righteous Father over all men on 
 earth. 
 
 FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH. 
 
 (ll VRLOTTENBURG, 
 
 1st March L.Q03.
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 What good purpose is served by the on- 
 slaught directed against the choice of "Babel 
 and Bible" as a title, since logic, at any rate. 
 imperatively demands such a sequence of 
 terms '. And how can anyone imagine it 
 possible to ban discussion of* these grave and 
 so far as the Bible is concerned — all-em- 
 bracing questions with the shibboleth of 
 ' original revelation,' discredited as the latter 
 term already is by a forgotten verse 3 of the 
 Old Testament \ Moreover, does "the ethical 
 monotheism of Israel " in its essential character 
 as "a real revelation of the living God" really 
 form, after all. such an unassailable, such a 
 triumphant bulwark, in the intellectual conflict 
 which Babylon has kindled in our days \ It is 
 certainly a pity that so many people should 
 
 1 Set- p. jo;. 
 
 151
 
 *52 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 allow the joy naturally felt over the rich harvest 
 that Babylon is continually offerine for the 
 * elucidation and illustration " of the Bible, to be 
 turned into gal] and bitterness by a prejudiced 
 regard for dogmatic considerations — to the 
 extent, indeed, of ignoring its value and utility 
 altogether. And yet what a debt of gratitude 
 has been laid upon all readers and interpreters 
 of the Bible for the new knowledge already 
 
 Fig. 52. — Ruin-mounds <>f Cuthah. 
 
 made and continually being made -avail- 
 able for us by the laborious excavations on the 
 sites of Babylonian and Assyrian ruins! 
 
 For my own part, I avoid, on principle, ever 
 speaking of 'corroborations' of the Bible. 
 For in truth the Old Testament would be 
 badly served as a source of ancient history if 
 it first needed corroboration at every turn 
 by the cuneiform monuments. When, how-
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 *53 
 
 ever, the Biblical book <>l* Kings informs 
 us ('2 Kings xvii. 30) that the inhabitants 
 of a certain town Cuthah, who had been 
 settled in Samaria, worshipped the god 
 Nergal and when we now not only know 
 
 
 --££2 
 
 ^ ir^^rzsr^^^ 
 
 i t£%'-*m 
 
 Fig. 53. — Assyrian letter from Chalach. 
 
 that this Babylonian town of Cuthah lies 
 buried beneath the rubbish-mound of Tell 
 Ibrahim (fig. 52), seven hours' journey north 
 west of Babylon, but also that a cuneiform 
 text expressly declares that the local deity of 
 Cuthah was called Nergal, it is something to
 
 x 54 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 be grateful for: and though there seemed 
 small likelihood that the city and district of 
 Chalach, to which a portion of the Israelites 
 taken captive by Sargon were transplanted 
 
 mm 
 
 ** 
 >a^ 
 
 
 Fig. 54. — Tlie Black Obelisk of Salmanassar II. (StiO Si'.", r. < . . 
 
 (2 Kings wii. <i. xviii. 11). would ever be 
 discovered, yet it is worth noting that we 
 now possess out of Ashm-hani-pal's library at 
 Nineveh a letter from Chalach (ti»> - . .*>.'}). in
 
 Babel and Rib] 
 
 c 
 
 155 
 
 which a certain Marduk-nadin-achi, emphasiz- 
 ing his proved unbroken loyalty, prays the 
 king to procure the restoration to him of 
 
 Mt'.r 1 iiaii.aw in 
 
 ir 
 
 m h : \ 
 
 iim 
 
 Figs. 55 and 56.— Israelites of the time of Jehu (840 B.C. . 
 
 his estate, which the king's father had pre- 
 sented to him. and which had afforded him 
 the means of livelihood during fourteen years, 
 until he had been deprived of it lately by the
 
 i 5 6 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 ffovernor of the land Mashalzi. With respect 
 to the inhabitants of the northern [sraelitish 
 kingdom, whom the famous Black Obelisk of 
 
 I '-■ A 
 
 Figs. 57 and 58.— Israelites of the time of Jehu (840 B.C.). 
 
 Shalmaneser 1 1, (fig. 54) brings so vividly before 
 our eves in its second tier of bas-reliefs (fi^s. 
 55 58) they are the ambassadors of King
 
 Babel and Bible 157 
 
 Jehu (840 B.C.) with various sorts of presents. 
 We now know all three districts where the 
 'Ten Tribes found their grave : Chalach some- 
 what east of the mountainous region, named 
 Arrapaehitis. where the sources of the upper 
 Zab take their rise : the district of Gozail on 
 the bank of the Chabor, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Xisibis: and the towns of Media. 
 Until quite recently the capture and sack 
 of the Egyptian Thebes mentioned by the 
 prophet Xahnm (eh. iii. 8 sqq.) remained a 
 riddle, in so far that no one was able to say 
 to what event the prophet's words had refer- 
 ence : "Art thou (Nineveh) better than \o- 
 Amon {i.e. Thebes), that lies among the Nile- 
 streams, (that has) the water round about her 
 . . .'. She also had to go into captivity, her 
 children also were dashed to pieces at the 
 corners of all streets, and over her honourable 
 men they cast the lot. and all her magnates 
 were bound with chains." Then came the 
 discovery at Nineveh of the magnificent dec- 
 agonal clay prism of Ashur-bani-pa] (fig. 59),
 
 ■ 5 8 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 which in its second column narrates that it 
 was Ashur-bani-pal who. while on the way from 
 Memphis in hot pursuit of the Egyptian King 
 I'rdamane. readied Thebes, sacked it. and 
 carried away from Thebes to Nineveh, the city 
 of his sovereignty, silver, gold, precious stones, 
 the whole of the palace-treasures, the inhabi- 
 
 I ! . 59. — Decagonal clay prism of Ashur-bani-pal. 
 
 tants, men and women — a vast. Immeasurable 
 booty. 
 
 Then, again, how great a service has 
 been rendered by the cuneiform literature for 
 the elucidation of the language of the Old 
 Testament! The Old Testament repeatedly 
 mentions an animal called rc'tiu. a wild un- 
 tamable creature, equipped with terrible
 
 Babel and Bible i 59 
 
 horns (IV xxii. 22), nearly related to the hull 
 (Deut. xxxiii. 17: Ps. xxix. (i ; cf. Isaiah 
 xxxiv. 7), the idea of employing which like a 
 tame ox for the work of the fields is to the 
 author of the Hook of .Job (xxxix. 9 sqq.) some- 
 thing altogether terrible and inconceivable : 
 " Will the re cm be content to serve thee, or 
 will he lodge in thy crib '. Canst thou bind 
 the re Pin with the guiding-rope in thy furrow. 
 or will he harrow the valleys after thee?' 1 
 Though the buffalo roams in herds about the 
 woods on the farther side of the Jordan at the 
 present day, it was not until shortly before 
 the commencement of our era that the species 
 migrated from Arachosia to hither Asia: it has 
 therefore been customary, on the strength of 
 a comparison with the Arabic USUS loquendi, 
 which designates the antelope "wild ox,' 
 and bestows on the antelope leukoryx the 
 name of rim, to understand by the Hebrew 
 re cm this particular kind of antelope. How- 
 it could have occurred to a poet, however, to 
 imagine this creature (tig. 60) which. In spite
 
 i6o 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 of its Long, pointed horns, is still only a deli- 
 cately formed, tender-eyed antelope as yoked 
 to a plough, and then to shudder at the very 
 thought of such a thing, was not explained. 
 The cuneiform inscriptions have taught us 
 
 Fig. 60. A-iitelojie leukoryx. 
 
 what the re mu really was: it was a powerful, 
 fierce-looking wild ox. equipped with strong 
 curved horns, an animal of the forest and the 
 mountain, accustomed to scale the peaks of 
 the highest hills, a creature endowed with 
 immense bodily strength, to hunt which, as in
 
 Babel and Bib] 
 
 61 
 
 the case of the lion, was by reason of its 
 dangerous character a favourite pastime of the 
 Assyrian monarchs. The existence of this 
 animal, which is nearly related to the bos urns 
 of Caesar {Bell. Gall., vi. 28), as well as to the 
 bison, is. so far as the district of* the Lebanon 
 is concerned, made certain by natural history; 
 
 V 
 
 .--U^ 
 
 *-*>.- 
 
 Fig 61. — Assyrian representation of the wild ox C 1 ».»■'< -in). 
 
 the cuneiform inscriptions make mention of 
 
 the revm times without number, and the 
 
 alabaster reliefs of the Assyrian royal palaces 
 
 (fig. < - l) set it before our eyes in palpable 
 
 shape. In the matter of the re cm the German 
 
 Oriental Society has earned special distinction. 
 
 For King Nebuchadnezzar relates thai he 
 
 adorned the city-gate of Babylon, which was 
 
 11
 
 1 62 Babel and Bible 
 
 dedicated to the goddess Ishtar. with bricks. 
 on which rSmu and immense serpents, standing 
 erect, were depicted : and the recovery of this 
 [shtar-Gate, together with the work of laying 
 it bare to a depth of fourteen metres, where 
 the water-level begins, constitutes one of the 
 
 
 1 
 
 h 
 
 
 
 Fig. 62. — Babil, the northernmost ruin-mound of Babylon. 
 
 most important achievements of recent years 
 in our excavations on the site of Babylon. 
 
 Hail to thee. () mound of Babil (fig. (12). 
 to thee and thy companions on the palm-girt 
 hanks of Euphrates ! Mow the pulses quicken 
 when, after long weary weeks of work with 
 pick and spade, under the scorching rays of an
 
 Babel and Bible 163 
 
 Eastern sun. the long-sought building is dis- 
 closed—when, inscribed on an immense slab 
 
 of stone, the name * Ishtar-Gate' is read, and, 
 pieee by piece, the great double-gate of 
 Babylon, flanked northward by three mighty 
 toweis. emerges from the bowels of the earth 
 in splendid preservation. Whichever way we 
 look, on the wall-surfaces of the towers as well 
 as of the Gateway-passages, every part swarms 
 with reliefs, remu coloured on their surface 
 with enamels standing out against the back- 
 ground of dee}) blue (fig. C>:$). "Mightily the 
 wild ox strides with long step, and neck 
 proudly raised, with horns bent threateningly 
 forward, ears turned back, nostrils dilated : 
 the muscles tense and swollen, the tail lifted 
 and falling away in a vigorous curve — all as 
 nature dictates, yet enhanced by an air of 
 nobility." If the smooth skin is white, the 
 horns and hoofs are of a brilliant golden hue : 
 if the skin is yellow, then both are of malachite- 
 green, while the mane in each cast- is painted 
 a deep blue. Of truly noble appearance, how-
 
 1 64. 
 
 Babel and Bibl 
 
 e 
 
 ever, is a white bull in relief, of which not 
 merely the horns and hoofs, but the mane as 
 well, are painted sap-green. 
 
 Such is the re cm of the date of Ishtar. 
 through which the Procession-Street of Marduk 
 led. a worthy companion to the well-known 
 
 Fig. 63. — The wild ox Re'em , relief in enamelled bricks 
 from Babylon. 
 
 -lion of Babylon' 1 (fig. 04). which adorned 
 that famous street. 
 
 And besides this, the German Oriental 
 
 Society has also presented Biblical Science 
 with another animal of the rarest kind, with 
 a fabulous beast which our religious training
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 165 
 
 has made us well acquainted with, and which 
 must make a fascinating impression on all 
 who approach the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar 
 through the Islitar-Ciate— I mean the Dragon 
 of Babel (fig. 65). 
 
 •• With neck extended far forward, and 
 
 Fig. 64. — Tho "lion of Babylon." 
 
 poison-threatening glance, the monster strides 
 along '* -it is a serpent, as the long double- 
 tongued head, the long scaly body, and the 
 serpentine tail clearly shew ; but it also, at 
 the same time, possesses the fore-legs of the 
 panther, while its hind legs are armed with
 
 i66 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 immense talons : and in addition it carries 
 Long straight horns on the head, and a scorpion- 
 sting at the end of the tail. 1 All, all be 
 thanked, who faithfully and truly co-operate 
 for the acquisition of such choice, and archaeo- 
 logically all-important, discoveries ! 
 
 Fig. 65. -The dragon of Babel. 
 
 Hut quite apart from many such ex- 
 planatory and illustrative details. Assyriology 
 has re-established the credit of* The Tradition 
 of the Old Testament Text, which has so 
 long and so fiercely been assailed. For while 
 
 1 See NOt<-. p. 221,
 
 Babel and Bible 167 
 
 A.ssyriology is itself ever being con Iron ted by 
 newly-discovered texts of growing difficulty, 
 lull of rare words and modes of speech, it can 
 understand that within the Old Testament 
 Scriptures also there are plenty of words and 
 expressions that occur but once or rarely; it 
 rejoices in the fact, and makes it its business 
 to attempt to explain such from the context, 
 and, in not a few cases, reaps the reward of 
 its labour by discovering the occurrence of the 
 self-same words and phrases in Assyrian. It 
 perceives in this way how fatal a mistake it has 
 been for modern exegesis to quibble about such 
 rare words and difficult passages, to 'emend' 
 them, and only too often to substitute plati- 
 tudes. In truth, every friend of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures should strenuously co- 
 operate in contributing to help unearth the 
 thousands of clay-tablets and all the other sorts 
 of literary monuments which lie buried in 
 Babylon, and which our Expedition will set to 
 work to excavate, as soon as the initial tasks 
 that have been imposed upon it have been
 
 1 68 Babel and Bible 
 
 successfully discharged. By so doing, he will 
 help to promote a more notable and rapid 
 advance in the Linguistic elucidation of the 
 ( )ld Testament than lias been possible for two 
 thousand years. 
 
 Even whole narratives of the Old Testament 
 receive their elucidation from Babylon. From 
 youth we have been burdened bv tradition with 
 the false notion of a brutalized Nebuchadnezzar, 
 because the Book of Daniel narrates (eh. iv. 
 29-37) how the King of Babel wandered about 
 on the roof of his palace, and. after glorying 
 again in the majesty of the city he had built, 
 was the recipient of a prophecy from Heaven 
 to the effect that he should be driven out from 
 human society, and should live with and after 
 the manner of the beasts of the field. There- 
 upon, we are told. King Nebuchadnezzar did 
 cit grass in the wilderness like the oxen, wet 
 with the dew of heaven, while his hair grew 
 like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds" 
 claws. Yet no instructor of youth, at least 
 since the appearance of Eberhard Schrader's
 
 Babel and Bible 169 
 
 essay. " Concerning the Madness of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar," 1 ought ever to have taught this story 
 without pointing out that the purer and more 
 original form of it lias long been known to us 
 in a Chaldsean legend preserved in Abydenus. 
 This story narrates that Nebuchadnezzar, 
 having attained the summit of his power, 
 ascended the roof of the royal castle, and, 
 inspired by a god. cried out and said: "I, 
 Nebuchadnezzar (Nabukodrosor), announce to 
 you the coming of a calamity which neither 
 Bel nor queen Beltis can persuade the Fates 
 to avert. There shall come a Persian (i.e. 
 Cyrus) .... and bring you into slavery. 
 Would that, before the citizens perish, he 
 might be hunted through the desert where 
 neither city nor track of man could be found, 
 but where rather wild beasts seek their food, 
 and birds fly : would that among mountain 
 clefts and gorges he might wander alone. 
 But as for me .... may I encounter a 
 happier end." Who could fail to observe here 
 1 See Note, p, 221,
 
 170 Babel and Bible 
 
 that the Hebrew writer lias lively altered the 
 Babylonian legend, especially since in verse 19 
 
 he lets it clearly be seen that he was quite well 
 acquainted with its original wording! What 
 Nebuchadnezzar desires for the enemy of the 
 Chaldeeans, the author of* the- collection of 
 pamphlets (which abound in mistakes and 
 omissions 1 embodied in the Hook of Daniel 
 attributes to the experience of Nebuchadnezzar 
 himself, in order to bring home by concrete 
 example, and in the strongest possible manner. 
 to his countrymen, persecuted by Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, the truth that the Lord God can 
 utterly abase even the most powerful king 
 who resists Yalnve. 
 
 When shall we at last learn to distinguish, 
 within the Old Testament, form from sub- 
 stance \ There are two profound lessons 
 that the author of the Book of .Jonah preaches 
 to ns viz., that no one can escape God, and 
 thai no mortal may dare attempt to regulate 
 or even set a limit to God's compassion or 
 loner-suffering : but the form in which these 
 
 \
 
 Babel and Bible 171 
 
 truths are clothed is human, altogether and 
 fantastically Oriental : and if we at this time 
 of day were willing to believe that Jonah in 
 the fishs belly uttered a prayer made up of 
 a mosaic of Psalm-passages which were com- 
 posed in part some centuries after the fall of 
 Nineveh, or that the King of Nineveh's re- 
 pentance was so profound that he commanded 
 even the oxen and sheep to clothe themselves 
 with sackcloth, we should ourselves be sinning 
 against the intelligence that God has bestowed 
 upon us. But all such features are mere 
 details that fade into the background before 
 the far intenser light. 
 
 It was a remarkably happy idea which was 
 conceived by the representatives of the 
 governing bodies of the German churches, 
 who went out to Jerusalem as the Kaiser's 
 guests to be present at the dedication of 
 the Church of the Redeemer — the idea of 
 founding n "German Evangelical Institute 
 of Archaeology for the Holy Land."' 
 
 Oh. may our young theologians there learn
 
 172 Babel and Bible 
 
 to acquaint themselves thoroughly— and that 
 
 not merely in the towns, but, best of all. in 
 the desert — with the manners and customs 
 of the Bedouin, who are still the self-same 
 people that they were in the time of old 
 Israel : and may they there deeply immerse 
 themselves in the points of view and modes 
 of presentment characteristic of the Orient : 
 may they listen, in the tents of the desert, 
 to story-tellers, or hear the descriptions and 
 narrations of the sons of the desert themselves, 
 full of vivid and unrestrained, spontaneous 
 fancy, which all too often unwittingly trans- 
 gresses the limits of fact ! There will then 
 be disclosed to them that w r orld from which 
 alone Oriental works like the Old and (to 
 some extent also) the New Testament can be 
 explained — there will fall as it were scales 
 from their eyes, and the "Midnight Sun v 
 will be transformed into morning light! 
 
 If even the Orient of to-day — w r herever we 
 go and stay, listen and look — offers such an 
 1 See Note, p. -.222.
 
 Babel and Bible 173 
 
 abundance of elucidatory material for the 
 Bible, how much more must this be true of 
 the study of the ancient literature of the 
 Babylonians and Assyrians, which indeed is 
 to some extent contemporary with the Old 
 Testament ! Everywhere we meet with 
 more or less significant agreements on the 
 part of the two literatures, which are closely 
 related in respect of language and style, 
 thought and modes of presentment. I 
 call to mind the sacred character of the 
 numbers seven and three, to which both 
 testify. "O Land, Land, Land, hear the 
 word of Yahwe," cries Jeremiah (ch. xxii. 
 21)); "Hail, hail, hail to the King, my 
 Lord " is the formula with which more than 
 one Assyrian scribe begins his letter. And 
 just as the Seraphim before God's Throne cry, 
 one to the other : " Holy, holy, holy is Yahwe 
 Sabaoth " (Is. vi. 3), so we read at the begin- 
 ning of the Assyrian Temple-liturgies a thrice- 
 repeated astir, i.e., ' Salvation-bringing ' or 
 ' holy/ According to Babylonian ideas magic
 
 174 Babel and Bible 
 
 power belongs in a special degree to human 
 spittle. Spittle and magic form closely con- 
 nected ideas, and in tact spittle was regarded 
 as possessing death-bringing as well as lit'c- 
 bestowing force. "O Marduk!" runs a 
 petition in a prayer to the city-deity of Babel 
 -" () Marduk ! To thee belongs the spittle of 
 lite!" Who can tail in such a connection to 
 recall New Testament accounts such as that 
 which narrates that Jesus took the deal' and 
 dumb man aside, put his fingers into his ears, 
 spat, and with the spittle touched his tongue, 
 and said : " Ephphatha" " Be thou opened ! " 
 ( Mark vii. 33 sqq. : cf. viii. 2.'i : John i.\. (J sqq.) 
 With a pillar of smoke by day. and a pillar of 
 fire by night. Yahwe accompanied his people on 
 the journey through the desert : but to Esar- 
 haddon also, the King of Assyria, there is 
 given, before his departure for the war, the 
 prophetic assurance: "I, Ishtar of Arbela. 
 will make to ascend on thy right hand smoke, 
 and on thy left hand tire." "Set thy house 
 in order" says the prophet Isaiah to King
 
 Babel and Bible 175 
 
 Hezekiah, who is sick unto death — "because 
 thou art dead, and shaft not live" (Is. xxxviii. 
 1 ) : and the Assyrian general Kudurru, to 
 whom the King despatches His Majesty's 
 physician-in-ordinary, thanks his King with the 
 words: " I was dead, but the King, my Lord, 
 lias made me live" (K. 81, 12). The soul 
 of one who is sick unto death dwells already 
 in the under-world, has journeyed already 
 down to the grave (Ps. xxx. 3). Therefore 
 the goddess Gula, the patroness of physicians, 
 hears the title of " Awakener of the Dead : 
 an Oriental physician, who did not awaken 
 the dead, would be regarded as no phy- 
 sician. How utterly alike everything is in 
 Babylon and Bible! Here as there we are 
 struck by the fondness shewn for illustrat- 
 ing speech and thought by symbolic action 
 (1 call to mind the scapegoat which was 
 driven into the wilderness): here as there 
 we meet with the same world of perpetual 
 wonders and signs : of continuous revelation, 
 principally in dreams: the same naive repre-
 
 176 Babel and Bible 
 
 sentations of the godhead ; just as in Babylon 
 the gods eat and drink, and even betake them- 
 selves to rest, so Yahwe goes forth in the cool 
 of the evening to walk in Paradise, and takes 
 pleasure in the sweet scent of Noah's sacrifice; 
 and just as in the Old Testament Yahwe speaks 
 to Moses and Aaron, and to all the prophets, 
 so the gods in Babylon spoke to men. either 
 directly or through the month of their priests 
 and inspired prophets and prophetesses. 
 
 Revelation indeed ! A greater mistake on 
 the part of the human mind can hardly be 
 conceived than this, that for long centuries the 
 priceless remains of the old Hebrew literature 
 collected in the Old Testament were regarded 
 collectively as a religious canon, a revealed 
 book of religion, in spite- of the tact that it 
 includes such literature as the Hook of Job, 
 which, with words that in places border on 
 blasphemy, casts doubts on the very existence 
 of a just (.<>d. together with absolutely secular 
 productions, such as wedding songs (the so- 
 called Song of Solomon). In the charming
 
 Babel and Bible 177 
 
 love-song, Ps. xlv., we read, vv. 11 sqq. : 
 '• Hearken, O daughter, and attend, and 
 incline thine ear, and forget thine own people 
 and thy father's house; and should the king 
 long for thy beauty, for he is thy lord, then 
 prostrate thyself before him." 
 
 The thought may suggest itself, what must 
 have been the result when books and passages 
 like these were interpreted theologically, and 
 even messianically (cf. Ep. to Hebrews i. 8 sq.) ? 
 It can hardly have been otherwise than 
 with the mediaeval Catholic monk, who, if he 
 met with the Latin word maria, 'seas,' while 
 reading in the Psalter, crossed himself in 
 honour of the Virgin Mary. But even for the 
 remaining portions of the Old Testament 
 literature, all scientifically trained theologians, 
 Evangelical as well as Catholic, have aban- 
 doned the doctrine of verbal inspiration: the 
 Old Testament is itself responsible for this, 
 with its numberless contradictory double nar- 
 ratives, and with the absolutely inextricable 
 confusion that has arisen in the five books
 
 178 Babel and Bible 
 
 of Moses, through constant revision and inter- 
 change. 
 
 To be quite frank, beyond the revelation of 
 God that we, each one of ns. carry in our own 
 conscience, we have certainly not deserved a 
 further personal Divine revelation. For up to 
 this dav mankind has absolutely trifled with 
 the original and most special revelation of the 
 holy God, the ten words written on the Tables 
 of the Law from Sinai. "The Word ye shall 
 let stand": in spite of this, in I)r Martin 
 Luther's Small Catechism, according to which 
 our children are instructed, the whole of the 
 second commandment : " Thou shaft not make 
 to thyself any image or likeness." has been sup- 
 pressed, and in place of it the last command- 
 ment, or rather negative command, concerning 
 the so-called evil desire has been severed into 
 two parts, a division which could easily be seen 
 to be inadmissible from a comparison of Exodus 
 XX. 1 7 and Dent. v. 18. Thus the command- 
 ment to honour father and mother is made to 
 be not the fourth, but the fifth, and so on.
 
 Babel and Bible 179 
 
 And in the Roman Catholic catechism, which 
 has exactly the same numeration of the Ten 
 Commandments, the first commandment ap- 
 peals in an expanded form, and runs thus : 
 " Thou shalt have no strange gods beside me ; 
 thon shalt not make to thyself any graven 
 image to worship it"; but immediately after this 
 it is added : Images of Christ, of the Mother 
 of God, and of all Saints we nevertheless make, 
 because we do not worship, but only honour 
 them— in which connection it lias been over- 
 looked that the Lord God says expressly : 
 Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven 
 image to worship and to honour it. (See also 
 Dent. iv. 1G.) 
 
 But the ease is even worse if, for the time 
 being, we assume the standpoint of the strict 
 letter of the law ; for then Moses himself will 
 have to bear the terrible reproach — a reproach 
 ascending in one unanimous shriek from all 
 peoples of the earth, who ask and seek after 
 God. Let it be remembered, it is Almighty 
 God, "the All-embracing, All-sustaining," the
 
 180 Babel and Bible 
 
 [nvisible, the Unapproachable One. who. amid 
 thunder and lightning, from the midst of cloud 
 and fire, announces I lis most holy will; Yahwe, 
 
 " the Hock whose deeds are perfect " (Deut. 
 wxii. 4). it is who chisels with His own hands 
 two tables of stone and engraves on them with 
 His own finffers, which hold the world in 
 equilibrium, the Ten Commandments then 
 .Moses in a fit of aimer hurls the eternal tables 
 of the eternal God from him. and shivers them 
 into a thousand fragments. Further, this Cod 
 writes a second time other tables which set 
 forth His first and last autograph revelation to 
 mankind. Gods unique palpable revelation, 
 and Moses does not think it worth while to 
 impart to his people, and thereby to mankind. 
 a literal and exact account of what God en- 
 graved on those tables. 
 
 We scholars would count it a grave reproach 
 to any one of ourselves to render falsely or 
 inaccurately, even in a single letter, the in- 
 scription of any one. even a herdsman, who 
 had perpetuated his name on a stone of the
 
 Babel and Bible 181 
 
 Sinaitic peninsula ; but Moses, when lie onee 
 more, before the crossing of the Jordan, incul- 
 cates the Ten Commandments to his people, 
 not only changes individual words, transposes 
 words and clauses and more of the like, but 
 even replaces one long passage by another, 
 although he emphatically and expressly asserts 
 that this also corresponds to the very letter of 
 God's words. And so to this day we know 
 not whether God commanded the Sabbath 
 Day to be hallowed in remembrance of I lis 
 own rest after the six days' work of creation 
 (Ex. xx. 11 ; cf. xxxi. 17). or as a memorial 
 of the unending compulsory labour of the 
 people during their sojourn in Egypt (Deut. 
 v. 14 sq. ). And the same remissness in regard 
 to God\s most holy testament to men is also 
 to be deplored in other respects. We are still 
 seeking for the mountain in the Sinai range 
 which corresponds in all respects with what the 
 account tells us: and while we are most fully 
 informed about numberless trifling details, such 
 as. for example, the rings and rods of the chest
 
 1 82 Babel and Bible 
 
 which served to protect the two tables, -with 
 regard to their external appearance and char- 
 acter, apart Prom the fact that they had writing 
 
 on botli sides, we learn nothing whatever. 
 
 When the Philistines capture the Ark of 
 the Covenant and bring it into the temple of 
 Dagon at Ashdod, on the very next morning 
 the image of the god Dagon lies shattered 
 before the Ark of Yahwe (1 Sam. v. sqg.). 
 When after this it is brought to the little 
 Jewish frontier hamlet of Beth-Shemesh, and 
 the inhabitants peep at it. seventy — according 
 to another account 50,000 (!) men pay the 
 penalty with death (1 Sam. vi. 1<)). Even one 
 who touches the Ark by mistake is slain by 
 Yahwe's wrath (2 Sam. \ i. 7 sq.). As soon. 
 however, as we set foot on the firm ground of 
 historical times, history is silent. We are in- 
 formed in minute- detail that the Chaldaeans 
 carried oil' the Temple treasures of Jerusalem, 
 and the gold, silver, and copper \cssels of the 
 Temple, the hasins and howls and shovels 
 (2 Kings xxiv. 13, xxv. L3 sijtj. ). but for the
 
 Babel and Bible 183 
 
 Ark, with the two divine Tables, nobody in- 
 quires ; the Temple perishes in flames, but to 
 the fate of the two wonder-working Tables of 
 Almighty God — of this greatest of the sacred 
 possessions of the Old Covenant — there is 
 devoted not a single word. 
 
 We will not stop to investigate the cause of 
 all this, but will only point out that Moses 
 is acquitted by Pentateuchal criticism of the 
 reproach which, according to the strict letter 
 of the law, lies upon him. For, as, in com- 
 pany with many other scholars, Dillmann 
 (Kommentar zu dot Bilchern Exodus und 
 Leviticus, p. 201) — who is esteemed as an 
 authority even on the Catholic side — clearly 
 establishes, the Ten Commandments lie before 
 us in two different Recensions, which do not 
 go back immediately to the tables but to other 
 and distinct categories. And in the same way 
 also all the other so-called Mosaic laws have 
 been handed down to us in two relatively 
 late Recensions, which for centuries existed 
 independently in distinct forms: and by this
 
 [84 Babel and Bible 
 
 means all differences receive their explanation 
 easily enough. Moreover, we also know tins, 
 that the so-called Mosaic laws, institutions, and 
 customs exhibit those elements which partly 
 from a long antiquity possessed validity among 
 the Children of Israel, but partly also only 
 secured valid recognition after the settlement 
 of the people in Canaan, and were then referred 
 back en bloc to Moses, and. with a view to 
 enhancing their sacred character and inviol- 
 ability, to Yahwe himself, as the supreme Law- 
 giver. We observe exactly the same process 
 at work in the laws of other old peoples -I 
 recall, at the moment, the law-hook of Maim 
 —and the case is exactly the same with the 
 <_;i\ ing of the law among the Babylonians. 
 
 When, last year. I had the honour of speak- 
 ing in this place, I pointed out that we find a 
 highly-developed organization of law already 
 in existence in Babylonia about 22.50 B.C., 1 and 
 I spoke of a great collection of laws of Ham- 
 murabi, which determines the civil law in all 
 
 1 Sec p. 35.
 
 Babel and Bible 185 
 
 its departments. What could then only be 
 inferred from scattered though unmistakable 
 details — viz., the existence of such a code — lias 
 now been demonstrated by the discovery of 
 Hammurabi's o-reat Law-Hook in the original ; 
 and by this great find science, and particularly 
 the history of culture, and comparative juris- 
 prudence, have been enriched with a treasure 
 of the utmost value. It was among the ruins 
 of the Acropolis of Susa that at the end 
 of the year 1901 and the beginning of 1002 
 the French archaeologist de Morgan and the 
 Dominican monk Scheil had the good fortune 
 to find a diorite block of King Hammurabi, 
 '1\ metres high, which had obviously been 
 carried off with other war-booty from Babylon 
 by the Elamites ; and on it were found 
 engraved, in the most careful manner. 282 
 paragraphs of laws (fig. 66). They consist, as 
 the King himself says, of" Laws of righteous- 
 ness, which Hammurabi, the mighty and just 
 King, has established for the advantage and 
 benefit of the weak and oppressed, the widows
 
 i86 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 I
 
 Babel and Bible 187 
 
 and orphans." " Let the wronged," we read, 
 ** who lias a lawsuit, read this my written 
 monument, and examine my precious words ; 
 let my written monument explain to him the 
 position of the law, and let him see the decision 
 of it ! With heart breathing freely again, let 
 him then exclaim: 'Hammurabi is a Lord 
 who is like a just father to his people.' 
 
 Init though the King says that he, the Sun 
 of Babylon, the Light streaming over south 
 and north of his land, has written down these 
 laws, yet he, on his part, has received them 
 from the supreme Judge of Heaven and 
 Earth, the Possessor of everything that is just 
 and right, the Sun-god ; and therefore the 
 mighty Law-Stone bears on its summit the 
 beautiful bas-relief (fig. 67) showing Ham- 
 murabi as lie receives the revelation of the 
 laws from Shamash, the supreme Law-giver. 
 
 With the giving of the Law from Sinai. 
 the conclusion of a so-called covenant by 
 
 Yahwewith Israel, it is in no respeel different. 
 
 In spite of this sacrosanct bond the purely
 
 i88 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 human origin and character of the Esraelitish 
 Law is sufficiently obvious! Or, would any 
 one have the temerity to assert that the thrice- 
 holy God, who with his own fingers engraved 
 
 on the table of stone the words 16 tiktdl, 
 
 Fig. ij?.- — Hammurabi receiving the Laws From the Sun-god, 
 
 "Thou shalt not kill."' could in the very same 
 breath have sanctioned Blood-Revenge, which 
 to this day lies like a curse on the peoples 
 of the East, especially as Hammurabi had 
 already "almost wholly eradicated all traces
 
 Babel and Bible 189 
 
 of it " ? Or, would any one be found ready to 
 cling to the notion that circumcision, which 
 has been customary from ancient times among 
 the Egyptians and Arabian Bedouin, is the 
 sign of a special covenant of God with Israel? 
 In accordance with Oriental modes of thought 
 and speech, we can very well understand the 
 fact that the numerous prescriptions for all 
 possible — even the minutest — events of daily 
 life (as, for instance, in the case when a 
 vicious ox gores a human being, or another 
 ox, to death: Exodus xxi. 28 sq.. 35 syy.), the 
 dietary laws, the minute medical regulations 
 governing diseases of the skin, the directions 
 respecting the priestly wardrobe, were repre- 
 sented as proceeding from Yahwe himself; 
 but all this is purely external setting — the 
 God to whom the most acceptable sacrifices 
 are " a broken spirit, a broken and contrite 
 heart' (Ps. li. 17), and who took no delight 
 in a sacrificial worship after the manner of 
 the "heathen' peoples (Ps. \1. (1). is certainly 
 not to be credited with having devised recipes
 
 1 90 Babel and Bible 
 
 tor anointing-oil and frankincense, " after the 
 art of the perfumer," as the expression runs 
 
 (Exod. xx\. 2.5. :J.5). It will be a matter for 
 future investigation to determine how far the 
 [sraelitish laws — civil as well as priestly — are 
 specifically 1 sraelitish or are common to 
 Semitic races generally, or whether they have 
 been influenced by the far older Babylonian 
 legislation, which certainly had spread beyond 
 the boundaries of Babylonia itself. I call to 
 mind, for example, the lex talioms — eye for 
 eye, tooth for tooth — the festivals of the new 
 moon, the ' shew-bread,' so-called, the High 
 Priest's breast-plate, and many other features. 
 Meanwhile we should be thankful that it 
 has been recognised that the institution of the 
 Sabbath Day, the origin of which was obscure 
 even to the Hebrews, has its roots in the 
 Babylonian Sabattu, the ' Day" par excellence. 
 On the other hand, nobody asserts that the 
 Ten Commandments were borrowed, even 
 partially, from Babylonia ; stress rather is Laid 
 on pointing out that such Commandments as
 
 Babel and Bible 191 
 
 the fifth, sixth, and seventh owe their origin to 
 an instinct of self-preservation common to the 
 human race. As a matter of fact, the majority 
 of the Ten Commandments were as sacred to 
 the Babylonians as to the Hebrews : disrespect 
 shewn towards parents, false witness, any and 
 every attempt to secure other people's pro- 
 perty, were, according to Babylonian custom, 
 sternly punished, for the most part with death. 
 So, for example, we read as third paragraph of 
 Hammurabi's Law-Book : " If any one in a 
 law-suit makes lying depositions, and cannot 
 prove his assertions, he shall, if thereby the 
 life of another is endangered, be punished with 
 death." Quite specifically Israelitish is the 
 second Commandment, the prohibition of 
 every form of image-worship whatever, which 
 seems to have a directly anti-Babylonian 
 point. In coming to the consideration of 
 the first Commandment so thoroughly 
 
 Israelitish in character: — " 1 am Yahwe, thy 
 God, thou shaft have none other Gods beside 
 me," I may be permitted to approach more
 
 1 9^ Babel and Bible 
 
 closely a point about which all who interest 
 themselves in the problems of Babel and 
 Bible manifest a persistent and profound con- 
 cern — I mean the question of Old Testament 
 
 Monotheism. It is, after all. quite compre- 
 hensible, from the standpoint of Old Testa- 
 ment Theology, that after having unanimously 
 abandoned — and rightly so -the doctrine of 
 the verbal inspiration of the Old Hebrew 
 Writings, and after acknowledging (albeit 
 unwillingly, yet quite consistently) the 
 absolutely non-binding character of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures as such upon our faith, 
 knowledge, and recognition, it should now 
 claim that their pervading spirit is divine, and. 
 with so much the greater insistence, should 
 emphasize the ethical monotheism of Israel, 
 the "spirit of the prophets.*' as being "a real 
 revelation of the living God." 
 
 The effect of the proper names, enumerated 
 in mv last years lecture, 1 which we find to 
 have been current in immensely large numbers 
 
 1 See p. 7 •'.
 
 Babel and Bible 193 
 
 among the North Semitic Nomads, who, about 
 
 2500 J5.c, had wandered into Babylonia, has 
 
 proved quite startling — names such as " El, 
 
 i.e. God, has given," " God sits enthroned in 
 
 power," " If God be not my God," " God ! 
 
 behold me!" " God is God," " Jahu (i.e. Jahve) 
 
 is God." The uneasiness produced by this 
 
 catalogue is really not quite comprehensible. 
 
 Since the Old Testament itself already allows 
 
 Abraham to preach in Jahve's name (Gen. xii. 
 
 8), and Jahve is already the God of Abraham, 
 
 Isaac, and Jacob, such old names as Jaku-ilu, 
 
 i.e. Joel, should really be hailed with joy. 
 
 And more particularly in the case of those 
 
 theologians who claim to be positive, who 
 
 allow that " all divine revelation develops, 
 
 stage by stage, historically" — thereby, as it 
 
 seems to me, entirely contradicting the Church's 
 
 idea of revelation — should the advent of these 
 
 names be opportune. Meanwhile the great 
 
 majority of theologians have an uneasy feeling. 
 
 and with reason, that these names, which are 
 
 something like a thousand years or more 
 
 13
 
 19+ Babel and Bible 
 
 older than the corresponding Old Testament 
 names, and which testify to the worship of 
 only one God (whether tribal god or otherwise 
 is a matter of opinion) named Jahn. "the 
 Abiding One." may involve the transference 
 of the starting-point for the historical develop- 
 ment of Jahve-religion to very much wider 
 circles than those having a special place within 
 the ranks of Abram's descendants, thereby, 
 however, gravely endangering its character as 
 a revelation. And therefore no efforts, no 
 pains are spared to explain these names away, 
 no means being rejected for this end — but 
 even though the waves sputter and foam, the 
 names of the descendants of the North Semitic 
 Bedouin, dating from circa 2300 B.C., remain, 
 like a lighthouse in a dark night, firm and im- 
 movable : " God is God," " Jahu is God." 
 
 It seems to me that, hoth on the one side 
 and the other, people need to he on their 
 guard against exaggeration. For my own 
 part, I have never failed to emphasize the 
 'coarseness" of the polytheism of the Baby-
 
 Babel and Bible 195 
 
 Lonians, and I do not feel myself constrained 
 in the least to palliate it. Only, I regard the 
 Sumerian-Babylonian Pantheon and its repre- 
 sentation in poetry (especially in popular 
 poetry) as quite as little suited to he the butt 
 of shallow criticisms and mocking exaggerations 
 as the Homeric gods, similar ridicule of whom 
 would he properly condemned. Nor should 
 the worship of the deities under forms of stone 
 and wood be in any way extenuated. Only, it 
 should never be forgotten that even according to 
 the biblical account of creation, man is created 
 in the very image of God ; and this feature, as 
 has rightly been emphasized already from the 
 theological side, directly contradicts the other 
 aspect of (iod which is repeatedly laid stress 
 upon — His immateriality. 
 
 So it is. after all, not altogether incompre- 
 hensible if the Babylonians, reversing the pro- 
 cess, set forth and represented their gods in 
 human likeness. The Old Testament prophets 
 do exactly the same thing, at least in the 
 spirit. In complete agreement with Baby-
 
 ic)6 
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 Ionian and Assyrian representations, the pro- 
 phet Habakkuk (ch. iii.) sees Yahw& approach 
 with horses and chariots, bow and arrows, and 
 lance, and even (ver. 4) " horns at His side" 
 yes,| with horns, the symbol of supremacy, 
 
 Fig. 68. — Assyrian t;t><l with "horns at its side." 
 
 strength, and victory (Amos vi. 13; cf. Numb. 
 
 xxiii. 22). the usual decoration of the 
 head-covering (fig. (*>8) of the Babylonian- 
 Assyrian gods, both high and low. The 
 representations of God the Father in Christian 
 Art : in the case of .Michael Angelo, Raphael,
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 197 
 
 in all our picture Bibles — the accompanying 
 representation (fig. (59) of the fourth day of 
 creation is taken from that by Julius v. Schnorr 
 all go back to a vision of Daniel (vii. 9), who 
 beholds God as an "Ancient of Days, His 
 
 Fig. 69. — The fourth day of creation (after Julius von Schnorr). 
 
 raiment white like snow, and the hair of His 
 head like pure wool." But the wearisome satire 
 poured by the Old Testament prophets on the 
 Babylonian idols — who have eyes and see not, 
 ears and hear not, a nose and smell not, feet
 
 1 98 Babel and Bible 
 
 and move not can be endured as easily by the 
 Babylonians as by the Roman Catholic Church. 
 For exactly as thinking Catholics generally 
 regard the figures simply as representing Christ, 
 Mary, and the Saints, so thinking Babylonians 
 did the same : there was no hymn, no prayer 
 that would he directed to the image as such 
 they are always addressed to the deity en- 
 throned beyond all that is earthly. 
 
 Further, in estimating the "Ethical Mono- 
 theism" of Israel a certain moderation is 
 desirable. First of all. the pre-Exilic period, 
 during which Judah as well as Israel, kings as 
 well as people, were the victims of a tendency 
 towards the polytheism of heathen Canaan, as 
 persistent as it was natural, must to a large 
 extent he excepted. That being so. however, 
 it appears to me a particularly unfortunate 
 proceeding when certain over-zealous spirits 
 represent the ethical level of Israel, even the 
 Israel of the prc-Kxilic period, as so vastly 
 superior to that of the Babylonians. It is 
 true the Babylonian-Assyrian method of
 
 Babel and Bible 199 
 
 waging war was cruel, sometimes even 
 barbarous. But the conquest of Canaan by 
 the Hebrew tribes was also accompanied by 
 the shedding of streams of innocent blood ; the 
 capture of "the great and goodly cities not 
 their own, of the houses full of all good things, 
 of the wells, vineyards, olive-trees" (Deut. vi. 
 10 sq.), was preceded by the 'devoting' of 
 hundreds of places both east and west of the 
 Jordan, which means the ruthless massacre of 
 all the inhabitants, even of the women, little 
 children, and infants. As regards justice and 
 righteousness in state and people, the ceaseless 
 denunciations by the prophets of Israel and 
 Judah of the oppression of the poor, of widows 
 and orphans, in conjunction with such accounts 
 as that of Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings xxi.), 
 afford us a glimpse of grave corruption on the 
 part of kings and people alike, while the 
 continuance of Hammurabi's kingdom for well- 
 nigh two thousand years might well serve to 
 justify the application to it of the words : 
 " Righteousness exalts a nation."
 
 200 Babel and Bible 
 
 We still possess a tablet which, in most 
 forcible Language, warns the Babylonian. King 
 himself against any form of injustice. " It' 
 the King receives money from the inhabitants 
 of Babylon, to augment his treasury, and then 
 hears lawsuits by Babylonians, and permits 
 himself to be partial in decision, then will 
 Marduk, Lord of Heaven and earth, raise up 
 his enemy against him, and will give his 
 possessions and treasure to his foe." Further, 
 in the chapter concerning love of neighbours, 
 the place of compassion in dealing witli 
 neighbours, there is, as has once already been 
 observed, no impassable gulf discoverable 
 between Babylon and the Old Testament. 
 One point illustrating this may be noted in 
 passing. Over the Babylonian Flood-narra- 
 tive, with its polytheistic features, Old Testa- 
 ment theologians make very merry, yet it 
 contains one feature which makes it appeal to 
 us with Car greater force than the Biblical 
 narrative. " The Storm-Mood " -so Xisuthros 
 narrates — "came to an end. I looked out
 
 Babel and Bible 201 
 
 over the wide sen, shrieking aloud, because 
 every human being hud perished." As 
 Eduard Suess, the renowned Austrian geologist, 
 acknowledges, it is in such features as these 
 that " the simple narrative of Xisuthros bears 
 the stamp of convincing truth." Of any feel- 
 ing of compassion on the part of Noah we 
 read nothing. The Babylonian Noah was 
 with his wife given a place among the gods— 
 and such an idea would be inconceivable in the 
 case of Israel. 
 
 Of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Har- 
 vest-Festival, it is said in Dent. xvi. 11 (cf. xii. 
 18) : " And thou shalt be joyful before Yah we, 
 thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, 
 and thy man-servant and thy maid-servant " 
 what has become of the wife \ The position of 
 woman in Israel was admittedly an inferior 
 one from childhood onwards. We know 
 hardly a single girl's name from the Old 
 Testament which testifies whole - heartedly 
 to any such feeling of grateful joy to Yah we 
 for the child's birth as is the case in regard
 
 202 Babel and Bible 
 
 to hoys: all such endearing designations of 
 oirls as 'Beloved,' 'Fragrant,' 'Dew-born,' 
 'Bee,' 'Gazelle,' -Ewe" (Rachel), 'Myrtle' 
 
 and • Palm." "Coral" and * Coronet, arc. in 
 my opinion, (juite insufficient to deceive us 
 in regard to the matter. The woman is the 
 property of her parents, and. later on. of her 
 husband : she is a valuable element for pur- 
 poses of work, on whom, in married life, a 
 large part of the hardest business of the home 
 is imposed -above all. she is. as in Islam. 
 incompetent to take pail in the practice of 
 the cultus. In the ease of the Babylonians 
 all this was managed differently and better; 
 we read, for example, of women in Ham- 
 murabi's time who were allowed to carry their 
 stools into the Temple: we find the names 
 of women as witnesses to Legal documents, 
 and more of the like. It is just in the 
 domain of questions concerning women that 
 it can clearly he seen how profoundly 
 Babylonian culture had been influenced by 
 the non-Semitic civilization of the Sumerians.
 
 Babel and Bible 205 
 
 ment scholar, 1 on the strength of a passage in 
 a Babylonian poem, the meaning of which is 
 still far from having been certainly deter- 
 mined, moved by similar moral indignation, 
 cries out that "the lowest corners of hither 
 Asia must be searched through to find analogies 
 for it," I, for my part, though indeed unable to 
 adduce equal local knowledge, may, however, 
 venture to remind him of the "rounds on which 
 our school authorities have so stringently in- 
 sisted upon selections from the Old Testament, 
 and warn him, when he throws stones, to be 
 careful that his own glass-house does not come 
 tumbling down with a sudden crash. 
 
 But immeasurably more important than this 
 skirmishing — which my opponents have pro- 
 voked — about the relative moral standard of 
 the two peoples, is, it seems to me, one final 
 consideration which has not, in my opinion, 
 received the attention it deserves in the 
 preaching of the " ethical monotheism " of 
 Israel, or of the "spirit of prophecy" as a 
 " real revelation of the living God." 
 1 See Note, p. 223,
 
 206 Babel and Bible 
 
 Five times a day. and even oftener, docs the 
 pious Moslem pray Islam's pater-noster, the 
 first sura of the Koran, which closes with the 
 words: "Direct us (Allah) in the right way. 
 in the way of those to whom Thou hast been 
 gracious, who are not struck by (Thy) anger 
 [as the Jews], and do not go astray [as the 
 Christians]." The Moslem alone is the one 
 to whom Allah has been gracious, he alone has 
 been chosen by God to worship and honour 
 the true God — all the rest of men and nations 
 are Kdjiri'in. unbelievers, whom God has not 
 predestined to eternal salvation. Exactly thus 
 and no otherwise, ranging itself in this respect 
 with a sentiment deeply implanted in the 
 Semitic character, does the Yahwism of Israel 
 appear in the pre-Exilic as well as the post- 
 Exilic period. Yah we is the only true (or 
 supreme) God, but at the same time He is the 
 God of Israel alone, exclusively; Israel is His 
 chosen people and his inheritance, all other 
 peoples arc (rot///// or Heathen, given up by 
 Yahwe himself to godlcssness and idolatry.
 
 Babel and Bible 207 
 
 That is a doctrine in any case utterly repug- 
 nant to our more purified ideas of God. It 
 lias been expressed, however, in the plainest 
 words in a passage which at one blow 
 annihilates the phantom of an ' original revela- 
 tion' — the 19th verse of the 4th chapter of 
 the Book of Deuteronomy : " Lest thou 
 direct thine eyes heavenwards, and see the sun 
 and the moon and the stars, the whole host of 
 heaven, and worship and honour them, which 
 Yahwe thy God has divided unto all peoples 
 under the whole heaven ; but you Yahwe has 
 taken and brought forth out of Egypt to be 
 unto Him a people of inheritance." 
 
 The star- and idol-worship of the peoples 
 under the whole heaven has, according to this, 
 been willed and ordained by Yahwe Himself. 
 So much the more terrible, then, is Yahwe s 
 command, given in Dent. vii. 2, to exterminate 
 without mercy, on account of their godlessness, 
 powerful nations which Israel should find in 
 Canaan, as it is said in verse 16 : "And thou 
 shaft consume all the peoples, which Yahwe
 
 2o8 Babel and Bible 
 
 thy Cod gives to thee; thine eye shall not 
 spare them." This national, particularistic 
 
 monotheism, which naturally cannot assert 
 itself in sections like the creation-narrative, 
 hut which elsewhere undeniably pervades the 
 whole of the Old Testament, from Sinai on- 
 wards I am Yahwc. thy God — up to the 
 second Isaiah's •■Comfort ye, comfort ye. my 
 people," and to Zechariah's prophetic utter- 
 ance (viii. '2'U : "Thus saith Yahwc Sabaoth: 
 In those days it comes to pass that ten men 
 out of all the tongues of the nations {Groyim) 
 shall clutch hold of the skirt of a Jew. saying : 
 • Let us go with you. for we have heard Cod is 
 with you ! this monotheism which, as even 
 Paul for instance admits (Ephes. ii. 11 sq.), 
 allowed all the other peoples of the earth 
 through thousands of years to be "without 
 hope" and "without Cod in the world" it 
 is difficult to regard this. I say. as 'revealed' 
 by the holy and just Cod! And yet we are 
 all from early youth so overpowered by this 
 doffma of "aliens from the commonwealth of
 
 Babel and Bible 209 
 
 Israel" (Eph. ii. 12), that we regard the his- 
 tory of the ancient world from an altogether 
 distorted historical point of view, and even yet 
 are content with the role of the * spiritual 
 Israel/ In so doing, we forget the mighty 
 historical revolution which was accomplished 
 in New Testament times, beginning with the 
 preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus — that 
 dramatic conflict between Judaism, Jewish and 
 non-Jewish Christianity, which lasted until 
 Peter was able to exclaim (Acts x. 34 sq.) : " In 
 truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 
 persons, but whoever in any nation fears Him 
 and practises righteousness, is acceptable to 
 Him," thereby breaking down, once for all, the 
 partition- wall between the Oriental- 1 sraelitish 
 and Christian philosophical views. 
 
 For my own part, I live in the faith that the 
 old Hebrew Scriptures, even if they lose their 
 character as writings ' revealed ' or pervaded 
 by a spirit of 'revelation,' will yet always 
 retain their high importance, especially as a 
 
 unique monument of a vast religious, historical 
 
 14
 
 2io Babel and Bible 
 
 process which readies to our own time. Those 
 exalted passages in the prophets and psalms, 
 inspired by vivid trust in God, and Longing 
 after peace in God, will always find a ready 
 echo in our hearts, in spite of the particularistic 
 limitations of their strict letter and literal sense 
 although this has to a large extent been 
 obliterated in our translations of the Bible. 
 Such words as those of the prophet Micah 
 (vi. 6-8) : " Wherewith shall 1 come before 
 Yahwe, to how myself before God on high \ 
 Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, 
 with calves of a year old \ Has Yahwe pleasure 
 in thousands of rams, in countless streams of 
 «»il \ Shall I give my firstborn as expiation, 
 the fruit of my body as atonement for ni\ 
 life : He hath showed thee. () man. what is 
 good, and what Yahwe requires of thee : 
 nothing but to do justly, to cultivate loving- 
 kindness, and to walk humbly before thy 
 God' words so cogent for the moral prac- 
 tice of religion (they are also found in Baby- 
 lonian literature) — are still to-day uttered
 
 Babel and Bible 
 
 211 
 
 from the soul of all religiously thinking 
 people. 
 
 But, on the other hand, let us not cling 
 blindly to outworn dogmas, which scientific 
 knowledge has overthrown, even from an 
 anxious fear lest our faith in God and true 
 religiousness may suffer harm at its hands. 
 We reflect that everything earthly is in a state 
 of vital flow; to stand still is synonymous 
 with death. We see the mighty throbbing 
 power, with which the Reformation infused 
 great nations of the earth, in all departments 
 of human activity and human progress. Hut 
 even the Reformation is only a stage on the 
 road to the goal of Truth, which has been set 
 before us by and in God. To attain that, we 
 strive humbly, yet with all the means of free 
 scientific investigation, joyfully confessing as 
 the object of our devotion — seen from the high 
 watch-tower with eagle glance, and proudly 
 announced to all the world — the emancipation 
 of religious development.
 
 Notes 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 The foregoing Lecture was delivered on the 
 L2th of January 1903 in the Academy of Music 
 a1 Berlin before the German Oriental Society. 
 in the presence of I lis Majesty the Kaiser 
 and King, and of Her Majesty the Kaiserin 
 and Queen. That this second lecture on 
 "Babel and the Bible" should also be given 
 before the German Oriental Society I owed 
 to it as well as to myself, on account of the 
 varied expressions of dissent which the first 
 Lecture called forth during my seventeen 
 weeks' stay in Assyro- Babylonia. 1 
 
 That the German Oriental Society lias not 
 the least concern with my personal religious 
 
 1 I arrived al Mosul, 27th April ; departed from Bassorah, 
 23rd August [902. 
 
 •212
 
 Notes 213 
 
 views, although it should have been obvious, has 
 been emphasized in the new edition of my first 
 Lecture (p. 89), and, as far as I am concerned, 
 will secure even more decided expression. 
 
 It is my most firm conviction that, if only 
 a little judgment be used, it will no longer be 
 possible for the opening up of these theological 
 or religions-historical questions to be considered 
 injurious or even insulting to Judaism, least of 
 all to the modern Jewish faith. Dispassionate, 
 strictly objective discussion of the origin of 
 the institution of the Sabbath, of the position 
 of woman in Israel as well as in Babylonia, 
 and of other related questions, can only make 
 our judgment keener, only serve to further the 
 cause of truth. In this way that unanimity 
 regarding the value of Old Testament mono- 
 theism, which for the time-being is far to seek 
 in even the Jewish cam]) proper, will gradually 
 but surely be attained. As opposed to the 
 alleged universalism of the Old Testament 
 belief in God — though it has been supposed to 
 be proved in more than one 'open letter' by
 
 2 1 4 Babel and Bible 
 
 Scriptural passages other voices of Israelites. 
 possessing a knowledge of the world as wel] as 
 of the Bible, have made themselves heard, of 
 such significant import as is expressed in the 
 following words, extracted from a private letter 
 of the 14th January 1903: "Your assertion 
 that Jewish monotheism is of an exclusive 
 character, in an egotistic and particularistic 
 sense, is irrefiitable; equally irrefutable, how- 
 ever, is it. in my opinion, that it is this abso- 
 lutely particularistic monotheism alone thai has 
 made it possible for Judaism to maintain itself 
 for thousands of years in the midst of persecu- 
 tions and enmity of all kinds. Looked at 
 from the Jewish standpoint, the national theism 
 has brilliantly justified itself: to give it up 
 means to give up Judaism : and even if there 
 is much to be said in favour of this course. 
 there is still a great deal to be said against it." 
 Regarding the divine character of the Torah, 
 indeed, this must be excluded from scientific 
 discussion, at least so long as complete ignor- 
 ance of the results of lVntatcuch-eritieisin
 
 Notes 2 1 5 
 
 is regarded on the Jewish side as ' exact 
 science/ and (correspond inn- to this) so long as 
 a discussion of " Babel and the Bible," founded 
 on such ignorance, is disseminated far and wide 
 through the magazines as ' scientific criticism.' 
 The really abysmal obscurity, incompleteness, 
 discord — to say nothing of more deplorable 
 features — disclosed by the attitude taken up 
 by evangelical orthodoxy towards the questions 
 raised by " Babylon and the Bible," fills me, 
 who myself am sprung from a strictly orthodox 
 Lutheran house, with deep pain. From all 
 sides and quarters I am assailed with the cry 
 that I have said ' nothing essentially new '— 
 whence, then, I ask, this excessive commotion ? 
 And while from Aix - la - Chapelle deep 
 lamentation and bitter accusation of Assyri- 
 ology is heard because " in the lecture Old 
 Testament traditions are, without further 
 proof, arbitrarily represented as borrowed from 
 Babylonian myths, such, for instance, as that 
 of Nebuchadnezzar's madness,*' in the columns 
 of a journal of middle Germany an 'orthodox
 
 2 i 6 Babel and Bible 
 
 pastor' exclaims, "I am fighting against a 
 blind foe," because the historical books of the 
 Bible, as a matter of tact, contained "neither 
 the story of Balaam's ass. nor of the sun 
 standing still, nor of the tall of the walls of 
 Jericho, nor of the fish which swallows Jonah, 
 nor of Nebuchadnezzar's madness — all of them 
 accounts whose historical trustworthiness may 
 well be contested even according to orthodox 
 views." So that even evangelical orthodoxy 
 sets aside 'revelations' which seem to it no 
 longer in accord with the spirit of the age: 
 will it not once for all condescend to an open 
 confession, and explain without equivocation 
 what hooks and narratives it thinks proper 
 t«. strike out from -Holy Scripture'? 
 
 One of the first and most meritorious of so- 
 calicd positive investigators in the domain of 
 the Old Testament, Professor Ernst Scllin 
 of Vienna, in his "Notes on Babel <tn<l 
 tin nililc" fin the Neue Freie Prcs.se of 
 January 25, L903) on the one hand cheer- 
 fully acknowledges the "absolutely incalculable
 
 Notes 217 
 
 amount of help, elucidation, and correction 
 that Old Testament investigation owes to the 
 decipherment of the Babylonian inscriptions, 
 in the matter of grammar and lexicography, 
 as well as in the history of culture and pure 
 history," yet, on the other, he is of opinion that 
 I, when I " argue against the fact of a divine 
 revelation in the Bible on the strength of the 
 Song of Songs and of growth of tradition out 
 of material derived from heterogeneous sources, 
 have appeared on the scene exactly a hundred 
 years too late." Such a statement as this last 
 can only be described as one of the grossest 
 exaggerations that could possibly have been 
 uttered. When my dear father, Franz 
 Delitzsch, saw himself compelled, towards the 
 end of his life, by the weight of the facts of 
 Old Testament textual criticism, to make, in 
 the case of Genesis, the smallest possible con- 
 cessions, he was persecuted, even on his death- 
 bed (181)0). by the warnings of whole synods. 
 The prodigious commotion, again, excited by 
 my second Lecture serves to show convincingly
 
 218 Babel and Bible 
 
 enough that in quarters from which Church 
 and school are governed an essentially different 
 view from that of my highly-esteemed critic 
 prevails. 
 
 Every individual clergyman, who has been a 
 diligent student at the university, does, it is 
 true, pay homage to freer views, but, all the 
 same-, school-teaching and religious instruction 
 remain unaffected, and this is the almost in- 
 tolerable discord against which page .5 of m\ 
 first Lecture is directed. And this discord 
 widens ever more profoundly. When, indeed, 
 one of* equally honourable theological ante- 
 cedents writes (26th January L903) : "You 
 inveigh against a conception of Revelation 
 that no sensible Protestant any Longer shares: 
 it was that of the old Lutheran Dogmatists. 
 . . . All divine revelation is. of course, subject 
 to human mediation, and must therefore have 
 been developed by a gradual process, histori- 
 cally." he describes exactly the standpoint that 
 I myself advocate, only thai I regard the con- 
 ception of • divine revelation' in the sens'
 
 Notes 219 
 
 held by the Church and " of (a human) de- 
 velopment by a gradual process historically ' 
 as the most opposed and absolutely irreconcil- 
 able ideas imaginable. Let it be one thing or 
 the other ! / believe that in the Old Testa- 
 ment we have to deal with a process of develop- 
 ment effected or permitted by God like any 
 other earthly product, but, for the rest, of a 
 purely human and historical character, in which 
 God has not intervened through ' special, super- 
 natural revelation.' Old Testament mono- 
 theism plainly shows itself to be such a process 
 marked by progress from the incomplete to the 
 complete, from the false to the more true, here 
 and there indeed by occasional retrogression, 
 and it seems to me inconceivable to see at each 
 single stage of this development a ' revelation' 
 of the absolute, complete Truth, which is God. 
 The attenuation of the original idea of revela- 
 tion — so deeply rooted in ancient Oriental 
 conceptions which began with the abandon- 
 ment of verbal inspiration on the part of the 
 evangelical as well as of Catholic theology, and
 
 220 Babel and Bible 
 
 Church even, and irretrievably divested the Old 
 Testament of its character as the * Word of 
 God,' meant, it seems to me. the v\u\ of the 
 theological and the beginning of the religious- 
 historical treatment of the Old Testament. 
 The Catholic Church, too, even if it does so 
 more slowly, will not always be able to hold 
 itself aloof from the results of modern science, 
 as perhaps sundry slight indications already 
 tend to show. 
 
 The resurrection of the Babylonian- 
 Assyrian literature which, certainly not with- 
 out Cods will, is being accomplished in our 
 time, and which has suddenly taken its place 
 by the side of the only literature also of the 
 hit her- Asiatic world the old Hebrew — that, up 
 to that time, had survived from the past, is ever 
 constraining us anew with irresistible force 
 to undertake a revision of our conception of 
 revelation which is bound up with the Old 
 Testament. .May the conviction make head- 
 way and grow, ever more and more, that only 
 by a dispassionate revision of the positions
 
 Notes 221 
 
 involved can the end be reached, and that 
 neither while the controversy rages, nor 
 if and when it shall be brought nearer 
 to its conclusion, can our heart-religion, our 
 heart-fellowship with God, suffer harm or 
 loss. 
 
 P. 153. The photographs of the letter 
 from Chalach I owe to the kindness of the 
 Director of the Assyrian-Babylonian Depart- 
 ment of the British Museum, Dr E. Wallis 
 Budge. 
 
 P. 166. The words above cited are derived 
 from an essay by Walter Andrae, in which 
 he describes in detail the painted representa- 
 tions in relief on brick of the wild ox as well 
 as of the Dragon (Sirrns). 
 
 P. 161), 1. 4. Eberhard Schrader's essay: 
 Die Sage vom Wahnsinn Nebukadnezzars is 
 to be found in the Jahrbiicher fur protestant- 
 ische Theologie, vol. vii. pp. 618-629. Dan. 
 iv. 19 runs : Then Daniel answered and said : 
 My Lord, let the dream be to thy foes, and its 
 interpretation to thine adversaries !
 
 222 Babel and Bible 
 
 P. 171. 1. 23. -Deutsche* Evangelisches 
 Iustitut fur AUertumswissemchqfl des heiligen 
 Land* ?." This has now been started under 
 the principalship of Prof. (i. II. Dalman.- 
 
 Trans. 
 
 P. 172. 1. 20. "Midnight Sun' was the 
 name of the ship which carried the representa- 
 tives of the governing bodies of the Evangelical 
 Churches to Palestine. 
 
 P. 184. 1. 21. Cf. Lecture I., p. 35. 
 
 P. 192, 1. 22. Cf. Lecture I., p. 70. 
 
 P. 203. 1. 5. Although Kaulen (col. 464) 
 speaks of " numberless statuettes found in 
 Babylon," etc., yet lie can only mean by this 
 those that have been found in Babylonia 
 generally. Therefore I have ventured in PI. 
 19 to reproduce three small clay figures, two 
 of which were excavated in Tel Mohammed, 
 not far from Bagdad, and published in Layard's 
 Nineveh and 'Babylon^ Tabic VII., H. I. 
 c-Some rude images of the Assyrian Venus, 
 of burnt clay, such as are found in the majority 
 of ruins of this period"), while the third is
 
 Conclusion 223 
 
 taken from Leon Heuzey's Catalogue des 
 Antiquites Chaldeennes, Paris, 1902, p. ;J49 
 (No. 213). As soon as good photographs of 
 the exactly similar figures found by our Ex- 
 pedition are available, these shall appear in 
 place of those now published. 
 
 P. 205, 1. 1. Eduard Konig, Bibel una 1 
 Babel, 6th ed. p. 57. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 As in the case of my first, so also in this my 
 second Lecture on " Babel and Bible," 1 shall 
 be content to deal only with scientific attacks, 
 material to the subject in hand. I am afraid, 
 however, that I shall have small occasion, if 
 matters continue as hitherto, to concern my- 
 self, in the execution of this task, with evan- 
 gelical orthodoxy. The method of conducting 
 hostilities adopted by this section, especially 
 by the Evangelical Orthodox Press, fills me 
 with the deepest abhorrence. In the Evangel- 
 ische Kirchenzeitung, founded by the revered 
 Hengstenburg, one of its principal contribu-
 
 2 2+ Babel and Bible 
 
 tors, the Rev. P. Wolff, of Friedersdorf bei 
 Seelow, writes (No. t. January 25, L903) as 
 
 follows : — 
 
 *• Following on the proofs which Delitzsch has 
 already given, we must expect that in his next 
 Lecture he will point out that how profoundly 
 inferior the views of Christendom regarding 
 marriage are to the Babylonian, is shewn by 
 the flight of the Saxon Crown-Princess. No 
 Babylonian princess eloped with the tutor of 
 her children": and again, "Delitzsch intends 
 to deliver a further lecture on Babylon and the 
 New Testament ; perhaps he will give us as 
 a supplement to it something on the theme of 
 • Babel and Berlin * : in that connection also 
 many points of contact could he adduced. 
 I might he able to offer a small contribution 
 to it myself. It has been proved by the 
 latest discoveries that the Prussian orders arc 
 derived from Babylon. 
 
 "On the monolith of Sanisi-Kamman IV.. 
 preserved in the British Museum, this king 
 wears, on a band round the neck, depending on
 
 Conclusion 225 
 
 the breast, a cross, which appears to be exactly 
 like a modern decoration. How our compre- 
 hension of the real meaning of the orders is 
 enlightened by this latest discovery ! The 
 order of the Red Eagle of the fourth class was 
 already bestowed in Babylon ! Thus as the 
 origin of our orders is derived beyond all doubt 
 from Babylon, so therefore it is proved that our 
 modern culture is steeped through and through 
 with that of Babylon." What a depth of 
 spiritual and moral levity finds expression in 
 these words of a German clergyman ! And 
 such samples could be multiplied tenfold ! 
 
 As against this I welcome, as an Evangelical 
 Christian, with feelings of deep gratitude and 
 pleasure, the discussion of my Lecture by the 
 Rev. Dr. Friedrich Jeremias of Dresden (in 
 the Dresdner Journal of 4th February 1903), 
 which, though disputing my conclusions (as 
 was to be expected), is, both as to form and 
 substance, a truly noble pronouncement. 
 
 The third (final) Lecture on " Babylon and 
 
 the Bible" will be delivered as soon as opinion 
 
 15
 
 226 Babel and Bible 
 
 on the views expounded in my first and this 
 second Lecture shall have become clear and 
 settled. It will show that it Lies much closer 
 to my heart to maintain and to build than to 
 overthrow and make away with pillars that 
 have grown tottering. 
 
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