Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/145



2. The only cuneiform document which admits of close and continuous comparison with Gn. 1 is the great Creation Epos just referred to. Since the publication, in 1876, of the first fragments, many lacunæ have been filled up from subsequent discoveries, and several duplicates have been brought to light; and the series is seen to have consisted of seven Tablets, entitled, from the opening phrase, Enuma eliš (= 'When above'). The actual tablets discovered are not of earlier date than the 7th cent. , but there are strong reasons to believe that the originals of which these are copies are of much greater antiquity, and may go back to 2000, while the myth itself probably existed in writing in other forms centuries before that. Moreover, they represent the theory of creation on which the statements of Berossus and Damascius are based, and they have every claim to be regarded as the authorised version of the Babylonian cosmogony. It is here, therefore, if anywhere, that we must look for traces of Babylonian influences on the Hebrew conception of the origin of the world. The following outline of the contents of the tablets is based on King's analysis of the epic into five originally distinct parts (CT, p. lxvii).

i. The Theogony.—The first twenty-one lines of Tab. I. contain a description of the primæval chaos and the evolution of successive generations of deities:

When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not bear a name, And the primæval Apsu, who begat them, And chaos, Ti'āmat, the mother of them both,— Their waters were mingled together,

Then were created the gods in the midst of (heaven), etc.

First Laḥmu and Laḥamu, then Ansar and Kisar, and lastly (as we learn from Damascius, whose report is in accord with this part of the tablet, and may safely be used to make up a slight defect) the supreme triad of the Bab. pantheon, Anu, Bel, and Ea.