Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/147



Every month without ceasing with the crown he covered (?) him, (saying,) "At the beginning of the month, when thou shinest upon the land, Thou commandest the horns to determine six days, And on the seventh day," etc. etc.

The rest of Tab. V., where legible, contains nothing bearing on the present subject; but in Tab. VI. we come to the creation of man, which is recorded in a form corresponding to the account of Berossus:

When Marduk heard the word of the gods, His heart prompted him, and he devised (a cunning plan). He opened his mouth and unto Ea (he spake), (That which) he had conceived in his heart he imparted (unto him): "My blood will I take and bone will I (fashion), I will make man, that man may  I will create man, who shall inhabit (the earth), That the service of the gods may be established," etc. etc.

At the end of the tablet the gods assemble to sing the praises of Marduk; and the last tablet is filled with a

v. Hymn in honour of Marduk.—From this we learn that to Marduk was ascribed the creation of vegetation and of the 'firm earth,' as well as those works which are described in the legible portions of Tabs. IV.-VI.

How far, now, does this conception of creation correspond with the cosmogony of Gn. 1? (1) In both we find the general notion of a watery chaos, and an etymological equivalence in the names (Ti'āmat, Tĕhôm) by which it is called. It is true that the Bab. chaos is the subject of a double personification, Apsu representing the male, and Tiamat the female principle by whose union the gods are generated. According to Jen. (KIB, 559 f.), Apsu is the fresh, life-giving water which descends from heaven in the rain, while Tiamat is the 'stinking, salt water of the ocean: in the beginning these were mingled (Tab. I. 5), and by the mixture the gods were produced. But in the subsequent narrative the rôle of Apsu is insignificant; and in the central episode, the conflict with Marduk, Tiamat alone represents the power of chaos, as in Heb. Tĕhôm.—(2) In Enuma eliš the description of chaos is followed by a theogony, of which there is no trace in Gen. The Bab. theory is essentially monistic, the gods being conceived as emanating from a material chaos. Lukas, indeed (l.c. 14 ff., 24 ff.), has tried to show that they are represented as proceeding from a supreme spiritual principle, Anu. But while an independent origin of deity may be consistent with the opening lines of Tab. I., it is in direct opposition to the statement of Damascius, and is irreconcilable with the later parts of the series, where the gods are repeatedly spoken of as children of Apsu and Tiamat. The biblical conception, on the contrary, is probably dualistic (above, pp. 7, 15), and at all events the supremacy of the spiritual principle (Elohim) is absolute. That a