Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/193



side of a tree, and each stretching out a hand toward its fruit, while a crooked line on the left of the picture is supposed to exhibit the serpent. The engraving no doubt represents some legend connected with the tree of life; but even if we knew that it illustrates the first temptation, the story is still wanting; and the details of the picture show that it can have had very little resemblance to Gn. 3.—The most that can be claimed is that there are certain remote parallels to particular features or ideas of Gn. 2$2$-3$4$, which are yet sufficiently close to suggest that the ultimate source of the biblical narrative is to be sought in the Babylonian mythology. Attention should be directed to the following:—

(a) The account of Creation in 2$24$ has undoubted resemblances to the Babylonian document described on p. 47 f., though they are hardly such as to prove dependence. Each starts with a vision of chaos, and in both the prior existence of heaven and earth seems to be assumed; although the Babylonian chaos is a waste of waters, while that of Gn. 2$4ff.$ is based rather on the idea of a waterless desert (see p. 56 above). The order of creation, though not the same, is alike in its promiscuous and unscientific character: in the Babylonian we have a hopeless medley—mankind, beasts of the field, living things of the field, Tigris and Euphrates, verdure of the field, grass, marshes, reeds, wild-cow, ewe, sheep of the fold, orchards, forests, houses, and cities, etc. etc.—but no separate creation of woman.—The creation of man from earth moistened by the blood of a god, in another document, may be instanced as a distant parallel to 2$5f.$ (pp. 42, 45).

(b) The legend of Eabani, embedded in the Gilgameš-Epic (Tab. I. Col. ii. l. 33 ff.: KIB, vi. 1, p. 120 ff.), seems to present us (it has been thought) with a 'type of primitive man.' Eabani, created as a rival to Gilgameš by the goddess Aruru from a lump of clay, is a being of gigantic strength who is found associating with the wild animals, living their life, and foiling all the devices of the huntsman. Eager to capture him, Gilgameš sends with the huntsman a harlot, by whose attractions he hopes to lure Eabani from his savagery. Eabani yields to her charms, and is led, a willing captive, to the life of civilisation:

When she speaks to him, her speech pleases him, One who knows his heart he seeks, a friend.

But later in the epic, the harlot appears as the cause of his sorrows, and Eabani curses her with all his heart. Apart from its present setting, and considered as an independent bit of folk-lore, it cannot be denied that the story has a certain resemblance to Gn. 2$7$. Only, we may be sure that if the idea of sexual intercourse with the beasts be implied in the picture of Eabani, the moral purity of the Hebrew writer never stooped so low (see Jastrow, AJSL, xv. 198 ff.; Stade, ZATW, xxiii. 174 f.).

(c) Far more instructive affinities with the inner motive of the story