Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/330



1. The double legend is a product of naïve reflexion on such facts of experience as the disunity of mankind, its want of a common language, and its consequent inability to bend its united energies to the accomplishment of some enduring memorial of human greatness. The contrast between this condition of things and the ideal unity of the race at its origin haunted the mind with a sense of fate and discomfiture, and prompted the questions, When, and where, and for what reason, was this doom imposed on men? The answer naturally assumed the legendary form, the concrete features of the representation being supplied by two vivid impressions produced by the achievements of civilisation in its most ancient centre in Babylonia. On one hand the city of Babylon itself, with its mixture of languages, its cosmopolitan population, and its proud boast of antiquity, suggested the idea that here was the very fountainhead of the confusion of tongues; and this idea, wrapped up in a popular etymology of the name of the city, formed the nucleus of the first of the two legends contained in the passage. On the other hand, the spectacle of some ruined or unfinished Temple-tower (zikkurat), built by a vast expenditure of human toil, and reported to symbolise the ascent to heaven (p. 226), appealed to the imagination of the nomads as a god-defying work, obviously intended to serve as a landmark and rallying-point for the whole human race. In each case mankind had measured its strength against the decree of the gods above; and the gods had taken their revenge by reducing mankind to the condition of impotent disunion in which it now is.

It is evident that ideas of this order did not emanate from the official religion of Babylonia. They originated rather in the unsophisticated reasoning of nomadic Semites who had penetrated into the country, and formed their own notions about the wonders they beheld there: the etymology of the name Babel (= Balbēl) suggests an Aramæan origin (Ch. Gu.). The stories travelled from land to land, till they reached Israel, where, divested of their cruder polytheistic elements, they became the vehicle of an impressive lesson on the folly of human pride, and the supremacy of Yahwe in the affairs of men.

It is of quite secondary interest to determine which of the numerous Babylonian zikkurats gave rise to the legend of the Dispersion. The most famous of these edifices were those of E-sagil, the temple of Marduk in Babylon, and of E-zida, the temple of Nebo at Borsippa on the opposite bank of the river (see Tiele, ZA, ii. 179-190). The former bore the (Sumerian) name E-temen-an-ki (= 'house of the foundations of heaven and earth'). It was restored by Nabo-polassar, who says that before him it had become "dilapidated and ruined," and that he was commanded by Marduk to "lay its foundations firm in the breast of the underworld, and make its top equal to heaven" (KIB, iii. 2. 5). The