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 HEXAEMERON

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HEXAEMERON

nian tablets; the inspired account opens with God's creative act. The Babylonian record starts with a double material principle; the Hebrew text knows only one God. The Babylonian stories taken to- gether describe the primeval waters as spontaneously generative; the Hebrew account represents the mate- rial of the universe as Ijing waste and lifeless, and as not assuming order or becoming productive of life untU the going forth of the Divine command. The Babylonian course of cosmic development is inter- rupted by the opposition of Tiamtu; the Hebrew Hexaemeron proceeds uninterruptedly from the less to the more perfect. According to the Babylonians the world arises out of a struggle between chaos and order, between good and evil; according to the He- brew conception there is no opposition to the power of the Divine command. In the hght of all these discrepancies between the Babylonian and the Hebrew cosmogonies, it is hardly possible to consider the former the source of the latter.

In reply, the critics grant that "the cosmogony of Gen., i, cannot have been simply taken over from the Babylonians"; they add, therefore, the following two modifications: (a) The Hebrew Hexaemeron does not correspond to the first part of the Babylonian account, but only to the formative work ascribed to Marduk. (b) "Circumstanced as the Israehtes were, we must allow for the po.ssibility of Phcenician, Egyptian, and Persian, as well as Babylonian influences, and we must not refuse to take a passing glance at cosmogonies of less civilized peoples."

Both of these modifications deserve a passing ex- amination, (a) It is urged that in Marduk's work the primeval light, the primeval flood, the production of heaven by the division of the primeval flood, the order of the creative acts, the Divine admonitions addressed to men after their creation, and the crea- tion by a word are so many points of contact between the Hebrew and the Babylonian cosmogony. But several of these points present a discrepancy rather than a harmony. The critics themselves admit that the parallelism "in the present form of Gen., i, is im- perfect " ; they admit, too, that the Babylonian record does not mention creation by a word, but they merely suppose that this idea must have been prominent in the full Babylonian epic. It is true that Marduk, being the sun-god, was a god of light, but it is proba- ble that the Babylonian primeval light is represented by Lahmu and Lahamu, the dawn and the twilight; again, Marduk is only a demiurge, a creature, and as such does not resemble the Hebrew God. Moreover, Marduk has no connexion with the primeval waters in the Babylonian account; he is at best the restorer of the order destroyed by Tiamtu. He does not pro- duce heaven, but only reopens the space between heaven and earth. Finally, it would be hard to im- agine a greater discrepancy than is foimd between the Babylonian story of man's creation and the He- brew account of the event. The source of the Hex- aemeron, therefore, is not the Babylonian record of Marduk's work.

(b) The appeal of the critics to Phoenician, EgjTJ- tian, and Persian influences is of a rather elusive character. It is hard to see which particular points of these various cosmogonies can be said to have in- fluenced the Hebrew writer. The Phoenicians begin with air moved by a breath of wind, and dark chaos; another account places first time, then desire, then darkness. The union of desire and darkness begets air (representing pure thought) and breath (the pro- totype of life) ; from these springs the cosmic egg. Sun, moon, and stars spring from the cosmic egg, and under the influence of light and heat the cosmic development continues, till the present universe is completed. The Egj^ptian cosmogony does not ap- pear to contain any elements more fit to serve as the source of the Hexaemeron than are the Phceniciaa

successive evolutions. In the beginning we find the primeval waters called Nun, containing the male and female germs, and informed by the di\ine proto-soul. The latter felt a desire (personified as the god Thot) for creative activity, the image of the future universe having formed itself in the eyes of Thot. Thot causes a movement in the waters, and the latter ditTerentiate themselves into four pairs of deities, male and female. These cosmogonic gods transform the invisible divine will of Thot into a \isible imiverse. First an egg is formed, out of which arises the god of light, Ra; he is the immediate cause of life in this world. In the sub- sequent formation of the universe the great Ennead of gods concurs. Variations of this cosmogony are found in the more popular accounts of creation, but they are not such as might be regarded as the source of the Hebrew cosmogony. The Persian cosmogony is really the second phase of the Iranian concept of creation. The great characteristic of Iranian thought is its dualism, which gradually tends towards monism. The early Persian phase dates from the time of the Sassanids, but in its present form is not earlier than the seventh century of the Christian Era. At any rate it seems quite impossible that the well-ordered and clear accoimt of the Hexaemeron should be the out- come of the complicated and obscure presentation of the Avesta and the Pahlavi literature. Cienerally speaking, the Biblical Hexaemeron cannot be sur- passed in grandeur, dignity, and simplicity. To de- rive it from any of the profane cosmogonies implies a derivation of order from disorder, of beauty from hideousness, of the sublime from the bizarre.

(2) Primitive Semitic Myth. — ProfessorT. K.Cheyne ("Encyclopa-dia Biblica", art. " Creation ",940) writes: "Either the Hebrew and the Babylonian accounts are independent developments of a primitive Semitic mj^h, or the Hebrew is borrowed directly or indirectly from the Babylonian. " We have already excluded the second alternative. Professor Cheyne himself proves, against Dillmann. that the first alternative is inadmissible. A specifically Hebrew myth ought to be in keeping with the natural surroundings of the people. And, as the human mind naturally pictures to itself the first rise of the world as it still arises every day and every year, a distinctively Hebrew myth of the first rise, or the creation, of the universe should be a picture of the early morning and the .springtime in Palestine or the Syro-.\rabian desert. The watery chaos of the Hexaemeron, its division into the waters above and the waters below, and its separation be- tween the waters and the dry land, do not agree with the sandy and desert country of the Hebrews. If it could be established that the Babylonian cosmogony is a mere nature myth, the foregoing data would agree with the phenomena of the Babylonian spring and the Babylonian moriiing. Owing to the heavy rains, the Babylonian plain looks like the sea during the long winter; then the god of the vernal sun, Marduk, brings forth the land anew, dividing the waters of Tiamtu, and sending them partly upwards as clouds, partly downwards to the rivers and canals. Again, the god of the rising sun, Marduk, every day conquers the cosmic sea, Tiamtu, dispelling the chaos of dark- ness, and dividing the nightly mists and fogs of the plain. A similar origin is quite impossible from a purely Hebrew point of view. While the foregoing considerations are hardly conclusive against those who admit a supernatural element in the formation of the Hebrew cosmogony, they are quite convincing against those who reganl the Hebrew views on crea- tion as a mere nature myth.

(^^) Hebrew Folk-Lore.—Those who regard Hebrew folk-lore as the source of the Hexaemeron point out that each nation has its traflition concerning its early history, or rather concerning men who lived and events which happened before the properly historical age of the nation. Among the Hebrews similar traditions must