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BABEL AND BIBLE 5*INFO

19 July 2021 by Red Johnson

TWO LECTURES ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ASSYRIOLOGICAL 
RESEARCH FOR RELIGION 

EMBODYING THE MOST IMPORTANT CRITICISMS 
AND THE AUTHOR'S REPLIES 
DR. FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH 

PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY 

THOMAS J. McCORMACK AND W. H. CARRUTH 



PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED 


Copyright 1903 by 

The Open Court Publishing Co. 

Chicago. 

"First t,ecture" Copyrighted 1902 under 
the title "Babel aud Bible." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



FIRST LECTURE i 

Excavations and the Bible, p. i.— A New Epoch, p. 2.— The Back- 
ground of the Old Testament, p. 3.— The Home of Abraham; p. 4 — 
Cuneiform Literature, p. 5.— Illustrations of Bible Reports, p. 6 ff.— 
Hezekiah and Sennacherib, pp. 6-8.— Seals, p. 9 — Sargon I., pp. 9- 
10.— Racial types, pp. lo-ii. — Assyrian Troops, pp 11-13.— Assyrian 
Soldiers and Details of Armament, pp. 15-18.— The Royal Household, 
pp. 18-20.— Battling with the Lion, pp. 20-22.— The Harem, pp. 23- 
24.— A Consort of Sardanapalus, pp. 23-25.— Technical Knowledge 
and Art, pp. 25-28. — Affinity Between Babylonian and Hebrew, p 
29. — Aaron's Blessing, pp. 29-30. — A Civilisation Comparable with 
Our Own, p. 30. — Hammurabi's Laws, pp. 30-31.— Commerce and 
Science, p. 33.— The Splendors of Babylon, pp. 33-34- — Clay Tablets, 
35-37. ^Canaan a Babylonian Domain, p. 37. — The Sabbath Day, pp. 
37-38. —A Tablet from El-Amarna, p. 38.— The Deluge, p. 38 ff.— 
Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, p. 39 ff.— The Gilgamesh Epic, p. 
41 ff.— Marduk and Yahveh, p. 43 ff — Tiamat and Tehom, p. 45.— 
Stress Laid on Humane Conduct, p. 47.— The Serpent and the Fall 
of Man, pp. 47-48.— The Underworld, pp. 49-50.— Job and the New 
Testament on Hell and Paradise, p. 50.— The Moslem Paradise, pp. 
50-52. — Seraphim and Guardian Angels, pp. 53-55.— Demons and 
Devils, pp. 55-58. — Monotheism, p. 59. — Abraham's Conversion, Ac- 
cording to the Koran, p. 60. — The Word El, pp. 60-61. — The Name 
Yahveh, on a Clay Tablet of Hammurabi's Time, pp. 61-62.— The 
Sun-God of Sippar, pp. 62-63 —Ezekiel's Vision Illustrated, pp. 64- 
65. — Babylonian Polytheism and Israelitic Particularism, pp. 65-66. 

SECOND LECTURE 6? 

Isaiah's Battle Song, p. 6g. — Shrinking from Yahveh, p. 70. — Babel 
as Interpreter of the Bible, p. 71. — Kutha and Chalach, the Home of 
the Exiled Israelites, pp. 72-73. — The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser 
II., pp. 74-78.— The Re'em, or Wild Ox, pp. 79-83.— The Hill of 
Babil, pp. 81-83. — The Lion of Babylon, p. 84. — The Dragon of Ba- 
bel, p. 85. — Old Testament Scriptures Translated by Assyriology, p. 
86. — The Insanity of Nebuchadnezzar, p. 87. — Book of Jonah, p. 88. 
— Even the Modern Orient an Interpreter of the Bible, pp. 89-90. — 
The Magic Power of Spittle, p. go. — Smoke and Fire, pp. 90-91.— 



IV BABLE AND BIBLE. 

PAGE 

Gula, the Awakener of the Dead, p. gr. — Revelation and the Old 
Testament, p. 92 S. — The Second Commandment Suppressed, p. 93 
ff. and also p. 102. — The Two Tablets Engraved by God's Own Finger, 
p. 94. — Miracles of the Two Tablets in Prehistoric Reports, pp. 95- 
96. — The So-called Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi, pp. 96- 
100. — The Covenant of Sinai, p. 100. — The Institution of Sabbath, p. 
101. — The First Commandment and Monotheism, p. 102. — God in 
Names, p. 102 ff —Babylonian Polytheism, gross but poetical, pp. 
103-104 — The Homeric Pantheon, p. 104. — Anthropomorphism of 
Hebrew Prophets, p. 104. — Yahveh with Horns, p. 104. — The Ancient 
of Days, p. 105. — The Ethical Level of Israel and Babylon, p. 106. — 
The Position of Woman in Israel, p. 108. — The Goddess of Birth and 
Eve, p. log ff. — The Narrowness of Hebrew and Moslem Monotheism, 
pp. 110-112. — The Extermination of Gentiles, p. 111-112. — God no 
Respecter of Persons, pp. 112-113. — Ethical Monotheism, p. 113. — 
Outlook Upon the Future Development of Religion, p. 114. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR BABEL AND BIBLE 115 

Literature ON Babel AND Bible 117 

Opinion.s ON " Babel AND Bible" 120 

Emperor William on "Babel and Bible," pp. 120-124. — Professor 
Harnack on the Emperor's Attitude Toward " Babel and Bible," pp. 
125-130. — M Halevy's Opinion, pp. 130-131.— Cornill on "Babel and 
Bible," pp. 132-136. — A Roman Catholic Verdict, pp. 136-137. — 
Alfred Jeremias on Delitzsch, pp. 137-139. — Higher Criticism and the 
Emperor, op. i3g-i44. 

Reply to Critics of the First Lecture 145 

The Ethical Aspect, pp. 145-146. — The Primordial Chaos, p. 146. — 
Traces of Polytheism, p. 146. — Babylonian Monotheism, pp. 146-147. 
— The Name "El," pp. 148-150. — The Name "Yahveh," pp. 150- 
151. — The Name "Yahum-ilu," pp. 152-153. — Processions of the 
Gods, pp. 153. — Aaron's Blessing, pp. 153-155. — The Sabbath, pp. 
155-156. — The Fall, pp. 157-158. — Life After Death, pp. 158 i5g. — 
Tiamat, pp. i5g-i6i. — Angels, pp. 161-162 — Babylonian Supersti- 
tions in Sweden, p. 162. — Canaanites, pp. 162-163. — 

Reply to Critics of the Second Lecture 164 

Orthodoxy in Synagogue and Church, pp. 164 167. — Conclusion, p. 
167. 



FIRST LECTURE 



FIRST LECTURE. 

TO what end this toil and trouble in distant, inhospit- 
able, and danger-ridden lands? Why all this ex- 
pense in ransacking to their utmost depths the rubbish 
heaps of forgotten centuries, where we know neither 
treasures of gold nor of silver exist? Why this zealous 
emulation on the part of the nations to secure the great- 
est possible number of mounds for excavation? And 
whence, too, that constantly increasing interest, that 
burning enthusiasm, born of generous sacrifice, now be- 
ing bestowed on both sides of the Atlantic on the excava- 
tions of Babylonia and Assyria? 

One answer echoes to all these questions, — one an- 
swer, which, if not absolutely adequate, is yet largely the 
reason and consummation of it all : The Bible. A magic 
halo, woven in earliest youth, encircles the names of 
Nineveh and Babylon, an irresistible fascination abides 
for us all in the stories of Belshazzar and the Wise Men 
of the East. The long-lasting d^masties here awakened 
to new life, however potent for history and civilisation 
they may have been, would not have aroused a tithe of 
their present interest, did they not number among them 
the names of Amraphel, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnez- 
zar, with whom we have been familiar from childhood. 



2 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

And with the graven memories of youth is associated 
the deeper longing of maturity, — the longing, so charac- 
teristic of our age, — to possess a philosophy of the world 
and of life that will satisfy both the heart and the head. 
And this again leads us directly to the Bible, and notably 
to the Old Testament, with which historically our mod- 
ern views are indissolubly connected. 

The minute, exhaustive scrutiny to which untold 
numbers of Christian scholars in Germany, England, and 
America — the three Bible-lands, as we may justly call 
them — are submitting the Old Testament, that little 
library of books of most varied hue, is nothing less than 
astounding. 

Of these silent intellectual labors the world has as 
yet taken but little notice. Yet this much is certain, 
that when the sum-total and ultimate upshot of the new 
knowledge shall have burst the barriers of the scholar's 
study and entered the broad path of life, — shall have 
entered our churches, schools, and homes, — the life of 
humanity will be more profoundly stirred and be made 
the recipient of more significant and enduring progress 
than it has by all the discoveries of modern physical and 
natural science put together. So far, at any rate, the 
conviction has steadily and universally established itself 
that the results of the Babylonian and Assyrian excava- 
tions are destined to inaugurate anew epoch, not onl}- in 
our intellectual life, but especially in the criticism and 
comprehension of the Old Testament, and that from now 
till all futurity the names of Babel and Bible will remain 
inseparably linked together. 

How times have changed ! There was David and 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 3 

there was Solomon, 1000 years before Christ ; and Moses, 
1400 3'ears ; and Abraham eight centuries prior. And of 
all these men we had the minutest information ! It was 
so unique, so supernatural, that one credulously accepted 
along with it stories concerning the origin of the world 
and mankind. The very greatest minds stood, and some 
of them still stand to-day, under the puissant thrall of 
the mystery encompassing the First Book of Moses. But 
now that the pyramids have opened their depths and the 
Ass3^rian palaces their portals, the people of Israel, with 
its literature, appears as the 3-oungest member onl^^ of a 
venerable and hoarj^ group of nations. 

The Old Testament formed a world by itself till far 
into the last century. It spoke of times to whose latest 
limits the age of classical antiquity barely reached, and 
of nations that have met cither with none or with the 
most cursory allusion from the Greeks and the Romans. 
The Bible was the sole source of our knowledge of the 
histor^^ of Hither Asia prior to 550 B. C, and since its 
vision extended over all that immense quadrangle lying 
between the Alediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf and 
stretching from Mount Ararat to Ethiopia, it naturally 
teemed with enigmas that might otherwise have tarried 
till eternit}^ for their solution. 
But now the walls that 
formed the impenetrable background to the scenes of the 
Old Testament have suddenl^^ fallen, and a keen invigo- 
rating air and a flood of light from the Orient pervades 
and irradiates the hoar3'book, — animating and illuminat- 
ing it the more as Hebrew antiquit3^ is linked together 
from beginning to end with Babylonia and Ass3-ria. 

The American excavations at Nippur brought to 



4 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

light the business records of a great wholesale house, 
Murashu & Sons, operating in that city in the reign of 
Artaxerxes (450 B. C). We read in these records the 
names of many Jewish exiles that had remained in Babel, 
as Nathaniel, Haggai, and Benjamin, and we read also 
of a canal Kabar in connection with the city of Nippur, 
which is the original of the canal of Kebar rendered fa- 
mous by Hzekiel's vision and situated ''in the land of 
the Chaldaeans" (Ezekiel i. 3). This "grand canal," 
for such the name means, may possibly exist to this very 
day. 

Fig. I. UR OF THE ChALDEES, THE HOME OF ABRAHAM AND THE 

Forefathers of Israel. 
(Ruins of el-Muqayyer, pronounced Mukayyer, English Mugheir.) 

Since the Babylonian bricks usually bear a stamp 
containing along with other marks the name of the city 
in which the building of which it formed a part was 
erected, it was made possible for Sir Henry Rawlinson as 
early as the year 1849 to rediscover the much-sought-for 
city of Ui' of the Chaldces^ the home of Abraham and the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 5 

ancestors of the tribes of Israel (Genesis xi. 31 and xv. 7) . 
The discovery was made in the gigantic mound of ruins 
of Mugheir on the right bank of the lower Buphrates 
(see Fig. 1) , which is now the storm-center of warring 
Arab tribes. The certainty of the discovery has been 
more and more established. 

The data of the cuneiform literature shed light also 
on geographical matters : formerly the site of the city of 





Fiy. 2. HiTTiTE Ideographic 
Writing from Carchemish.' 



Fig. 3. King Hammurabi. The King 
Amraphel of the Bible. 



Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C. won his 
great battle from Pharaoh-necho (Jeremiah xlvi. 2) was 
sought for at random on the banks of the Euphrates, but 
in March, 1876, the English Assyriologist George Smith, 
starting from Aleppo and following the river downward 
from Biredjik, rode directly to the spot where from the 

' Confirming the discovery of the site of Carchemish, where Nebuchednezzar 
defeated Necho in 605 B. C. 



6 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

tenor of the cuneiform inscriptions the city of the Hittite 
king's must have lain, and at once and unhesitatingly 
identified the vast ruins of Dsherabis there situate, with 
their walls and palace-mounds, more extensive than Nin- 
eveh itself, with the ancient city of Carchemish, — a con- 
clusion that was immediatel3^ afterward confirmed by the 
inscriptions in the unique ideographic Hittite script that 
were strewn over the entire site of the ruins (Fig. 2) . 

And like many names of places, so also many of the 
personalities named in the Bible, have received new light 
and life. The book of the prophet Isaiah (xx. 1) men- 
tions an Assyrian king by the name of Sargon, who 
sent his marshal against Ashdod ; and when in 1843 the 
French consul Kmile Botta began his excavations on the 
mound of ruins situated not far from Mosul, and thus in- 
augurated archaeological research on Mesopotamian soil, 
the first Assyrian palace unearthed was the palace of this 
same Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria. Na3^, on one of 
the superb alabaster reliefs with which the walls of the 
palace chambers were adorned, the very person of this 
mighty warrior conversing with his marshal appears be- 
fore our e3^es (Fig. 4) . 

The Book of Kings (2 Kings xviii. 14) narrates that 
King Sennacherib received tribute from King Hezekiah 
in the city of Lachish in southern Palestine. Now, a re- 
lief from Sargon 's palace in Nineveh shows the great As- 
S3-rian king enthroned before his tent in sight of a con- 
quered city, and the accompanying inscription reads: 
"Sennacherib, the king of the universe, king of Ashur, 
seated himself upon his throne and inspected the booty of 
Lachish." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



7 



And again, Sennaclierib's Babylonian rival Mero- 
dacli-Baladan, who according to the Bible (2 Kings xx. 
12) sent letters and a present to King Hezekiah, is shown 
us in his own likeness by a magnificent diorite relief now 




Fig. 4. King Sargon II. and His Marshal. 

in Berlin, where before the king is the lord-mayor of the 
city of Babylon, to whom the sovereign in his gracious- 
ness has seen fit to grant large tracts of land. Even the 




Fig. 5 Assyrian King in State Custume. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



contemporary of Abraham, Amrapliel, the great king 
Hammurabi, is now represented by a likeness (Fig. 3) . 
Thus, all the men that made the history of the world for 
3000 long years, rise to life again, and the most costly 




Fig. 6. Seal of King Darius. 

relics have been bequeathed to us by them. Here is the 
seal of King Darius, the son of Hystaspes (Fig. 6) , where 
the king is represented as hunting the lion under the 
sublime protection of Ahura Mazda, and at the side is the 
trilingual inscription : "I am Darius, the great king," — 




Fig. 7. Seal of Sargon I. (Third or fourth millennium B. C.) 

a genuine treasure of the British Museum. Here is the 
state seal of one of the oldest known Babylonian rulers, 
Shargani-shar-ali, or Sargon I., who flourished in the 
third, or possibly the fourth, millennium before Christ 



10 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



(Fig. 7) . This king, as the legend runs, knew not his 
own father, the latter having met his death prior to the 
birth of his son ; and since the father's brother cared not 




Elamite 
Babylonian merchant 



Jew of Lachish 



Israelite 
Arab horseman 



Fie. 8. Racial Types. 



for the widowed mother, great affliction attended the son's 
entrance into this world; we read: "In Azupiran, on 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 11 

the banks of the Euphrates, she bore me in concealment ; 
she placed nie in a box of reeds, sealed my door with 
pitch, and cast me upon the river, which conve^^ed me on 
its waves to Akki, the water-carrier. He took me up in 
the kindness of his heart, reared me as his own child, 
made me his gardener. Then Ishtar, the daughter of the 
King of Heaven, showed fondness for me and made me 
king over men." 

And not only kings and generals, but also entu'e na- 
tions^ have been brought to life again by these discov- 
eries. If we compare the various types of nationality 
engraved on the monuments of Assyrian art, and, taking 
for example two types that we know, here scrutinise the 
picture of a Jew of Lachish (Fig. 8) , and here the repre- 
sentation of an Israelite of the time of Jehu, we are not 
likely to be wrong in our conclusion that also the other 
national types, for example the Elamite chieftain, the 
Arab horseman, and the Babylonian merchant, have been 
depicted and reproduced with the same fidelity and exact- 
ness. ParticularU' the Assyrians, who sixty years ago 
were supposed to have perished with all their history and 
civilisation in the great river of tinre, have been made 
known to us in the minutest details by excavations in 
Nineveh, and many passages in the prophetic books re- 
ceive gorgeous illustration from our discoveries. Thus, 
Isaiah describes in the following eloquent language the 
Assyrian troops : 

"Behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: None shall be 
weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; 
neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of 
their shoes be broken : Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows 



12 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 9. Bronze Gates of the Palace of Shalmaneser II (At Balawat.) 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



13 



bent, their horses' lioofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels 
like a whirlwind : Their roaring shall be like a lion, yea, they shall 




Fig. lo. Assyrians B/vtterinc. a Fortress. 




Fig. II. Detail-Group on Bronze Gate. 
Above war-chariots and below captives led before the king. 

roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and 
none shall deliver it." — ( Isaiah, v. 27-29.) 



14 



BABEL AND BIBLH. 




Fig. 12. Procession of Female Captives. (Detail-group on bronze gate.) 















^Jx 



. \: 



^ ' ^ 



.^ 



k^k\^\' 



r?y^<1% 






IV 







Fig. 13. Assyrian Bowmen and Spearmen Attacking a Hostile Fortress. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



15 



We can now see these same Assyrian soldiers arising 
from their camp in the early morn and dashing their bat- 
tering-rams against the enemy's fortress (Fig. 10) ; and 







>^- '~~ 




■..-•-— ^l_-.V^ ^ 





Fig. 13a. Grazing Antelopes. 
(Idyllic scene picturing the intense realism of Assj'rian art. 



<M>(M'^]W^sm^Um»^)%'^^^ ' 










rew^ 


70{fflwrw^- v^AWi^srrwAYf^ 


\\/Vxxk 


0wvwPlJJW^ 


\J /VVx/' 





Fig. 14. Assyrian Slingers. 

on Other representations (Figs. 11 and 12) iwA.y be seen 
the unfortunate prisoners conducted the \va3^ from which 



16 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



there is no home-coming. We see also (Fig. 13) the 
Assyrian bowmen and spearmen casting their weapons 
toward the hostile fortress, and in another case Assyrian 
warriors storming an elevation defended by hostile arch- 
ers. The}' pull themselves upward by the branches of 




Fig. 15. Head of Winged Bull. 

Showing details of Assyrian mode of dressing the beard, as worn 

by the king and the officers of the army. 

the trees, or clamber to the summit with the help of 
staffs ; whilst others drag in triumph the severed heads 
of their enemies into the valley. 

The military system of this first great warrior-state 
of the world is shown forth to us in a vast number of sim- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



17 




Fig i6. The King's Chariot in a Parade. 




Fig. 17. Officers of Ashurbanipal (Sardanapalus) Entering Court 



18 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



ilar representations on the bronze doors of Shahnaneser 
II. (Fig. 9) and on the alabaster reliefs of the palaces of 
Sargon and Sennacherib, with all details of armament 
and eqnipment and in all phases of development. (See, 
for example, Fig. 14.) 




Fig. i8. Pages Carrying the Royal Chariot. 

Again wc have the portrait of an Assyrian officer of 
Sargon 's general staff, the style of whose beard surpasses 
in artistic cut aii3'thing that has been attempted by mod- 
ern officers. (See, for example. Fig. 15.) Here we see 
the officers of the ro^^al household making their cere- 
monial entry (Fig. 17) , or pages carr3-ing the ro3-al char- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



19 



iot (Fig. 18) , or the royal throne (Fig. 19) . Many beau- 
tiful reliefs show us King Sardanapalus following the 
chase, especially in his favorite sport of hunting lions, of 
which a goodly number of magnificent specimens were 




Fig. 19. Pages Carrying the Royal Throne. 

constantly kept at hand in parks specially reserved for 
this purpose. (Figs. 20-25.) 

When King Saul refused to suffer young David to 
go forth to do battle with the giant Goliath, David re- 



20 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



minded him that he had been the shepherd of his father's 
flocks and that when a lion or a bear had come and taken 
a lamb from his flock, he had gone out after the beast and 









i^^'-^m 


iii:^ 


mamtsmi^ggsfaiam 


«>;.Mi^^HI 


■-^*!^:-^..- ■.^i.c^L^^'!;^^"^AS;5Ui.^ i 



Fig. 20. King Sardanapalus on Horseback. 

had smitten it and wrested from it its prey, and that if 
after that it had risen against him he had caught the lion 




Fig. 21. Sardanapalus Hunting the Lion on Horseback. 

by its beard and slain it. Precisely the same custom pre- 
vailed in Assyria; and the reliefs show King Sardana- 
palus doing battle with the lion, not only on horseback 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



21 




Fig. 22. Hunting the Lion from a Chariot. 




Fig. 23. Sardanapalus Bearding the Lion. 
(The king of Ashur measures his strength with the king of the desert. 




Fig. 24. Hunting from a Boat. 



12 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



(Fig. 21) and from liis chariot (Fig. 11) , but also in hand 
to hand combat (Fig. 23) , — the King of Ashur measur- 
ing his strength with the king of the desert. 




Fig 25. Caged Lion Set Free for the Chase. 




Fig. 26. Servants Carrying Fruit, Hares, Partridges, Spitted 
Grasshoppers, and Onions. 

Wq catch glimpses of the preparations which were 
made for the royal meal (Figs. 26 and 27) ; we see the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



23 



servants bringing hares, partridges, spitted grasshoppers, 
a plenitude of cakes and all manner of fruits, and carry- 
ing fresh branches for driving away the flies. We are 
even permitted to see on a bas-relief of the harem (Fig. 
28) the king and queen quaffing costly wine in a leafy 
bower, the king reclining on an elevated divan, the queen 
seated opposite him on a chair, and clothed in rich gar- 
ments. Eunuchs waft cooling breezes toward them from 




Fig. 27. Slaves Carrying Fruit 

their fans, while soft music from distant sources steals 
gently upon their ears (Fig. 29) . This is the only queen 
of whom we possess a picture. Her profile as it appeared 
years ago in a better state of preservation has been saved 
for posterity by a sketch made in 1867 by Lieutenant, 
afterwards Colonel, Billerbeck (Fig. 30) . This consort 
of Sardanapalus was apparently a princess of Aryan blood 
with blond hair. 

Many other things of interest in iVssyrian antiquity 



24 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 28. King Sard.\napalus and His Consort. 




Fig. 29. Attendants Upon King Sardanapalus and His Consort. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



25 



have also been restored to our bodily vision. The prophet 
Isaiah (xlvi. 1) mentions the procession of the idols, and 
in Fig. 31 we actually wit- 
ness one, — with the god- 
desses in front, and behind, 
the god of the weather 
armed with hammer and 
bolts ; Assyrian soldiers 
have been commanded to 
transport the idols. 

We see in Figure 32 
how the statues of the 
gigantic stone bulls were 
transported, and catch in 
this way all manner of 
glimpses of the technical 
knowledge of the Assy- 
rians. But our greatest and most constant delight is 







'v" 


1 


WW 


' V/^ 


f ^ 

i 

1- . 


M^iua:!^- 


' 


*-- 







Fig. 30. Consort of Sardanapalus. 
(From a sketch by Colonel Billerbeck.) 




Fig. 31. Procession of Idols. 

derived from the contemplation of their noble and simple 
architecture, as it is exhibited for example in the portal 



26 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 32. Transportation of the Gigantic Stone Bulls. 



Qd^MI^JMhM 





1 


1 H 


1 


\ 


\ \ \ 

j 


1 




1 


1 

t 

Uil . 



4.1. 






h^m&Mi^^A 



^ ■ ■ LE 

Fig. 33 Portal of the Palace of Sargon. 
(Representicg the noble style and simplicity of the Assyrian architecture 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



21 



of Sargon's palace excavated by Botta (Fig. 2)2)) , or from 
tlie magnificent representations of animals, replete with 
the most startling realism, which these "Dutchmen of 
antiquity" created. For example, the idyllic picture of 
the grazing antelopes (Fig. 13a ; also Fig. 34) , or the 
d^dng lioness of Nineveh, so justly renowned in art 
(Fig. 35). 




Fig. 34. Idyllic Scenes from Assyrian Art. 

The excavations on Babylonian soil disclose in like 
manner the art and culture of the mother country of As- 
syrian civilisation far back in the fourth millennium, — a 
period which the boldest flights of fancy would otherwise 
have scarcely dreamt of recovering. We penetrate lastly 
here into the period of that primitive un-Indo-Germanic 
and likewise un-Semitic nation of Sumerians, who are 



28 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



the creators and originators of the great Babylonian civ- 
ilisation, of those Sumerians for whom the number 60 
and not 100 constituted the next higher unit after 10. 




Fig. 35. The Dying Lioness of Nineveh. 

That Sumerian Priest-King whose magnificently pre- 
served head (Fig. 36) the Berlin Museum now shelters. 




Fig. 36. Head of a Sumerian Priest-King. 
(A noble type from the dawn of human history.) 

may unquestionably be characterised as a noble represen- 
tative of the human race from the twilight of history. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 29 

But gratifying and instructive as all these discov- 
eries may be, they have 3^et, so to speak, the significance 
of details and externalities only, and are easily surpassed 
in scope and importance by the revelations which it still 
remains for us to adduce. 

I am not referring now to the highly important fact 
that the Babylonian and Assyrian methods of reckoning 
time, which were based on accurate astronomical observa- 
tions of solar eclipses, etc., enabled us to determine the 
chronology of the events narrated in the Book of Kings, 
— a circumstance that was doubly gratifying owing to the 
discovery of Robertson Smith and Wellhausen that the 
chronology of the Old Testament had been forcibly made 
to conform to a system of sacred numbers, which counted 
480 3^ears from the end of the Exile back to the founding 
of the temple of Solomon, and again 480 3^ears backward 
from that date to the Exodus of the children of Israel 
from Egj^pt (1 Kings vi. 1) . 

I can also adduce in this place but a single, and that 
an inconspicuous, illustration of the far-reaching influence 
which the cuneiform investigations have exercised on our 
uiidej'standing of the text of the Old Testa7jzent^ — a result 
due to the remarkably close affinity between the Baby- 
lonian and Hebrew languages and to the enormous com- 
pass of the Babylonian literature. We read in Numbers 
vi. 24-27: 

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord 
make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and 
give thee peace." 

Countless times has this blessing been given and re- 



30 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ceived ! But it was never understood in its full depth 
and import until Babylonian usage informed us that ' ' to 
lift up one's countenance or eyes upon or to another," 
was a form of speech for "bestowing one's love upon an- 
other, for gazing lovingly and feelingly upon another, as 
a bridegroom upon a bride, or a father upon a son." This 
ancient and glorious benediction, therefore, invokes on 
man with increasing emphasis God's blessing and protec- 
tion, God's benignant and gracious consideration, and 
lastly God's own love, — finally to break forth into that 
truly beautiful greeting of the Orient, "Peace be with 
thee!" 

Yet the greatest and most unexpected service that 
Babel ever rendered the philological interpretation of the 
Bible must yield the palm for wide-reaching significance 
to the fact that here on the banks of the Euphrates and 
Tigris as early as 2250 B. C. we find a highly oi'ganised 
constittitiotial state. Here in these Babylonian lowlands, 
having an area not greater than that of Italj^, yet extra- 
ordinarily rich b}^ nature and transformed by human in- 
dustry into a veritable hotbed of productiveness, there 
existed in the third millennium before Christ a civilisa- 
tion comparable in many respects with our own. 

It was Hammurabi, the Amraphel of the Bible, that 
ultimately succeeded in expelling the Elamites, the her- 
editary enemy of Babylon, from the country, and in weld- 
ing North and South together into a single union, with 
Babylon as political and religious center. His first solici- 
tude was to establish a uniform system of law over the 
entire country, and he accordingly promulgated a juridic 
code that determined in the minutest manner the rights 



BABEL AND BIBLE 31 

and privileges of liis citizens. The relations of master, 
slave, and hireling, of merchant and apprentice, of land- 
lord and tenant, are here precisely fixed. There is a law, 
for example, that a clerk who has delivered money to his 
superior for goods that he has sold shall obtain a receipt 
for the transaction. Reductions in rent are provided for 
in case of damage by storms and wild beasts. The fish- 
ing rights of boroughs along the canals are precisely de- 
fined. And so on. Babylon is the seat of the Supreme 
Court, to which all knotty and disputed points of law are 
submitted. Every able-bodied man is subject to military 
duty. But Hammurabi softened by many decisions the 
severity of the recruiting laws ; for example, in the inter- 
ests of stock-raising he exempted herdsmen from military 
service, and he also conferred special privileges on an- 
cient priestly families. 

We read of money having been coined in Babylon, 
and the distinctively cursive character of their script 
points to a very extensive use of writing. Many letters 
of this ancient period have been preserved. We read, for 
example, the letter of a wife to her absent husband, ask- 
ing his advice on some trivial matter ; the epistle of a 
son to his father, announcing that a certain person has 
unspeakably offended him, and that his impulse is to give 
the miscreant a severe drubbing, but that he prefers to 
have the advice of his father on the matter; and another, 
still stranger one, in which a son implores his father to 
send him at once the money that he has so long promised 
him, fortifying his request with the contumelious insin- 
uation that in that event only Mill he feel justified in re- 
suming his prayers for his father's salvation. Every- 



?>2 



BABEL AXD BIBLE. 




O? 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



33 



tiling, in fact, points to a thoroughly organised postal 
system throughout the empire, and this conclusion is 
corroborated by the distinctest evidence that there existed 
causeways and canals in Babylonia which extended far 
beyond its boundaries and M'hich were kept in perfect 
condition. 

Commerce and industry, stock-raising and agricul- 
ture, flourished here in an eminent degree, while science. 




Fig. 38. Palace of King Sargon at Khorsabad. 
(Restored by Victor Place.) 

geometry, mathematics, and notably astronomy, attained 
a height of development that has repeatedly evoked the 
admiration of modern scientists. Certainly not Paris, 
and at most Rome, can bear comparison with Babylon in 
the extent of influence which it exercised upon the world 
for 2000 years. 

Bitter testimony do the prophets of the Old Testa- 



34 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



meiit bear to the surpassing splendor and unconquerable 
might of the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar (see Figs. 37, 
38, 39, 40, and 41) . " Babylon," cries Jeremiah, ''hath 
been a golden cup in Yahveh's hand, that made all the 
earth drunken" (Jer. li. 7) ; and the Revelation of St. 
John still quivers with the detested memor^^ of Babel the 
Great, the gay voluptuous city, the wealth-teeming me- 
tropolis of commerce and art, the mother of harlots and 




ri ■ ri, 



Fig. 39. P.A.L.-\CE OF Senn.-\cherib at Nineveh. 
(Imaginative Restoration. After Ferguson.) 

of all abominations of the earth. Yet so far back as the 
beginning of the third millennium before Christ Babylon 
had been this great focus of culture, science, and litera- 
ture, the "brain" of Hither Asia, the power that dom- 
inated the world. 

In the winter of 1887, a band of Eg3q^tian fellahs 
who were excavating in the ruins of the ])alaces of Amen- 
ophis IV. at El-Amarna, between Thebes and Memphis, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 35 

discovered about 300 clay tablets of man^^ forms and 
sizes. These tablets were found to contain the corre- 
spondence of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Mesopotamian 
kings with the Pharaohs Amenophis III. and IV., and, 
most important of all, the letters of the Egyptian gover- 
nors of the great Canaanite cities of Tyre, Sidon, Akko, 
Askalon, etc., to the Egyptian court; and the museum 
at Berlin is so fortunate as to possess the only letters that 




Fig. 40. Chariot and Attendants of Sennacherib with Castle 
ON a Mountain. (After Layard.) 

came from Jerusalem, — letters written before the entrance 
of the Israelites into the promised land. Like a powerful 
searchlight, these clay tablets of El-Amarna shed a flood 
of dazzling effulgence upon the profound obscurit}^ which 
shrouded the political and cultural conditions of the period 
from 1500 to 1400 B.C.; and the mere fact that the mag- 
nates of Canaan, nay, even of Cyprus, made use of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. ?)7 

Babylonian language and script, and like the Babylonians 
wrote on clay tablets, the mere fact that the Babylonian 
language was the official language of diplomatic inter- 
course from the Euphrates to the Nile, is in itself indis- 
putable proof of the omnipotent influence which Baby- 
lonian civilisation and literature exercised on the world 
from the year 2200 until 1400 B. C. 

When the twelve tribes of Israel invaded the land of 
Canaan, they entered a country which belonged absolutely 
to the domain of Babylonian civilisation. It is an unim- 
portant but characteristic feature of the prevailing state 
of things that a Babylonish garment excited the avarice of 
Achan when the first Canaanite cit3^, Jericho, was stormed 
and plundered (Joshua vii. 21) . And not onl}^ the in- 
dustry, but also the commerce and law, the customs and 
the science of Babylon were the standards of the land. 
Knowing this, Ave comprehend at once why the systems 
of measures, weights, and coins used in the Old Testa- 
ment, and the external form of their laws ("if a man do 
this or that, he shall be punished after this manner or 
that") are Babylonian throughout. So also the sacer- 
dotal customs and the methods of offering sacrifices Avere 
profoundly influenced by Babylonian models ; and it is a 
remarkable fact that Israelitic traditions are altogether at 
variance in their accounts of the origin of the Sabbath, — 
as will be rendered apparent by a comparison of Exodus 
XX. 11 and Deuteronomy v. 15. But now the matter is 
clearer. 

The Babylonians also had their Sabbath day {sha- 
battti) , and a calendar of feasts and sacrifices has been 
unearthed according to which the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 



38 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

28tli da3\s of every montli were set apart as da^^s on which 
no work should be done, on which the king should not 
change his robes, nor mount his chariot, nor offer sacri- 
fices, nor render legal decisions, nor eat of boiled or 
roasted meats, on which not even a physician should lay 
hands on the sick. Now this setting apart of the sev- 
enth day for the propitiation of the gods is really under- 
stood from the Babylonian point of view, and there can 
therefore be scarcely the shadow of a doubt that in the 
last resort we are indebted to this ancient nation on the 
banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris for the plenitude 
of blessings that flows from our day of Sabbath or Sun- 
day rest. 

And more still. There is a priceless treasure in the 
Berlin Museum, a tablet of clay, containing the Babylo- 
nian legend of how it came to pass that the first man for- 
feited the boon of immortality. The place where this 
tablet was found, namely El-Amarna in Eg^^pt, and the 
numerous dots scattered over it in red Egj^ptian ink, 
showing the pains that some Egyptian scholar had taken 
to master the intricacies of the foreign text, are ocular 
evidence of the zeal with which the productions of Baby- 
lonian literature were cultivated over the vast extent of 
territory which stretched from Canaan to the land of the 
Pharaohs. Shall we be astonished, therefore, to learn 
that entire C3xles of Biblical stories have been suddenly 
brought to light from the darkness of the Babylonian 
treasure-heaps, in much purer and more primitive form 
than they exist in the Bible itself? 
I The Babylonians divided their history into two great 

periods : that before the Flood and that after the Flood. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 39 

Babylonia was in the true sense of the word the land of 
deluges. Like all alluvial lowlands bordering on great 
streams that flow into the sea, it was exposed to floods of 
the direst and most unique character. It is the home of 
the cyclone or tornado, Mitli its accompaniment of earth- 
quake and cloudburst. Only twenty-five years ago, in 
the year 1876, a tornado of this character gathered in the 
Bay of Bengal, and amid the crashing of thunder and 
with a violence so terrific as to dismast ships distant 
nearly two hundred miles, approached the delta of the 
Ganges, met the ebbing tide, and engulfing it in its own 
titanic tidal-wave, hurled oceans of water over an area of 
141 square leagues to a depth of 45 feet, drowning 215,000 
human beings, and only losing its strength as it broke 
against the highlands that lay beyond. Now the credit 
belongs to the celebrated Viennese geologist, Eduard 
Suess, for having discovered the exact and detailed de- 
scription of just such a tornado in the Babylonian story 
of the Flood inscribed on this tablet (Fig. 42) from the 
library of Sardanapalus at Nineveh and committed to 
writing 2000 years before Christ. The sea plays the prin- 
cipal part in this flood, and therefore the ark of the Baby- 
lonian Noah, Xisuthros, is cast back upon a spur of the 
Armenio-Medean mountains ; but in other respects it is 
the same old story of the Flood, so familiar to us all. - 
Xisuthros receives from the god of the watery deep 
the command to build a ship of certain dimensions, to 
coat it thoroughly with pitch, and to put on board of it 
his entire family together with the seeds of all living 
things. The ship is entered, its doors are closed, it is 
cast adrift upon the devastating waves, and is finally 



40 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



stranded upon a mountain bearinf^ the name of Nizir. 
Then follows the famous passage: " On the seventh day 
I took forth a dove and released it ; the dove flew hither 
and thither, but finding no resting-place returned." We 
then read that a swallow was sent forth ; it also found no 
resting-place and returned. Finally a raven was sent 
forth, which, noticing that the waters had subsided, did 



r»-»/-'.»^-..~7>,-'— /-r-r 








Fig. 42. Tablet Containing Babylonian Story of the Flood. 

not return. Xisuthros then abandons his ship and offers 
sacrifices on the summit of the mountain. The sweet 
odor was scented by the gods, etc., etc. 

This entire story, precisely as it is here written, 
afterwards travelled to Canaan, but owing to the totally 
different conformation of the land in this latter country, 
it was forgotten that the sea had played the principal role, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 41 

and we accordingly find in the Bible two distinct versions 
of the Flood, which are not only absolutely impossible 
from the point of view of natural science, but are also at 
diametrical variance with each other, the one giving as 
the duration of the Flood a period of 365 days and the 
other a period of 40 + (3 X 7) , or 61 days. We owe the 
discovery that two fundamentally different versions of the 
story of the Flood were welded together into one in the 
Bible, to the orthodox Catholic body surgeon of Louis 
XV., Jean Astruc, who, in the year 1753 first submitted, 
as Goethe expresses it, the books of Moses " to the probe 
and knife," and thus became the founder of Pentateuch 
criticism, or that branch of inquiry which seeks to in- 
crease and clarify our knowledge of the many diversified 
sources of which the Five Books of Moses are composed. 

These are facts which from the point of view of sci- 
ence are as immutable as rock, however stubbornly people 
on both sides of the Atlantic may close their e3'es to 
them. When we remember that minds of the stamp of 
Luther and Alelancthon once contemptuously rejected the 
Copernican S3^stem of astronomy, we may be certain that 
the results of the scientific criticism of the Pentateuch 
will tarry long for recognition. Yet it is just as certain 
that some day they will be openly admitted. 

The ten Babylonian kings who reigned before the 
Flood have also been accepted in the Bible as the ten 
antediluvian patriarchs, and the agreement is perfect in 
all details. 

In addition to the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, the 
eleventh tablet of which contains the story of the Flood, 



42 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

we possess another beautiful Babylonian poem, the story 
of the Creation. 

In the primordial beginning of things, according to 
this epic, down in the gloomy chaos, surged and raged 
the primeval waters, the name of which was Tiamat. 
When the gods declared their intention of forming an 
orderly cosmos out of the chaos, Tiamat arose (usually 
represented as a dragon, but also as a seven-headed ser- 
pent) , and made ready for combat to the death. Monsters 
of all descriptions she spawned from her might3^ depths, 
especially gigantic venom-blown serpents ; and in their 
company she set forth bellowing and snorting to her con- 
flict with the gods. The Celestials quaked with terror 
when they saw their direful foe. The god Marduk alone, 
the god of light, of dawn, and of the vernal sun, came 
forward to do battle with her, his sole stipulation being 
that sovereign rank among the gods should be accorded 
him. 

Then follows a splendid scene. First the god Mar- 
duk fastened a gigantic net to the East and the South, to 
the North and the West, lest any part of Tiamat should 
escape. He then mounted in shining armor and radiant 
with majesty his celestial chariot, which was drawn b3^ 
four spirited steeds, the admired cynosure of the eyes of 
all the surrounding gods. Straightwa}^ he made for the 
dragon and her dread embattled train, sending forth his 
challenge for the contest. Then Tiamat shrieked loudly 
and fiercel}^, till her deepmost foundations trembled and 
shook. She opened her maw to its uttermost, but before 
she could shut her lips Marduk made enter into her belly 
the evil hurricane. He seized his lance and pierced her 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 43 

heart. He cast her carcass down and placed himself upon 
it, whilst her helpers were taken captive and placed in 
close confinement. Thereupon Marduk cut Tiamat in 
twain, as cleanly as one would sever a fish, and of the 
one half he made the roof of heaven and of the other he 
made the earth ; and the heaven he inlaid with the moon, 
and the sun, and the stars, and the earth he covered with 
plants and animals, until finally the first man and the 
first woman, made of mingled clay and celestial blood, 
came forth from the hand of their creator. 

Since Marduk was the city-god of Babel, it is quite 
intelligible that this story found widespread diffusion in 
Canaan. Nay, the poets and prophets of the Old Testa- 
ment went so far as to attribute directly to Yahveh the 
heroic deeds of Marduk, and to extol him as the cham- 
pion that broke the head of the dragons in the water 
(Psalms Ixxiv. 13 et seq. ; Ixxxix. 10) , and under ^vhom 
the helpers of the dragon stooped (Job ix. 13) . 

Passages like the following from Isaiah li. 9: 
"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahveh; awake, 
as in the days of old, in the generations of ancient times. Art thou 
not it that hath cut Rahab in pieces and pierced the dragon?" 

or passages like that from Job xxvi, 12 : 

"He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understand- 
ing he smiteth the dragon," 

read like explanatory comments on the little image which 
our expedition found representing the god Marduk, of 
the powerful arm, the far-seeing eye, and the far-hearing 
ear, the symbol of intelligence clad in majestic glory, 
with the conquered dragon of the primeval waters at his 
feet (Fig. 44) . 




iMg. 43 FiiK ••Hi.\cK Oi;iiLisK."' 

(Lenormant, V., p. 329.) 
I Erected by Shalinaneser II. (860-825 B.C.) to 



Fig. 45. Conical Piece of Clay from a 
Babylonian Coffin. 
record the victories of his 31 military expeditions. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 45 

The priestly author that wrote the first chapter of 
Genesis took infinite pains to eliminate all mythological 
features from his story of the creation of the world. But 
since his story begins with the gloomy, watery chaos 
which bears precisely the same name as Tiamat, namely 
Tehofii^ and since this chaos was first divided by the 
light, and heaven and the earth appeared afterwards, and 
heaven was set with the sun, the moon, and the stars, 
and the earth was covered with flowers and with animals, 
and finally the first man and woman went forth from the 
hand of God, it will be seen that there is a very close re- 
lationship between the Biblical and the Babylonian story 
of the creation of the world ; and it will be obvious at the 
same time how absolutely futile all attempts are and will 
forever remain, to harmonise our Biblical story of the 
creation with the results of natural science. 

It is an interesting fact that echoes of this same con- 
flict between Marduk and Tiamat may still be heard in 
the Revelation of St. John the Divine, in the battle be- 
tween the archangel Michael and the beast of the deep, 
"that old serpent called the Devil and Satan." This en- 
tire group of stories, which is also represented in the tale 
of St. George and the dragon, brought by the crusaders 
from the East, is distinctively Babylonian in character; 
inasmuch as many, many hundred years before the Apoc- 
alypse and the first chapter of Genesis were written, we 
find this conflict between the powers of light and the 
powers of darkness renewed at the break of every day 
and the beginning of every spring, depicted in gorgeous 
relief on the walls of the Assyrian palaces (Fig. 46) . 

But the discovery of this' relationship is of still 



46 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



greater importance. The commandment not to do unto 
one's neighbor what one would not like to have done unto 
oneself is indelibly engraven on every human heart. 
" Thou shalt not shed the blood of thy neighbor," " thou 
shalt not draw near thy neighbor's wife," "thou shalt 
not take unto th3^self the garment of thy neighbor," — all 
these fundamental postulates of the human instinct of 






Fig. 46. Battle Between Marduk and Tiamat, the Powers of Light 

AND THE Powers of Darkness. 

(Ancient Assyrian bas-relief now in the British Museum.) 

self-preservation are read in the Babylonian records in 
precisely the same order as they are given in the fifth, 
sixth and seventh commandments of the Old Testament. 
But man is also a social being, and for this reason the 
commandments of humanity, charity, mercy, and love, 
also form an inalienable patrimony of the human race. 
Therefore when a Babylonian Magus was called to a man 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 47 

who was ill and began to inquire what sin had stretched 
him on the sick-bed, he did not rest satisfied with the re- 
cital of the greater sins of commission like murder and 
robbery, but he asked : " Hath this man refused to clothe 
one that was naked ; or hath he refused light to one that 
was imprisoned?" The Babylonian lays great stress, 
too, on the higher forms of human morality ; speaking 
the truth and keeping one's word were sacred duties with 
them, while to say "yes" with the lips and "no" with 
the heart was a punishable transgression. It is not sur- 
prising that infringements of these commandments were 
regarded by the Babylonians precisely as they were by 
the Hebrews, as sins^ for the Babylonians also in all their 
doings considered themselves as dependent on the gods. 
But it is certainly more remarkable that they also con- 
ceived all human afflictions, particularly sickness and 
death, as ?l pttnishment for sins. In Babel as in the Bible, 
the notion of sin dominates everything. Under these 
circumstances it is intelligible that Babylonian thinkers 
also pondered deeply over the problem of how it was pos- 
sible that a creature that had been created in the image 
of God and was God's own handiwork could have fallen a 
victim to sin and to death ; and the Bible has a profound 
and beautiful story of the temptation of woman by the 
serpent. 

The serpent again? That has an unmistakably Baby- 
lonian ring. It was doubtless the same serpent, the pri- 
mordial foe of the gods, that sought to revenge itself on 
the gods of light by seeking to estrange from them their 
noblest creature? Or was it the serpent of which it is 
once said that it "destroyed the dwelling-place of life"? 



48 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The question as to the origin of the Biblical story of the 
Fall of Man is of the utmost importance from the point 
of view of the history of religion as well as from that of 
the theology of the New Testament, which, as is well 
known, contrasts with the first Adam by whom sin and 
death were brought into the world, a second Adam. 

May I lift the veil, may I point to an old Babylonian 
cylinder-seal (Fig. 47) , on which may be seen in the 
center a tree bearing pendent fruits, to the right a man, 

distinguishable by his ' 
horns, which are the S3an- 
bol of strength, to the left 
a woman, both with their 
hands outstretched to- 
J ward the fruit, and be- 
^. c -r c hind the woman the ser- 

Fig. 47. Sacred Tree and Serpent. 
A Babylonian conception of the Fall of Man. pent? Is it UOt the VCry 

'^'^ '"^ acme of likelihood that 

there is some connection between this old Babylonian 
picture and the Biblical tale of the Fall of Man? 

Man dies, and while his body is buried in the grave 
his departed soul descends into "the land of no return- 
ing," into Sheol, into Hades, into the gloomy, dust- 
impregnated localit}^, where the shades flutter around \ 
like birds and lead a joyless and sodden existence. Dust! /j 1 
covers the doors and the bolts, and everything in which; 
the heart of man took delight is mouldy and dust-laden^ 

/"^ With such a disconsolate outlook it is intelligible 

/ 
that both Hebrews and Babylonians looked upon length 

of days here below as the sovereign boon ; and on every 

single one of the great flag-stones with which the holy 




BABEL AND BIBLE. 49 

Street of Marduk in Babylon was paved, and which was 
discovered by the German expedition to that city, there 
was engraved a prayer of Nebuchadnezzar which closed 
with the words: "O, Lord Marduk, grant to us great 
length of days ! " 

But strange to say, the Babylonian conception of the 
Underworld is one degree pleasanter than that of the Old 
Testament. On the twelfth tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, 
the Babylonian Underworld is described in the minutest 
details. We read there of a space situated beneath the 
Underworld which was apparently reserved for souls of 
unusual piety and "in which they reposed on beds of 
ease and quaffed clear water. ' ' 

Many Babylonian coffins have been found in Warka, 
Nippur, and Babel, but the Berlin Museum recently ac- 
quired a small conical piece of clay (Fig. 45) , which has 
evidently been taken from a coffin of this kind, and the 
inscription of which plaintively requests that whosoever 
may find the coffin shall leave it undisturbed and unin- 
jured in its original resting-place ; and the text concludes 
with words of blessing for him who performs so kind a 
deed : "May his name be blessed in the Upperworld, and 
in the Underworld may his departed spirit drink of clear 
water." 

In Sheol, therefore, there exists a place for particu- 
larly pious souls, where they repose on beds of ease and 
quaff clear water. The remainder of Sheol, therefore, 
appears to be especially adapted to the needs of the im- 
pious and to be not only dusty but to be also without 
water, or at most furnishing "roily water,"— in any 
event a place of thirst. 



50 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

In the Book of Job (xxiv. 18) , wliicli appears to be 
extremely conversant with Babylonian modes of thought, 
we find comparisons drawn between the arid, waterless 
desert which is reserved for those that have sinned, and 
the garden with fresh, clear w^ater which is reserved for 
the pious. And in the New Testament, which has most 
curiously amalgamated this sentiment with the last verse 
of the Book of Isaiah, we read of a flaming hell in which 
the rich man languishes from want of w^ater, and of a 
garden (for that is the meaning of Paradise) full of fresh, 
clear water for Lazarus . 

And the pictures which painters and poets, theo- 
logians and priests, and last of all Mahomet the prophet, 
have drawn of this Hell and this Paradise, are well 
known. 

Behold yonder poor Moslem, sick and feeble, who on 
account of his weakness has been abandoned by the cara- 
van in the desert. A jug filled with water is by his side. 
With his own hands he digs his shallow grave in the des- 
ert sands, resignedly awaiting his death. His eyes are 
aglow with expectation, for in a few moments angels Mill 
issue from the open portals of Paradise and greet him 
with the w^ords : ^'' Selain ^alaika^ thou hast been a god- 
fearing man ; enter therefore for all eternity the garden 
that Allah has prepared for his own." 

The garden stretches before him like the vast ex- 
panse of heaven and earth. Luxuriant groves casting 
plentiful shadows and laden with sweet fruits are inter- 
sected in all directions with babbling brooks and dotted 
with bubbling springs ; while aerial bowers rise from the 
banks of the streams. Paradisian glory suffuses the 



BABKL AND BIBLE. 



51 



countenances of the beatified ones, who are filled with 
happiness and serenity. They wear green brocaded gar- 
ments made of the finest silk ; their arms are adorned 
with gold and silver spangles ; they lie on couches with 
lofty bolsters and soft pillows, and at their feet are 
thick carpets. So they rest, 
seated opposite one another 
at richly -furnished tables 
which offer them ever^^thing 
their hearts desire. Brim- 
ming goblets go the rounds, 
and youths endowed with 
immortality and resembling 
scattered pearls carry silver 
beakers and crystal vessels 
filled with Mai'n, the most 
delicious and clearest water 
from the spring Tasnim, 
from which the archangels 
drink, redolent with cam- 
phor and ginger. And this 
water is mixed with the 
rarest old wine, of which 
one can drink as much as 
one pleases, for it does not 
inebriate and causes no headaches. 

And then there are the maidens of Paradise ! Maidens 
with skin as soft and delicate as the ostrich egg, with 
voluptuous bosoms, and with eyes like glittering pearls 
concealed in shells of oysters, — gazelle-like eyes full of 
chaste but enrapturing glances. Two and seventy of 




Fig, 48. Assyrian Angel. 

Type representing manly strength and 

intelligence. (Bas-relief of Kuyunjik. 

Lenormant, IV., pp. 432-433.) 



52 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



these Paradisian maidens may every god-fearing man 
choose unto himself, in addition to the wives that he pos- 
sessed on earth, provided he cares to have them (and the 
good man will always cherish desire for the good) . All 
hatred and envy has departed from the breasts of the de- 
vout ones; no gossip, no slander, is heard in Paradise. 
^^ Se/(7?f/j Selam!^^ everywhere; and all utterances con- 




Fig. 49. Angels with Eagle Heads 
The Holy Tree in the Centre. (British Museum.) 



elude with the ringing words : cl-haindii lillalii rabbi-l- 
''alainiu^ the praise is the Lord's, the master of all crea- 
tures. _: 
This is the culminating point in the development of 
that simple and unpretentious Bab3'lonian conception of 
the crystal-clear water which god-fearing men M-ere des- 
tined to drink in Slicol. And these conceptions of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



53 



torments of Hell and of the blissful pleasures of Paradise, 
to-da3^ swa3^ the hearts of untold millions. \^ ^- 

It is well-known, also, that the conceptions of the '^ 
messengers of the gods, or of the angels^ Avith which the 
Egyptians were utterlj^ unacquainted, are characteristi- 
cally Bab3donian, and also that the conception of cheru- 



10 > 



r^ 




lJ^I 



Fig. 50. Winged Cherub, with Body of Bull and Human Head 
(After Layard.) 

bim and seraphim and of the guardian angels that watch 
over the waj's of men had its origin in Bab3don. The 
Babylonian rulers stood in need of hosts of messengers 
to bear their behests into all quarters of their dominions ; 
and so also their gods were obliged to have at their beck 



54 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



and call legions of messengers or angels, — messengers 
with the intelligence of men, and therefore having the 
form of men, bnt at the same time equipped with wings, 
in order to be able to carry through the winds of heaven 
the commands of the gods to the inhabitants of earth ; in 
addition, these angels were invested with the keenness of 
vision and the rapidity of flight of the eagle ; and to those 




Fig. 50a. Winged Cherub, with Body of Lion and Human Head 
(After Layard.) 

whose chief ofhce it was to guard the entrance to their 
divine masters was imparted the unconquerable strength 
of the bull, or the awe-inspiring majesty of the lion. 
(Figs. 48, 49, 50, and 50^-.) 

The Babylonian and Assyrian angels, like those in 
Ezekiel's vision, are very often of hybrid shape. Take, 
for example, the cherubim of which a type is given in 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



55 



Fig. 50, with, their wings, their bull's bodies, and their 
honest, serious human countenances. Then again we 
find types like that discovered in the palace of Ashurna- 
zirpal (Fig. 51) , which bears the closest possible resem- 
blance to our conception of angels. These noble and 
radiant figures, which art has rendered so attractive and 
familiar in our eyes, will always retain a kindly place in 
our hearts. 




Fig. 51. Angels WITH Human Heads. 
(Noble types closely resembling the Christian conception of angels.) 

But the demons and the devils^ whether they take 
for us the form of the enemies of man or that of the 
primordial foes of God, — to these we were destined to bid 
farewell for all eternity, for the ancient Persian dualism 
was not after our hearts. " I form the light and create 
darkness: I make peace and create evil: it is /, YaJiveh^ 
that do all these things y So justly declares the greatest 



56 



BABEL AND BIBLE, 



prophet of the Old Testament, Isaiah (xlv. 7) . Demons 
like that represented in Fig. 52,— though such pictures 
are not without interest for the history of duelling,— or 
caricatures like that represented in Fig. 53, may be com- 




Fig. 52. Duel of Lion-Headed and Eagle-Footed Demons. 
(British Museum. After Lenormant.) 

mitted forever and aye to the obscurity of the Babylonian 
hills from which they have risen. (See also Fig. 54.) 

In his excavations at Khorsabad, Victor Place dis- 
covered the supply-depot of the palace of Sargon. One 
of the store-rooms contained pottery of all sorts and sizes, 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



57 



and another utensils and implements made of iron. Here 
were found arranged in beautiful order abundant supplies 
of cHains, nails, plugs, mattocks, and boes, and tbe iron 
bad been so admirably wrought and was so well preserved 
that it rang like a bell when struck ; and some of these 
implements which were then twenty-five centuries old 
could be forthwith put into 
actual use by the Arabian 
workmen. 

This drastic intrusion of 
Assyrian antiquity upon our 
own days naturally fills us 
with amazement, and yet it is 
nothing more than what has 
happened in the intellectual 
domain. When we distinguish 
the twelve signs of the zodiac 
and call them Aries, Taurus, 
Gemini, etc. (see Fig, 55) , 
when we divide the circle into 
360 parts, the hour into 60 
minutes, and the minute into 
60 seconds, and so on, — in all 
this, Sumerian and Babylo- 
nian civilisation still lives with us to-day. 

And possibly I have also been successful in my en- 
deavor to show that many Babylonian features still cling, 
through the medium of the Bible, to our religious think- 
ing. 

The elimination from our religious thought of the 
purely human conceptions derived from these admittedly 




Fig. 53. Babylonian DhViL. 

Demon of the Southwest Wind. 

(Louvre. After Smith ) 



58 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



talented peoples, and the liberation of our thought gen- 
erally from the shackles of deep-rooted prejudices, will in 
no wise impair true religion and the true religious spirit, 
as these have been taught us by the prophets and poets 
of the Old Testament, but most sublimely of all by 
Jesus; on the contrary, both will come forth from this 






-. Alii 3^} j.4ii % 

''1'/i '" I 1 \ W ^ 








Fig. 54 A Demon Supporting a Tablet.' 
(Assyrian bronze tablet. After Lenormant.) 

process of purification far truer and far more intensified 
than ever they were before. 

I may be allowed finally a word with regard to the 
feature that invests the Bible with its main significance 

' The two upper horizontal strips in the left-hand side of the figure represent 
the heavens (the celestial bodies and the celestial genii). The third strip exhibits 
a funeral scene on earth. The fourth strip represents the Underworld bathed in 
the floods of the ocean. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



59 



from the point of view of general history, — its monothe- 
ism. Here too Babel early opened a new and undreamt-of 
prospect. 

It is remarkable, but no one can definitely say what 
our Teutonic word God originally signified. Philologists 
vacillate between "inspiring timidity" and "delibera- 
tion." But the word which the Semitic Canaanite races, 




Fig. 55. Sagittarius and Scorpio. 
Signs of the Zodiac, as represented by the Babylonians. (Lenormant, V., p. 180.) 

to whom the Babylonians are most nearly related and 
from whom the Israelites afterward sprang, coined for 
God, is not only lucid as to its meaning, but conceives 
the notion of divinity under so profound and exalted a 
form that this word alone suffices to shatter the legend 
that "the Semites were, time out of mind, amazingly 
deficient in religious instinct; " while it also refutes the 



60 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

popular modern conception that the religion of Yahveh, 
and therefore also our Christian belief in God, is ulti- 
mately sprung from a species of fetishism and animism 
such as is common among the South Sea cannibals or the 
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. 

There is a remarkably beautiful passage in the Ko- 
ran, VI, 75 et seq., which so fascinated Goethe that he 
expressed the desire to see it dramatised. Mahomet has 
mentally put himself in the place of Abraham, and is 
endeavoring to realise the manner in which Abraham had 
reached the monotheistic idea. He says: "And when 
the gloom of night had fallen, Abraham stepped forth 
into the darkness ; and behold, there was a star shining 
above him. Then he cried out in his gladness : ' This is 
my Lord! ' But when the star grew dim, he said: 'I 
love not those that grow dim.' And when the moon rose 
radiantly in the firmament, he cried out in exceeding 
gladness : ' This is my Lord ! ' But when it set, he said : 
'Alas, I shall surely be one of the people that must needs 
err.' But when the sun rose dazzlingly in the morning, 
he said: 'This is my Lord, this is the greatest of all! ' 
But when the sun set, then he said: 'O, my people, 
verily I am rid of your idolatry of many gods, and I lift 
up my countenance to him alone that created the heavens 
and the earth.' " 

That ancient Semitic word for God, so well known 
to us from the sentence, Eli Eli lama azabtani^ is El^ 
and its meaning is the goal ; the goal toward which are 
directed the eyes of all men that look Heavenward only, 
"which every man sees, which every man beholds from 
afar" (Job xxxvi. 25) ; the goal to which man stretches 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



61 



forth liis hands, for which the human heart longs as its 
release from the uncertainties and imperfections of this 
earthly life, — this goal the ancient Semitic nomads called 
El^ or God. And inasmuch as there can in the nature of 
things be only one goal, we find among the old Canaanite 
races which settled in Babylonia as early as 2500 years 
before Christ, and to whom Hammurabi himself be- 
longed, such beautiful proper names as "God hath 
given," "God be with thee," "With the help of my God 
I go my way," etc. 




Fig. 56. Clay Tablets Containing the Words " Yahveh is God." 
(Time of Hammurabi or Amraphel. British Museum.) 



But more ! Through the kindness of the director of 
the Egyptian and Assyrian department of the British 
Museum I am able to show you here pictures of three 
little clay tablets (Fig. 56). What, will be asked, is to 
be seen on these tablets, fragile broken pieces of clay, 
with scarcely legible characters scratched on their sur- 
face? True enough, but they are valuable from the fact 
that their date may be exactly fixed as that of the time of 
Hammurabi, one of them having been made during the 
reign of his father, Sin-muballit ; but still more so from 



62 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

the circumstance that they contain three names which 
are of the very greatest significance from the point of 
view of the historj^ of religion. They are the words : 

^ ^ ^ »f 
la- ah- ve- ibi 

la- hu- inn- ilu 
Yahveh is God. Yahveh, the Abiding One, the Perma- 
nent One (for such is, as we have reason to believe, the 
significance of the name) , who, unlike man, is not to- 
morrow a thing of the past, but one that endures forever, 
that lives and labors for all eternity above the broad, re- 
splendent, law-bound canopy of the stars, — it was this 
Yahveh that constituted the primordial patrimony of 
those Canaanite tribes from which centuries afterward 
the twelve tribes of Israel sprang. 

The religion of the Canaanite tribes that emigrated 
to Babylonia rapidly succumbed, indeed, before the poly- 
theism that had been practised for centuries by the an- 
cient inhabitants of that country. But this polytheism 
by no means strikes an unsympathetic chord in us, at 
least so far as its conception of its gods is concerned, all 
of whom were living, omnipotent, and omnipresent be- 
ings that hearkened unto the prayers of men, and who, 
however much incensed the^- might become at the sins of 
men, were always immediately ready again with offers of 
mercy and reconciliation. And likewise the representa- 
tions which these deities found in Babylonian art, as for 
instance that of the sun-god of Sippar enthroned in his 
Holy of Holies (Fig. 57)' are far removed from every- 

' See also Fig. 31. 







Fig 57. The Sun-God of Sippar Enthroned in His Holy of Holies. 
(Lenormant, V., p. 301.) 



64 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



thing that savors of the ugly, the ignoble, or the gro- 
tesque. The Prophet Ezekiel (chap, i.) in his visions of 
his Lord saw God enter on a living chariot formed of four 
winged creatures with the face of a man, a lion, an ox, 
and an eagle, and on the heads of these cherubim he saw 
(x. 1) a crystal surface supporting a sapphire throne on 
which God was seated in the likeness of a man, bathed in 
the most resplendent radiance. Noting carefully these 




Fig. 58. Babylonian Cylinder-Seal with Representation 
Resembling the Vision of Ezekiel. 



details, can we fail to observe the striking resemblance 
which his vision presents to the representation of a god 
which has been found on a very ancient Babylonian cjd- 
inder-seal (Fig. 58) ? Standing on an odd sort of vessel, 
the prow and stem of which terminate in seated human 
figures, may be seen two cherubim with their backs to 
each other and with their fac^s, which are human in form, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 65 

turned to tlie front. Their attitude leads us to infer that 
there are two corresponding figures at the rear. On their 
backs reposes a surface, and on this surface stands a 
throne on which the god sits, bearded and clothed in long 
robes, with a tiara on his head, and in his right hand 
what are apparently a scepter and a ring : and behind the 
throne, standing ready to answer his beck and call, is a 
servitor of the god, who may be likened to the man 
"clothed with linen" (Ezekiel ix. 3, and x. 2) that exe- 
cuted the behests of Yahveh. 

Notwithstanding all this, however, and despite the 
fact that many liberal and enlightened minds openly ad- 
vocated the doctrine that Nergal and Nebo, that the 
moon-god and the sun-god, the god of thunder Ramman, 
and all the rest of the Babylonian Pantheon w^ere one in 
Marduk, the god of light, still polytheism, gross poly- 
theism, remained for tJirce thousand years the Babylonian 
state religion, — a sad and significant warning against the 
indolence of men and races in matters of religion, and 
against the colossal power which may be acquired by a 
strongly organised priesthood based upon it. 

Even the religion of Yahveh, under the magic stand- 
ard of which Moses united into a single nation the twelve 
nomadic tribes of Israel, remained infected for centuries 
with all manner of human infirmities, — with all the un- 
sophisticated anthropomorphic conceptions that are char- 
acteristic of the childhood of the human race, with Israel- 
itic particularism, with heathen sacrificial customs, and 
with the cult of legal externalities. Even its intrinsic 
worth was impotent to restrain the nation from worship- 
ping the Baal and the Astarte of the indigenous Canaan- 



66 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ite race, until those titanic minds, the prophets, discov- 
ered in Yahveh the god of the universe, and pleaded for 
a quickening of the inner spirit of religion with exhorta- 
tions like that of Joel, " to rend their hearts and not their 
garments," and until the divinely endowed singers of the 
Psalms expressed the concepts of the prophetic leaders in 
verses which awaken to this day a living echo in the 
hearts of all nations and times, — until, in fine, the proph- 
ets and the psalmists paved the way for the adhortation 
of Jesus to pray to God in spirit and truth and to strive 
by dint of individual moral endeavor in all spheres of life 
after higher and higher perfection, — after that perfection 
which is our Father's in Heaven. 



SECOND LECTURE 



IN EXPLANATION. 

WHO is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? 
This that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his 

strength ? 
"It is I (Yahveh) that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." 
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth 

in the vvinefat ? 
"I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the peoples there was no man 

with me : 
Yea, I trod them in mine anger, and trampled them in my fury ; 
And their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my 

raiment. 
For the day of vengeance was in mine heart, and the year of my redemption was 

come. 
And I looked, and there was none to help ; and I wondered that there was none to 

uphold : 
Therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and my fury, it upheld me. 
And I trod down the peoples in anger, and made them drunk with my fury, 
And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. 

In language, style, and sentiment, forsooth a genuine Bedouin 
song of battle and victory ! Not at all ! This utterance of Isaiah 
Ixiii. 1-6, and a hundred other prophetic utterances full of inex- 
tinguishable hatred toward the races round about : toward Edom 
and Moab, Asohu and Babel, Tyre and Egypt, mostly masterpieces 
of Hebrew rhetoric, are to be accepted as representing the ethical 
prophetism of Israel, and this at its high tide ! These outpourings 
of political jealousy and of passionate hatred on the part of long 
vanished generations, born of certain contemporary conditions and 
perhaps comprehensible from a merely human standpoint, must 
serve us children of the twentieth century after Christ, must serve 



70 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

even Occidental and Christian races, as a religious guide for refine- 
ment and edification! Instead of losing ourselves "in grateful 
admiration " in the contemplation of God's manifestation in our 
own people, from primitive Germanic times down to the present 
day, we continue, from ignorance, indifference or blindness, to 
concede to those early Israelitic oracles the character of a "revela- 
tion," which cannot be justified either in the light of science or in 
that of religion or of ethics. 

The more deeply I dive into the spirit of the prophetic writ- 
ings of the Old Testament, the more I shrink from Yahveh, who 
slaughters the nations with the insatiable sword of his wrath, who 
has but one favorite child, and surrenders all other nations to night 
and shame and destruction, who said even to Abraham (Genesis 
xii. 2): "I will bless them who bless thee, and those who curse 
thee, them will I curse" — and I seek refuge with him who taught 
in life and in death : "Bless them that curse you," and I hide, full 
of trust and joy and earnest longing for moral perfection, in the 
God to whom Jesus taught us to pray, the God who is a loving and 
just father to all men on earth. 

Charlotteneurg, May i, 1903. 



SECOND I.ECTURE. 

WHY this opposition to "Babel and Bible" when 
logic itself compels this sequence of the words? 
And how can anyone expect to be able to suppress these 
serious questions, which involve the entire Bible with the 
catchword "Primitive Revelation," when this is shown 
to be false by a single forgotten verse of the Old Testa- 
ment? And does in fact "the ethical monotheism of Is- 
rael" in its function as " a real revelation of the living 
God," constitute the unassailable bulwark in the conflict 
of opinions which Babel has aroused in these later days? 

It is a pity that so many people permit their delight 
in the great advantage which Babel is constantly offering 
us as " interpreter and illustrator" of the Bible to be 
spoiled by a narrow regard for dogmatic questions to such 
a degree that they even entirely ignore that advantage. 
And yet, how grateful all readers of and commentators 
on the Bible must needs be for the new knowledge which 
has been revealed, and is constantly being revealed, to us 
by the laborious excavations among the ruins of Babylon 
and Assyria ! 

On principle I too avoid continually speaking of 
"confirmations" of the Bible. For indeed the Old Tes- 
tament as a source of ancient history would be in a bad 



12 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



case if it required everywhere confirmatiou by cuneiform 
inscriptions. But when the Biblical Books of Kings (2 



^.^'IciliSc^ 



m w^:^^*:'^r^^:^: 



22^ 



F'g- 59- The Ruins at Tell Ibrahim, Site of the City of Kutha. 

Kings xvii. 30) states that the inhabitants of the city of 
Kutha who settled in Samaria worshipped the god Nergal, 




Fig. 6o. Nergal, the 1\\tron God of Kutha. 

and we now know, not alone that this Babylonian city of 
Kutha (Fig. 59) lies buried under the ruins at Tell Ibra- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



73 



him, twenty-one miles northeast of Babylon, but also that 
a cuneiform inscription expressly informs us that the 
patron god of Kutha was called Nergal (Fig. 60) , — this 
is really valuable information. 

While there seemed to be no prospect of ever dis- 
covering the town and district of Chalach, to which a 
portion of the Israelites taken captive by Sargon were 







.-!^\1X'-i>r- 



'/^ 










Fig.6i. Black Obelisk 
OF Shalmaneser n. 



Fig. 62. Assyrian Letter. 

Written from Chalach, the Babylonian home of 

the exiled Israelites. 



transplanted (2 Kings xvii. 6 ; xviii. 11), we now pos- 
sess, from the library of Asurbanipal at Nineveh, a letter 
written from Chalach (Fig. 62) , in which a certain Mar- 
duk-nadin-achi, laying emphasis upon his steadily mani- 
fested lo^^alty, petitions the king to help him regain his 
estate, which had been given him by the king's father, 
and which had supported him for fourteen 3^ears until at 



V^t«4?TlT 




n^Hf ^ 







f ^ ^T#y^' 7 ^ ^ ^-wW^i¥^^^x^>^T^ T^ 




Fig. 63. 



'>ijfr^ ^^ ^^^-i 




f ' 



» ' 











Fig. 64. 







>^1T4M/I^^>r^<t^>0 r>w^ ^ ►•^^ ^TT^^TrTI^ 




Fie; 65. 



^ "^ M.^:^^UU^^-^ '^<^.LM 




phk- ^^^^^>^^^f^>f^)::^ \>^ ^ ^ 




!4R5«H<THTi<^TF)^ W H"^,<^T(« ^ ^ ^ 




^• 



r.>!i^f-< >^T^'*V*^„ fe«^^,>^. 




Fig. 66. 



78 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



last the governor of the land of Mashalzi had taken it 
from him. 

As to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of 
Israel, who are presented to oui eyes so vividly by the 
famous black obelisk of Shalmaneser II. (Fig. 61) in its 
second row of relief figures (Figs. 63-66) — they are the 
ambassadors of King Jehu (840 B. C.) with gifts of vari- 
ous sorts, — we now know all three 
of the localities where the ten tribes 
found their grave: Chalach, some- 
what farther east than the moun- 
tainous source of the upper Zab, 
called Arrapachitis ; the province 
of Goshen along the Chabor prob- 
ably not far from Nisibis ; and 
thirdly, the villages of Media. 

Until recent times the con- 
quest and plundering of Egyptian 
Thebes mentioned by the prophet 
Nahum (iii. 8 ff.) has been a 
puzzle, so that no one knew to 
what the words of the prophet re- 
ferred : 

"Art thou (Nineveh) better 
than No-amon (i. e., Thebes), that is situate in the 
waters of the Nile, with waters round about her. . .? 
Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her 
young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all 
the streets, and they cast lots for her honorable men, and 
all her great men were bound in chains." 

But then there was discovered at Nineveh the mag- 




Fig. 67. Assurbanipal's Ten 
Sided Clay Prism. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



79 



iiificent ten-sided clay prism of Asurbanipal (Fig. 67) , 
whicli reports in its second column that it was Asurbani- 
pal who, pursuing the Egyptian king Urdamane from 
Memphis, reached Thebes, conquered it and carried away 
silver, gold, and precious stones, the entire treasure of 
the palace, the inhabitants, male and female, a great and 
immeasurable booty, from Thebes to Nineveh the city 
of his dominion. 

And how much the language of the Old Testament 




Fig. 68. Antelope Leukoryx. 

is indebted to the cuneiform literature ! The Old Testa- 
ment mentions repeatedly an animal called re'em, a fierce, 
untamable animal armed with fearful horns (Psalms xxii. 
22) and most nearly related to the ox (Deuteronomy 
xxxiii. 17; Psalms xxix. 6; comp. Isaiah xxxiv. 7), to 
use which in field labor on the plain like a common ox 
seems to the poet of the Book of Job (xxxix. 9 ff.) a ter- 
rible, an inconceivable thought: "Will the wild ox be 
content to serve thee, or will he abide by th}^ crib? Canst 



80 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



tiiou bind the wild ox with his guiding-band in thy fur- 
row? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? " 

Despite the fact that the buffalo now roams in herds 
the forests beyond the Jordan, it w^as nevertheless diffused 
over Asia Minor from Arachosia onl^^ a short time before 
the beginning of our era ; hence it had become customary 
as a result of comparison with Arabian usage, which 
styles the antelopes "cattle of the desert" and applies 
the name I'l^'m, to anlilopc Icukojyx (Fig. 68) , to under- 




Fig. 6g. The Re'em,' or Wild Bull. 
(After a bas-relief in the palace of Sennacherib.) 

stand under the Hebrew re'em this species of antelope. 
But as this antelope, despite its long, sharp horns, is a 
slender-limbed and soft-eyed creature, it was be3'ond com- 
prehension liow^ it should occur to a poet to imagine it 
hitched to a plow and then to shudder at the thought. 

The cuneiform inscriptions have informed us what 
the remit is: it is the powerful, fierce-eyed, wild ox with 
stout curved horns, an animal of the w^ood and the moun- 
tain, which scales the highest summits, an animal of tre- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



81 



mendous physical strength, the chase for which, like that 
for the lion, was especially popular with the Assyrian 
kings on account of its hazardousness. The presence of 




Fig. 70. Hunting the Re'em. 



this animal, which is most closely related to the bos urus 
of Csesar (Bell. Gall. VI. 28) and to the wiseiit (bison) 




Fig. 71. The Hill of Babil. 

of Middle-High-German literature, is scientifically estab- 
lished for the region of Alt. Lebanon : the cuneiform in- 
scriptions mention the re'em countless times, and the 
alabaster reliefs of the Ass3-rian royal palace present it 
very clearly to our eyes. (Fig. 69.) 



!( I 






■-Bmu 

4 ssW ! : , , ,:■■ 





CL, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



83 



King Nebuchadnezzar reports that he adorned the 
city gate of Babylon which is dedicated to the goddess 
Istar with burned bricks upon which were represented 
renins and gigantic serpents standing upright. The re- 
discovery of this Istar Gate and its excavation to a depth 
of fourteen meters, where the underflow begins, consti- 
tutes one of the most valuable achievements of recent 
years in our exploration of the ruins of Babylon. 

Hail to thee, thou hill of Babil (Fig. 71) , and to all 
thy fellows on the palm-bordered banks of the Euphrates ! 




Fig. 73. The Wild Bull (Re'em) on the Istar Gate. 
Brick mosaic in enameled colors. 

(Fig. 72.) How the heartbeats quicken when, after 
weeks of picking and shoveling under the glowing sun- 
beams of the East, suddenly the structure that has been 
sought is revealed, when upon a giant block of stone cov- 
ered with characters the name "Istar Gate" is read, and 
gradually the great double gate of Babylon, flanked 
northward on each side by three mighty towers, rises in 
a splendid state of preservation from the bowels of the 



84 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

earth! And wherever 3^011 may look, on the surfaces of 
the towers as well as upon the inner walls of the gate- 
way, droves of remus carved in relief, the uppermost row 
in brilliant contemporary enamel, standing forth in fasci- 
nating splendor of colors against the deep blue back- 
ground. (Fig. 7?>.) 

"Vigorously strides the wild ox with long paces, 
with proudly curved neck, with horns pointed threaten- 
ingly forward, ears laid back, and inflated nostrils; his 




Fig. 74. The Lion of Babylon. 
Brick mosaic in enameled colors. 

muscles are tense and swelling, his tail raised and yet 
falling stiffly downwards, — all as in Nature, but ideal- 
ised."' Where the smooth hide is white, horns and hoofs 
shine like gold ; where the hide is yellow, these are of 
malachite green, while in both kinds the long hair is col- 
ored dark blue. But a truly imposing effect is produced 
by a white ox in relief, in which the long hair, as well as 
the horns and hoofs, is tinted a delicate green. Thus 

' From a treatise on these relief figures by Walter Andrae. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 85 

the re 'em of the Istar Gate through which led the tri- 
umphal highway of Marduk proves to be a worthy com- 
panion for the widely known "lion of Babylon" which 
adorned the triumphal highway itself. (Fig. 74.) 

And Biblical science is enriched by still another ani- 
mal of the strangest sort, a fabulous animal, familiar to 
us from the days of our youthful religious instruction, 
and which could not fail to make a fascinating impression 
upon all who passed through the Istar Gate toward the 




Fig. 75. The Dragon of Babel. 
Enameled brick mosaic. 

palace of Nebuchadnezzar, — I refer to the Dragon of Ba- 
bel. (Fig. 75.) "With neck stretched far forward and 
looks darting poison the monster marches along," — it is 
a serpent, as is shown by the elongated head with its 
forked tongue, the long, scale-covered trunk and the 
wriggling tail, but at the same time it has the fore-legs 
of the panther while its hind-legs are armed with mon- 
strous talons ; in addition to all this it has on its head 
long, straight horns and a scorpion's sting in the end of 



86 ^ BABEL AND BIBLE. 

its tail. Thanks are due to all whose faithful labor con- 
tributes to secure such choice and exceedingly important 
archaeological treasures ! 

Quite apart from many such individual interpreta- 
tions and illustrations, Assyriology is restoring confi- 
dence in the authenticity of the text of the Old Testa- 
ment, which has for some time been so violently assailed. 
For, finding itself constantly face to face with more and 
more difficult texts full of rare words and phrases, it real- 
ises that there are also in the Old Testament scriptures 
great numbers of rare and even unique words and phrases ; 
it takes delight in these, attempts to interpret them from 
their context, and in not a few cases finds its efforts re- 
warded by the presence of these very same words and 
phrases in Assyrian. In this manner it recognises what 
a fatal error it is on the part of modern exegesis to make 
conjectural interpretations of such rare words and diffi- 
cult phrases, to "emend" them, and only too frequently 
to replace them with meaningless substitutes. In truth 
every friend of the Old Testament Scriptures should as- 
sist with all his might in bringing to light the thousands 
of clay tablets and all other sorts of written monuments 
that lie buried in Babylon, and which our expedition will 
bring to light as soon as the first objects set before it are 
accomplished, thereby making possible for the textual 
interpretation of the Old Testament more rapid and more 
important progress than it has experienced within the 
two thousand years preceding. 

Indeed, entire narratives of the Old Testament re- 
ceive their interpretation from Babylon. In our early 
youth we inherit the burden of the foolish notion of a 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 87 

Nebuchadnezzar who was turned into a beast ; for the 
Book of Daniel tells us (iv. 26-34) how the King of 
Babylon walked upon the roof of his palace, and after 
feasting his eyes once more on the splendor of the city 
he had built, received from heaven the prophecy that he 
should live, an exile from among men, with the beasts of 
the field and after the fashion of the beasts. Thereupon, 
according to account, Nebuchadnezzar ate grass in the 
wilderness like unto an ox, wet by the dew of heaven, 
while his hair grew like unto the feathers of the eagle and 
his finger-nails like unto birds' claws. 

Yet no educator of youth should ever have ventured 
to teach such things, and especially not after the appear- 
ance of Eberhard Schrader's treatise on The Insanity of 
Nebuchadnezzar ^ without at the same time pointing out 
the fact that the purer and more primitive form of this 
story has long been known in a Chkldasan legend trans- 
mitted to us in Abydenus. This tells us that Nebuchad- 
nezzar, after reaching the zenith of his power, went out 
upon the roof of his palace, inspired by a god, he ex- 
claimed' "I here, Nabuchodrosor, announce to you the 
coming of the calamity which neither Bel nor Queen 
Beltis can persuade the Fates to avert. Perses (that is, 
Cyrus) will come . . . and bring servitude upon you. O 
would that he, before my fellow-citizens perish, might be 
driven through the desert, where neither cities nor the 
track of men can be found, but where wild beasts graze 
and birds fly about, while he wanders about solitary in 
caves and gorges. But may a better lot . . . befall me." 

Who could fail to perceive in this that the Hebrew 
writer has made a free version of the Babylonian legend, 



88 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

especially since lie lets us see plainly in verse 16 that the 
very wording of the original was quite familiar to him ! 
What Nebuchadnezzar wishes for the enemy of the Chal- 
daeans, this the author of the pamphlets full of errors and 
carelessness which are combined to make the Book of 
Daniel, has Nebuchadnezzar suffer himself, in order to 
exemplify as drastically as possible to his countrymen, 
who were being persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes, the 
truth that God the Lord is able to humble deeply even 
the mightiest king who rebels against Yahveh. 

When shall we finally learn to distinguish the form 
from the content even within the covers of the Old Tes- 
tament ? 

The author of the Book of Jonah preaches to us two 
lofty doctrines : that no one can escape from God, and 
that no mortal dare presume to dictate terms to God's 
mercy and patience, or even toset limits for them. But 
the form in which these truths are clothed is human, is 
fancifully Oriental, and if we should continue to believe 
to-day that Jonah while in the whale's belly prayed a 
conglomeration of passages from the Psalms, part of which 
were not composed until several centuries after the de- 
struction of Nineveh, or that the King of Nineveh did 
such deep penance that he gave commands even to oxen 
and sheep to put on sackcloth, we should be sinning 
against the reason bestowed upon us by God. 

But all these are details which sink into insignifi- 
cance under an intenser light. 

It was an exceedingly happy thought which struck 
the representatives of the various German ecclesiastical 
bodies who went to Jerusalem as guests of the German 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 89 

Emperor to take part in tlie dedication of the Churcli of 
Our Saviour, that of founding in Jerusalem a "German 
Kvangelical Institute for the Archaeology of the Holy 
Land." O would that our young theologians might go 
thither, and not merely in the cities, but better still out 
in the desert, familiarise themselves with the manners 
and customs of the Bedouins, which are still so com- 
pletely the same as in the times of Ancient Israel, and 
plunge deeply into the Oriental mode of thought and ex- 
pression : might listen to the story-tellers in the tents of 
the desert or hear the descriptions and accounts of the 
sons of the desert themselves, full of fancy that bubbles 
up vigorously and unhampered and only too often ex- 
ceeds unconsciously the bounds of fact ! 

And if even the modern Orient, wherever we go and 
listen and look, furnishes such an abundance of sugges- 
tions for the interpretation of the Bible, how much more 
will this be the case with the study of the ancient litera- 
ture of the Babylonians and Ass3"rians which is in part 
contemporary with the Old Testament! Everywhere 
there are more or less important agreements between the 
two literatures which are most closely related in language 
and style, in mode of thought and expression. 

I will cite here the sacredness of the number seven 
as well as that of the number three, for which we have 
evidence in both literatures : "Land, land, land, hear the 
word of the Lord," exclaims Jeremiah (xxii. 29) ; "Hail, 
hail, hail to the king, my lord," more than one Assyrian 
scribe begins his letter. And as the seraphim before the 
throne of God call one to another: "Holy, holy, holy is 
Yahveh Zebaoth" (Isaiah vi. 3), so we read at the be- 



90 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ginning of tlie Assyrian temple liturgy a threefold asiir^ 
that is, "salutary," or "holy." 

"God created man out of the dust of the earth and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man be- 
came a living soul," — thus runs the so-called Yahvistic 
account of creation (Genesis ii. 7) . The very same con- 
ceptions are found among the Babylonians : man is formed 
of earth (mud, clay) , as for instance Eabani is created 
out of a pinched off and moisted piece of clay (compare 
Job xxxiii. 6 : "I too am made of a pinch of clay ") , and 
for that reason he returns again thither (so Genesis iii. 
19) ; but he becomes a living being through the breath 
of God. In the opening of a letter to the Assyrian king 
the writers characterise themselves as "dead dogs" (cf. 
2 Samuel ix. 8) , whom the king, their master, had caused 
to live by "putting the breath of life into their nostrils." 

According to Babylonian notions the spittle of human 
beings possesses in a marked degree magic power. Spittle 
and spells are closely related conceptions, and spittle has 
death-dealing as well as life-giving power. "O ]\Iar- 
duk," — thus runs a prayer to the patron deity of Babel, 
— ^" O Marduk ! thine is the spittle of life ! " Who is not 
reminded by this of New Testament narratives such as 
that of Jesus taking the deaf and dumb man aside, put- 
ting his fingers in his ears, spitting and touching the 
man's tongue with the spittle, sa3'ing, "Hephata," "Be 
opened!" (Mark vii. Zli ff., and compare viii. IZ^ John 
ix. 6 ff.) 

Yahveh conducts his people on the march through 
the desert by means of a pillar of cloud by day and a pil- 
lar of fire by night (comp. also Isaiah iv. 5) ; but P^sar- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 91 

haddon, King of Assoria, before setting out upon a cam- 
paign, also receives the prophetic message: "I, Istar of 
Arbela, will cause to rise upon thy right hand smoke and 
upon thy left fire." 

''Set thine house in order," says the prophet Isaiah 
to King Hezekiah when he is sick unto death, "for thou 
art sick and wilt not live" (Isaiah xxxviii. 1) , while the 
Assyrian general Kudurru, to whom the king has sent 
his own personal ph^^sician, thanks the king with the 
words: "I was dead, but the king, my lord, has made 
me to live." The soul of a man sick unto death is con- 
ceived as already straying in the underworld, has already 
gone down into the pit (Psalms xxx. 4) . For this reason 
the goddess Gula, the patron genius of phj'sicians, has 
the title "Awakener of the dead " : an Oriental physician 
who did not raise people from the dead would be no phy- 
sician at all. 

How great the similarity between all things in Babel 
and Bible ! Here as well as there the fondness for ren- 
dering speech and thought vivid by symbolical actions (I 
cite here merely the scapegoat which is chased away into 
the desert) ; here as well as there the same world of con- 
stant wonders and signs, of perpetual revelations of the 
divinity, particularly through dreams, the same naive 
conceptions of the divinity ! As in Babel the gods eat and 
drink and even retire to rest, so Yahveh goes walking in 
Paradise in the cool of the evening, or takes delight in 
the smell of Noah's sacrifice. And just as in the Old 
Testament Yahveh speaks to Moses and Aaron and to all 
the prophets, so also in Babel the gods speak to men. 



92 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

either directl}^ or tlirougli the mouth of their priests and 
divinely inspired prophets and prophetesses. 

Revelation ! For a long time all scientifically trained 
theologians, whether Evangelical or Catholic, have for 
centuries been firmly convinced that it was a grievous 
error to have regarded the invaluable remains of ancient 
Hebrew scriptures collected into the Old Testament as 
constituting collectively a religious canon, as being from 
beginning to end a revealed book of religion. For among 
them are writings such as the Book of Job, which ques- 
tions the very existence of a just God, and in language 
that sometimes borders on blasphemy, and other very 
profane compositions, such, for example, as wedding 
songs (the so-called Song of Solomon) . In the pretty 
love-song, Ps. 45, we read, v. 11 ff. : "Hear, O daughter, 
and consider and incline thine ear : forget also thine own 
people and thy father's house; and if the king vshall de- 
sire thy beauty — for he is thy lord — fall down before 
him . ' ' 

It is very easy to imagine what the results must be 
when books and passages like these were forced to submit 
to a theological, and even a Messianic, interpretation (cf. 
the Epistle to the Hebrews i. 8 f.) , — the result could not 
fail to be such as it was in that mediaeval Catholic monk 
who, when he read in his Psalter the Latin viaria^ ''the 
seas," crossed himself as in the presence of "Maria," 
meaning Mary, the mother of Christ. But for the re- 
mainder of the Old Testament literature also the doctrine 
of verbal inspiration has been surrendered even by the 
Catholic Church. The Old Testament itself has com- 
pelled this result, with its mass of contradictory duplicate 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 93 

accounts, and with tlie absolutely inextricable confusion 
which, has been brought about in the Pentateuch by per- 
petual revision and combination. 

And to be perfectly serious and frank, — we have not 
deserved such an immediate and personal revelation from 
the divinity anyway. For mankind has unto this day 
treated with absolute flippancy the most primitive and 
genuine revelation of the holy God, the ten command- 
ments on the tables of the law from Sinai. Dr. Martin 
Luther said : 

"Das Wort sie sol/en lassen s/ahn.''^ 
(Inviolate the Word let stand !) 

and yet in the Smaller Catechism, from which our chil- 
dren are instructed, the entire second commandment has 
been suppressed, the same upon w^hich God laid such 
especial emphasis (Exodus xx. 22 f.) : "Thou shalt not 
make unto thyself any image or any likeness," etc., and 
have put in its place the last commandment, or rather 
prohibition of covetousness (wicked desire) , after having 
torn it in two, which might easily have been recognised 
as unpermissible by comparing Exodus xx. 17 and Deu- 
teronomy V. 18. 

The command to honor father and mother is not the 
fourth but the fifth, and so on. And in the Catholic 
Catechism, which has the same method of numbering the 
commandments, the first commandment is, indeed, fuller : 
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me; thou shalt 
not make unto thyself an3^ graven image, to worship it," 
but immediately after we read: "Nevertheless, we make 
images of Christ, of the mother of God and of all the 



94 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

saints, because we do not worship them, but onl}- rev- 
erence them." This entirely ignores the fact that God 
the Lord expressly says : ' ' Thou shalt not make unto 
thyself any graven image to worship and to reverence.' 
(Consider also Deuteronomy iv. 16.) 

But if we regard the matter for a while from the 
standpoint of the letter of the Thora, this reproach falls 
still more heavily upon Moses himself, a shrill and unani- 
mous reproach from all the people of the earth who ask 
after God if haply they may find him. Just think of 
it: The Almighty God, "the All-container, the All-sus- 
tainer," the inscrutable, unapproachable, proclaims from 
the midst of fire and cloud and to the accompaniment of 
thunder and lightning his most holy will, Yahveh, "the 
rock whose work is perfect," with his own hands carves 
two tablets of stone and engraves upon them M'itli his 
own fingers, those fingers that keep the world in equilib- 
rium, the Ten Commandments, — and then Moses in 
anger hurls away the eternal tables of the eternal God 
and breaks them into a thousand pieces ! And this God 
a second time writes other tables, which present his last 
autograph revelation to mankind, the most unique and 
tangible revelation of God, — and Moses does not consider 
it worth while to report literally to his people, and thus 
to mankind, what God had engraved upon those tables. 

We scholars regard it as a serious reproach to one of 
our number if, in dealing with an inscription by any one 
soever, though but a shepherd who may have perpetuated 
his name upon some rock on the Sinaitic peninsula, he 
reports it inaccurately or incorrectly in even a single 

*R. v., "serve." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 95 

character; whereas Moses, when he impresses the ten 
commandments upon his people once more before cross- 
ing the Jordan, not only changes individual words, trans- 
poses words and sentences, but even substitutes for one 
long passage another which, however, he also emphasises 
expressly as being the very literal word of God. And 
accordingly we do not know to this day whether God 
commanded that the Sabbath day be kept holy in memory 
of his own rest after finishing the six days' labor of crea- 
tion (Exodus XX. 11 ; comp. xxxi. 17) , or in commem- 
oration of the incessant forced labor of his people during 
their stay in Egypt (Deuteronomy v. 14 ff.) . 

The same carelessness has to be regretted in other 
points that concern God's most sacred bequest to men. 
To this day we are hunting for the peak in the mountain- 
chain of the Sinaitic peninsula which corresponds with 
all that is told, and while we are most minutely informed 
regarding vastly less important things, such, for in- 
stance, as the rings and the rods of the box which con- 
tained the two tables, M-e learn absolutely nothing about 
the outward character of the tables themselves, except 
that they were written upon both sides. 

When the Philistines capture the ark of the covenant 
and place it in the temple of Dagon at Aslidad, they find 
on the second morning following the image of the god 
Dagon lying in fragments before the ark of Yahveh (1 
Samuel v. f.) . And then when it is brought to the little 
Jewish border-town of Beth Shemesh and the inhabitants 
look at it, seventy of them pay for their presumption by 
death, — according to another account fifty thousand ( ! ) 
(1 Sam. vi. 19) . Even one who touches the ark from 



96 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

inadvertence is slain by the wrath of Yahveh (2 Sam. 
6-7 f.). 

But as soon as we touch the soil of the historical 
period, history is silent. We are told in detail that the 
Chaldseans carried away the treasures of the temple at 
Jerusalem and the gold, silver, and copper furnishings of 
the temple, the fire pans and basins and shovels (2 Kings 
xxiv. 13 ; XXV. 13 ff.) , but no one is concerned about the 
ark with the two God-given tables ; the temple goes down 
in flame, but not a single word is said of the fate of the 
two miracle-working tables of the Almighty God, the 
most sacred treasure of the Old Covenant. 

We do not propose to ask the cause of all this, but 
only to record the fact that Moses is exonerated by the 
critical study of the Pentateuch from the reproach which 
belongs to him according to the strict letter of the Thora, 
For, as is confirmed by many and among them Dillmann 
{Commoitajy to the Books of Exodus and Leviticus^ p. 
201) , this authority so highly valued even on the Catholic 
side, "We have the ten commandments in two different 
revisions neither of which is based upon the tables them- 
selves, but upon other versions." 

And similarly all the other so-called Mosaic laws 
are transmitted to us in two comparatively late revisions, 
separated from each other by centuries, whence all the 
differences are easily enough accounted for. And we 
know this also, that the so-called Mosaic laws represent 
regulations and customs part of which had been recog- 
nised in Israel from primitive times, and part of which 
had not received legal recognition until after the settle- 
ment of the people in Canaan, and were then attributed 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 97 

bodily to Moses, and later, for tlie sake of greater sacred- 
ness and inviolability, to Yabveb himself. The same 
process we see in connection with the laws of other races 
— I will mention Here the law-book of Mann — and it is 
precisely the case with tlie law-making Babylon. 

In my first lectnre on this subject I pointed out the 
fact that we find in Babylon as early as 2250 B. C. a 
State with a highly developed system of law, and I spoke 
of a great Code of Hammurabi which established civil 
law in all its branches. While at that time we could 
only infer the existence of this Code from scattered but 
perfectly reliable details, — the original of this great Law 
Book of Hammurabi has now been found, and therewith 
a treasure of the very first rank has been conferred upon 
science and especially upon the science of law and the 
history of civilisation. It was in the ruins of the acrop- 
olis of Susa, about the turn of the year 1901-1902, that 
the French archaeologist de Morgan and the Dominican 
monk Scheil had the good fortune to find a monument of 
King Hammurabi in the shape of a diorite block 2.25 
meters high. It had apparently been carried away from 
Babylon along with other plunder by the Elamites. On 
it had been engraved in the most careful manner 282 
paragraphs of law (Fig. 76) . As the King himself says, 
they are "laws of justice which Hammurabi, the mighty 
and just King, has established for the use and benefit of 
the weak and oppressed, of widows and orphans." "Let 
the wronged person," thus we read, "who has a case at 
law, read this my monumental record and hear my pre- 
cious words ; my monument shall explain his case to him 
and he may look forward to its settlement ! With a heart 



98 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



full of gratitude let liim then say : ' Hammurabi is a lord 
who is like a real father to his people.' " But although 





Fig. 76. A Portion of the Inscription of the Laws of Hammurabi. 

the King says that he, the sun of Babylon, which sheds 
the light over North and South in his land, has written 



BABEIy AND BIBLE. 



99 



down these laws, nevertheless he in his turn received 
them from the highest judge of heaven and earth, the 




Fig. 77. Hammurabi Before Shamash, the God of Law. 



Sun god, the lord of all that is called "right," and there- 
fore the mighty tablet of the law bears at its head the 



100 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

beautiful bas-relief (Fig. 77) , which represents Hammu- 
rabi in the act of receiving the laws from Shamash, the 
supreme law-giver. 

Thus and not otherwise was it with the giving of the 
Law on Sinai, the so-called making of the Covenant be- 
tween Yahveh and Israel. For the purely human origin 
and character of the Israelitic laws are surely evident 
enough ! Or is any one so bold as to maintain that the 
thrice holy God, who with his own finger engraved upon 
the stone tablet Id tirzach "thou shalt not kill," in the 
same breath sanctioned blood-vengeance, which rests like 
a curse upon Oriental peoples to this day, while Hammu- 
rabi had almost obliterated the traces of it? Or is it pos- 
sible that any one still clings to the notion that circum- 
cision, which had for ages before been customary among 
the Egyptians and the Bedouin Arabs, was the mark of 
an especial covenant between God and Israel? 

We understand very well, according to Oriental 
thought and speech, that the numerous regulations for 
every possible petty event in daily life, as for instance, 
the case of a fierce ox that kills a man or another ox 
(Exodus xxi. 28 f., 35 f.) , that the prohibitions of foods, 
the minute medicinal prescriptions for skin diseases, the 
detailed directions regarding the priest's wardrobe, are 
represented as derived from Yahveh. But this is alto- 
gether outward form ; the God who prefers the offerings 
of *' a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart (Ps. 
li. 17) , and who took no pleasure in the worship by burnt 
offerings after the fashion of the ''heathen" peoples, cer- 
tainly did not ordain this worship by burnt offerings with 
its minute details, nor devise the recipes for ointment 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 101 

and burnt incense ^' after the art of the perfumer," as the 
expression runs (Exodus xxx. 25, 35) . 

It will be the business of future investigators to de- 
termine to just what extent the Israelitic laws both civil 
and levitical are specifically Israelitic, or general Semitic, 
or how far they were influenced by the Babylonian code 
which is so much older and which had certainly extended 
beyond the borders of Babylon. I think, for instance, of 
the law of retribution, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a 
tooth, of the feast of the new moon, the so-called "shew 
bread," the high priest's breast plate, and man^^ other 
things. For the present we must be thankful that the 
institution of the Sabbath day, the origin of which was 
unclear even to the Hebrews themselves, is now recog- 
nised as having its roots in the Babylonian Sabattu^ 
"the day par excellence." 

On the other hand, no one has maintained that the 
Ten Commandments were borrowed even in part from 
Babylon, but on the contrary it has been pointed out 
very emphatically that prohibitions like the Fifth, Sixth, 
and Seventh spring from the instinct of self-preservation 
which is common to all men. In fact, the most of the 
Ten Commandments are just as sacred to the Babylo- 
nians as to the Hebrews: disrespect for parents, false 
witness, and every sort of covetousness are also punished 
severely in Babylonian law, generally with death. Thus, 
for instance, we read in the very third paragraph of Ham- 
murabi's code : " If in a law suit any one on the witness- 
stand utters falsehoods and cannot support his testimony, 
he shall himself be punished with death if the life of an- 
other is involved." 



102 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The Second Commandment is specifically Israelitic, 
the prohibition of every sort of image-worship, which in 
its direct application seems to have a distinctly anti- 
Babylonian point. 

But in connection with the eminently Israelitic First 
Commandment, "I am Yahveh, thy God; thou shalt 
have no other gods beside me," may I be permitted to 
treat more fully one point which deeply and permanently 
concerns all who are interested in Babel and Bible, — the 
monotheism of the Old Testament. From the standpoint 
of Old Testament theology I can understand how, after 
it has unanimously and rightly given up the verbal in- 
spiration of the ancient Hebrew scriptures and thus rec- 
ognised, perhaps unintentionally but quite logically, the 
wholly unauthoritative character of the Old Testament 
writings as such for our belief, our knowledge and our 
investigations, — I say I can understand how theology 
now claims as divine the spirit that pervades them and 
preaches with so much the greater unanimity the "ethi- 
cal monotheism of Israel," the "spirit of prophecy" as 
" a real revelation of the living God." 

Great consternation seems to have been produced by 
the names mentioned in my first lecture, which we find 
in surprisingly great numbers among the North-Semitic 
nomads who immigrated into Babylon about 2500 B.C.: 
"El (i. e., God) hath given," "God sits in control," 
"If God were not my God," " God, consider me," "God 
is God," " Jahu (i. e., Yahveh) is God." I really do 
not understand this uneasiness. For since the Old Testa- 
ment itself represents Abram as preaching in the name 
of Yahveh (Gen. xii. 8) , and since Yahveh had already 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 103 

been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those old 
names such as Jahu-ilu, i. e., Joel, ought really to be 
welcomed with joy. And these names should prove very 
opportune, particularly for those theologians who regard 
themselves as affirmative and who hold that ' ' all divine 
inspiration has undergone a gradual historical develop- 
ment," thereby turning the orthodox notion of inspira- 
tion upside down, as it seems to me. 

However, the great majority of theologians feel and 
fear rightly that these names, which are more than a 
thousand years older than the corresponding names in 
the Old Testament, which attest the worship of a single 
god named Jahu, "the permanent" (whether a tribal 
god or what not) , and which moreover might indicate the 
initial point of an historical development of the belief in 
Yahveh as existing in very much \vider circles than 
merely among the descendants of Abram, will thereby 
throw serious doubt upon its claim to be a special revela- 
tion. And therefore they are laboring and tormenting 
themselves in the effort to explain away these names, 
hesitating at no means. But though the waves spew and 
foam, like a lighthouse in the dark night stand fast the 
names of the descendants of North Semitic Bedouins from 
2300 B. C, "God is God," "Jahu is God." 

It seems to me that exaggerations should be avoided 
in either direction. I have never ceased to emphasise 
the gross polytheism of the Babylonians, and am far 
from feeling obliged to disguise it. But I regard it as 
just as much out of place to make the Sumerian-Babylo- 
nian pantheon and its representation in poetry, particu- 
larly in popular poetry, the butt of shallow wit and sar- 



104 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



castic exaggerations, as we should properly condemn 
such ridicule if directed at tlie gods of Homer. Nor 
should the worship of divinities in images of wood or 
stone be in any wise glossed over. Only it should not 
be forgotten that even the Biblical account of creation 

has man created "in the 
likeness of God," in dia- 
metrical contradiction of 
the constantly emphasised 
"spirituality" of God, — 
as has rightly been pointed 
out by students of theology. 
And in view of this fact we 
can understand after all how 
the Babylonians reversed 
this method and conceived 
and represented their gods 
in the image of man. 

The prophets of the Old 
Testament do exactly the 
same thing, at least in spirit. 
In perfect agreement with 
the Babylonians and Ass}-- 
rians the prophet Habakkuk 
(chap, iii.) sees Yahveh ap- 
proach with horses and char- 
iot, bow and arrows and lance, and even with "horns at 
his side,"' with horns, the symbol of authority and 
strength and victory (cp. Numbers xxiii. 22) , the cus- 
tomary adornment of the headdress of both higher and 




Fig. 78. Horns the Emblem of 
Strength. 



^R. v., "rays coiyiiiig forl]i from his hand 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



105 



lower divinities among the Assyrio-Babylonians (Fig. 
78) . And the representations of God the Father in 
Christian art: in Michael Angelo, Raphael, and all our 
illustrated Bibles, — the representation of the first day of 




mill' \\ 

Fig. 79. The Ancient of Days. (After Schnorr von Karolsfeld.) 

creation (Fig. 79) is taken from Julius von Schnorr's 
illustrated Bible,— are all derived from a vision of the 
Prophet Daniel (vii. 9) who sees God as the "Ancient of 
Days, his garments white as snow and the hair of his 
head like unto pure wool." 



106 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

But tlie Babylonians can endure with tlie same equa- 
nimity as tlie Catholic Church the wearisome ridicule of 
the Old Testament prophets cast upon the Babylonian 
idols who have eyes but see not, ears but hear not, a nose 
but smell not, and feet but cannot go. For just as intel- 
ligent Catholics see in the images merely the representa- 
tions of Christ, Mary, and the saints, so did the intelli- 
gent Babylonians : no hymn or prayer was addressed to 
the image as such, — they are alwa3^s appealing to the 
divinity that dwells beyond the bounds of earth. 

In passing judgment upon the ''ethical monothe- 
ism ' ' of Israel also a certain moderation would seem to 
be desirable. In the first place, we must except from 
consideration in this connection much of the pre-exilic 
period, during which Judah as well as Israel, kings as 
well as people, were dominated by an ineradicable 3^et 
quite natural predilection for the indigenous Canaanitish 
polytheism. 

Furthermore, it seems to me a particularly unwise 
proceeding on the part of certain hotspurs to j^ortray the 
ethical level of Israel, even that of the pre-exilic period, 
as elevated far above that of the Babylonians. It is un- 
deniable that the warfare of the Assyrio- Babylonians was 
cruel and sometimes barbarous. But so was the conquest 
of Canaan by the Hebrew tribes accompanied by a tor- 
rent of innocent blood ; the capture of ' ' the great and 
goodly alien cities, of the houses full of all good things, 
of the cisterns, the vineyards, the olive-groves" (Deuter- 
onomy vi. 10 f.) was preceded by the "devoting" (Deu- 
teronomy vii. 2, R. v., margin) of hundreds of villages 
on both sides of the Jordan, that is, by the merciless 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 107 

massacre of all the inhabitants, even of the women and 
the very smallest of children. And as for right and jus- 
tice in state and people, the persistent denunciations by 
the prophets of both Israel and Judah of the oppression 
of the poor, of widows and of orphans, taken in conjunc- 
tion with stories such as that of Naboth's vineyard (1 
Kings xxi) , reveal a profound corruption of both kings 
and people, while the almost two thousand years' exist- 
ence of the nation of Hammurabi would seem to justify 
the application to it of the saying : ' ' Righteousness ex- 
alteth a nation." 

We actually possess a monumental tablet which 
warns the Babylonian king himself most insistently 
against every species of injustice! *'If the king takes 
the money of the people of Babylon to appropriate it to 
his own treasury, and then hears the suit of the Babylo- 
nians and permits himself to be inclined to partisanship, 
then Marduk, the Lord of heaven and earth, will set his 
enemy against him and give his possessions and his 
treasure to his enemy." 

In the matter of love of one's neighbor, of compas- 
sion upon one's neighbor, as has already been remarked, 
there is no deep gulf to be discovered between Babylon 
and the Old Testament. 

In passing let me call attention here to one other \ 
point. Old Testament theologians make very merry 
over the Babylonian account of the Flood with its poly- 
theism, and yet it contains one element which appeals to 
us much more humanely than that of the Bible. "The 
Deluge," thus Xisuthros tells us, "was over. I looked 
forth over the v/ide ocean, lamenting aloud because all 



108 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

humankind had perished." Eduard Siiss, the celebrated 
Austrian geologist, confessed long since that in touches 
like this ' ' the simple narrative of Xisuthros bears the 
stamp of convincing truth." We find no report of any 
compassion on the part of Noah. 

The Babylonian Noah and his wife are transformed 
into gods ; this too would have been impossible in Israel. 
Of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the Feast of Weeks we 
read, Deuteronomy xvi. 11 (comp. also xii. 18) : "And 
thou shalt rejoice before Yahveh, thy God, thou and th3^ 
son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maid- 
servant," — but where is the wife? It is generally recog- 
nised that the position of women in Israel was a very 
subordinate one from earliest childhood. We find in the 
Old Testament scarcely a single girl's name which ex- 
presses in the cordial manner customary in the case of 
boy's names, joyful gratitude to Yahveh for the birth of 
the child. All the tender pet-names of girls, such as 
"Beloved," "Fragrant One," "Dew-born," "Bee," 
"Gazelle," "Ewe" (Rachel), "Myrtle" and "Palm," 
* ' Coral ' ' and ' ' Crown ' ' cannot in my opinion deceive us 
on this point. The woman is the property of her parents 
and afterwards of her husband ; she is a valuable ' ' hand ' ' 
upon which in marriage a great share of the heaviest do- 
mestic burdens are laid. And above all, as in Islam, she 
is disqualified for performing religious rites. 

All this was different and better in Babylon : for in- 
stance, we read in the time of Hammurabi of women who 
have their chairs carried into the temple ; we find the 
names of women as witnesses in legal documents, and 
other similar things. Right here in this matter of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 109 

position of women we may perceive clearly how pro- 
foundly the Babylonian civilisation was influenced by the 
non-Semitic civilisation of the Sumerians. 

And how variously pitched is that instrument, the 
human temperament ! While Koldewey and others with 
him are astonished anew that the excavations in Babylo- 
nia bring to light absolutely no obscene figures, a Catho- 
lic Old Testament scholar knows of ' ' numberless statu- 
ettes found in Babylon which have no other purpose but 





..jJ 



Fig. 80. Babylonian Clay Figures Representing the Goddess of Birth. 



to give expression to the lowest and most vulgar sensual- 
ity." Thou poor goddess of childbirth, poor goddess Is- 
tar! However, although thou be moulded only of clay, 
yet needst thou not blush to appear in this company 
(Fig. 80) ; for I am certain thou wilt give no offence, 
just as certain as that we are none of us offended but on 
the contrary love to give ourselves up to the contempla- 
tion of the glorious and familiar marble statue of Eve 
with her children (Fig. 81) . 



110 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



And although an Evangelical specialist in the Old 
Testament, finding occasion in a passage of a Babylonian 
poem, which has not yet received its definitive interpre- 
tation, exclaims with similar ethical indignation, that we 
* ' must needs search through the most vulgar corners of 
Further Asia in order to find its analogues," I cannot, 
indeed, boast of equal knowledge of local details, but I 

would like to remind him of 
the reasons why our school 
authorities so urgently de- 
manded extracts from the Old 
Testament, and to warn him 
against throwing stones, lest 
all too speedily his own glass- 
house come crashing about his 
ears. 

However, these skirmishes, 
provoked by my opponents, 
into the realm of the moral 
level of the two nations in- 
volved, seem to me of infinitely 
less importance than a final ob- 
servation in connection with 
the proclamation of the ' ' eth- 
ical monotheism ' ' of Israel or of the ' ' spirit of prophet- 
ism " as "a genuine revelation of the living God," 
which in my opinion has not yet received fitting atten- 
tion. 

Five times a day and even more frequently the ortho- 
dox Moslem prays the Paternoster of Islam, the first Sura 
of the Koran, which closes with the words : *' Lead us, O 




Fig. 8i. Eve and Her Children. 
(A marble statue by Adolf Briitt.) 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 111 

Allah, the right way, the way of those whom thou hast 
favored, who are not smitten by thy wrath [like the Jews] 
and who are not in error [like the Christians]." The 
Moslem alone is the one favored by Allah, he alone is the 
one chosen by God to adore and worship the true God. 
All other men and races are kafiriin^ heretics, whom God 
has not predestined to eternal salvation. Just such and 
not otherwise, deeply rooted in the nature of the Semite, 
does the Yahvism of Israel show itself to be, in the pre- 
exilic as well as in the post-exilic period. Yahveh is the 
only true (or highest) God, but at the same time he is 
the God of Israel solely and exclusively, Israel is his 
chosen people and his inheritance ; all other nations are 
Gojmi or heathen, given over by Yahveh himself to god- 
lessness and idolatry. This is a doctrine absolutely ir- 
reconcilable with our nobler conception of God, but which, 
nevertheless, is uttered in uncloaked language in the 
nineteenth verse of the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, a 
passage which at the same time destroys with a single 
phrase the illusion of a " primitive revelation " : " Lest 
thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven and when thou seest 
the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of 
heaven, thou worship them and reverence them, which 
Yahveh, thy God, hath divided unto all the peoples under 
the whole heaven ; but you Yahveh hath taken and 
brought forth out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of 
inheritance." According to this, the worship of the 
heavenly bodies and of idols was willed and decreed by 
Yahveh himself upon the peoples under the whole heaven. 
So much the more dreadful is the shock when in Deute- 
ronomy vii. 2, Yahveh gives the command to exterminate 



112 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

mercilessly on account of tlieir impiety the seven great 
and powerful peoples whom Israel may expect to find 
already in possession of Canaan, or when we read, verse 
16 : "And thou shalt consume all the peoples which Yah- 
veh thy God shall deliver unto thee ; thine 63^6 shall not 
pity them." 

It goes hard to regard as inspired bj^ the hol3^ and 
just God this monotheism of the exclusively national 
type. It is not manifested in the nature of the case in 
such passages as the account of the creation, but in gene- 
ral it runs throughout the Old Testament undeniably 
from Sinai on: "I am Yahveh, thy God," to Deutero- 
Isaiah : "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," and to 
Zechariah's prophecy (xx. 8, 23) : "Thus saith Yahveh 
Zebaoth : In those daj^s it shall come to pass that ten 
men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the na- 
tions ^Gojifii) ^ shall even take hold of the skirt of him 
that is a Jew, saying: 'We will go with 3^ou, for we 
have heard that God is with you.' " It is this monotheism 
that left all the other nations of the earth "without hope" 
and "without God in the world," as for instance the 
Apostle Paul assumes (Hphesians ii. 11 f.)- And 3^et 
we have all been so hypnotised from 3^outh up b3' this 
dogma of the " exclusive inheritance of Israel" (Ephe- 
sians ii. 12) , that we regard the histor3^ of the ancient 
world from an entirely wrong point of view and are even 
satisfied to claim for ourselves at this day the role of a 
"spiritual Israel," forgetting the niight3' historical revo- 
lution which was accomplished in the New Testament 
times under the influence of John the Baptist and the 
preaching of Jesus, that dramatic conflict between Juda- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 113 

ism, Jewish Christianity, and Gentile Christianity, which 
made it possible for Peter to exclaim (Acts x. 34 f.) : 
* ' Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of per- 
sons, but that in every nation, he that feareth him and is 
acceptable to him," thus tearing down the partition be- 
tween the Oriental-Israelitic and the Christian-philosophic 
conception of the universe. 

For my own part, I live firm in the belief that the 
early Hebrew scriptures, even if they lose their standing 
as "revealed" or as permeated by a "revealed" spirit, 
will nevertheless always maintain their great importance, 
especially as a unique monument of a great religio-histo- 
rical process which continues even into our own times. 
The lofty passages in the prophets and the psalms, filled 
with a living confidence in God and with longing for re- 
pose in God, will always find a living echo in our hearts, 
despite the particularistic limitation of its literal text and 
its literal meaning, which are largely obliterated anyway 
in our translation of the Bible. Indeed, words like those 
of the prophet Micah (vi. 6-S) : "Wherewith shall I 
come before Yahveh, and bow myself before the high 
God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
calves of a year old? Will Yahveh be pleased with thou- 
sands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Or shall 
I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my 
body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O 
man, what is good; and what doth Yahveh require of 
thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God! " — words like these, insisting on 
an ethical manifestation of religion in the life (and which 
are also found in Babylonian writings) , come, as it were, 



114 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

from die very soul of all sincerely religious people to- 
day. 

But on tlie other hand, let us not blindly cling to 
antiquated and scientificall3' discredited dogmas from the 
vain fear that our faith in God and our true religious life 
might suffer harm ! Let us remember that all things 
earthly are in living motion and that standing still means 
death. Let us look back upon the mighty, throbbing 
force with which the German Reformation filled the great 
nations of the earth in every field of human endeavor and 
human progress ! But even the Reformation is only one 
stage on the road to the goal of truth set for us by God 
and in God. Let us press forward toward it, humbly but 
with all the resources of free scientific investigation, J03- 
fully professing our adherence to that standard perceived 
with eagle eye from the high watch-tower and courage- 
ously proclaimed to all the world : " The further develop- 
ment of religion." 



THE STRUGGLE FOR BABEL 
AND BIBLE 



LITERATURE ON BABEL AND BIBLE. 



J. Barth, Bahel und israelitisches Religio7iswescn. A Lecture. Ber- 
lin, 1902 ; 36 pp. 

Prof. Dr. Karl Budde, Das Alte Testamejit und die Ausgrabungen. 
Giesen, 1903. (A Lecture, delivered May 29, 1902, at the 
Theological Conference at Giessen); 39 pp., of which, how- 
ever, only pp. I- 10 are pertinent. 

Dr. Johannes Doller, Imperial and Royal Court Chaplain and 
Director of Studies at the Frintaneum, Vienna, Bibcl und 
Babel oder Babel und Bibel? Eitie Entgegnung auf Prof. F. 
Deliizscli's "Babel und Bibel." Padernborn, 1903. 

Prof. Dr. Hommel, Die altorienialischen Denkmaler und das Alte 
Testament. Eine Erwiderung auf Prof. Fr. Delitzsch's "Babel 
und Bibel.'" Berlin, 1902; 38 pp. 

Dr. Alfred Jeremias, pastor of the Lutheran Church at Leipzig, 
Im Kampfe u?n Babel und Bibel. Ein Wort zur Verstdndigung 
und Abwehr. Leipzig, 1903; 35 pp. 

Prof. D. R. Kittel, Die babylonischen Ausgrabungen und die biblische 
Urges c hi elite. Leipzig, 1902 ; 36 pp. See also under Sec- 
tion II., p. 91. 

W. Knieschre, pastor at Sieversdorf, Bibel und Babel, El und Bel. 
Eine Replik auf Friedrich Delitzschs's Babel und Bibel. West- 
end-Berlin, 1902 ; 64 pp. 

Dr. Eduard Konig, Prof. (5f theolog}'. Bibel und Babel. Eine 
kulturgesehichtliclie Skizzc. Sixth, enlarged edition, with ref- 
erence to the most recent literature on the subject of Babel 
and Bible. Berlin, 1902; 60 pp. 



118 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Prof. D. Sam. Oettli, Dcr Kampf um Bihel und Babel. Et?i reli- 
giofisgescJuchtlicher Vortrag. Second edition. Leipzig, 1902; 
32 pp. 

Rabb. Dr. Ludw. A. Rosenthal, Babel und Bibel oder Babel gegen 
Bibel ? Ein Wort ziir Kldrung. Berlin, 1902; 31 pp. 

Prof. Bruno Baentsch, Jena, "Babel und Bibel. Eine Priifung 
des unter diesem Titel erschienenen Vortrages von Friedrich 
Delitzsch, besonders auf die darin enthaltenen religions- 
geschichtlichen Ausfiihrungen," in the Protestantische Alo7iats- 
heftc, edited by D. Julius Websky. Vol. VI., No. 8 (August 
15, 1902). Berlin, 1902. Cf. also two articles, signed B. B., 
"Noch einmal Babel und Bibel," in the T/mri/iger Rinid- 
seliaii, March 2nd and 9th, 1902. 

Prof. Dr. C. H. Cornill, Breslau, Deutsche Litter aturzeitung, 
1902, No. 27 (July 5). 

Heinrich Danneil (Schonebeck a. E.), "Babel und Bibel," 
MagdeburgiscJie Zeitung, No. 25, 1902, Beiblatt. 

Privatdocent Dr. W. Engelkemper, Miinster, "Babel und Bibel," 
Wisscnschaftliclie Bella gc ziir Gcrmauia, 1902, Nos. 31 (July 
31) and 32 (August 7). Berlin, 1902. 

Prof. D. Gunkel, "Babylonische und biblische Urgeschichte." 
Christliche Welt, XVII., 1903, No. 6 (Feb. 5), cols. 121- 

134- 

Prof. Dr. Peter Jensen, "Babel und Bibel," Die christliche Welt, 
XVI., 1902, No. 21 (May 22), cols. 487-494. 

Franz Kaulen, Bonn, "Babel und Bibel," Literarischer Hand- 
iveiscr zundchst fiir alle Katholikcn deutscher Zunge. XL., 
Nos. 766 and 767, 1901-1902. 

P. Keil, London, "Babel und Bibel." Pastor bonus. Zeitschri/t 
fiir kirchliche Wisscnschaft und Praxis, edited by Domkapitular 
Dr. P. Einig. XV., parts i, 2, 3 (Oct. i, Nov. i, Dec. i, 
1902). 

Prof. D. R. Kittee, Leipzig, "Jahve in Babel und Bibel," TJieo- 
logisches Literaturblatt, XXIII. , No. 17 (April 25, 1902). 
Also, "Noch einmal Jahve in Babel und Bibel," ibid., No. 
18 (May 2, 1902), and "Der Monotheismus in Babel und 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 119 

Bibel," AUgemeine evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, igo2, 
No. 17 (April 25, 1902). 

Rabbi Dr. S. Meyer, Regensburg, "Die Hypothesenglaubigen," 
Deutsche israclitische Zcitung, XIX., No. 8 (20th February, 
1902); and "Nochmals Babel und Bibel," ibid., No. 10 
(6th March). 

"Babel und Bibel," Ncue prciissische (^Krcuz-') Zeititng, 1902, No. 

211 (7th May). Signed 1- [Lie. theol. Prof. Riedel, 

Greifswald]. 

Wolff, "Babel und Bibel," Evajigelische Kirchenzeitung, 1902, No. 
28 (cols. 657-662). 



OPINIONS ON '/BABEL AND BIBLE." 

EMPEROR WILLIAM ON "BABEL AND BIBLE." 

(A Letter from His Majesty Emperor William II to Admiral Hollman, President 
of the Oriental Society ) 

February 15, 1903. 
Afy Dear Hollmati: 

My telegram to you will unquestionably have removed the 
doubts which you still entertained regarding the concluding pas- 
sage of the lecture, which was clearly understood by the audience 
and therefore could not be altered. I am glad, nevertheless, that 
the subject-matter of the second lecture has again been taken up, 
and I gladly seize the opportunity after a perusal of a copy of the 
proofs to state again clearly my position with regard to it. 

During an evening's entertainment with us Professor Delitzsch 
had the opportunity to fully confer and debate with Her Majesty, 
the Empress, and Dr. Dryander, while I listened and remained 
passive. Unfortunately he abandoned the standpoints of the strict 
historian and Assyriologist, going into religious and theological 
conclusions which were quite nebulous or bold. 

When he came to speak of the New Testament, it became 
clear at once that he developed such quite divergent views regard- 
ing the person of our Saviour that I had to express the diametri- 
cally opposite view. He does not recognise the divinity of Christ 
as a deduction therefrom and asserts that the Old Testament con- 
tains no revelation about him as the Messiah. 

Here the Assyriologist and the historical investigator ceases 
and the theologian begins, with all his light and shadow sides. In 
this province I can only urgently advise him to proceed cautiously, 
step by step, and at any rate to ventilate his theses only in the 
theological books and in the circle of his colleagues. Spare us, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 121 

the laymen, and, above all, the Oriental Society, from hearing of 
them. 

We carry on excavations and publish the results in behalf of 
science and history, but not to conform or attack religious hypoth- 
eses. 

Professor Delitzsch, the theologian, has run away with Profes- 
sor Delitzsch, the historian ; his history is exploited merely for the 
benefit of his theology. 

I regret that Professor Delitzsch did not adhere to his original 
program which he developed last year; viz., to determine, on the 
basis of the discoveries of our society and by means of critically 
verified translations of the inscriptions, the extent to which these 
materials shed light on the history of the people of Israel or eluci- 
date the historical events, customs and habits, traditions, politics 
and laws of the Israelites. In other words, he should have shown 
the mutual relationship in which the undeniably powerful and 
highly developed civilisation of the Babylonians stood to that of 
the Israelites, and the extent to which the former might have in- 
fluenced the latter or have impressed upon it its own stamp. He 
could thus have saved, so to speak, from a purely human point of 
view, the honor and good name of the Babylonian people which 
has certainly been depicted in the Old Testament in a revolting 
and grossly one-sided manner. This was indeed his original inten- 
tion, — at least as I conceive it, — and certainly his is a most fruit- 
ful and interesting field, the investigation, elucidation, and expla- 
nation of which necessarily interests us laymen in the highest 
degree and would have placed us under the highest obligation to 
him. At precisely here is the place where he should have stopped 
but beyond which unfortunately his ardent zeal led him. As was 
not otherwise to be expected, the excavations brought information 
to light which has a bearing also on the religion of the Old Testa- 
ment. He should have mentioned this fact and should have em- 
phasised and explained whatever coincidences occurred ; but all 
purely religious conclusions it was his duty to have left for his hear- 
ers themselves to draw. Thus the interest and the favor of the lay 
public would have been gained in the fullest measure for his lec- 
ture. 

He approached the question of revelation in a polemical tone, 
more or less denying it or reducing it to a matter of purely human 
development. That was a grave error, for thereby he touched on 
the innermost, holiest possession of many of his hearers. 



122 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

And whether he did so justifiably or unjustifiably, — and that is 
for our present purpose quite indifferent, since we are concerned 
here not with scientific conventions of theologians but with lay 
people of all ages and professions, — he still either demolished or 
endangered the dearest conceptions, or it may be, the illusions of 
many of his hearers, — conceptions with which these people had in- 
terwoven their oldest and dearest associations. And unqestionably 
he shattered or at least undermined for these people their faith. It 
is a deed that only the greatest genius should venture to attempt 
and for which the mere study of Assyriology did not justify him. 

Goethe also once discussed this question, calling emphatic at- 
tention to the fact that one must be on one's guard in speaking to 
the general public not to destroy even such insignificant structures 
as mere "pagodas of terminology." The fundamental principle, 
that it is very important to distinguish precisely between what is 
and what is not adapted to the place, the public, etc., appears to 
have escaped the excellent Professor in his zeal. As a professional 
theologian it is permissible for him to publish in technical reviews 
and for his colleagues theses, hypotheses, and theories, nay, even 
convictions which it would not be proper for him to utter in a pub- 
lic lecture or book. 

I should now like to advert again to my personal attitude 
toward the doctrine of revelation and to state it in terms similar to 
those I have formerly employed toward you, my dear Hollman, 
and toward other gentlemen. - 

I distinguish between two different kinds of revelation, — one 
progressive, and, as it were, historical ; the other purely religious, 
as preparing the way for the future Messiah. 

Regarding the former, it must be said for me, it does not ad- 
mit of a doubt, not even the slightest, that God reveals himself 
continuously in the race of man created by him. He breathed into 
man the breath of his life and follows with fatherly love and inter- 
est the development of the human race. In order to lead it for- 
ward and develop it, he reveals himself in this or that great sage, 
whether priest or king, w'hether among the heathen, the Jews, or 
the Christians. Hammurabi was one. So was Moses, Abraham, 
Homer, Charlemagne, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, and 
Emperor William the Great. These he sought out and endowed 
with his grace to accomplish splendid, imperishable results for 
their people, in their intellectual and physical provinces, according 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 123 

to hiy will. How often my grandfather pointed out that he was 
only an instrument in the Lord's hands. 

The achievements of the great intellects of the world were do- 
nated by God to the nations in order that they might through their 
aid make further progress, and might feel their way farther and 
farther through the labyrinths which yet remained uninvestigated. 
Unquestionably God did "reveal" himself differently to the differ- 
ent races according to their position and rank in the scale of civil- 
isation, and he does the same to-day. For just as we may be over- 
whelmed by the grandeur, magnificence, and might of nature when 
we look upon it and wonder while so doing at the grandeur of God 
who is revealed in it, so assuredly are we justified, when we con- 
template the grand and splendid deeds that a man or a nation has 
accomplished, in wondering with gratitude at the splendor of the 
revelation made by God in them. He works directly upon us and 
among us. 

The second form of revelation, the more religious, is that which 
leads to the manifestation of our Lord. It was introduced with 
Abraham, slow but forward looking and omniscient, for humanity 
was lost without it. Now begins the most astonishing activity of 
God's revelation. Abraham's race and the peoples developing from 
it regard faith in one God as their holiest possession, and, it fol- 
lows, hold fast to it with ironlike consistency. It is their duty to 
foster and cherish it. Split up during their Egyptian captivity, 
the divided elements were again welded together by Moses, ever 
trying to hold fast to their monotheism. It was the direct inter- 
vention of God that caused the rejuvenation of this people, thus 
proved through centuries, till the Messiah, heralded by prophets 
and psalmists, finally appeared, the greatest revelation of God in 
the world, for he appeared in the son himself. Christ is God, God 
in human form. He redeemed us and inspires, entices us to follow 
him. We feel his fire burning in us. His sympathy strengthens 
us. His discontent destroys us. But also his intercession saves 
us. Conscious of victory, building solely upon his world, we go 
through labor, ridicule, sorrow, misery, and death, for we have in 
him God's revealed word, and he never lies. 

That is my view of these matters. 

For us of the Evangelical Denomination the Word has, through 
Luther, been made our all, and as a good theologian Delitzsch 
should not have forgotten that our great Luther taught us to sing 
and believe • 



124 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

" Inviolate the Word let stand." 

It is to me self-evident that the Old Testament contains many 
sections which are of a purely human and historical nature, and are 
not God's revealed word. These are merely historical descriptions 
of incidents of all kinds which happen in the political, religious, 
moral, and intellectual life of this people. 

The legislative act on Sinai, for example, can be only regarded 
as symbolically inspired by God. When Moses had to reburnish 
well known paragraphs of the law, perhaps derived from the code 
of Hammurabi, in order to incorporate and bind them into the 
loose, weak fabric of his people, here the historian can perhaps 
construe from the sense or wording a connection with the laws of 
Hammurabi, the friend of Abraham. That is perhaps logically 
correct. But that will never disguise the fact that God incited 
Moses thereto and in so far revealed himself to the people of Israel. 

Accordingly it is my opinion, that henceforward in his lectures 
before our society it will be better for our good Professor to let 
matters of religion alone. On the other hand, he may depict un- 
disturbed the relation which the religion, customs, etc. of the Baby- 
lonians bear to those of the Old Testament. 

For me the following conclusions result from the foregoing 
discussions. 

1. I believe in the one and only God. 

2. We human beings need a form in order to teach his exist- 
ence, especially for our children. 

3. This has hitherto been the Old Testament. The present 
version of this will be possibly and substantially modified under the 
influence of research through inscriptions and excavations. That 
does not matter. Neither does it matter that much of the nimbus 
of the chosen people will thereby disappear. The kernel of the 
contents of the Old Testament will remain always the same, — God 
and his works. 

Religion has never been the result of science, but the pouring 
out of the heart and being of man from intercourse with God. 
With cordial thanks and greetings. 

Your Faithful Friend, 

WiLHELM, I. R. 

P. S. — You may make the utmost use of these lines. Let all 
who are interested read. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 125 



PROFESSOR HARNACK ON THE EMPERORS ATTITUDE TOWARD 
"BABEL AND BIBLE." 

The Emperor has spoken, in order to express his position 
v/ithout ambiguity in an historico-theological dispute. This is 
something new, but in view of all the circumstances the Emperor's 
decision is quite easily explained. The opinion was likely to be- 
come widespread, had indeed become widespread, that the Em- 
peror occupied the same theological standpoint as Dr. Delitzsch. 
Not wishing to permit this misunderstanding to continue, the Em- 
peror wrote as the public has read. 

From the point of view of scholars there was, indeed, no real 
controversy. It has long been known that a portion of the myths 
and legends of the Old Testament, together with important ele- 
ments of ancient Israelitish civilisation, had their origin in Baby- 
lon. It was equally beyond question that this fact is fatal to the 
current notion of the inspiration of the Old Testament. For the 
refutation of this belief there was no need of reference to Babylon : 
a hundred other observed facts had contributed to destroy it. 

But the knowledge of these facts had not become common 
property. However, the theologians cannot be held to blame for 
this. They had done their duty toward spreading the information 
in books and pamphlets and lectures. Our German literature points 
with pride to a work of such eminence as Wellhausen's History of 
Israel; it appeals to all educated people and is classic in form and 
content. And beside it stand a half dozen other excellent works, 
each of which gives full and accessible information regarding Old 
Testament literature and history. But Church and School have 
been in league to suppress this knowledge by excluding it from 
their domain. And indeed they are not alone to blame. Indolence 
and fear have done their share. 

To Delitzsch's lectures is due the credit for the fact that we 
now hear preached from the house-tops what before was but like a 
voice in the wilderness. "Credit," indeed, is scarcely the word ; 
it is due to the force of circumstances. But we do not need to 
weigh the individual credit for the result ; we hail with gratitude 
the fact that Delitzsch has given wide currency to a more correct 
view of the Old Testament. 

But has he in fact done this? Unquestionably he has removed 
a great error : the belief that the materials of the Old Testament 



126 BABElv AND BIBLE. 

are all original. But how little does the material amount to in the 
history of religion and of the spirit! If to-day some one should go 
before the public and announce to it: "Gentlemen, I come to re- 
relieve you from a great error; you have hitherto believed that 
Goethe's I^aust was an original work, while in fact it is only a recent 
secondary product ; for the entire material of it is found in a popu- 
lar legend of the sixteenth century," — what would be the reply to 
him? He would be laughed to scorn, and Delitzsch would join in 
the laugh. 

Without doubt he is very far from trying to determine the 
value of the Old Testament religion on the ground of its depend- 
ence upon Babylon, but in my opinion he has not done enough to 
prevent the establishment of a false conception of the matter in his 
hearers and readers. This public is very far from conceding to the 
prophets and the psalmists what it concedes without hesitation to 
a Goethe, Furthermore, for the very reason that there has pre- 
vailed hitherto a notion of the supernatural character of the Old 
Testament, the pendulum of opinion, following a familiar psycho- 
logical law, now swings to the opposite extreme. To-day it is the 
talk of the streets that "the Old Testament no longer amounts to 
much." 

At this point the Emperor enters the arena with his letter. 
But meantime the chasm had become deeper. As the result of an 
interview the monarch had become convinced that Professor De- 
litzsch did not hold the -orthodox belief regarding the divinity of 
Christ, and that the examination of the Old Testament among other 
reasons prevented his holding this belief. In the face of this nega- 
tive conviction the Emperor wished to leave no doubt regarding 
his own positive conviction. 

We must thank him for the way in which he did this. It is 
true, the reproof which Delitzsch has received cannot fail to be 
painful to him, and he must feel deeply his being excluded from 
the domain of theology upon which the Emperor himself now en- 
ters. But that was surely not the intention : the Emperor means 
to say, and he is right in so saying, that Delitzsch's authority as an 
Assyriologist does not also extend to his theological doctrines. Be- 
yond this he concedes absolute freedom to the convictions of the 
scholar. 

Absolute freedom, — this sentiment shines forth from the Em- 
peror's utterances with pleasing and inspiring effect. He has no 
thought of issuing a peremptory decree ; the whole letter is per- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 127 

meated with the spirit of freedom. He knows very well that com- 
mands are out of place in connection with these delicate and sacred 
matters, and he knows that theology cannot pass by these ques- 
tions, but that they must be treated most seriously, with liberty 
and courage. He leaves them to theological science. 

But still more pleasing is the effect of the positiveness, the 
frankness and warmth with which the Emperor himself takes his 
stand in these matters. What he has written is from the depth of 
his heart ; he utters it just as he thinks and feels it, and he has 
written it down like one who is trying to take account of his own 
mind, with all the minute marks of individual feeling and individ- 
ual experience. He feels his soul bound to Christ, and he is not 
willing to speak of religion without praising him and confessing his 
allegiance to him. 

The Emperor's utterance professes to be a personal confession 
of faith, and as such it deserves respect. But it would certainly 
not be in accordance with the spirit of the imperial author if we 
were to give no other response than silence. In the Evangelical 
Church the ultimate and supreme questions are always open to dis- 
cussion, and each generation must work out the answers anew. 
Our spiritual life also depends upon crises and finds its very vitality 
in them. How should we be silent when the profoundest and most 
solemn questions challenge us in this form? 

All Evangelical Christians will frankly and joyfully agree with 
the final sentence of the Emperor's letter: ** Religion was never 
the result of science, but an overflow of the heart and being of man 
from his intercourse with God." Theology subscribes to this prop- 
osition ; it knows right well that it does not work creativel}', but 
merely tries to follow reverently in thought something that already 
is. 

Not less will be the general accord with the Emperor's convic- 
tion that religion must have forms, so that we may explain our- 
selves and give mutual instruction, but that these forms cannot be 
imperishable. I think that even Professor Delitzsch has attained 
the capital feature of his purposes in the concession that the cus- 
tomary forms of the current school traditions regarding the Old 
Testament are in urgent need of change. 

But questions and disputes will arise chiefly in connection with 
two convictions expressed by his majesty : the theory of a twofold 
revelation, and the divinity of Christ. And the two are closely con- 
nected. 



128 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The difference between faith and science in connection with 
religion becomes clear immediately on the mention of the word 
"revelation." Science in the strictest sense cannot admit the no- 
tion at all, finding it too transcendental. On the other hand, faith 
cannot permit itself to be deprived of revelation. But in the course 
of development there has been an approach between the two sides. 
Aside from the reverent contemplation of the universe the Evan- 
gelical faith has ceased to recognise revelation through any medi- 
ums but persons. The whole lower series of alleged revelations 
has been put aside. There are no revelations by means of things. 
The Emperor's letter also took this ground : the revelations of God 
in his humanity are persons, especially great persons. Now in so 
far as great personages have their mystery even for science in their 
individuality and power, in so far harmony is established between 
faith and science. But the recognition by me and others of these 
personages as revelations of God is an act of subjective experience 
which no science can either create or prevent. 

But upon this common ground the Emperor's letter distin- 
guishes two sorts of revelation : a general one, and a peculiarly re- 
ligious one. There is a great element of strength in this distinc- 
tion, for it brings out vigorously the fact that there is no more seri- 
ous concern for man than his relation to God, and that everj^thing 
is dependent on this relationship. But on the other hand, the 
thinking mind cannot possibly repose in the assumption of two 
revelations running, as it were, parallel with each other, and the 
imperial letter has given utterance to this observation by putting 
Abraham into both categories. Accordingly there cannot be two 
revelations, — for religion, moral force, and knowledge stand in most 
intimate union, — but one revelation, the bearers of which were, and 
still are, very different in nature and greatness, calling and function. 
If Jesus Christ loses nothing of his individuality and uniqueness 
when he is placed in the series with Moses, Isaiah, and tlie psalm- 
ists, neither does he suffer by the comparison when we see him in 
the line with Socrates and Plato and the others who are mentiond 
in the Emperor's letter. The religious conception of history must 
in the last analysis be one and the same: it must be mankind led 
forth by God out of the state of primitive nature, out of error and 
sin, and saved and brought into the estate of the children of God. 
Here, however, we make reservation of the fact that the divine his- 
tory finds its specific line in ancient times in Israel. 

The Christian Church must reject every estimate of Christ 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 129 

which ignores the difference between him and other masters. He 
himself, his disciples and the history of the world have spoken so 
distinctly on this point that there should be no room for doubt, and 
he still speaks to us in his word as distinctly as to his disciples of 
old. But it may and must be questioned whether the inflexible 
formula "divinity of Christ" is the correct one. He himself never 
used it, but chose other designations, and it is at least very doubt- 
ful whether any of his disciples ever uttered it. And the early 
Church, too, did not speak directly of the divinity of Christ, but 
always of his divinity and humanity. "God-man," therefore, is the 
only correct formula even in the intent of the ancient dogma. In 
this phrase we have almost restored the mystery which according 
to the will of Christ himself was to remain in this matter. He 
made no secret of the fact that he was the Lord and Saviour, and 
his disciples were expected to observe and experience the fact in 
his words and deeds. But how his relation to the Father arose, 
he withheld from us and kept to himself. In my historical opinion, 
therefore, and according to my feeling in the matter, even the for- 
mula "man and God" (God-man-hood) is not bej^ond criticism, 
inasmuch as it has already begun to intrude upon a mystery into 
which we are not permitted to look. 

But the formula may be allowed to stand, because at bottom it 
does not pretend to explain anything, but only protects the extra- 
ordinary from profanation, just as does the expression "Son of 
God." The Pauline expression "God was in Christ" seems to me 
to be the last word that we are permitted to speak in this matter, 
now that we have liberated ourselves slowl}^ and painfully from the 
erroneous notion of ancient philosophers that we can penetrate the 
mysteries of God and Nature, humanity and history. 

"If ye love me, keep my commandments;" "In this shall 
every one recognise that ye are my disciples, that ye love one an- 
another," — it is more important to meditate upon these words and 
try to live up to them than to put the incomprehensible and the 
venerable into formulas. The time is coming and even now is near 
when Evangelical Christians will join hands sincerely in the con- 
fession of Jesus Christ as their master and in the determination to 
follow his words, and our Catholic brethren will then be obliged to 
join with us to the same end. The burden of a long history of mis- 
understandings, of formulas that bristle like swords, of tears and 
blood, weighs upon us, but in it there is also preserved to us a pre- 
cious inheritance. The two seem to be united inextricably, but 



130 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

nevertheless they are gradually separating, although the "Let there 
be light" has not yet been spoken across this chaos. Frankness 
and courage, honesty with ourselves, freedom and love, — these are 
the levers which will lift the burden. And the Emperor's letter 
also is intended to aid in this lofty undertaking. 

M. HALEVY'S OPINION. 

M. Joseph Hal^vy, the French coryphaeus of Oriental research, 
born December 15, 1827, says about Babel and Bible: "Sincerity 
nevertheless compels me to point out certain inept, inaccurate, and 
redundant statements which disfigure this otherwise beautiful lec- 
ture. The meaning of Numbers vi. 26 (page 29, Babel and Bible) 
is perfectly clear in itself and parallel to the passage in Job xxii. 
26. The Babylonian form of expression adds absolutely nothing 
new. There is not a vestige of a proof that the Ur of Kasdim, the 
home of Abraham, is identical with the city of Ur of Babylonia 
(page 4); the appellation Kasdim designates in the Pentateuch 
'territory which is exclusively Aramean' ; Babylonia is called there 
'the land of Sincar.' To make a princess of Arj^an blood and blond 
complexion out of the wife of Sardanapalus, of whom we have only 
an old and hastily executed sketch; to call the converted Jew Jean 
Astruc 'zealously orthodox' (page 41); to attribute to the Koran 
the beautiful legends of the Talmud, and to pass over almost in 
silence the magnificent results of the French excavations in Assyria 
and Babylonia, is carrying cleverness to an unjustified extreme. 
The picture (page 48) of the First Sin, borrowed from Mdnant, 
and the comparison of the destruction of Rahab, a name for Egypt 
(Psalms Ixxiv. 13, Ixxxix. 11; Job xxvi. 12), with the splitting in 
twain of the body of the chaotic goddess Tiamat by Marduk, who 
made of it the earth and the heavens, will not stand before exami- 
nation. In the first picture, the man and the woman who are seated 
opposite each other on the two sides of the tree are extending 
toward each other their hands and are not gathering the fruit that 
hangs upon the lower branches of the tree near their feet. And 
furthermore, the undulating line behind the woman is not beyond 
all doubt a serpent. The same disposition to rest content with 
superficial appearances shows itself in the interpretation which is 
put upon Figure 58, page 64, which has no points of resemblance 
with the chariot of Ezekiel. 

"Must it be repeated for the tenth time that the institution of 



BABEL AND BIBLE. I3l 

Sunday rest is nowhere mentioned in cuneiform literature? The 
abstinences prescribed for the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth (an 
awkward date omitted by the lecturer), twenty-first, and twenty- 
eighth days of the second Elud, which is an exceptional month, 
have nothing whatever to do with the Jewish Sabbath? 

''Absolutely fantastical also is the attribution of the head of a 
patesi or priest-king preserved in the Berlin Museum to the imagi- 
nary and undiscoverable race of Sumerians who, although the origi- 
nators of the great Babylonian civilisation, are said to have been 
unable to count beyond 60 ! This error is an old one; the number 
6 could never have formed a primitive multiple; the first series 
obtained by actual counting, which is based on the fingers of the 
hand, finds its natural termination at the number 3 ; Delitzsch has 
confounded instinctive counting with the artificial or scientific mode 
ofi computation by 6o's, which has its advantages. We must deplore 
indeed the sad lot of these great allophylian creators of the most 
ancient civilisation who have left as a witness of their vanished 
glory only a single head of stone, fac-similies of which can be found 
by the hundreds in real flesh and blood in the ghettos of Podolia 
and Morocco. 

"But the acme is reached in the following. Delitzsch affirmed 
in his Paradise that the name Yahveh came from the Sumerian Y 
and the consonants hvh. He now declares, — and this is the culmi- 
nation of his lecture, — that he has found on three Babylonian tab- 
lets names belonging to Canaanites establisJicd in Babylon, and com- 
posed of the element Yahveh (page 61). Now, the spelling of the 
second form, j'^-?/-?/w-// (written an), signifies in good Babylonian 
'Yaum [with mimmation for iauT=iam-mu, Okeanos, god of the sea] 
is god.' The first form, written ia-ah-pi-il, exhibits a general Se- 
mitic name Yahpcel (El covers, protects, '^>?r~- analogous to ^??f"!). 
The possible reading Yahvch-ill ^o\\\(\ be equivalent to the Aramean 
^N""!:, <God exists,' and would not necessarily signify 'Yahveh is 
god.' In no case could a name like Yahveh-el be Canaanite-Phoe- 
nician ; for these people express the verb to be by ^13, and not by 

nin- 

"With so alluring a subject and before an audience chosen 
from among the highest intellects of the nation, it would have been 
more prudent to limit oneself to established facts, and not to offer 
ephemeral conjectures which can serve no other purpose than to 
dazzle superficial and inquisitive minds." 



132 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



CORNILL ON "BABEL AND BIBLE." 

^^ Babel and Bihie offers nothing essentially new to Old Testa- 
ment scholars. There is doubtless not a single professor of Old 
Testament research in any German university that has not already 
told all these things to his students in his lectures on Genesis. And 
Delitzsch does not gainsay this. He maintains only that the world 
at large has as yet heard very little of the silent labors of the As- 
syriologists and that it is now time for this knowledge to burst the 
barriers of the scholars' study and enter the broad path of life. 

"If this is to be interpreted as an aspersion upon us scholars, 
it may be answered that we have never treated this knowledge as 
an esoteric doctrine, and that any one who desired any information 
about it had ample opportunity to obtain such, and further that 
there are matters and problems in science concerning which exces- 
sive discretion is the lesser evil. Now, in the exercise of this nec- 
essary discretion Delitzsch has been extremely c\\2.xy. The im- 
pression that the lecture is apt to make on unprofessional readers 
is that the Bible and its religion is to a certain extent a mere off- 
shoot of Babylonian heathendom which we have 'in purer and 
more original form' in Babel; and this impression is intensified by 
the fact that Delitzsch by his own statements actually expects from 
the results of the Assyrio-Babj'lonian excavations the advent of a 
new epoch in the i7iierpretation as well as in the understanding of 
the Old Testament. I shall consider Delitzsch's statements under 
this point of view. 

"The Babylonians also had their sJiahatiit, he says, and 'there 
can therefore be scarcely the shadow of a doubt that in the last re- 
sort we are indebted to this ancient nation on the banks of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris for the plenitude of blessings that flows 
from our day of Sabbath or Sunday rest.' What now was this 
Babylonian shabaitu'i Not the seventh day of each week, for the 
Babylonians regarded the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty- 
first, and twenty-eighth calendar days of every month as days in 
which no work could be done; and for what reason? For fear of 
the wrath of the gods. These were the days that the Romans 
called dies airi, and are we now to believe that these dies atri of the 
Babylonians, which were inseparably linked with the dates of the 
calendar, are our Biblical Sabbath? Never! The Sabbath as the 
'day of the Lord,' the view that on one day in every week we 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 133 

should cast aside all the trials and tribulations of our earthly life 
and live for God alone and be happy in communion with Him, is 
exclusively the property of the Bible, and for the 'plenitude of 
blessings' contained in it the world is indebted, not to Babel, but 
to Bible. 

"We have long known that the Biblical story of the Creation 
(Genesis i. ) reposed on a Babylonian foundation; but the only 
genuinely religious and imperishable fact of this history, the al- 
mighty God, creator of heaven and earth, who speaks and it comes 
to pass, who commands and it is so, the holy personal God, who 
created man in his own image and entrusted him with the duties 
attendant upon morality and a religious life, was given to the 
world, not by Babel, but by Bible. 

"And how is it with the story of Paradise and the Fall of Man 
(Genesis ii. and iii.)? Delitzsch reproduces on page 48 the well- 
known ancient Babylonian clay cylinder which is said to contain a 
pictorial representation of this story. Assyriologists of the stand- 
ing of Oppert, M^nant, Hal^vy, and Tiele vigorously contest this 
interpretation, even explaining the figures on the cylinder as two 
men, and are absolutely unable to recognise a serpent in the undu- 
latory line in this picture. No Babylonian text corresponding to 
Genesis iii. has yet been discovered, and if the reader of page 38 
of Delitzsch's book imagines that the clay tablet there mentioned 
containing 'the Babylonian legend of how it came to pass that the 
first man forfeited the boon of immortality' is the Biblical story of 
Genesis iii., 'in much purer and more primitive form,' I have only 
to say that he is sorely mistaken. But even granting that such is 
the case and that it has been proved that the Babylonians had a 
story according to which the first woman, tempted by the serpent, 
ate of the forbidden fruit and thereby brought sin and death into 
the world, it will be distinctly seen from the picture that, leaving 
everything else out of account, the Babylonian pair are clothed, and 
that therefore what is perhaps the profoundest and most significant 
feature of the story of Genesis iii. belongs to Bible, and not to 
Babel. 

"The conception of angels is without doubt 'characteristically 
Babylonian.' But whether they are also such in the Biblical sense 
as so grandly expressed in Psalms xci, verses 11 and 12, and in the 
utterance of Jesus, Matthew xviii. 10, is another question. In the 
Biblical representations Babylonian angels and eunuchs surround 
only the throne of the great king. And before Delitzsch wrote 



134 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

(page 55) his remarks concerning the demons and the devils which 
he says were possible only for the ancient Persian dualism, an-d 
were so destined to be committed forever and aye to the obscurity 
of the Babylonian hills from which they rose, he should have re- 
called to mind the important role which these concepts played in 
the religious life of Jesus, so that we might be justified in saying 
that there are 'still many Babylonian traits clinging even to the re- 
ligious thoughts' of Jesus. But these concepts in the Bible are no 
Parsee importation ; for the Bible can think of Satan and his an- 
gels under no other form than that of creatures of God who had 
fallen through their own sins and who stand thus on the most essen- 
tial point in the sharpest imaginable contrast with the afore-men- 
tioned Persian dualism. And does Delitzsch mean to say, when 
he affirms that the 5th, 6th, and 7th commandments occur 'in pre- 
cisely the same order' in the Babylonian records, that Moses, or 
whoever else composed the Decalogue, sought advice from Babel, 
in the face of the fact that the order of the treasures which man 
seeks to protect, namely, life, famil}^ and property, could not pos- 
sibly be more natural and obvious, and that the humane Baby- 
lonian commandments have also their parallel in the Egyptian 
Book of the Dead ? 

"And how do matters stand with the Biblical problems con- 
cerning which we are led to believe that Babel only can explain 
Bible? Delitzsch sees in the Bible Amraphel of Genesis xiv. the 
great Babylonian king Hammurabi, the founder of the old Baby- 
lonian kingdom. I shall not gainsay that this identification is pos- 
sible ; and since Amraphel was 'the contemporary of Abraham' we 
shall certainly be glad to reckon the period of Abraham by that of 
Hammurabi. But if we consult the Assyriologists we shall find 
that in fixing the chronological place of the fifty-five years of the 
reign of this king they vary between 2394-2339 B. C. and 1923- 
1868 B. C, with all the intermediate possibilities. From the point 
of view of method, therefore, is it not better to follow the plan of 
the Assyriologist Hommel, who, convinced of the correctness of 
the equation Amraphel ^Hammurabi, as of the historical authen- 
ticity of the events narrated in Genesis xiv., starts, contrariwise, 
from the Bible and moulds the Babylonian chronology until it ac- 
cords with the Biblical? 

"Delitzsch's statements (page 61) concerning the three clay 
tablets containing the name of Yahveh are quite new. I cannot 
revive here, much less resolve, the question of the original mono- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 135 

theism of the Semites, or at least of 'the old Canaanite races which 
settled in Babylonia 2500 years before Christ, and to whom Ham- 
murabi himself belonged'; but I have to confess that I cherish the 
gravest doubts concerning the correctness of the meaning of these 
tablets, or at any rate of the interpretation of the names Ya-ah-ve- 
ilu and Ya-hu-um-ilu. Of names containing the proper names of a 
god, and asserting additionally that this god is God, there are no 
instances whatever among the thousands of Semitic proper names 
which we know. Even the well-known Biblical y(5'^/ does not mean 
'Yahveh is God.' But even granting that these old 'Canaanites' 
did possess the theophorous name Yahu, is this any proof that they 
also possessed the Biblical concept of Yahveh? How does it hap- 
pen that of these 'monotheistic' kings one is called Sinmu-ballit 
which means 'Sin gives life,' and another is Samsu-iluna, which 
means 'the sun is our god.' 

"There are also other evidences \n Babel and Bible that De- 
litzsch's statements must be accepted with reserve. We read on 
page 50: 'In the Book of Job (xxiv. 18), which appears to be ex- 
tremely conversant with Babylonian modes of thought, we find 
comparisons drawn (xxiv. 18 et seq. ) between the arid, waterless 
desert which is reserved for those that have sinned, and the garden 
with fresh, clear water which is reserved for the pious.' I believe 
that I also am tolerably well acquainted with the Book of Job, and 
I was consequently not a little astonished at reading these words, 
for as a matter of fact there is absolutely nothing of the kind in Job 
xxiv. 18, and if Delitzsch possibly introduced this meaning into 
the passage conjecturally, it was entirely inadmissible on his part 
to deal with it as with something that had been absolutely estab- 
lished. 

"Again, the passage on pages 51-52 concerning Mahomet's 
Paradise, — namely: ' Two and seventy of these Paradisian maidens 
may every god-fearing man choose unto himself, in addition to the 
wives that he possessed on earth, provided he cares to have them 
(and the good man will always cherish desire for the good),' — is 
not to be found at all in the Koran, but has been taken from E. W. 
Lane's Ct4stoms arid Manners, part I., page 59, of the German trans- 
lation. 

"We are delighted and proud that Germany also is at last 
taking an independent part in the excavations in the valle}^ of the 
Euphrates. But in entering upon this undertaking it is only ful- 
filling a national obligation of honor toward the educated world, 



136 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

and no one could entertain greater sympathy with these labors or 
wish them greater success than we theological investigators of the 
Old Testament, for we know the light which will be shed from that 
source upon the object of our studies. But we are far from be- 
lieving that a new interpretation of the Old Testament will ever be 
brought to pass by these investigations, nay we are firmly con- 
vinced that in the struggle between Babel and Bible the Bible will 
ultimately come out victorious. Gunkel spoke for us all when he 
said : 

" 'How incomparably superior the Hebrew legend is to the 
Babylonian ! Should we not really be delighted at having found 
in this Babylonian parallel a criterion for estimating the real sub- 
limity of the conception of God in Israel, — a conception of so much 
intrinsic power that it can purge and recast in such a manner ma- 
terial so repellent and outlandish? And this also we may say, that 
the Babylonian legend strongly impresses us by its barbaric charac- 
ter, whereas the Hebrew legend is far nearer and more human to 
us. Even granting that we have been accustomed from childhood 
to the Hebrew legends, we yet learn from this example that in our 
whole world of ideas we owe far more to these Hebrews than to the 
Babylonians." 

The same theologian wrote to the editors of The Open Court 
after the appearance of Professor Delitzsch's First Lecture as fol- 
lows : "You are to be commended for having made the American 
public acquamted with Delitzsch's Babel and Bible, for the little 
book contains an extraordinary amount of stimulating and instruc- 
tive matter, and it has been cleverly constructed, so as to appeal 
at once to the great reading public. Yet while there is no direct 
polemical attack made in it against the Bible, you will nevertheless 
understand that we theologians have witnessed the appearance of 
this essay and the great sensation which it has made with solici- 
tude, nay even with distress ; for the impression which it is inevi- 
tably destined to make on the unprepared reader is one that we 
could never wish to see." 

A ROMAN CATHOLIC VERDICT. 

The Catholic Neius of New York, a journal "recommended by 
the Catholic hierarchy and the clergy as a model family paper," 
takes the following view of the situation: "The school of which 
Professor Dclitzsch is a distinguished member is by no means pre- 
occupied about establishing the veracity of the Bible. The gene- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 137 

ral purport of this lecture is to indicate that the Bible has borrowed 
almost all its religious and moral elements from the pagan Assyrians 
and Babylonians, and that it is merely a human compilation. The 
success which has attended the propagation of this view is to be seen 
in the total disintegration of all Protestant behef. It is the climax 
of irony that the sects which broke away from the Catholic Church 
with the cry, 'A free Bible; the Bible is the sole rule of faith,' 
are to-day giving up all supernatural belief because they have lost 
faith in the inspiration of the Bible, consequent upon the attacks 
of the higher criticism. Meanwhile the Catholic Church stands un- 
disturbed on her old platform. The Catholic repeats the profession 
of St. Augustine: 'I would not accept the Bible except on the au- 
thority of the Church.' He is confident that in the long run, when 
all facts have been garnered and after hasty theories shall have 
been tried and found wanting, the light thrown by science on all 
the complications of the Biblical question will serve to corroborate 
the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church, whose more than 
human prudence is nowhere more conspicuous than in her few 
guarded but comprehensive declarations concerning the fact and 
the nature of inspiration. Students who may not have time to 
study larger volumes dealing with Assyriology will find this little 
book a handy one to consult for the interpretation given to many 
archaeological discoveries by the representatives of the higher criti- 
cism." 

ALFRED JEREMIAS ON DELITZSCH.i 

Alfred Jeremias, in an interesting pamphlet bearing the title 
Itn Kampfe um Babel und Bibel, thoroughly reviews the situation 
and calls attention from another point of view to this very topic. 
Confuting the expressions of fear that Assyriological science is 
shaking the foundations of the sanctuary of Holy Scriptures, he 
remarks that it is strange the situation has been so completely re- 
versed with years. In the first periods of Assyriological research, 
the inscriptions on the excavated monuments were stridently ad- 
duced as evidence in corroboration of the traditional views of the 
Bible. It was triumphantly proclaimed that now (Luke xix. 40) 
the very bricks of Babylon cried out in confirmation of the Holy 
Scriptures, and the world should hold its peace. Exact copies of 
the writings of Moses and the children of Israel during their so- 

1 Written by Thomas J. McCormack. Extracted from The Open Court, Vol. XVII., No. 3, pp. 
130-132. 



138 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

journ in the desert were supposedly recovered from Nabataean in- 
scriptions; the historical existence of Abraham was confirmed by a 
brick ; and the wall was actually discovered on which Belshazzar 
saw written the fateful words, Mcne mene tekel upharsin ! 

But in Herr Jeremias's opinion the use of Assyriology as a 
weapon of destructive criticism for the overthrow of the traditional 
Bible is just as wicked as the preceding specimens of its applica- 
tion are stupid. One very advanced critic, cited by Jeremias, goes 
so far even as to wish for the time when the bricks of Babylon shall 
compel a more truthful view of the Old Testament, shall shatter in 
shards the doctrine of inspiration, and pave the way for a deeper, 
more spiritual, and more "pious" conception. Verily, Babel Jias 
"laid her mailed fist on the Old Testament." 

But we need have no fear. Orthodoxy and piety may yet lie 
down in harmonious union with Assyriology ; and Herr Jeremias, 
who takes both the strictly religious and the strictly scientific view, 
well expresses the terms of the compromise as follows: "In so far 
as the Old Testament as a document of God's education of the hu- 
man race may lay claim to being a fides divina, it stands in no need 
of corroboration by any auxiliary science. Here Babel can never 
promote the comprehension of the Old Testament, nor put it to 
hazard in any way, be the philological and scientific imbroglio what 
it may. Any ten of the marked passages of Luther's Bible are suf- 
ficient to demonstrate^ how superior the spirit of the Old Testa- 
ment is to that of Babylon. But the Old Testament has also its 
human side, — a side so stupendously interesting that no literature 
of antiquity can be mentioned with it in the same breath. Much 
of this remained obscure so long as the historical and cultural 
framework in which the life of Israel was enacted was veiled. But 
now the world around about Canaan is flooded with light; we can 
contemplate the people of the Old Testament in their relationship 
with the political and cultural conditions out of which it evolved 
and which have exerted a determining influence upon its destinies. 
In this domain cuneiform research can perform important services 
for the comprehension of the Bible. But the imperishable jewel 
which Israel possesses will shine only more brilliantly under this 
illumination, and likewise \\iQ. fides Jiumana upon which this unique 
book of literature rests its claims will stand triumphantly the ordeal 
of fire to which it has been subjected." 

IThe most significant passages of the Bible are printed in Luther's translation in bold-faced 
type. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 139 

There has been little criticism of Delitzsch's book from the 
side of the Assyriologists proper. There are many points on which 
all Assyriological inquirers do not agree, but upon the whole it is 
the universal verdict of the Assyriologists that Delitzsch's lecture 
"gives, so far as the monuments are concerned, those facts that 
may be regarded as indubitably established results of cuneiform in- 
quiry." And the advantage in the bout will doubtless also remain 
with Delitzsch. For in purely technical and Assyriological matters 
it is with him, as opposed to most of his theological critics, a case 
of Krupp guns against "halberds and blunderbusses." 

HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE EMPEROR. 

BY DR. PAUL CARUS. 
Manager of The Open Court Publishing Co. 

Emperor William criticises Delitzsch for "abandoning the 
standpoint of the strict historian" and "straying into religious and 
historical conclusions and hypotheses which are quite nebulous and 
bold." He says that "Delitzsch the theologian has run away with 
Delitzsch the historian." 

The Emperor means to say that in his historical research work 
Delitzsch is carried away by his liberal theological views ; but the 
case is probably just the reverse. Professor Delitzsch, the son of 
an equally famous Hebrew scholar and a pious Christian, was from 
the start an orthodox theologian, and his theology was modified 
under the influence of his historical investigations. The Emperor, 
who still clings to the old conception, concedes that "the Old Tes- 
tament contains many sections which are of a purely human and his- 
torical nature," and goes even so far as to add that they "are tiot 
God's revealed word." He declares "that the legislative act on 
Sinai, for example, can only be symbolically regarded as inspired 
of God." Apparently the Emperor makes a difference between the 
Jewish and the Christian Scriptures, and in this sense he says : 
"Neither does it matter that much of the nimbus of the chosen 
people will thereby disappear." 

The Emperor's letter is an important document in the evolu- 
tion of religion. He is a pronounced upholder of militant and 
pious Protestantism, and his views may be regarded as typical for 
large classes of all Protestant denominations. 

The struggle over Babel and Bible opens to the Christian laity 
a period of discussion concerning the nature of the Old Testament 
which is bound to lead to an investigation of the New Testament. 



140 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The battle concerning the Old Testament is as good as ended. 
Whether or not Delitzsch is right in his sundry contentions as to 
the names "El" and "Yahveh," the identification of the Ruins of 
Mugheir with the home of Abraham, and his interpretation of Baby- 
lonian seal-cylinders, is quite indifferent. The essential point lies 
deeper and there is no need to conceal it. No one who has investi- 
gated the subject will any longer deny that the Old Testament is 
the product of an historical evolution. Of course, it is Jewish, not 
Babylonian ; nevertheless, the Babylonian civilisation forms the 
background, and many things which were formerly believed to 
have been dictated by the Holy Ghost are now seen to be the nat- 
ural outcome of historical conditions. But on that account the 
nimbus of the chosen people will no more disappear than the glory 
of Homer, and Phidias, and Pericles, and Socrates can be dimmed 
because we can trace their greatness to conditions and understand 
how they naturally grew and rose into being. 

The old narrow view cannot be abandoned at once, and many 
intermediate steps are being taken which attempt compromises. So 
we read for instance in the interesting pamphlet of Alfred Jeremias 
that we must grant the prevalence of a monotheism among the pa- 
gan nations long before the rise of Israel as a nation. Hammurabi, 
for instance, a contemporary of Abraham who lived more than half 
a millennium before Moses, introduces his code of laws with the 
invocation, "Thus speaketh ILU SIRU, i. e., God the Supreme." 
"But," adds Professor Jeremias, "there is this difference between 
the pagan monotheism which can be traced among all the nations, 
and Hebrew monotheism, that 'God himself filled the latter with 
his own revelation." In other words, when Plato speaks of God, 
we have to deal with a purely human speculation, but when David 
danced before the ark of the Lord we are expected to believe that 
then God was personally present. 

The truth is, we are familiar with the Hebrew view, for our 
own belief has developed out of it. We are not so familiar with 
pagan views. Therefore when Zarathustra speaks of Ahura Mazda, 
the Lord Omniscient, we admire his wisdom, but fail to find any 
connection with our own belief. The term sounds strange to our 
ears because it remains unassociated with our prayers and has no 
relation to the traditions that have become sacred to us. It ap- 
pears as the natural product of human thought, while the Hebrew 
names Jehovah, Zebaoth, Elohim, even when the context betrays 
a pagan or even polytheistic conception, are filled with a sanctity 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 141 

and a religious awe that is to us the evidence of a supernatural 
revelation. 

How true this is appears from the fact that the original and 
correct form Yahveh, which is not used in our churches, does not 
possess the same sacred ring to our ears as the corrupted form Je- 
hovah. The name Yahveh is written in our brains, not in our 
hearts. Yahveh is the name of a deity with which we have become 
acquainted through the study of Hebrew literature, and we would 
deem it all but a sacrilege, a kind of paganism, to pray to Yahveh 
or to sing hymns to him. The word Jehovah, an unmeaning and 
positively nonsensical combination of the consonants of the word 
"Jahveh," with the vowels of another, "Adonai," was invented in 
the days of Luther. It was unknown before the year 1519; but 
having slipped into our prayers, we still sing the triumphal strain, 
"Jehovah is King." 

When we become acquainted with the monotheism of Ham- 
murabi, we put him down as a philosopher, but the God of Moses 
is the same God to whom Christians bend the knee. That makes 
a difference. The associations with our own religious life, our 
forms of worship, our prayers, are important for obvious psycho- 
logical reasons. 

Through Delitzsch, the Emperor became familiar with the re- 
ligion of ancient Babylon, and he took a liking to the Assyrians. 
The Assyrian guards were so much like the Prussian grenadiers; 
their kings were generals enjoying the display of armies ; they be- 
lieved in the religion of the mailed fist and bestowed much atten- 
tion upon military attire, even as to the minute details of hair- 
dressing. While the Emperor's court barber patented the fashion 
of an upturned mustache under the name Es ist crreicht, which 
means "surpassing all," Delitzsch speaks of the official style of 
the Assyrian beard as Noch uicht erreicht, i. e., "still unsurpassed." 
Whether Delitzsch intended the joke or was serious in making this 
comparison we have no means to tell. Certainly the similarities 
were so many and so striking that the Emperor felt the thrill of 
kinship and showed himself willing to transfer the nimbus from 
the chosen people to the rulers of ancront Babylon. 

Truly, the Emperor is right when he says that '*God reveals 
himself continuously in the race of men." It is a good old doc- 
trine, and orthodox too, that "God spoke not to Moses alone," and 
St. John the Evangelist says that "that was the true light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 



142 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

But it is natural that Christians raised in the traditional dog- 
matism should shrink from the idea that the New Testament (as 
well as the Old) should be conceded to be the product of historical 
conditions. "Here," they argue, "Christ speaks himself," and (to 
use the Emperor's own words) "Christ is God, God in human form 
. . . .We have in Him God's revealed word, and He never lies." 

Certainly, God never lies. But do we have in the New Testa- 
tnent Christ's own words? We have reports about Jesus, and these 
reports are as human as are the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
Christianity would be in a sad plight if the New Testament had in- 
deed to be regarded as inspired verbatim by God. We cannot en- 
ter here into details but would suggest only that the mere contra- 
victions in the Gospels alone force us to look upon them as human 
compositions. 

The difficulties of regarding the Bible as literally the word of 
God are almost greater in the New Testament than in the Old. 
Any one who has studied the Scriptures knows that the problem is 
grave and cannot be easily disposed of. 

The great question back of all these discussions is simply this • 
"Shall we, or shall we not, grant Science the right io modify Re- 
ligion?" And the question need not be answered. Men of science 
know that whether or not we grant science the right to modify reli- 
gion, science is shedding her light upon religious problems, and 
she is constantly and continuously modifying religion. Science 
(represented in physics, astronomy, physiology, psychology, his- 
tory, text-criticism, etc., etc.) has enlarged our view of the world 
and deepened our conception of God. The scientific spirit of the 
age has begotten a new theology, a truly scientific treatment of the 
problems of God, inspiration, and revelation, which we call theon- 
omy, for it ranges as high above the antiquated theology as astron- 
omy is superior to astrology.^ 

After all, Christians are not pledged to dogmas, but to the 
truth. Orthodoxy means the right doctrine, and the right doctrine 
is that which can stand the test of critique. Orthodoxy so called 
is a misnomer and ought to be called dogmatism. The truth can 
be found only by searching, and the methods of an exact search 
are called science. 

Science is not human ; science is divine, and the development 

ICf. the writer's articles "Theology as a Science " in The Monist, \'o\. XII., No. 4, and Vol 
XIII., No. I. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 143 

of science is the coming of the spirit of God, — of the true God, of 
the God of Truth, who is "the light that lighteth every man." 

The dogmas of Christianity are formulations of the Truth as 
interpreted by our forefathers. Let no Athanasius with his limited 
knowledge bind the conscience of a Delitzsch. Had Delitzsch lived 
in the days of the Alexandrian church-father, he would most likely 
have acquiesced in the Nicene formulation of the Christian creed ; 
but new issues have arisen and some of the traditional beliefs have 
become untenable. Dogmas may be venerable on account of their 
antiquity, but they cannot stand against Truth. Truth alone is 
holy, and the Truth of Science will finally win the day. 

The struggle for Babel and Bible is important not on its own 
account but because it forces upon us in a new form the issue of 
Science versus Faith, and compels us to revise our conception of the 
nature of divine revelation. It is a mere skirmish which will soon 
be followed by the more important struggle over the Gospels. The 
issues at stake are graver there, and thus we anticipate that the 
latter will be a more bitter and obdurate battle. The main histor- 
ical questions of Christianity lie in the New Testament, and though 
Assyriology contributes its goodly share toward the solution of the 
religious problem, it is after all a side issue only, which must be 
complemented by work along other lines of research. 

Delitzsch sums up his position in these words : " Do not let 
us blindly cling to dogmas which science has shown to be super- 
annuated, merely for fear of abandoning them. Faith in God and 
the true religion may thereby be injured." 

Whatever the final result of the present discussion shall be, 
we may rest assured that the modification of our religious faith will 
not be for the worse. Christianity has again and again adapted it- 
self to a more scientific conception of the world. How strong was 
the opposition of the so-called orthodox to the Copernican system, 
how fierce were their attacks on the doctrine of evolution ! But 
that is now a matter of the past, and religion has certainly been 
broadened as well as deepened by a broader and deeper insight 
into the constitution of nature. 

The task of the theology of to-day is a reconstruction of our 
conception of Christianity upon a strictly scientific basis. In the 
background of the several historical questions there is looming up 
the struggle for a scientific world-conception, and rightly considered, 
the philosophical problem is the main issue which over-shadows all 
others. 



144 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

It is not difficult to foresee the final result of the whole move- 
ment. It will not lead to a destruction of religion, but to its puri- 
fication and reconstruction upon a more solid foundation. There- 
fore let us have faith in the Truth. 

Says Esdras : "As for the truth, it endureth, and is always 
strong; it liveth and conquereth for evermore. 

"With her there is no accepting of persons or rewards ; but 
she doeth the things that are just, and refraineth from all unjust 
and wicked things ; and all men do well like of her works. 

"Neither in her judgment is any unrighteousness ; and she is 
the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all ages. Blessed 
be the God of Truth." (i Esdras iv. 38-40.) 



REPLY TO CRITICS OF THE FIRST LECTURE. 

THE ETHICAL ASPECT. 

In his Dcr Kampf urn Babel tind Bihel, p. 20 ff., Professor 
Samuel Oettli says: "The materials transmitted to us in the Old 
Testament have been plunged into an atmosphere of ethical inono- 
theisi7i and purified by this bath from all ethically or religiously 
confused and confusing elements. We no longer find the deluge 
here as the product of the blind wrath of a god, but as the ethically 
warranted punishment sent by a just god upon a degenerate race." 

This is an error. Even the report of Berosus shows us that to 
^.he Babylonians also the world-flood was a sin-flood.^ Consider 
his words: "The others cried aloud when a voice commanded 
them to fear God, as Xisuthros had been translated to the gods 
because lie had been godfearing." While we may assure ourselves 
from this alone that the Babylonian Noah escaped from the judg- 
ment of the deluge because of his piety and the remainder of man- 
kind were destroyed because of their ever-increasing sinfulness, 
the inference is confirmed by the words in the cuneiform inscrip- 
tion, spoken by Ea after the deluge to Bel who had caused it : 
"Lay up his sin against the sinner," etc. 

Professor Edward Konig, in his essay Bihel und Babel, p. 32, 
says: "The spirit of the two traditions (Babylonian and Hebrew) 
is totally different. This is shown by a single feature : The Baby- 
lonian hero rescues his inanimate as well as his living property, 
while in both the Bible accounts we have the higher point of view 
represented by the rescue of the living creatures only." What 
blind zeal ! Even in the fragment of Berosus we read that Xisu- 
thros was commanded to "take in winged and fourfooted animals," 
and the original cuneiform account says expressly: "I brought up 
into the ship the cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the field.' 

lAn untranslatable German pun and popular etymology (Sintflut= "universal flood ": Siind- 
flut = " sin-flood "). 



146 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Accordingly, the "higher point of view" must be conceded to the 
Babylonian account by Konig himself. 

THE PRIMORDIAL CHAOS. 
With reference to mythological features in the Biblical account 
of the creation something further may be said. Oettli remarks with 
much truth, p. 12, on the presumption of the existence of a chaos : 
"The notion of a primitive matter which was not derived from 
God's creative activity but which had rather to be overcome by it, 
cannot have grown up on soil of the Religion of Israel, which is 
strictly monotheistic in its thought, at least on the prophetic 
heights, and consequently excludes the dualistic conflict of two 
hostile primitive principles." I call attention here to the remark 
of Wellhausen also: "If we take Chaos for granted, everything 
else is developed out of this ; everything else is reflection, syste- 
matic construction, which we can figure out with little difificulty." 

TRACES OF POLYTHEISM. 

In the Elohistic account of the creation also there are traces 
of polytheistic elements. When we read (Genesis i. 26): "Let us 
make men in our^ own image, after our semblance," Oettli says 
with justice : "Moreover, that plural of self-appeal preceding the 
creation of man is not so easily to be reconciled with the later strict 
monotheism, nor the 'image of God' in which man is created, 
with the spirituality of Yahveh which is afterwards so strongly em- 
phasised, when once, rejecting all exegetic arts, we give to words 
their simple and obvious meaning. And this, notwithstanding the 
fact that the Biblical author, in accordance with his religious posi- 
tion, has given a higher value to these originally foreign elements." 

In fact. Genesis i. 26 and Isaiah xlvi. 5 are in irreconcilable 
opposition. The polytheistic coloring of Genesis i. 27 with its im- 
plied distinction of gods and goddesses would appear peculiarly 
drastic if the three members of the sentence are thought of as quite 
closely connected : "And God created man in his own image, in 
the image of God created He him, male and female created He 
them." But we cannot regard this as sure. 

BABYLONIAN MONOTHEISM. 
It may be recalled that I said in my first lecture: "Despite 
the fact that free and enlightened minds publicly taught that Nergal 

IThe assumption that we have here a case of pluralis ntajestaticus is not, indeed, precluded 
by general Hebrew usage, but it is far-fetched ; compare lii 2, the saying of Yahveh : " Lo, man 
has become as one of us." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 147 

and Nebo, moon-god and sun-god, the thunder-god Ramman and 
all the other gods were one in Marduk, the god of light, polytheism 
remained for three thousand years the state religion of Babylon." 

Jensen has felt warranted in accompanying this remark with 
the following observations, which have been carried further by 
Konig and others with much gratification, as was to be expected : 
"This would indeed be one of the most significant discoveries ever 
made in the realm of the history of religion, and therefore we must 
regret exceedingly that Delitzsch does not cite his source. I be- 
lieve that I may declare with all positiveness that nothing of the 
sort can be derived from the texts that are accessible to me. There- 
fore we beg urgently that he publish soon the text of the passage 
which deprives Israel of the greatest glory that has hitherto illu- 
mined that race, — that of being the only one that worked its way 
out into pure monotheism." 

Very good, if indeed Jensen stands by his expression, Israel is 
now actually deprived of this its greatest glory, and this by the 
Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablet 8 1, 11-3, in, known since 1895 
and published in \\\& Jotirnal of the Transactions of the Victoria Insti- 
tute by Theo. G. Pinches, — a tablet which is indeed preserved only 
as a fragment, but the remaining portion of which shows us that 
upon it all the divinities of the Babylonian pantheon (or at least 
the chief ones) are indicated as being one with and one in the god 
Marduk. I quote only a few lines •} 

"The god Marduk is written and called Ninib as the possessor 
of power, Nergal or perhaps Zamama as lord of combat or of battle, 
Bel as possessor of dominion, Nebo as lord of business (?), Sin as 
illuminator of the night, Samas as lord of all that is right, as lord 
of rain." 

Accordingly, Marduk is Ninib as well as Nergal, moon-god as 
well as sun-god, etc., in other words, the names Ninib and Nergal, 
Sin and Samas are only various designations of the one god Mar- 
duk; they are all one with him and in him. Is this not "indoger- 
manic monotheism, the doctrine of the unity which develops only 
out of variety"? 



ilNin-ib 


Marduk sa alii 


ii Nergal 


Marduk sa kablu 


ilZa-m.'i-ma 


Marduk sa tahazi 


ilBS'I 


Marduk sa bg'lutu u miduktu 


ilNabu 


Marduk sa nikasi 


iiSin 


Marduk munammir musi 


il Samas 


Marduk sa kOnSti 


ilAddu 


Marduk sa zunnu 



148 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



THE NAME "EL." 

O71 il, ^?>* God. — All Semitic prepositions were originally sub- 
stantives. For the preposition "7N!, which is originall}^ //, "toward, 
to, at," the fundamental significance which from the start seems 
most probable, "aim, direction," is still preserved in Hebrew^ al- 
though this was until recently overlooked. It is found in the 
phrase, "This or that is ^7t "^^?>" that is, "at the disposal of thy 
hand," "it is in thy control." 

The opinion that "'N* in this phrase means "power" may have 
the support of tradition, like thousands of other errors in the He- 
brew lexicography, but it has never been demonstrated, and there- 
fore it is not true, as Konig declares (p. 38), that "^/ is surely equiv- 
alent to 'power' or 'strength.'" The only meanmg that can be 
demonstrated is "aim, direction," which carries with it as a matter 
of course the concrete significance "that toward which one directs 
himself, end, goal." 

The Sumerians conceived of their gods as dwelling up above 
where the eye of man is directed, in and over the sky ; we ourselves 
use "heaven" figuratively for "God" (comp. Daniel iv. 23); and 
furthermore, a Babylonian psalm calls the sun-god digil irsiiiyn 
rapostitn, the "goal of the wide world," that is, the end toward 
which the eyes of all the earth-dwellers are directed, and, finally, 
the poet of the Book of Job (xxxvi. 25), in harmony with an abun- 
dance of other passages in Semitic literatures, glorifies God as the 
one "on whom all eyes hang, toward whom man looks from afar." 
And just so the earliest Semites called the "divine" being whom 
they conceived of as dwelling in the heavens above and ruling 
heaven and earth //, el, "that toward which the eye is directed,' 
(cp. the analogous application of ?2? to God and things divine in 
Hosea xi. 7). In my opinion the first and original meaning of the 
word is "goal of the eye," as is the case with the sun and the sky. 

Inasmuch as il is thus demonstrated to have the meaning 
"aim, goal," and as the designation of the deity by this word is 
perfectly in accord with the Semitic habit of thought, and it is 
therefore not permissible to assume another primitive noun //, my 
interpretation of el, the name of God, is established in every point. 

It is just as useless and impermissible to seek after a verb cor- 
responding to such a primitive noun as // (see Konig, p. 38), as to 
seek after a verbal stem to match others of these most ancient bi- 
consonantal nouns, such as y'/w, " day," or mi/l, "man." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 149 

Besides, the etymology of the word //, el is not the most im- 
portant consideration. The chief thing is rather the fact that those 
North-Semitic tribes which we find estabhshed about 2500 B. C. 
both north and south of Babylon, and whose greatest monarch in 
later times (about 2250) was King Hammurabi, conceived of and 
worshipped God as a unitary, spiritual being. Let it be observed 
that this applies to the North-Semitic tribes which had in part im- 
migrated to Babylonia and afterwards established themselves 
there, not to Sumerian-Semitic Babylonians. 

A number of journals have represented it as my opinion that 
"even the Jewish conception of God was derived from the Baby- 
lonian cosmology"; and Oettli (p. 4) says that in my view even 
"the name and the worship of Yahveh himself, united with a more 
or less definitely developed monotheism, was a primitive posses- 
sion of Babylon." But these are misrepresentations. 

As to those names of persons which occur so freqiiently in the 
time of the first Babylonian dynasty, Konig is utterly mistaken in 
declaring (p. 40, 42) that among notorious polytheists the names 
must needs be translated and interpreted as "<? god hath given"; 
and so is Oettli (p. 23) when he asks: "Who can prove that those 
names are not to be taken polytheistically, ^a god hath given,' ^ a 
god be with me' "? To say nothing of other reasons, this interpre- 
tation breaks down in the case of such names as Ilu-amranni, "God 
consider me!" Ilu-turani, "God, turn thee hither again!" and 
others. Or, on the other hand, are we to cease to render Bab-ihi 
"Gate of God," and say "Gate of a god"? No! For the time of 
Hammurabi we hold fast to those beautiful names which signify so 
much for the history of religion : Ilu-ittia, "God be with me," Ilu- 
amtahar, "I called upon God," Ilu-abi, Ilu-tni/ki, "God is my fa- 
ther," or "my counsel," larbi-ilu, "Great is God," lamlik-ilu, 
"God sits in power," Ibsi-itia-ili, "Through God came he into be- 
ing," Avel-ilu, "Servant of God," Mut{uni)-ilu, "Man of God" 
(=r=Methuscha'el), //z^w^-/(fV, "God is xm^X.y,''^ Iluma-abi, "God 
is my father," IWuna-ilu, "God is God," Summa-ilu-Id-ilia, "If God 
were not my God," and so on. 

The names must of course be judged collectively. In the case 
of certain of them (as in certain Assyrian names, like Na'id-ilu) we 
might certainly see in "God" merely an appellative, as perhaps in 
the phrase from the laws of Hammurabi : mahar-ili, to assert any- 
thing "before God"; or in the phrase that occurs hundreds of 
times in the Babylonian contracts of that period, "to swear by God 



150 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

(^ilu) and the king" (cp. i Samuel xii. 3, 5: "by Yahveh and the 
king"), but taking them all together it seems to me that they make 
it impossible to think that ilu means a "city or family god," or the 
"special tutelary deity." 

Precisely in "the endeavor of a people without philosophical 
development to be as concrete and specific as possible in its notions 
and expressions," we should inevitably expect to find in each case 
the name of the particular divinity intended, or on the other hand 
if the tutelary divinity of the family or of the infant was meant we 
should expect to find "my God," or "his God." An unprejudiced 
and unsophisticated consideration of all these and other names of 
the Hammurabi period leads rather to the renewed assumption that 
they are rooted in a religious conception different from the poly- 
theistic views that were native in Babylon. What was the nature 
and value of that monotheism the contemporary sources do not 
enable us to determine, but only to infer them from the later de- 
velopment of "Yahvism." 

THE NAME "YAHVEH." 

We must insist with all positiveness that in the two names 
Ya-a'-ve-ilu and Ya ve-ilu the reading Ya've is the onl}^ one that 
can be regarded as within the realm of possibility. 

The assault upon my reading — which in the light of our pres- 
ent knowledge is irrefutable — has revealed a lamentable state of 
ignorance in the critics : this ignorance may account for the mis- 
cellaneous insinuations which have been indulged in, as when Pro- 
fessor Kittel ventures to speak of my reading as a "partisan ma- 
neuver." 

In order to at least correct this ignorance, I beg to make the 
following brief and condensed exposition of the matter for the ben- 
efit of my theological critics and of certain of the Assyriologists 
who have volunteered to advise them. The sign vu has the follow- 
ing syllabic values : /// tal; tii; tarn, and besides in Babylonian in 
particular: """/z/^'' fn^ l^d.; a; {ini), or as would be perhaps bet- 
ter; ve; Vil; a; {yii). But any one who has become measurably 
familiar with the style of writing of the Hammurabi period knows 
that, even if the reading Ya-'u-md, be granted, this md cannot pos- 
sibly be interpreted as the emphasising particle tna. Accordingly 
Konig (p. 48 f. ) and Kittel and others are mistaken; on the con- 
trary, ma is without exception written with its customary sign. 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 151 

Thus the interpretation of the names in question as "Ya, Ya'u is 
God" is absolutely precluded. Let him who denies this cite one 
single instance in which the emphatic particle ma is written with 
the character vie. And in the case of Ya-ii-u/n ilu, I may remark 
incidentally, the in may be only mimation and not an abbreviated 
fna. 

Neither is the reading proposed by Bezold, Ya-\x-bi-iiu, pos- 
sible, for in the time of Hammurabi the sign hi does perhaps rep- 
resent also the S3dlable //, but the reverse, sign tni for bi, is never 
the case. And on mature reflection the reading Ya\ay-pi-ilu can- 
not be considered. It is true that the sign inc is found for //in the 
time of Hammurabi, as frequently in the contracts published by 
Meissner in his Beitrdgc zuin altbahylonischen Privatreclit, and also 
in the Code of Hammurabi, but the regular sign for// occurs much 
more frequentl}^ For instance, in the 79 letters from this very 
period, published by King,// is represented exclusively by its regu- 
lar sign. 

Besides this, a "canaanitish" verb form /a'//, iapi could be 
derived only from a stem ncn, which does not exist. Instead of 
Ya(^^ve ilu we might then at most read Ya-^' a /w-)vd /ji-i/u, with 
radical v, but by this very emendation we should expose ourselves 
to the dreaded recognition of a god TuTC Accordingly my reading 
Ya-a'-ve-ilu, Yave-ilu remains the most obvious as well as the only 
one deserving serious consideration. 

I venture on the interpretation of the name Ya(^^vc-ilu with 
less confidence than on the reading of it. The interpretation pro- 
posed by Konig (p. 50), "May God protect" (why not, "May<z 
god protect"?), from Arabic hama, "to protect," as well as that 
of Barth (p. ig), "God gives life" {Ya-ah-vc-ihi), is highly improb- 
able. As names from a foreign language they would needs appear 
as Yahve-ilu, not Ya've-ilu or even Yavc-ilu, and only in the last ex- 
tremity would one be justified in the assumption that these foreign 
personal names had gradually been Bab5donised in pronunciation, 
at the same time becoming wholly unintelligible. No, if we are to 
concede that there is a verb-form contained in yd've, ydve, then it is 
certainly the most obvious thing to think of the verb t^^tx, the older 
form of n*n which is assumed in Exodus iii. 14, and to interpret it 
with Zimmern as "God exists." My interpretation, "Ja've is 
God," would accordingly remain by far the most probable in and 
of itself. 



152 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



THE NAME "YAHUM-ILU." 

The name Ya u-um-ilu is and remains a foreign name. It 
belongs among the North-Semitic tribes, more precisely Canaan- 
itic. Among these tribes there is no other god Ya-i't but the god 
in^, Yahii, that god who is contained in the name Ya-u-ha-zi and 
others. 

Now this name of the divinity Yahu which is found at the be- 
ginning and especially at the end of Hebrew names of persons, is 
the shorter form of Yahve, "the Existing," and consequently pre- 
supposes the fuller form Yahve. Now even to the Jews of the exilic 
and post-exilic periods the name Yahveh was by no means a nomen 
ineffabile, as is shown by the many names of this later time : Ya-se'- 
va-a-va^= Isaiah (^n^JJii'?'), Pi-li-ya-a-va, and others. So much the less 
could it have been such to that primitive period in which the name 
of God, Yahveh, was very far from possessing the sanctity which it 
was to attain later in Israel. 

The name Yahum-ilu, therefore, presupposes a fuller equiva- 
lent name Ya've-ilu. Now when such a name is really twice docu- 
mented, in Ya'-ve-ilu, Ya-ve ilu, should It not be recognised as such 
without reserve, and the more so as the refusal to recognise it will 
after all not obliterate the fact of the existence of the North-Semitic 
("Canaanitic") name of the divinity Yahti, which is perfectly iden- 
tical with Yahveh, nor the existence of a name Yahu-ilu, "Yahu is 
God," similar to the Hebrew ^^<"'' (Joel), a thousand years before 
the prophet Elijah's utterance upon Carmel, "Yahveh is God'' 
(i Kings xviii. 39)? 

It needs no demonstration to convince competent judges that 
Earth's interpretation (p. 19) of Ya-hu-um-ilu as abbreviated from 
Ya-ah-we-ilu must be rejected. 

Jensen too regards it as "certainly in the highest degree prob- 
able that both composita contain the name of God Yavch-Yahu," 
adding very correctly : " Now since the Ya'wa in the name cannot 
be of Assyrio-Babylonian origin, it is surely of foreign origin, and 
hence, in all probability, the whole name is ' Canaanitic,' and its 
wearers, or wearer, also 'Canaanites.' " But when he goes on to 
say: "But because a Miiller or a Schultze is met with in Paris, we 
are not warranted in assuming that the Germans are the prevalent 
race in Paris; and just as little does an Ya'wa-iK^ii), appearing in 
Babylon 2000 years ago, need to prove anything more than that 
the bearers of this name occasionally came to Babylon," — when he 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 153 

reasons thus I confidently leave it to the unprejudiced reader to 
decide whether, in view of all the names like Yarbi-ilu, Yavilik-ilu, 
and so on (not to mention Ha7tiniurabi, Attitni-zadtlga, and other 
Canaanitish names), the delicate parallel of Miiller and Schulze is 
even remotely justified. Furthermore, even Jensen is compelled, 
as we see, to admit that the evidence is good for the existence of 
the divine name Yahvc ( Yahvu') before 2000 B. C. Moreover, Zim- 
mern makes this concession: "Even supposing that we have in 
ya-ii-tifu the name of a divinity, which is not i?nprobabIe, and even 
the name Yahu, Yahvc, 7uhich is possible. '' That is enough for the 
present; the admission of the reading Kz-(a')z'<? and of my inter- 
pretation will probably follow. 

And accordingly, if Ya-h-um holds its own as equivalent to 
1.T, i.T, then the names of that same period: Ilu-idinnam, "God 
hath given," Sd-iii, "Belonging to God," Ilu-amtahar, "I called 
upon God," Ilu-iiiraffi, "God, turn to me," etc., may with double 
right be regarded as equivalent in their content to the correspond- 
ing Hebrew names. 

PROCESSIONS OF THE GODS. 

Jensen would not countenance my proposition that processions 
of Gods are mentioned in Isaiah. We read (xlv. 20): "They 
have no knowledge that carry their graven image of wood, and pray 
unto a God that cannot help," and again (xlvi. i): "Bel has sunk 
down, Nebo is bowed down, their idols are fallen to the lot of the 
beasts and to the cattle, the things (i. e., fabrications) that ye car- 
ried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beasts." There 
can be but few commentators here who do not think in connection 
with these passages of the Babylonian processions of the gods, in 
which Bel and Nebo were carried in ceremonious progress through 
the streets of Babel. 

AARON'S BLESSING.' 

What I have said as to the significance of the phrase in the 
Aaronite blessing, "Yahveh lift up his countenance to thee," i. e. , 
"turn his favor, his love, towards thee," holds good in spite of my 
critics. When spoken of men, "to lift the countenance to any one 
or to anything" means nothing more than "to look up at" (so it is 
used in 2 Ki. ix. 32). It is used in Job xxii. 26 (cf. xi. 15), as well 
as in 2 Sam. ii. 22, with reference to a man who, free from guilt 

1 Num. vi. 24 ff. 



154 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

and fault, can look up God and to his fellow-men. This meaning, 
of course, is not appropriate if the words are spoken of God. Then 
it must mean precisely the same thing as the Assyrian, "to raise 
the eyes to anyone," that is to say, to find pleasure in one, to direct 
one's love towards him ; therefore not quite the same as to take 
heed of one (as in Siegiried-Stade's /fi-/>ra/si/ifs Wortcrbucli, p. 441). 
If it were so, "the Lord lift up his countenance to thee" would be 
equivalent to "the Lord keep thee." When Jensen (^op. cit., col. 
491) insists that the Assyrian expression is literally, not to lift up 
"the face," but to lift up "the eyes," he might with equal justice 
deny that Assyrian bit Amman means the same thing as the He- 
brew b^nc Atnmon. In fact, whereas the prevailing Hebrew usage 
is "if it be right in thine eyes," the Assyrian says in every case, 
"if it be right in thy countenance" {ina pdnika; cf. siimma \ind\ 
t>dn sarri mahir); "eyes" and "countenance" interchange in such 
phrases as this. 

In Hebrew we find "to lift up the e3'es to one" used as equiv- 
alent to "to conceive an affection for one," only with reference to 
human, sensual love (Gen. xxxix. 7). The value of the Assyrian 
phrase, "to lift up the eyes to any one," in its bearing on the 
Aaronite blessing, rests in the fact that it is used with preference 
(though not exclusively, as Jensen thinks) of the gods who direct 
their love towards a favored person or some sacred spot. In reply 
to Jensen who claims (p. 490) that the choice of my example of 
the usefulness of Assyrian linguistic analogies is "a failure," I 
comfort myself with the thought that the recognition of our in- 
debtedness as to a deepening of the meaning of the Aaronite bless- 
ing to cuneiform literature, was many years ago publicly endorsed 
by no lesser one than Franz Delitzsch. 

J. Barth attacks on trivial grounds my statement that Canaan 
at the time of the Israelite Incursion, was a "domain completely 
pervaded by Babylonian culture." This fact, however, obtains 
ever wider recognition. Alfred Jeremias in the '■'■ZeitgeisV of the 
Berliticr Tageblatt, February 16, 1903, says: "Further, at the time 
of the immigration of the 'children of Israel,' Canaan was sub- 
ject to the especial influence of Babylonian civilisation. About 
1450 the Canaanites, like all the peoples of the Nearer Fast, wrote 
in the Babylonian cuneiform character, and in the Babylonian lan- 
guage. This fact, proved by the literature of the time, forces us 
to assume that the influence of Babylonian thought had been ex- 
erted for centuries previously. Of late Canaan itself seems to wish 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 155 

to bear witness. The excavation of an ancient Canaanite castle by 
Professor Sellin has brought to light an altar with Babylonian 
genii and trees of life, and Babylonian seals." 

It may be briefly recalled here that the religion of the Cana- 
anites with their god Tammuz, and their Asherahs, bears unmistak- 
able marks of Babylonian influence, and that before the immigration 
of the children of Israel a place in the neighborhood of Jerusalem 
was called Bit-Ninib (house of Ninib), after the Babylonian god 
Ninib. There may have been actually in Jerusalem itself a bit 
Ninib, a temple of the god Ninib. See Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, 
v.. No. 183, 15, and cf. Zimmern, in the third edition of Schra- 
der's Die Keilinschriftcn und das Alte Testament, second half, p. 411. 
Cf. also Lecture II., p. 184. 

THE SABBATH. 

The vocabulary (II. R. 32, No. i) mentions, among divers 
kinds of days, a titn mih libbi (1. 16, a, b), a day for the quieting of 
the heart (viz., of the gods), with its synonym sa-pat-tum, which 
word, in view of the frequent use of the sign pat for bat (e. g., sti- 
t>at, var. bat, "dwelling"; Tig. vi. 94), might be interpreted to 
mean sabattum, and on the authority of the syllabary (82, g-i8, 
4159, col. I, 24) where UD (Sumer. t'l) is rendered by sa-bat-tmn, 
it must be so. 

The statement in the syllabary not only confirms the view that 
the word sabattum means a day, but it may also explain the sabat- 
tum to be the day par excellence, perhaps because it is the day of 
the gods. 

Jensen in Z. A. iv., 1889, pp. 274 et seq. says that sabattu 
means "appeasement (of the gods), expiation, penitential prayer," 
and the verb sabdtu "to conciliate" or "to be conciliated" (Jensen 
in Christliche Welt, col. 492). But, neither from 83, 1-8, 1330, col. 
I, 25, where ZUR is rendered sa-bat-tim (following immediately 
n^orv nuhhii), nor from IV. 8, where TE is rendered by sa-bat-tim 
[why not, as elsewhere, in the nominative?], ma)' Jensen's propo- 
sition be inferred with any degree of certainty. The verb sabdtu 
is hitherto only attested as a synonym of gamdru (V. R. 28, 14, <?,/). 
Therefore, the only meaning that may be justifiably assumed for 
sabattu at present is "cessation (of work), keeping holiday." It 
seems to me that the compiler of the syllabary 83, 1-8, 1330, de- 
rived his statement ZUR and TE^:=sabbatim from the equations 
UD. ZUR and UD, TE^=^uni nuhhi ox pussuhi^^^um sabattitn. 



156 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Accordingly, the Babylonian sabattu is the day of the quieting 
of the heart of the gods and the rest day for human work (the latter 
is naturally the condition of the former). 

If in the well-known calendar of festivals (IV. R. 32/33) the 
seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of a month 
are expressly characterised as days whereon every kind of labor 
should rest, should we not see in these days no other than the sa- 
/>attu-ddiy} 

The mooted words in the calendar of festivals run, according 
to our present knowledge, thus: "The shepherd of the great na- 
tions shall not eat roasted or smoked (?) meat (variant : anything 
touched by fire), not change his garment, not put on white raiment, 
not offer sacrifice." [It is doubtful whether these prohibitions are 
of universal application, binding also the flocks of the shepherd. 
Then the particular prohibitions follow] ; "the King shall not 
mount his chariot, as ruler not pronounce judgment; the Magus 
shall not give oracles in a secret place [i. e., removed from pro- 
fane approach], the physician shall not lay his hand on the sick, 
[the day being] unauspiscious for any affair whatever" (.? ana kal 
sihlti; sibutu here, it seems used like 13V, in Dan. vi. 18 ; "afffair, 
cause"). 

Accordingly we must acquiesce in the fact that the Hebrew 
Sabbath, ultimately is rooted in a Babylonian institution. More 
than this was not claimed. 

We need not quarrel with Konig who emphasises that the 
Israelite Sabbath received its specific consecration on account of 
its "humanitarian tendency towards servants, and animals." 

The setting apart of the seventh day as the day in which we 
are to refrain from labors of any kind finds its explanation, as I 
showed years ago, in the fact that the number seven was in this as 
in other instances to the Babylonians an 'evil' number, and this 
is the reason why the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty- 
eighth days in the above-mentioned calendar are called UD. HUL. 
GAL., i. e., evil days. 

Alfred Jeremias (1. c, p. 25) aptly recalls the Talmudic story, 
according to which Moses arranged with Pharaoh a day of rest for 
his people, and when asked which he thought the most appropriate 
for the purpose, answered : "The seventh, dedicated to the Planet 
Saturn, labors done on this day will anyhow not prosper, in any 
case." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 157 



THE FALL. 

Any one who reads without bias my comments on the cylinder 
seal (Fig. 47) representing a Babylonian conception of the Fall, 
will grant that in comparing it to the Biblical story of the Fall, 
that I merely proposed to emphasise the circumstance that the 
serpent as the corrupter of the woman was a significant feature in 
either version. The dress of the two Babylonian figures, naturally 
prevented me also from regarding the tree as the tree "of knowl- 
edge of good and evil." 

It seems to me that possibly there may loom back of the Bib- 
lical story in Gen. chapters ii.-iii. another older form which knew of 
one tree only in the middle of the garden, the Tree of Life. The 
words in ii. 9, "and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," 
seem to be superadded, and the narrator, quite engrossed with the 
newly introduced tree of knowledge, and forgetful of the tree of 
life inadvertently makes God allow man to eat of the tree of life 
which is in contradiction with iii. 22. 

As to the tree, but that alone, I agree with the late C. P. Tiele 
who sees in the mooted Babylonian picture, "a god with his male 
or female worshippers partaking of the fruit of the tree of life," "a. 
symbol of the hope of immortality," and also with Hommel, who 
says (p. 23): "It is most important that the original tree was ob- 
viously conceived to be a conifer, a pine or cedar with its life and 
procreation promoting fruits. There is, accordingly, an unmistak- 
able allusion to the holy cedar of Eridu, the typical tree of Para- 
dise in the Chaldaean and Babylonian legends." 

Jensen (col. 488) argues as follows: "If the picture has any 
reference to the story of the Fall, it is likely to represent a scene 
in which a god forbids the first-created woman to partake of the 
fruit of the tree of life." 

That one of the figures is distinguished by horns, the usual 
symbol of strength and victory (see Amos vi. 13) in Babylonia as 
well as in Israel, is in my opinion a very ingenious touch on the 
part of the artist, in order to give an unmistakable indication as to 
the sexes of the two clothed human figures. Those who see in the 
serpent behind the woman a "meandering line " or "an ornamental 
division," may do so if they please, but they will find few that will 
concur. 

I do not stand alone with my opinion. Hommel, for instance, 
says (p. 23); "The woman and the writhing serpent behind her 



158 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

express themselves clearly enough"; and Jensen (col. 488): "a 
serpent stands or crawls behind the woman." 

As to the nature of this serpent, nothing definite can be said 
so long as we depend upon this pictorial representation alone. We 
might regard it as one of the forms of Tiamat, who, like Leviathan 
in Job iii. 8, and the old serpent in the Apocalypse, would be as- 
sumed to be still in existence. But this is very uncertain. 

Yiz.u.-pi's Akkadische und sumerische Keilschrifttexic, p. iig, con- 
tain a bilingual text (D. T. 67) which may deserve a passing notice 
in this connection: It mentions a fallen hand-maid, the "mother 
of sin," who being severely punished, bursts into bitter tears — "in- 
tercourse I learned, kissing I learned" — and we find her later on 
lying in the dust stricken by the fatal glance of the deity. 

LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

In the code of Hammurabi (xxvii. 34etseq. ), the sinner is 
cursed in the words: "May God utterly exterminate him from 
among the living upon earth, and debar his departed soul from the 
fresh water in Hades." 

The last passage confirms the great antiquity of the Babylonian 
conception concerning the life of the pious after death. 

The Book of Job which shows a close acquaintance with Baby- 
lonian views, describes the contrast in the underworld between a 
hot, waterless desert destined for the wicked, and a garden with 
fresh Clearwater for the pious. The passage is rendered in a phil- 
ologically unobjectionable translation in my book Das Buck Job, 
Leipzig, 1902: "Cursed be their portion on earth. Not does lie 
turn to vineyards. Desolation and also heat will despoil them. 
Their prayer for snow-water will not be granted. Mercy forgets 
him, vermin devours him ; no longer is he remembered." 

Thus in its right interpretation this passage forms a welcome 
bridge to the New Testament conception of a hot, waterless, and 
torture-inflicting Hell, and the garden which to the Oriental mind 
cannot be conceived of as lacking water, abundant, running, living 
water. 

The concluding verse of the prophetic book of Isaiah (ch. Ixvi. 
24): "and they shall go forth and look with joy upon the dead 
bodies of those that have revolted from me : how their worm dieth 
not, neither is their fire quenched : and they are an abomination to 
all flesh," means that those whose bodies are buried in the earth 
will forever be gnawed by worms, and those whose bodies are 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 159 

burnt with fire shall forever suffer the death of fire. In two respects 
the passage is important : first, it shows that cremation is thought 
of as standing entirely on the same level with burial, and that, ac- 
cordingly, not the slightest objection can be made to cremation on 
account of the Bible ; secondly, it follows that the words, "where 
their worm dieth not," in Mark's account of the description of hell- 
fire as given by Jesus ^ should not have been admitted ; they are 
out of place. 

TIAMAT. 

Jensen (/. c, p. 489) observes with reference to Tiamat: "Be- 
rossus calls this being 'a woman,' she is the mother of the gods,' 
has a husband and a lover, and nowhere throughout Assyrian or 
Babylonian literature is there found even the slightest hint that 
this creature is regarded otherwise than as a woman." 

Nothing can be farther off the mark than this assertion, which 
contradicts not merely me, but also a fact recognised by all Assyri- 
ologists. Or is it not true that a human woman gives birth to 
human beings, while a lioness brings forth young lions? Therefore, 
a creature which gives birth to sinnahhe, i. e., gigantic serpents 
{ittalad, see Creation-epic, IIL, 24 and passitn'), must itself be a 
great, powerful serpent, a SpaKwv /xeyas or some serpent-like mon- 
ster. As a matter of fact, Tiamat is represented in Babylonian art 
as a great serpent. (See, e. g. , Cheyne's English translation of 
the Book of the Prophet Isaiah in Haupt's edition of the Bible, p. 
206.) 

I see by no means in the scene reproduced in my First Lec- 
ture (Fig. 46, p. 46) an exact portrayal of Marduk's fight with the 
Dragon, as described to us in the creation-epic ; on the contrary, I 
speak expressly and cautiously of a battle between "the power of 
light and the power of darkness" in general. 

The representation of this battle, especially of the monster 
Tiamat, naturally left a wide scope to the imagination of the artist. 
A dragon could be represented in various ways, such as we see in 
Figure 44, page 44. The beast which lies at the feet of the god 
Marduk has since been palpably proved by the German excavations 
to be, as explained by me, the dragon Tiamat. The relief of the 
sirrussii found on the Gate of Ishtar at Babylon unmistakably 
agrees with the figure familiar to us from our illustration. 

Oettli, following Gunkel (^Schopfung u.nd Chaos, pp. 29—114), 

1 Mk. ix. 44, 46, 48. 



160 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

practically agrees with my conclusion when he says: "There are 
enough references in the prophetical and poetical books of the Old 
Testament to make it obvious that the old [Babylonian] creation- 
myth survived in the popular conceptions of Israel, and that in a 
highly-colored form." And again: "There are indeed enough 
cases where the original mythical meaning of the monsters Tehom, 
Leviathdn, Tannin, Rahab, is unmistakable."^ Isaiah proceeds (li. 
lo): "Art thou not it that dried up the sea, the water of the great 
Tehom, that made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to 
pass over?" Here the prophet actually couples "those mythical 
reminiscences" with the deliverance from Egypt, as another tri- 
umph of Yahveh over the waters of Tehom. And when we con- 
sider how in other passages (e. g., Ps. cvi. 9-1 1, Ixxviii. 13) Yah- 
veh's achievement of the passage of the children of Israel through 
the Red Sea is described and celebrated, we cannot apply to any 
but primaeval times the words in Ps. Ixxiv. 13 sq.: "Thou brakest 
the heads of the dragons in the waters, thou didst dash to pieces 
the heads of the sea-monsters" (^Leviathcin^. Leviathdn, accordmg 
to Job iii. 8 also, is a personification of the dark chaotic primaeval 
waters, the sworn enemy of light. 

Even Konig reluctantly grants (p. 27) that the Book of Job^ 
"alludes, in all probability, to the conquest of the primaeval ocean ; " 
Jensen accordingly seems to stand quite alone when he says (/. c, 
p. 490): 

" Wherever the Old Testament mentions a struggle of Yahveh against serpents 
and crocodile-like creatures, there is no occasion to assume with Delitzsch and 
with a goodly number of other Assyriologists [add: also with Gunkel and most 
Old Testament theologians] a reference to the Babylonian myth of the struggle 
with Tiamat." 

Oettli is right when he declares (p. 17): 

"To submit the researches of Natural Science to the Biblical version of the 
creation is a wholly erroneous proceeding, which is the more unintelligible as the 
details of the second account of Genesis and many other passages in the Old Testa- 
ment are quite incompatible with the first. Let us, therefore, unreservedly give to 
Science that which belongs to Science." 

Oettli proceeds : 

" But let us also give to God that which is God's ; the world is a creation of 
God's omnipotence, which supports it as its law of life,- — this the first page of Gen- 
esis tells us. " 

1 Oettli cites Job ix. 13 and Isaiah li. g, wliere. moreover, " pierced " ini^ht be better than 
dishonored." 

2 " God turns not his anger, the helpers of ritAi?;!' brake in pieces under him"(ix. 13). and 
in his power he smote the sea and in his wisdom he dashed rOhSb to pieces " (xxvi. 12). 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 161 

In this I can no longer concur. Our faith claims, and many 
passages in the Old Testament assert, that God is the Almighty 
Creator of heaven and earth, but this truth is certainly not stated on 
the first page of Genesis, where we read: "In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth, — and the earth was waste and 
desolate," etc. ; for this passage leaves unanswered the question, 
"Whence did chaos originate?" Besides, even among the Baby- 
lonians the creation of the heavens and of the earth is ascribed to 
the gods, and the life of all animate creatures is regarded as rest- 
ing in their hands. 

* 
* * 

I will call attention to a passage in II. R. 51, 44^;, where a 
canal is named after "the Serpent-god who bursts (or destroys) 
the house of life," apparently referring to some as yet unknown 
Babylonian myth. This, however, would upset Jensen's view, that 
we may perhaps see in the two figures, two gods dwelling by the 
tree of life, and in the serpent, its guardian. 

Zimmern^ regards the serpent-god as ultimately identical with 
the chaos-monster. 

ANGELS. 

Cornill (/. c, p. 1682), also, comes to the conclusion that "the 
conception of angels is genuinely Babylonian." When I spoke of 
guardian angels who attend on men (Ps. xci. ii et seq., Matt, 
xviii. 10), I had in mind such passages as Apia's well-known letter 
of consolation to the queen-mother (K. 523). The Babylonian 
officer writes: "Mother of the king, my lady, be comforted (?) ! 
Bel's and Nebo's angel of mercy attends on the king of the lands, 
my lord." Further the writing addressed to Esarhaddon (K. 948): 
"May the great gods send a guardian of salvation and life to stand 
by the king, my lord ; " and also the words of Nabopolassar, the 
founder of the Chaldaean kingdom: "To lordship over land and 
people Marduk called me. He sent a Cherub of mercy (a tutelary 
god) to attend on me, and everything I undertook he sped" (see 
Mitteilimgcn dcr deutschen Oric7it-Gesellschaft, No. 10, p. 14 et seq.). 

In "the Old Serpent which is the Devil and Satan" is pre- 
served the ancient Babylonian conception of Tiamat, the primaeval 
eneni)^ of the gods, while Satan, who appears several times in the 
later and latest books of the Old Testament, and is always the 
enemy of man, not of God,'' owes his origin to Babylonian demon- 

1 Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3rd ed., second half, p. 504 et seq. 
2See Job, ch. i. et seq., i Chron. xsi. i, Zech. iii. i et seq. 



162 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ology in which we become acquainted with an //// Ihnnu or * evil 
god' and a. gallu or 'devil.' 

BABYLONIAN SUPERSTITIONS IN SWEDEN. 

How much Assyria intrudes into our own time can be seen 
from G. Hellmann's most interesting communion on the Chaldaean 
origin of modern superstitions about the understorms (in the Mr- 
teorologische Zcitsclirift, June, i8g6, pp. 236-238), where it is proved 
that an ancient Babylonian belief survives even at the present day 
in the popular Swedish book, Sibyllae Prophetia, in which a chapter 
entitled "Tordons marketecken " treats of the prognostics of the 
weather and fertility as indicated by the thunder in the several 
months. 

CANAANITES. 

The term used by me in its usual linguistic sense (see, e. g., 
Kautzsch, Hebrdische Grammatik, 27th ed., p. 2), has been replaced 
in later editions by "North Semites," simply because the name was 
frequently misunderstood. That the kings of the first Babylonian 
dynasty, Sianu-abi and his successors, do not belong to that Semitic 
stock of Babylonian Semites who had become fused with the Sume- 
rians, but rather to later immigrants, is proved by the ancient Baby- 
lonian scholars, for they deemed the names of the two kings Hafn- 
murabi (also Ammurabi^ and Ammisadtiga (or Airimizaduga) to be 
foreign and stand in need of explanation, rendering the former by 
Kimta-rapasium, "wide- spread family" (cf. C^''3n"i, Rehoboam), and 
the latter hy Kimtum-kcttuiti, "upright family" (VR. 44, 21, 22, a, 
b^. The replacement of the u (in C^, people, family) by h in the 
name Ha7n7nurabi shows that these Semites, unlike the older stock 
that had been settled for centuries in Babylonia, still pronounced 
the iJ as an 37. Further, their pronunciation of sh as an s,^ no less 
than the preformative of the third person of the perfect tense with ia 
(not /^), proves that these Semitic tribes were quite distinct, which 
fact, first stated by Hommel and Winckler, is and remains true, in 
spite of Jensen's opposition (/. c, p. 491). Linguistic and his- 
torical considerations make it more than probable than these im- 
migrant Semites belonged to the Northern Semites and are most 
closely affiliated with the linguistically so-called "Canaanites" (i. 
e., the Phoenicians, Moabites, Hebrews, etc.). The knowledge of 

ISamsu in Sa-am-su-iliina fcf. also Samu-ahi) as contrasted with the older Babylonian 
Shamshu. 

2 In the personal names of that age Vatnlik-ilu, Varbi-ilu, Vak-hani-ilu, etc 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 163 

this we owe to the acumen of Hugo Winckler (see his Geschichte 
Israels), who thereby made a particularly important addition to his 
many other merits. The na of ihina (in Satnsu ibina), which is 
alleged to mean "our God," is not sufficient to prove tribal rela- 
tionship with Arabia, since, in view of the names Atnmi-zadTiga, 
Ammi-ditana, it is at least equally probable that iluna represents an 
adjective. 1 \{.o^q,vq.x, zadiig, "righteous," may indicate a "Cana- 
anite" dialect, both lexically^ and phonetically;^ and the same may 
be said, too, of such personal names as Ya-su-tib-ilu belonging to 
the same age.* Will Jensen be able ever to produce an unobjec- 
tionable explanation from the Babylonian language of such names 
as Yasiib-ilu} 

1 Note the personal n^Tae T-lu-na xaMeissaex's Beitriige zum altbabylontschen Privatrecht ^ 
No. 4 ; cf. ■jfns ? 

"^ZadUg must be the Hebrew pil^il for ih^ verbal stem, compare saduk, "he is righteous," 
in the Amarna tablets, 

3The vowel S is obscured to o, ft ; e. g., in anitki, signifying the pronoun '' I " in the Amarna 
tablets, etc. 

4Cf. Phoen. Ba-a-al-ia-sft-bu, VR, 2, St-. 



REPLY TO CRITICS OF THE SECOND LEC- 
TURE. 

That a discussion of these momentous theological or religio- 
historical questions, if they are but treated in the right spirit, 
could be considered an injury or even an insult to Judaism, least of 
all to the modern Jewish faith, is in my opinion absolutely ex- 
cluded. Dispassionate, strictly objective inquiry into the origin 
of the Sabbath, of the position of woman in Israel as well as in 
Babylonia, and of kindred questions, can only sharpen our judg- 
ment and promote the truth. In the same way we shall gradually 
witness in Jewish circles a unanimity regarding the worth of Old 
Testament monotheism, which at present is not yet attained. In 
contradiction to the universalism of the belief in God which several 
Jewish writers of open letters assume to prevail in the Old Testa- 
ment (and they imagine they prove their case by quotations of Scrip- 
tural passages), the opinion of other Israelites, authorities both for 
their general knowledge and Biblical scholarship, has been voiced, 
the purport of which appears in the following private letter of Jan- 
uary 14, 1903: 

"Irrefutable is your assertion that Jewish monotheism is egotistic, particular- 
stic, and exclusive ; equally irrefutable, however, in my opinion, is the fact that 
this rigorously particularistic monotheism alone could preserve Judaism for thou- 
sands of years in the midst of all kinds of persecution and hostility. From the 
Jewish standpoint, the national theism is brilliantly justified; to give it up means 
to give up Judaism ; and though much can be said in favor of such a surrender, 
there are many points that militate against it." 

The divine character of the Torah, of course, will have to be 
excluded from scientific discussion, at least so long as a complete 
neglect of the results of Pentateuch-criticism on the Jewish side 
can be regarded as "exact science," and so long as reviews of 
Bahcl and Bible based on such a neglect are looked upon as "scien- 
tific criticism." 



BABEIy AND BIBLE. 165 

A deep pain seizes me, who myself am sprung from a strictly 
orthodox Lutheran house, when I consider the abyss of obscurant- 
ism, confusion, halfheartedness, contradiction, let alone worse fea- 
tures, of the evangelical orthodoxy displayed towards the questions 
raised by Babel and Bible. From all quarters and corners the cry is 
raised that I have said "nothing essentially new": but, if that be 
so, why this extraordinary excitement? 

On the one hand, a deep lamentation and bitter accusation of 
Assyriology comes from Aix-la-Chapelle, because the Old Testa- 
ment traditions, e. g. , Nebuchadnezzar's madness, are arbitrarily 
assumed to be borrowed from Babylonian myths; on the other 
hand, an "orthodox pastor" exclaims in the columns of a journal 
of central Germany that I am fighting windmills, because the story 
of Balaam's ass, of the sun standing still, of the fall of the walls of 
Jericho, of the fish which swallows Jonah, of Nebuchadnezzar's 
madness, are not contained in the historical books of the Bible. 
"They are accounts," he says, "whose historical trustworthiness 
may be contested even according to orthodox views." 

Accordingly even evangelical orthodoxy set aside "revela- 
tions" which are no longer deemed in accord with the spirit of the 
age : will not the orthodoxy once for all condescend to an open 
c:onfession, and explain unequivocally which books and narratives 
of "Holly Scripture" they think proper to surrender? 

Professor Ernst Sellin of Vienna, one of the first and most 
meritorious among the positive Old Testament investigators, gladly 
acknowledges in his glosses on Babel and Bible {^Neue Freie Presse, 
January 25, 1903) "the innumerable helps, elucidations, and cor- 
rections which in grammatical and lexicographical questions as 
well as in the field of the history of civilisation and general history 
Old Testament investigation owes to the decipherment of the Baby- 
lonian inscriptions. Yet, on the other, he is of opinion that if I 
dispose of the fact of a divine revelation in the Bible on account 
of the Songs of Songs and the amalgamation of tradition out of 
heterogeneous sources, I appear on the scene a hundred years too 
late. This is, to say the least, a gross exaggeration. When my 
dear father, Franz Delitzsch, towards the end of his life, found 
himself compelled by the weight of the facts of the Old Testament 
text criticism to make some, and indeed the smallest possible, con- 
cessions for the book of Genesis, he was persecuted, even on his 
deathbed (i8go), by the denunciation of whole synods. And the 
great commotion excited by my Second Lecture serves to show 



166 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

convincingly enough that the circles which govern Church and 
school cherish a different conviction from that of my highly- 
esteemed critic. 

The several clergymen who have not wasted their time at the 
university adhere to freer views, but Church and School — especially 
the public schools — have remained unaffected, and this inconsist- 
ency is no longer endurable, as stated in my First Lecture and also 
freely granted by Harnack. 

And this inconsistency produces an increasingly widening gulf. 
When, e. g., a theologian of no less authority writes (26th January, 
4903): "You criticise a conception of Revelation that sensible 
Protestants no longer share ; it is that of the antiquated Lutheran 
Dogmatists. . . . All divine revelation is, of course, affected by the 
human medium, and must therefore have historically developed; " 
he describes exactly the standpoint that I myself advocate, only I 
regard the conceptions of ' 'divine revelation " as held by the Church 
and as a historical, i. e., human, development to be irreconcilable 
contradictions. Either we take the one or the other. Tcrtium non 
datur. 

I hold the view that in the Old Testament we have to deal 
with a development effected or permitted by God like any other 
product of this world, but, for the rest, of a purely human and his- 
torical character, in which God has not intervened through a "spe- 
cial, supernatural revelation." 

The Old Testament monotheism plainly shows itself to be 
such a process marked by an advance from the imperfect to the 
perfect, from the false to the true, here and there indeed by occa- 
sional retrogression. The modification of the original conception 
of revelation, deeply rooted in ancient Orientalism, by a surrender 
of the verbal inspiration, made by both, evangelical and Catholic 
theology, and even by the Church, irretrievably divests the Old 
Testament of its character as the "Word of God," ushering in, as 
it seems to me, the end of the theological and the beginning of the 
religio-historical treatment of the Old Testament. 

The present resurrection of the Babylonio-Assyrian literature 
has certainly not been accomplished without God's will. It has 
suddenly taken its place by the side of the ancient Hebrew litera- 
ture, the only one of Hither-Asia heretofore known to us, and com- 
pels to revise our conception of revelation bound up with the Old 
Testament. Would that we might more and more become con- 
vinced that only b}' a dispassionate reinvestigation of the docu- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 1^' 

ments we can reach our aim, and that in th.s controversy, neitl,er 
::: oTwhen its solution has been approached, our p.ety and the 
communion of our hearts with God can suffer the least. 

CONCLUSION, 

I shall endeavor to reply only to scientific criticisms, but I fear 
that i I adhere to this mLim, I shall have little opportunity, ■ 
m t';;"c:ntinue as heretofore, to concern -V-" ^'^'^^Evange cal 
Orthodoxy. Their method of warfare, especially that °f 'he bvan 
get 1 Orthodox Press, fills me with profound d-gus.^ In the 
%.ange,iscke Kirc,.en.ciU,n,, founded by the venerable Hengs. n 
burg. Pastor P. Wolff, of Friedensdorl, Seelow, one of its regular 
contributors, writes (No. 4, January 25, .903) as follows: 



children." 



And again: 

..Dem.sch intend, .0 deliver another lecture o„ Baby lo;- and .he New Te^ta- 
„en.;perhapshe,.,.al30,rea..hes„hi»..Bahe,^^^^^^ ^^ 

rrs.T:rr-:i.tXrpro.ed.hate,en.e^^^^^^^^^ 
rived from Babylon. On a monolith preserved ■" '^;'^"'f^.'J;;=3„„j ,L neck, 
Ramnran IV., is represented wearing upon ^'^"^'^^'^l ^J^^^l „,,, („, „,ders 
a cross, which appears '° ^";-| f, ;^^%>,:^„t;°: ^ ^r comp-hension of the 
What a newbght ,s shed ^^ 'h' '^^' ^^j^J^/^ l^^, „j ,„, Red Eagle of the 
real meanmg of orders Even ,D Baby'o are unquestionably derived 

;:rBr,.Tf :virt"th:r:ur rd:rr -"lisation is steeped .hr„ugh and 
through with Babylonian ideas 

What a slough of mental and moral depravity in a German 
clergT-n these lords bespeak ! And samples like th.s could be 

"'"Tcon't:attt'this, I, as an Evangelical Chrisfan greet with 
gratitude Rev. Dr. Friedrich Jeremias of Dresden, whose dtscus- 
sion of -y lecture (^Drcsiner Joun.al, February 4, -gos).. '-"K 
according to his standpoint he naturally rejects my postt.on. ts 
trulv noble both in diction and substance. , ^ ,. , ,, 

A third lecture on "Babel and Bible" will be dehvered as 
as soon ale views on these two lectures shall have become clear 
and settled. 



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Babel anb Bible 



Uvoo Xcctures 



Blao 

Embossing tbe fSbost Important Criticisms 
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BABEL AND BIBLE 



TWO LECTURES ON 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ASSYRIOLOGICAL 
RESEARCH FOR RELIGION 



EMBODYING THE MOST IMPORTANT CRITICISMS 
AND THE AUTHOR'S REPLIES 



^ 



DR. FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH 

PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY 

THOMAS J. McCORMACK AND W. H. CARRUTH 



PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED 



CHICAGO 

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1903 



Copyright 1903 by 

The Open Court Publishing Co. 

Chicago. 

"First t,ecture" Copyrighted 1902 under 
the title "Babel aud Bible." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



FIRST LECTURE i 

Excavations and the Bible, p. i.— A New Epoch, p. 2.— The Back- 
ground of the Old Testament, p. 3.— The Home of Abraham; p. 4 — 
Cuneiform Literature, p. 5.— Illustrations of Bible Reports, p. 6 ff.— 
Hezekiah and Sennacherib, pp. 6-8.— Seals, p. 9 — Sargon I., pp. 9- 
10.— Racial types, pp. lo-ii. — Assyrian Troops, pp 11-13.— Assyrian 
Soldiers and Details of Armament, pp. 15-18.— The Royal Household, 
pp. 18-20.— Battling with the Lion, pp. 20-22.— The Harem, pp. 23- 
24.— A Consort of Sardanapalus, pp. 23-25.— Technical Knowledge 
and Art, pp. 25-28. — Affinity Between Babylonian and Hebrew, p 
29. — Aaron's Blessing, pp. 29-30. — A Civilisation Comparable with 
Our Own, p. 30. — Hammurabi's Laws, pp. 30-31.— Commerce and 
Science, p. 33.— The Splendors of Babylon, pp. 33-34- — Clay Tablets, 
35-37. ^Canaan a Babylonian Domain, p. 37. — The Sabbath Day, pp. 
37-38. —A Tablet from El-Amarna, p. 38.— The Deluge, p. 38 ff.— 
Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, p. 39 ff.— The Gilgamesh Epic, p. 
41 ff.— Marduk and Yahveh, p. 43 ff — Tiamat and Tehom, p. 45.— 
Stress Laid on Humane Conduct, p. 47.— The Serpent and the Fall 
of Man, pp. 47-48.— The Underworld, pp. 49-50.— Job and the New 
Testament on Hell and Paradise, p. 50.— The Moslem Paradise, pp. 
50-52. — Seraphim and Guardian Angels, pp. 53-55.— Demons and 
Devils, pp. 55-58. — Monotheism, p. 59. — Abraham's Conversion, Ac- 
cording to the Koran, p. 60. — The Word El, pp. 60-61. — The Name 
Yahveh, on a Clay Tablet of Hammurabi's Time, pp. 61-62.— The 
Sun-God of Sippar, pp. 62-63 —Ezekiel's Vision Illustrated, pp. 64- 
65. — Babylonian Polytheism and Israelitic Particularism, pp. 65-66. 

SECOND LECTURE 6? 

Isaiah's Battle Song, p. 6g. — Shrinking from Yahveh, p. 70. — Babel 
as Interpreter of the Bible, p. 71. — Kutha and Chalach, the Home of 
the Exiled Israelites, pp. 72-73. — The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser 
II., pp. 74-78.— The Re'em, or Wild Ox, pp. 79-83.— The Hill of 
Babil, pp. 81-83. — The Lion of Babylon, p. 84. — The Dragon of Ba- 
bel, p. 85. — Old Testament Scriptures Translated by Assyriology, p. 
86. — The Insanity of Nebuchadnezzar, p. 87. — Book of Jonah, p. 88. 
— Even the Modern Orient an Interpreter of the Bible, pp. 89-90. — 
The Magic Power of Spittle, p. go. — Smoke and Fire, pp. 90-91.— 



IV BABLE AND BIBLE. 

PAGE 

Gula, the Awakener of the Dead, p. gr. — Revelation and the Old 
Testament, p. 92 S. — The Second Commandment Suppressed, p. 93 
ff. and also p. 102. — The Two Tablets Engraved by God's Own Finger, 
p. 94. — Miracles of the Two Tablets in Prehistoric Reports, pp. 95- 
96. — The So-called Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi, pp. 96- 
100. — The Covenant of Sinai, p. 100. — The Institution of Sabbath, p. 
101. — The First Commandment and Monotheism, p. 102. — God in 
Names, p. 102 ff —Babylonian Polytheism, gross but poetical, pp. 
103-104 — The Homeric Pantheon, p. 104. — Anthropomorphism of 
Hebrew Prophets, p. 104. — Yahveh with Horns, p. 104. — The Ancient 
of Days, p. 105. — The Ethical Level of Israel and Babylon, p. 106. — 
The Position of Woman in Israel, p. 108. — The Goddess of Birth and 
Eve, p. log ff. — The Narrowness of Hebrew and Moslem Monotheism, 
pp. 110-112. — The Extermination of Gentiles, p. 111-112. — God no 
Respecter of Persons, pp. 112-113. — Ethical Monotheism, p. 113. — 
Outlook Upon the Future Development of Religion, p. 114. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR BABEL AND BIBLE 115 

Literature ON Babel AND Bible 117 

Opinion.s ON " Babel AND Bible" 120 

Emperor William on "Babel and Bible," pp. 120-124. — Professor 
Harnack on the Emperor's Attitude Toward " Babel and Bible," pp. 
125-130. — M Halevy's Opinion, pp. 130-131.— Cornill on "Babel and 
Bible," pp. 132-136. — A Roman Catholic Verdict, pp. 136-137. — 
Alfred Jeremias on Delitzsch, pp. 137-139. — Higher Criticism and the 
Emperor, op. i3g-i44. 

Reply to Critics of the First Lecture 145 

The Ethical Aspect, pp. 145-146. — The Primordial Chaos, p. 146. — 
Traces of Polytheism, p. 146. — Babylonian Monotheism, pp. 146-147. 
— The Name "El," pp. 148-150. — The Name "Yahveh," pp. 150- 
151. — The Name "Yahum-ilu," pp. 152-153. — Processions of the 
Gods, pp. 153. — Aaron's Blessing, pp. 153-155. — The Sabbath, pp. 
155-156. — The Fall, pp. 157-158. — Life After Death, pp. 158 i5g. — 
Tiamat, pp. i5g-i6i. — Angels, pp. 161-162 — Babylonian Supersti- 
tions in Sweden, p. 162. — Canaanites, pp. 162-163. — 

Reply to Critics of the Second Lecture 164 

Orthodoxy in Synagogue and Church, pp. 164 167. — Conclusion, p. 
167. 



FIRST LECTURE 



FIRST LECTURE. 

TO what end this toil and trouble in distant, inhospit- 
able, and danger-ridden lands? Why all this ex- 
pense in ransacking to their utmost depths the rubbish 
heaps of forgotten centuries, where we know neither 
treasures of gold nor of silver exist? Why this zealous 
emulation on the part of the nations to secure the great- 
est possible number of mounds for excavation? And 
whence, too, that constantly increasing interest, that 
burning enthusiasm, born of generous sacrifice, now be- 
ing bestowed on both sides of the Atlantic on the excava- 
tions of Babylonia and Assyria? 

One answer echoes to all these questions, — one an- 
swer, which, if not absolutely adequate, is yet largely the 
reason and consummation of it all : the Bible. A magic 
halo, woven in earliest youth, encircles the names of 
Nineveh and Babylon, an irresistible fascination abides 
for us all in the stories of Belshazzar and the Wise Men 
of the East. The long-lasting d^masties here awakened 
to new life, however potent for history and civilisation 
they may have been, would not have aroused a tithe of 
their present interest, did they not number among them 
the names of Amraphel, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnez- 
zar, with whom we have been familiar from childhood. 



2 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

And with the graven memories of youth is associated 
the deeper longing of maturity, — the longing, so charac- 
teristic of our age, — to possess a philosophy of the world 
and of life that will satisfy both the heart and the head. 
And this again leads us directly to the Bible, and notably 
to the Old Testament, with which historically our mod- 
ern views are indissolubly connected. 

The minute, exhaustive scrutiny to which untold 
numbers of Christian scholars in Germany, England, and 
America — the three Bible-lands, as we may justly call 
them — are submitting the Old Testament, that little 
library of books of most varied hue, is nothing less than 
astounding. 

Of these silent intellectual labors the world has as 
yet taken but little notice. Yet this much is certain, 
that when the sum-total and ultimate upshot of the new 
knowledge shall have burst the barriers of the scholar's 
study and entered the broad path of life, — shall have 
entered our churches, schools, and homes, — the life of 
humanity will be more profoundly stirred and be made 
the recipient of more significant and enduring progress 
than it has by all the discoveries of modern physical and 
natural science put together. So far, at any rate, the 
conviction has steadily and universally established itself 
that the results of the Babylonian and Assyrian excava- 
tions are destined to inaugurate anew epoch, not onl}- in 
our intellectual life, but especially in the criticism and 
comprehension of the Old Testament, and that from now 
till all futurity the names of Babel and Bible will remain 
inseparably linked together. 

How times have changed ! There was David and 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 3 

there was Solomon, 1000 years before Christ ; and Moses, 
1400 3'ears ; and Abraham eight centuries prior. And of 
all these men we had the minutest information ! It was 
so unique, so supernatural, that one credulously accepted 
along with it stories concerning the origin of the world 
and mankind. The very greatest minds stood, and some 
of them still stand to-day, under the puissant thrall of 
the mystery encompassing the First Book of Moses. But 
now that the pyramids have opened their depths and the 
Ass3^rian palaces their portals, the people of Israel, with 
its literature, appears as the 3-oungest member onl^^ of a 
venerable and hoarj^ group of nations. 

The Old Testament formed a world by itself till far 
into the last century. It spoke of times to whose latest 
limits the age of classical antiquity barely reached, and 
of nations that have met cither with none or with the 
most cursory allusion from the Greeks and the Romans. 
The Bible was the sole source of our knowledge of the 
histor^^ of Hither Asia prior to 550 B. C, and since its 
vision extended over all that immense quadrangle lying 
between the Alediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf and 
stretching from Mount Ararat to Ethiopia, it naturally 
teemed with enigmas that might otherwise have tarried 
till eternit}^ for their solution. But now the walls that 
formed the impenetrable background to the scenes of the 
Old Testament have suddenl^^ fallen, and a keen invigo- 
rating air and a flood of light from the Orient pervades 
and irradiates the hoar3'book, — animating and illuminat- 
ing it the more as Hebrew antiquit3^ is linked together 
from beginning to end with Babylonia and Ass3-ria. 

The American excavations at Nippur brought to 



4 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

light the business records of a great wholesale house, 
Murashu & Sons, operating in that city in the reign of 
Artaxerxes (450 B. C). We read in these records the 
names of many Jewish exiles that had remained in Babel, 
as Nathaniel, Haggai, and Benjamin, and we read also 
of a canal Kabar in connection with the city of Nippur, 
which is the original of the canal of Kebar rendered fa- 
mous by Hzekiel's vision and situated ''in the land of 
the Chaldaeans" (Ezekiel i. 3). This "grand canal," 
for such the name means, may possibly exist to this very 
day. 




Fig. I. UR OF THE ChALDEES, THE HOME OF ABRAHAM AND THE 

Forefathers of Israel. 
(Ruins of el-Muqayyer, pronounced Mukayyer, English Mugheir.) 

Since the Babylonian bricks usually bear a stamp 
containing along with other marks the name of the city 
in which the building of which it formed a part was 
erected, it was made possible for Sir Henry Rawlinson as 
early as the year 1849 to rediscover the much-sought-for 
city of Ui' of the Chaldces^ the home of Abraham and the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 5 

ancestors of the tribes of Israel (Genesis xi. 31 and xv. 7) . 
The discovery was made in the gigantic mound of ruins 
of Mugheir on the right bank of the lower Buphrates 
(see Fig. 1) , which is now the storm-center of warring 
Arab tribes. The certainty of the discovery has been 
more and more established. 

The data of the cuneiform literature shed light also 
on geographical matters : formerly the site of the city of 





Fiy. 2. HiTTiTE Ideographic 
Writing from Carchemish.' 



Fig. 3. King Hammurabi. The King 
Amraphel of the Bible. 



Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C. won his 
great battle from Pharaoh-necho (Jeremiah xlvi. 2) was 
sought for at random on the banks of the Euphrates, but 
in March, 1876, the English Assyriologist George Smith, 
starting from Aleppo and following the river downward 
from Biredjik, rode directly to the spot where from the 

' Confirming the discovery of the site of Carchemish, where Nebuchednezzar 
defeated Necho in 605 B. C. 



6 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

tenor of the cuneiform inscriptions the city of the Hittite 
king's must have lain, and at once and unhesitatingly 
identified the vast ruins of Dsherabis there situate, with 
their walls and palace-mounds, more extensive than Nin- 
eveh itself, with the ancient city of Carchemish, — a con- 
clusion that was immediatel3^ afterward confirmed by the 
inscriptions in the unique ideographic Hittite script that 
were strewn over the entire site of the ruins (Fig. 2) . 

And like many names of places, so also many of the 
personalities named in the Bible, have received new light 
and life. The book of the prophet Isaiah (xx. 1) men- 
tions an Assyrian king by the name of Sargon, who 
sent his marshal against Ashdod ; and when in 1843 the 
French consul Kmile Botta began his excavations on the 
mound of ruins situated not far from Mosul, and thus in- 
augurated archaeological research on Mesopotamian soil, 
the first Assyrian palace unearthed was the palace of this 
same Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria. Na3^, on one of 
the superb alabaster reliefs with which the walls of the 
palace chambers were adorned, the very person of this 
mighty warrior conversing with his marshal appears be- 
fore our e3^es (Fig. 4) . 

The Book of Kings (2 Kings xviii. 14) narrates that 
King Sennacherib received tribute from King Hezekiah 
in the city of Lachish in southern Palestine. Now, a re- 
lief from Sargon 's palace in Nineveh shows the great As- 
S3-rian king enthroned before his tent in sight of a con- 
quered city, and the accompanying inscription reads: 
"Sennacherib, the king of the universe, king of Ashur, 
seated himself upon his throne and inspected the booty of 
Lachish." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



7 



And again, Sennaclierib's Babylonian rival Mero- 
dacli-Baladan, who according to the Bible (2 Kings xx. 
12) sent letters and a present to King Hezekiah, is shown 
us in his own likeness by a magnificent diorite relief now 




Fig. 4. King Sargon II. and His Marshal. 

in Berlin, where before the king is the lord-mayor of the 
city of Babylon, to whom the sovereign in his gracious- 
ness has seen fit to grant large tracts of land. Even the 




Fig. 5 Assyrian King in State Custume. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



contemporary of Abraham, Amrapliel, the great king 
Hammurabi, is now represented by a likeness (Fig. 3) . 
Thus, all the men that made the history of the world for 
3000 long years, rise to life again, and the most costly 




Fig. 6. Seal of King Darius. 

relics have been bequeathed to us by them. Here is the 
seal of King Darius, the son of Hystaspes (Fig. 6) , where 
the king is represented as hunting the lion under the 
sublime protection of Ahura Mazda, and at the side is the 
trilingual inscription : "I am Darius, the great king," — 




Fig. 7. Seal of Sargon I. (Third or fourth millennium B. C.) 

a genuine treasure of the British Museum. Here is the 
state seal of one of the oldest known Babylonian rulers, 
Shargani-shar-ali, or Sargon I., who flourished in the 
third, or possibly the fourth, millennium before Christ 



10 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



(Fig. 7) . This king, as the legend runs, knew not his 
own father, the latter having met his death prior to the 
birth of his son ; and since the father's brother cared not 




Elamite 
Babylonian merchant 



Jew of Lachish 



Israelite 
Arab horseman 



Fie. 8. Racial Types. 



for the widowed mother, great affliction attended the son's 
entrance into this world; we read: "In Azupiran, on 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 11 

the banks of the Euphrates, she bore me in concealment ; 
she placed nie in a box of reeds, sealed my door with 
pitch, and cast me upon the river, which conve^^ed me on 
its waves to Akki, the water-carrier. He took me up in 
the kindness of his heart, reared me as his own child, 
made me his gardener. Then Ishtar, the daughter of the 
King of Heaven, showed fondness for me and made me 
king over men." 

And not only kings and generals, but also entu'e na- 
tions^ have been brought to life again by these discov- 
eries. If we compare the various types of nationality 
engraved on the monuments of Assyrian art, and, taking 
for example two types that we know, here scrutinise the 
picture of a Jew of Lachish (Fig. 8) , and here the repre- 
sentation of an Israelite of the time of Jehu, we are not 
likely to be wrong in our conclusion that also the other 
national types, for example the Elamite chieftain, the 
Arab horseman, and the Babylonian merchant, have been 
depicted and reproduced with the same fidelity and exact- 
ness. ParticularU' the Assyrians, who sixty years ago 
were supposed to have perished with all their history and 
civilisation in the great river of tinre, have been made 
known to us in the minutest details by excavations in 
Nineveh, and many passages in the prophetic books re- 
ceive gorgeous illustration from our discoveries. Thus, 
Isaiah describes in the following eloquent language the 
Assyrian troops : 

"Behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: None shall be 
weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; 
neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of 
their shoes be broken : Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows 



12 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 9. Bronze Gates of the Palace of Shalmaneser II (At Balawat.) 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



13 



bent, their horses' lioofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels 
like a whirlwind : Their roaring shall be like a lion, yea, they shall 




Fig. lo. Assyrians B/vtterinc. a Fortress. 




Fig. II. Detail-Group on Bronze Gate. 
Above war-chariots and below captives led before the king. 

roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and 
none shall deliver it." — ( Isaiah, v. 27-29.) 



14 



BABEL AND BIBLH. 




Fig. 12. Procession of Female Captives. (Detail-group on bronze gate.) 















^Jx 



. \: 



^ ' ^ 



.^ 



k^k\^\' 



r?y^<1% 






IV 







Fig. 13. Assyrian Bowmen and Spearmen Attacking a Hostile Fortress. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



15 



We can now see these same Assyrian soldiers arising 
from their camp in the early morn and dashing their bat- 
tering-rams against the enemy's fortress (Fig. 10) ; and 







>^- '~~ 




■..-•-— ^l_-.V^ ^ 





Fig. 13a. Grazing Antelopes. 
(Idyllic scene picturing the intense realism of Assj'rian art. 



<M>(M'^]W^sm^Um»^)%'^^^ ' 










rew^ 


70{fflwrw^- v^AWi^srrwAYf^ 


\\/Vxxk 


0wvwPlJJW^ 


\J /VVx/' 





Fig. 14. Assyrian Slingers. 

on Other representations (Figs. 11 and 12) iwA.y be seen 
the unfortunate prisoners conducted the \va3^ from which 



16 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



there is no home-coming. We see also (Fig. 13) the 
Assyrian bowmen and spearmen casting their weapons 
toward the hostile fortress, and in another case Assyrian 
warriors storming an elevation defended by hostile arch- 
ers. The}' pull themselves upward by the branches of 




Fig. 15. Head of Winged Bull. 

Showing details of Assyrian mode of dressing the beard, as worn 

by the king and the officers of the army. 

the trees, or clamber to the summit with the help of 
staffs ; whilst others drag in triumph the severed heads 
of their enemies into the valley. 

The military system of this first great warrior-state 
of the world is shown forth to us in a vast number of sim- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



17 




Fig i6. The King's Chariot in a Parade. 




Fig. 17. Officers of Ashurbanipal (Sardanapalus) Entering Court 



18 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



ilar representations on the bronze doors of Shahnaneser 
II. (Fig. 9) and on the alabaster reliefs of the palaces of 
Sargon and Sennacherib, with all details of armament 
and eqnipment and in all phases of development. (See, 
for example, Fig. 14.) 




Fig. i8. Pages Carrying the Royal Chariot. 

Again wc have the portrait of an Assyrian officer of 
Sargon 's general staff, the style of whose beard surpasses 
in artistic cut aii3'thing that has been attempted by mod- 
ern officers. (See, for example. Fig. 15.) Here we see 
the officers of the ro^^al household making their cere- 
monial entry (Fig. 17) , or pages carr3-ing the ro3-al char- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



19 



iot (Fig. 18) , or the royal throne (Fig. 19) . Many beau- 
tiful reliefs show us King Sardanapalus following the 
chase, especially in his favorite sport of hunting lions, of 
which a goodly number of magnificent specimens were 




Fig. 19. Pages Carrying the Royal Throne. 

constantly kept at hand in parks specially reserved for 
this purpose. (Figs. 20-25.) 

When King Saul refused to suffer young David to 
go forth to do battle with the giant Goliath, David re- 



20 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



minded him that he had been the shepherd of his father's 
flocks and that when a lion or a bear had come and taken 
a lamb from his flock, he had gone out after the beast and 









i^^'-^m 


iii:^ 


mamtsmi^ggsfaiam 


«>;.Mi^^HI 


■-^*!^:-^..- ■.^i.c^L^^'!;^^"^AS;5Ui.^ i 



Fig. 20. King Sardanapalus on Horseback. 

had smitten it and wrested from it its prey, and that if 
after that it had risen against him he had caught the lion 




Fig. 21. Sardanapalus Hunting the Lion on Horseback. 

by its beard and slain it. Precisely the same custom pre- 
vailed in Assyria; and the reliefs show King Sardana- 
palus doing battle with the lion, not only on horseback 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



21 




Fig. 22. Hunting the Lion from a Chariot. 




Fig. 23. Sardanapalus Bearding the Lion. 
(The king of Ashur measures his strength with the king of the desert. 




Fig. 24. Hunting from a Boat. 



12 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



(Fig. 21) and from liis chariot (Fig. 11) , but also in hand 
to hand combat (Fig. 23) , — the King of Ashur measur- 
ing his strength with the king of the desert. 




Fig 25. Caged Lion Set Free for the Chase. 




Fig. 26. Servants Carrying Fruit, Hares, Partridges, Spitted 
Grasshoppers, and Onions. 

Wq catch glimpses of the preparations which were 
made for the royal meal (Figs. 26 and 27) ; we see the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



23 



servants bringing hares, partridges, spitted grasshoppers, 
a plenitude of cakes and all manner of fruits, and carry- 
ing fresh branches for driving away the flies. We are 
even permitted to see on a bas-relief of the harem (Fig. 
28) the king and queen quaffing costly wine in a leafy 
bower, the king reclining on an elevated divan, the queen 
seated opposite him on a chair, and clothed in rich gar- 
ments. Eunuchs waft cooling breezes toward them from 




Fig. 27. Slaves Carrying Fruit 

their fans, while soft music from distant sources steals 
gently upon their ears (Fig. 29) . This is the only queen 
of whom we possess a picture. Her profile as it appeared 
years ago in a better state of preservation has been saved 
for posterity by a sketch made in 1867 by Lieutenant, 
afterwards Colonel, Billerbeck (Fig. 30) . This consort 
of Sardanapalus was apparently a princess of Aryan blood 
with blond hair. 

Many other things of interest in iVssyrian antiquity 



24 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 28. King Sard.\napalus and His Consort. 




Fig. 29. Attendants Upon King Sardanapalus and His Consort. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



25 



have also been restored to our bodily vision. The prophet 
Isaiah (xlvi. 1) mentions the procession of the idols, and 
in Fig. 31 we actually wit- 
ness one, — with the god- 
desses in front, and behind, 
the god of the weather 
armed with hammer and 
bolts ; Assyrian soldiers 
have been commanded to 
transport the idols. 

We see in Figure 32 
how the statues of the 
gigantic stone bulls were 
transported, and catch in 
this way all manner of 
glimpses of the technical 
knowledge of the Assy- 
rians. But our greatest and most constant delight is 







'v" 


1 


WW 


' V/^ 


f ^ 

i 

1- . 


M^iua:!^- 


' 


*-- 







Fig. 30. Consort of Sardanapalus. 
(From a sketch by Colonel Billerbeck.) 




Fig. 31. Procession of Idols. 

derived from the contemplation of their noble and simple 
architecture, as it is exhibited for example in the portal 



26 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 




Fig. 32. Transportation of the Gigantic Stone Bulls. 



Qd^MI^JMhM 





1 


1 H 


1 


\ 


\ \ \ 

j 


1 




1 


1 

t 

Uil . 



4.1. 






h^m&Mi^^A 



^ ■ ■ LE 

Fig. 33 Portal of the Palace of Sargon. 
(Representicg the noble style and simplicity of the Assyrian architecture 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



21 



of Sargon's palace excavated by Botta (Fig. 2)2)) , or from 
tlie magnificent representations of animals, replete with 
the most startling realism, which these "Dutchmen of 
antiquity" created. For example, the idyllic picture of 
the grazing antelopes (Fig. 13a ; also Fig. 34) , or the 
d^dng lioness of Nineveh, so justly renowned in art 
(Fig. 35). 




Fig. 34. Idyllic Scenes from Assyrian Art. 

The excavations on Babylonian soil disclose in like 
manner the art and culture of the mother country of As- 
syrian civilisation far back in the fourth millennium, — a 
period which the boldest flights of fancy would otherwise 
have scarcely dreamt of recovering. We penetrate lastly 
here into the period of that primitive un-Indo-Germanic 
and likewise un-Semitic nation of Sumerians, who are 



28 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



the creators and originators of the great Babylonian civ- 
ilisation, of those Sumerians for whom the number 60 
and not 100 constituted the next higher unit after 10. 




Fig. 35. The Dying Lioness of Nineveh. 

That Sumerian Priest-King whose magnificently pre- 
served head (Fig. 36) the Berlin Museum now shelters. 




Fig. 36. Head of a Sumerian Priest-King. 
(A noble type from the dawn of human history.) 

may unquestionably be characterised as a noble represen- 
tative of the human race from the twilight of history. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 29 

But gratifying and instructive as all these discov- 
eries may be, they have 3^et, so to speak, the significance 
of details and externalities only, and are easily surpassed 
in scope and importance by the revelations which it still 
remains for us to adduce. 

I am not referring now to the highly important fact 
that the Babylonian and Assyrian methods of reckoning 
time, which were based on accurate astronomical observa- 
tions of solar eclipses, etc., enabled us to determine the 
chronology of the events narrated in the Book of Kings, 
— a circumstance that was doubly gratifying owing to the 
discovery of Robertson Smith and Wellhausen that the 
chronology of the Old Testament had been forcibly made 
to conform to a system of sacred numbers, which counted 
480 3^ears from the end of the Exile back to the founding 
of the temple of Solomon, and again 480 3^ears backward 
from that date to the Exodus of the children of Israel 
from Egj^pt (1 Kings vi. 1) . 

I can also adduce in this place but a single, and that 
an inconspicuous, illustration of the far-reaching influence 
which the cuneiform investigations have exercised on our 
uiidej'standing of the text of the Old Testa7jzent^ — a result 
due to the remarkably close affinity between the Baby- 
lonian and Hebrew languages and to the enormous com- 
pass of the Babylonian literature. We read in Numbers 
vi. 24-27: 

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord 
make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and 
give thee peace." 

Countless times has this blessing been given and re- 



30 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ceived ! But it was never understood in its full depth 
and import until Babylonian usage informed us that ' ' to 
lift up one's countenance or eyes upon or to another," 
was a form of speech for "bestowing one's love upon an- 
other, for gazing lovingly and feelingly upon another, as 
a bridegroom upon a bride, or a father upon a son." This 
ancient and glorious benediction, therefore, invokes on 
man with increasing emphasis God's blessing and protec- 
tion, God's benignant and gracious consideration, and 
lastly God's own love, — finally to break forth into that 
truly beautiful greeting of the Orient, "Peace be with 
thee!" 

Yet the greatest and most unexpected service that 
Babel ever rendered the philological interpretation of the 
Bible must yield the palm for wide-reaching significance 
to the fact that here on the banks of the Euphrates and 
Tigris as early as 2250 B. C. we find a highly oi'ganised 
constittitiotial state. Here in these Babylonian lowlands, 
having an area not greater than that of Italj^, yet extra- 
ordinarily rich b}^ nature and transformed by human in- 
dustry into a veritable hotbed of productiveness, there 
existed in the third millennium before Christ a civilisa- 
tion comparable in many respects with our own. 

It was Hammurabi, the Amraphel of the Bible, that 
ultimately succeeded in expelling the Elamites, the her- 
editary enemy of Babylon, from the country, and in weld- 
ing North and South together into a single union, with 
Babylon as political and religious center. His first solici- 
tude was to establish a uniform system of law over the 
entire country, and he accordingly promulgated a juridic 
code that determined in the minutest manner the rights 



BABEL AND BIBLE 31 

and privileges of liis citizens. The relations of master, 
slave, and hireling, of merchant and apprentice, of land- 
lord and tenant, are here precisely fixed. There is a law, 
for example, that a clerk who has delivered money to his 
superior for goods that he has sold shall obtain a receipt 
for the transaction. Reductions in rent are provided for 
in case of damage by storms and wild beasts. The fish- 
ing rights of boroughs along the canals are precisely de- 
fined. And so on. Babylon is the seat of the Supreme 
Court, to which all knotty and disputed points of law are 
submitted. Every able-bodied man is subject to military 
duty. But Hammurabi softened by many decisions the 
severity of the recruiting laws ; for example, in the inter- 
ests of stock-raising he exempted herdsmen from military 
service, and he also conferred special privileges on an- 
cient priestly families. 

We read of money having been coined in Babylon, 
and the distinctively cursive character of their script 
points to a very extensive use of writing. Many letters 
of this ancient period have been preserved. We read, for 
example, the letter of a wife to her absent husband, ask- 
ing his advice on some trivial matter ; the epistle of a 
son to his father, announcing that a certain person has 
unspeakably offended him, and that his impulse is to give 
the miscreant a severe drubbing, but that he prefers to 
have the advice of his father on the matter; and another, 
still stranger one, in which a son implores his father to 
send him at once the money that he has so long promised 
him, fortifying his request with the contumelious insin- 
uation that in that event only Mill he feel justified in re- 
suming his prayers for his father's salvation. Every- 



?>2 



BABEL AXD BIBLE. 




O? 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



33 



tiling, in fact, points to a thoroughly organised postal 
system throughout the empire, and this conclusion is 
corroborated by the distinctest evidence that there existed 
causeways and canals in Babylonia which extended far 
beyond its boundaries and M'hich were kept in perfect 
condition. 

Commerce and industry, stock-raising and agricul- 
ture, flourished here in an eminent degree, while science. 




Fig. 38. Palace of King Sargon at Khorsabad. 
(Restored by Victor Place.) 

geometry, mathematics, and notably astronomy, attained 
a height of development that has repeatedly evoked the 
admiration of modern scientists. Certainly not Paris, 
and at most Rome, can bear comparison with Babylon in 
the extent of influence which it exercised upon the world 
for 2000 years. 

Bitter testimony do the prophets of the Old Testa- 



34 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



meiit bear to the surpassing splendor and unconquerable 
might of the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar (see Figs. 37, 
38, 39, 40, and 41) . " Babylon," cries Jeremiah, ''hath 
been a golden cup in Yahveh's hand, that made all the 
earth drunken" (Jer. li. 7) ; and the Revelation of St. 
John still quivers with the detested memor^^ of Babel the 
Great, the gay voluptuous city, the wealth-teeming me- 
tropolis of commerce and art, the mother of harlots and 




ri ■ ri, 



Fig. 39. P.A.L.-\CE OF Senn.-\cherib at Nineveh. 
(Imaginative Restoration. After Ferguson.) 

of all abominations of the earth. Yet so far back as the 
beginning of the third millennium before Christ Babylon 
had been this great focus of culture, science, and litera- 
ture, the "brain" of Hither Asia, the power that dom- 
inated the world. 

In the winter of 1887, a band of Eg3q^tian fellahs 
who were excavating in the ruins of the ])alaces of Amen- 
ophis IV. at El-Amarna, between Thebes and Memphis, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 35 

discovered about 300 clay tablets of man^^ forms and 
sizes. These tablets were found to contain the corre- 
spondence of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Mesopotamian 
kings with the Pharaohs Amenophis III. and IV., and, 
most important of all, the letters of the Egyptian gover- 
nors of the great Canaanite cities of Tyre, Sidon, Akko, 
Askalon, etc., to the Egyptian court; and the museum 
at Berlin is so fortunate as to possess the only letters that 




Fig. 40. Chariot and Attendants of Sennacherib with Castle 
ON a Mountain. (After Layard.) 

came from Jerusalem, — letters written before the entrance 
of the Israelites into the promised land. Like a powerful 
searchlight, these clay tablets of El-Amarna shed a flood 
of dazzling effulgence upon the profound obscurit}^ which 
shrouded the political and cultural conditions of the period 
from 1500 to 1400 B.C.; and the mere fact that the mag- 
nates of Canaan, nay, even of Cyprus, made use of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. ?)7 

Babylonian language and script, and like the Babylonians 
wrote on clay tablets, the mere fact that the Babylonian 
language was the official language of diplomatic inter- 
course from the Euphrates to the Nile, is in itself indis- 
putable proof of the omnipotent influence which Baby- 
lonian civilisation and literature exercised on the world 
from the year 2200 until 1400 B. C. 

When the twelve tribes of Israel invaded the land of 
Canaan, they entered a country which belonged absolutely 
to the domain of Babylonian civilisation. It is an unim- 
portant but characteristic feature of the prevailing state 
of things that a Babylonish garment excited the avarice of 
Achan when the first Canaanite cit3^, Jericho, was stormed 
and plundered (Joshua vii. 21) . And not onl}^ the in- 
dustry, but also the commerce and law, the customs and 
the science of Babylon were the standards of the land. 
Knowing this, Ave comprehend at once why the systems 
of measures, weights, and coins used in the Old Testa- 
ment, and the external form of their laws ("if a man do 
this or that, he shall be punished after this manner or 
that") are Babylonian throughout. So also the sacer- 
dotal customs and the methods of offering sacrifices Avere 
profoundly influenced by Babylonian models ; and it is a 
remarkable fact that Israelitic traditions are altogether at 
variance in their accounts of the origin of the Sabbath, — 
as will be rendered apparent by a comparison of Exodus 
XX. 11 and Deuteronomy v. 15. But now the matter is 
clearer. 

The Babylonians also had their Sabbath day {sha- 
battti) , and a calendar of feasts and sacrifices has been 
unearthed according to which the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 



38 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

28tli da3\s of every montli were set apart as da^^s on which 
no work should be done, on which the king should not 
change his robes, nor mount his chariot, nor offer sacri- 
fices, nor render legal decisions, nor eat of boiled or 
roasted meats, on which not even a physician should lay 
hands on the sick. Now this setting apart of the sev- 
enth day for the propitiation of the gods is really under- 
stood from the Babylonian point of view, and there can 
therefore be scarcely the shadow of a doubt that in the 
last resort we are indebted to this ancient nation on the 
banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris for the plenitude 
of blessings that flows from our day of Sabbath or Sun- 
day rest. 

And more still. There is a priceless treasure in the 
Berlin Museum, a tablet of clay, containing the Babylo- 
nian legend of how it came to pass that the first man for- 
feited the boon of immortality. The place where this 
tablet was found, namely El-Amarna in Eg^^pt, and the 
numerous dots scattered over it in red Egj^ptian ink, 
showing the pains that some Egyptian scholar had taken 
to master the intricacies of the foreign text, are ocular 
evidence of the zeal with which the productions of Baby- 
lonian literature were cultivated over the vast extent of 
territory which stretched from Canaan to the land of the 
Pharaohs. Shall we be astonished, therefore, to learn 
that entire C3xles of Biblical stories have been suddenly 
brought to light from the darkness of the Babylonian 
treasure-heaps, in much purer and more primitive form 
than they exist in the Bible itself? 
I The Babylonians divided their history into two great 

periods : that before the Flood and that after the Flood. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 39 

Babylonia was in the true sense of the word the land of 
deluges. Like all alluvial lowlands bordering on great 
streams that flow into the sea, it was exposed to floods of 
the direst and most unique character. It is the home of 
the cyclone or tornado, Mitli its accompaniment of earth- 
quake and cloudburst. Only twenty-five years ago, in 
the year 1876, a tornado of this character gathered in the 
Bay of Bengal, and amid the crashing of thunder and 
with a violence so terrific as to dismast ships distant 
nearly two hundred miles, approached the delta of the 
Ganges, met the ebbing tide, and engulfing it in its own 
titanic tidal-wave, hurled oceans of water over an area of 
141 square leagues to a depth of 45 feet, drowning 215,000 
human beings, and only losing its strength as it broke 
against the highlands that lay beyond. Now the credit 
belongs to the celebrated Viennese geologist, Eduard 
Suess, for having discovered the exact and detailed de- 
scription of just such a tornado in the Babylonian story 
of the Flood inscribed on this tablet (Fig. 42) from the 
library of Sardanapalus at Nineveh and committed to 
writing 2000 years before Christ. The sea plays the prin- 
cipal part in this flood, and therefore the ark of the Baby- 
lonian Noah, Xisuthros, is cast back upon a spur of the 
Armenio-Medean mountains ; but in other respects it is 
the same old story of the Flood, so familiar to us all. - 
Xisuthros receives from the god of the watery deep 
the command to build a ship of certain dimensions, to 
coat it thoroughly with pitch, and to put on board of it 
his entire family together with the seeds of all living 
things. The ship is entered, its doors are closed, it is 
cast adrift upon the devastating waves, and is finally 



40 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



stranded upon a mountain bearinf^ the name of Nizir. 
Then follows the famous passage: " On the seventh day 
I took forth a dove and released it ; the dove flew hither 
and thither, but finding no resting-place returned." We 
then read that a swallow was sent forth ; it also found no 
resting-place and returned. Finally a raven was sent 
forth, which, noticing that the waters had subsided, did 



r»-»/-'.»^-..~7>,-'— /-r-r 








Fig. 42. Tablet Containing Babylonian Story of the Flood. 

not return. Xisuthros then abandons his ship and offers 
sacrifices on the summit of the mountain. The sweet 
odor was scented by the gods, etc., etc. 

This entire story, precisely as it is here written, 
afterwards travelled to Canaan, but owing to the totally 
different conformation of the land in this latter country, 
it was forgotten that the sea had played the principal role, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 41 

and we accordingly find in the Bible two distinct versions 
of the Flood, which are not only absolutely impossible 
from the point of view of natural science, but are also at 
diametrical variance with each other, the one giving as 
the duration of the Flood a period of 365 days and the 
other a period of 40 + (3 X 7) , or 61 days. We owe the 
discovery that two fundamentally different versions of the 
story of the Flood were welded together into one in the 
Bible, to the orthodox Catholic body surgeon of Louis 
XV., Jean Astruc, who, in the year 1753 first submitted, 
as Goethe expresses it, the books of Moses " to the probe 
and knife," and thus became the founder of Pentateuch 
criticism, or that branch of inquiry which seeks to in- 
crease and clarify our knowledge of the many diversified 
sources of which the Five Books of Moses are composed. 

These are facts which from the point of view of sci- 
ence are as immutable as rock, however stubbornly people 
on both sides of the Atlantic may close their e3'es to 
them. When we remember that minds of the stamp of 
Luther and Alelancthon once contemptuously rejected the 
Copernican S3^stem of astronomy, we may be certain that 
the results of the scientific criticism of the Pentateuch 
will tarry long for recognition. Yet it is just as certain 
that some day they will be openly admitted. 

The ten Babylonian kings who reigned before the 
Flood have also been accepted in the Bible as the ten 
antediluvian patriarchs, and the agreement is perfect in 
all details. 

In addition to the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, the 
eleventh tablet of which contains the story of the Flood, 



42 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

we possess another beautiful Babylonian poem, the story 
of the Creation. 

In the primordial beginning of things, according to 
this epic, down in the gloomy chaos, surged and raged 
the primeval waters, the name of which was Tiamat. 
When the gods declared their intention of forming an 
orderly cosmos out of the chaos, Tiamat arose (usually 
represented as a dragon, but also as a seven-headed ser- 
pent) , and made ready for combat to the death. Monsters 
of all descriptions she spawned from her might3^ depths, 
especially gigantic venom-blown serpents ; and in their 
company she set forth bellowing and snorting to her con- 
flict with the gods. The Celestials quaked with terror 
when they saw their direful foe. The god Marduk alone, 
the god of light, of dawn, and of the vernal sun, came 
forward to do battle with her, his sole stipulation being 
that sovereign rank among the gods should be accorded 
him. 

Then follows a splendid scene. First the god Mar- 
duk fastened a gigantic net to the East and the South, to 
the North and the West, lest any part of Tiamat should 
escape. He then mounted in shining armor and radiant 
with majesty his celestial chariot, which was drawn b3^ 
four spirited steeds, the admired cynosure of the eyes of 
all the surrounding gods. Straightwa}^ he made for the 
dragon and her dread embattled train, sending forth his 
challenge for the contest. Then Tiamat shrieked loudly 
and fiercel}^, till her deepmost foundations trembled and 
shook. She opened her maw to its uttermost, but before 
she could shut her lips Marduk made enter into her belly 
the evil hurricane. He seized his lance and pierced her 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 43 

heart. He cast her carcass down and placed himself upon 
it, whilst her helpers were taken captive and placed in 
close confinement. Thereupon Marduk cut Tiamat in 
twain, as cleanly as one would sever a fish, and of the 
one half he made the roof of heaven and of the other he 
made the earth ; and the heaven he inlaid with the moon, 
and the sun, and the stars, and the earth he covered with 
plants and animals, until finally the first man and the 
first woman, made of mingled clay and celestial blood, 
came forth from the hand of their creator. 

Since Marduk was the city-god of Babel, it is quite 
intelligible that this story found widespread diffusion in 
Canaan. Nay, the poets and prophets of the Old Testa- 
ment went so far as to attribute directly to Yahveh the 
heroic deeds of Marduk, and to extol him as the cham- 
pion that broke the head of the dragons in the water 
(Psalms Ixxiv. 13 et seq. ; Ixxxix. 10) , and under ^vhom 
the helpers of the dragon stooped (Job ix. 13) . 

Passages like the following from Isaiah li. 9: 
"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahveh; awake, 
as in the days of old, in the generations of ancient times. Art thou 
not it that hath cut Rahab in pieces and pierced the dragon?" 

or passages like that from Job xxvi, 12 : 

"He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understand- 
ing he smiteth the dragon," 

read like explanatory comments on the little image which 
our expedition found representing the god Marduk, of 
the powerful arm, the far-seeing eye, and the far-hearing 
ear, the symbol of intelligence clad in majestic glory, 
with the conquered dragon of the primeval waters at his 
feet (Fig. 44) . 




iMg. 43 FiiK ••Hi.\cK Oi;iiLisK."' 

(Lenormant, V., p. 329.) 
I Erected by Shalinaneser II. (860-825 B.C.) to 



Fig. 45. Conical Piece of Clay from a 
Babylonian Coffin. 
record the victories of his 31 military expeditions. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 45 

The priestly author that wrote the first chapter of 
Genesis took infinite pains to eliminate all mythological 
features from his story of the creation of the world. But 
since his story begins with the gloomy, watery chaos 
which bears precisely the same name as Tiamat, namely 
Tehofii^ and since this chaos was first divided by the 
light, and heaven and the earth appeared afterwards, and 
heaven was set with the sun, the moon, and the stars, 
and the earth was covered with flowers and with animals, 
and finally the first man and woman went forth from the 
hand of God, it will be seen that there is a very close re- 
lationship between the Biblical and the Babylonian story 
of the creation of the world ; and it will be obvious at the 
same time how absolutely futile all attempts are and will 
forever remain, to harmonise our Biblical story of the 
creation with the results of natural science. 

It is an interesting fact that echoes of this same con- 
flict between Marduk and Tiamat may still be heard in 
the Revelation of St. John the Divine, in the battle be- 
tween the archangel Michael and the beast of the deep, 
"that old serpent called the Devil and Satan." This en- 
tire group of stories, which is also represented in the tale 
of St. George and the dragon, brought by the crusaders 
from the East, is distinctively Babylonian in character; 
inasmuch as many, many hundred years before the Apoc- 
alypse and the first chapter of Genesis were written, we 
find this conflict between the powers of light and the 
powers of darkness renewed at the break of every day 
and the beginning of every spring, depicted in gorgeous 
relief on the walls of the Assyrian palaces (Fig. 46) . 

But the discovery of this' relationship is of still 



46 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



greater importance. The commandment not to do unto 
one's neighbor what one would not like to have done unto 
oneself is indelibly engraven on every human heart. 
" Thou shalt not shed the blood of thy neighbor," " thou 
shalt not draw near thy neighbor's wife," "thou shalt 
not take unto th3^self the garment of thy neighbor," — all 
these fundamental postulates of the human instinct of 






Fig. 46. Battle Between Marduk and Tiamat, the Powers of Light 

AND THE Powers of Darkness. 

(Ancient Assyrian bas-relief now in the British Museum.) 

self-preservation are read in the Babylonian records in 
precisely the same order as they are given in the fifth, 
sixth and seventh commandments of the Old Testament. 
But man is also a social being, and for this reason the 
commandments of humanity, charity, mercy, and love, 
also form an inalienable patrimony of the human race. 
Therefore when a Babylonian Magus was called to a man 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 47 

who was ill and began to inquire what sin had stretched 
him on the sick-bed, he did not rest satisfied with the re- 
cital of the greater sins of commission like murder and 
robbery, but he asked : " Hath this man refused to clothe 
one that was naked ; or hath he refused light to one that 
was imprisoned?" The Babylonian lays great stress, 
too, on the higher forms of human morality ; speaking 
the truth and keeping one's word were sacred duties with 
them, while to say "yes" with the lips and "no" with 
the heart was a punishable transgression. It is not sur- 
prising that infringements of these commandments were 
regarded by the Babylonians precisely as they were by 
the Hebrews, as sins^ for the Babylonians also in all their 
doings considered themselves as dependent on the gods. 
But it is certainly more remarkable that they also con- 
ceived all human afflictions, particularly sickness and 
death, as ?l pttnishment for sins. In Babel as in the Bible, 
the notion of sin dominates everything. Under these 
circumstances it is intelligible that Babylonian thinkers 
also pondered deeply over the problem of how it was pos- 
sible that a creature that had been created in the image 
of God and was God's own handiwork could have fallen a 
victim to sin and to death ; and the Bible has a profound 
and beautiful story of the temptation of woman by the 
serpent. 

The serpent again? That has an unmistakably Baby- 
lonian ring. It was doubtless the same serpent, the pri- 
mordial foe of the gods, that sought to revenge itself on 
the gods of light by seeking to estrange from them their 
noblest creature? Or was it the serpent of which it is 
once said that it "destroyed the dwelling-place of life"? 



48 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The question as to the origin of the Biblical story of the 
Fall of Man is of the utmost importance from the point 
of view of the history of religion as well as from that of 
the theology of the New Testament, which, as is well 
known, contrasts with the first Adam by whom sin and 
death were brought into the world, a second Adam. 

May I lift the veil, may I point to an old Babylonian 
cylinder-seal (Fig. 47) , on which may be seen in the 
center a tree bearing pendent fruits, to the right a man, 

distinguishable by his ' 
horns, which are the S3an- 
bol of strength, to the left 
a woman, both with their 
hands outstretched to- 
J ward the fruit, and be- 
^. c -r c hind the woman the ser- 

Fig. 47. Sacred Tree and Serpent. 
A Babylonian conception of the Fall of Man. pent? Is it UOt the VCry 

'^'^ '"^ acme of likelihood that 

there is some connection between this old Babylonian 
picture and the Biblical tale of the Fall of Man? 

Man dies, and while his body is buried in the grave 
his departed soul descends into "the land of no return- 
ing," into Sheol, into Hades, into the gloomy, dust- 
impregnated localit}^, where the shades flutter around \ 
like birds and lead a joyless and sodden existence. Dust! /j 1 
covers the doors and the bolts, and everything in which; 
the heart of man took delight is mouldy and dust-laden^ 

/"^ With such a disconsolate outlook it is intelligible 

/ 
that both Hebrews and Babylonians looked upon length 

of days here below as the sovereign boon ; and on every 

single one of the great flag-stones with which the holy 




BABEL AND BIBLE. 49 

Street of Marduk in Babylon was paved, and which was 
discovered by the German expedition to that city, there 
was engraved a prayer of Nebuchadnezzar which closed 
with the words: "O, Lord Marduk, grant to us great 
length of days ! " 

But strange to say, the Babylonian conception of the 
Underworld is one degree pleasanter than that of the Old 
Testament. On the twelfth tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, 
the Babylonian Underworld is described in the minutest 
details. We read there of a space situated beneath the 
Underworld which was apparently reserved for souls of 
unusual piety and "in which they reposed on beds of 
ease and quaffed clear water. ' ' 

Many Babylonian coffins have been found in Warka, 
Nippur, and Babel, but the Berlin Museum recently ac- 
quired a small conical piece of clay (Fig. 45) , which has 
evidently been taken from a coffin of this kind, and the 
inscription of which plaintively requests that whosoever 
may find the coffin shall leave it undisturbed and unin- 
jured in its original resting-place ; and the text concludes 
with words of blessing for him who performs so kind a 
deed : "May his name be blessed in the Upperworld, and 
in the Underworld may his departed spirit drink of clear 
water." 

In Sheol, therefore, there exists a place for particu- 
larly pious souls, where they repose on beds of ease and 
quaff clear water. The remainder of Sheol, therefore, 
appears to be especially adapted to the needs of the im- 
pious and to be not only dusty but to be also without 
water, or at most furnishing "roily water,"— in any 
event a place of thirst. 



50 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

In the Book of Job (xxiv. 18) , wliicli appears to be 
extremely conversant with Babylonian modes of thought, 
we find comparisons drawn between the arid, waterless 
desert which is reserved for those that have sinned, and 
the garden with fresh, clear w^ater which is reserved for 
the pious. And in the New Testament, which has most 
curiously amalgamated this sentiment with the last verse 
of the Book of Isaiah, we read of a flaming hell in which 
the rich man languishes from want of w^ater, and of a 
garden (for that is the meaning of Paradise) full of fresh, 
clear water for Lazarus . 

And the pictures which painters and poets, theo- 
logians and priests, and last of all Mahomet the prophet, 
have drawn of this Hell and this Paradise, are well 
known. 

Behold yonder poor Moslem, sick and feeble, who on 
account of his weakness has been abandoned by the cara- 
van in the desert. A jug filled with water is by his side. 
With his own hands he digs his shallow grave in the des- 
ert sands, resignedly awaiting his death. His eyes are 
aglow with expectation, for in a few moments angels Mill 
issue from the open portals of Paradise and greet him 
with the w^ords : ^'' Selain ^alaika^ thou hast been a god- 
fearing man ; enter therefore for all eternity the garden 
that Allah has prepared for his own." 

The garden stretches before him like the vast ex- 
panse of heaven and earth. Luxuriant groves casting 
plentiful shadows and laden with sweet fruits are inter- 
sected in all directions with babbling brooks and dotted 
with bubbling springs ; while aerial bowers rise from the 
banks of the streams. Paradisian glory suffuses the 



BABKL AND BIBLE. 



51 



countenances of the beatified ones, who are filled with 
happiness and serenity. They wear green brocaded gar- 
ments made of the finest silk ; their arms are adorned 
with gold and silver spangles ; they lie on couches with 
lofty bolsters and soft pillows, and at their feet are 
thick carpets. So they rest, 
seated opposite one another 
at richly -furnished tables 
which offer them ever^^thing 
their hearts desire. Brim- 
ming goblets go the rounds, 
and youths endowed with 
immortality and resembling 
scattered pearls carry silver 
beakers and crystal vessels 
filled with Mai'n, the most 
delicious and clearest water 
from the spring Tasnim, 
from which the archangels 
drink, redolent with cam- 
phor and ginger. And this 
water is mixed with the 
rarest old wine, of which 
one can drink as much as 
one pleases, for it does not 
inebriate and causes no headaches. 

And then there are the maidens of Paradise ! Maidens 
with skin as soft and delicate as the ostrich egg, with 
voluptuous bosoms, and with eyes like glittering pearls 
concealed in shells of oysters, — gazelle-like eyes full of 
chaste but enrapturing glances. Two and seventy of 




Fig, 48. Assyrian Angel. 

Type representing manly strength and 

intelligence. (Bas-relief of Kuyunjik. 

Lenormant, IV., pp. 432-433.) 



52 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



these Paradisian maidens may every god-fearing man 
choose unto himself, in addition to the wives that he pos- 
sessed on earth, provided he cares to have them (and the 
good man will always cherish desire for the good) . All 
hatred and envy has departed from the breasts of the de- 
vout ones; no gossip, no slander, is heard in Paradise. 
^^ Se/(7?f/j Selam!^^ everywhere; and all utterances con- 




Fig. 49. Angels with Eagle Heads 
The Holy Tree in the Centre. (British Museum.) 



elude with the ringing words : cl-haindii lillalii rabbi-l- 
''alainiu^ the praise is the Lord's, the master of all crea- 
tures. _: 
This is the culminating point in the development of 
that simple and unpretentious Bab3'lonian conception of 
the crystal-clear water which god-fearing men M-ere des- 
tined to drink in Slicol. And these conceptions of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



53 



torments of Hell and of the blissful pleasures of Paradise, 
to-da3^ swa3^ the hearts of untold millions. \^ ^- 

It is well-known, also, that the conceptions of the '^ 
messengers of the gods, or of the angels^ Avith which the 
Egyptians were utterlj^ unacquainted, are characteristi- 
cally Bab3donian, and also that the conception of cheru- 



10 > 



r^ 




lJ^I 



Fig. 50. Winged Cherub, with Body of Bull and Human Head 
(After Layard.) 

bim and seraphim and of the guardian angels that watch 
over the waj's of men had its origin in Bab3don. The 
Babylonian rulers stood in need of hosts of messengers 
to bear their behests into all quarters of their dominions ; 
and so also their gods were obliged to have at their beck 



54 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



and call legions of messengers or angels, — messengers 
with the intelligence of men, and therefore having the 
form of men, bnt at the same time equipped with wings, 
in order to be able to carry through the winds of heaven 
the commands of the gods to the inhabitants of earth ; in 
addition, these angels were invested with the keenness of 
vision and the rapidity of flight of the eagle ; and to those 




Fig. 50a. Winged Cherub, with Body of Lion and Human Head 
(After Layard.) 

whose chief ofhce it was to guard the entrance to their 
divine masters was imparted the unconquerable strength 
of the bull, or the awe-inspiring majesty of the lion. 
(Figs. 48, 49, 50, and 50^-.) 

The Babylonian and Assyrian angels, like those in 
Ezekiel's vision, are very often of hybrid shape. Take, 
for example, the cherubim of which a type is given in 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



55 



Fig. 50, with, their wings, their bull's bodies, and their 
honest, serious human countenances. Then again we 
find types like that discovered in the palace of Ashurna- 
zirpal (Fig. 51) , which bears the closest possible resem- 
blance to our conception of angels. These noble and 
radiant figures, which art has rendered so attractive and 
familiar in our eyes, will always retain a kindly place in 
our hearts. 




Fig. 51. Angels WITH Human Heads. 
(Noble types closely resembling the Christian conception of angels.) 

But the demons and the devils^ whether they take 
for us the form of the enemies of man or that of the 
primordial foes of God, — to these we were destined to bid 
farewell for all eternity, for the ancient Persian dualism 
was not after our hearts. " I form the light and create 
darkness: I make peace and create evil: it is /, YaJiveh^ 
that do all these things y So justly declares the greatest 



56 



BABEL AND BIBLE, 



prophet of the Old Testament, Isaiah (xlv. 7) . Demons 
like that represented in Fig. 52,— though such pictures 
are not without interest for the history of duelling,— or 
caricatures like that represented in Fig. 53, may be com- 




Fig. 52. Duel of Lion-Headed and Eagle-Footed Demons. 
(British Museum. After Lenormant.) 

mitted forever and aye to the obscurity of the Babylonian 
hills from which they have risen. (See also Fig. 54.) 

In his excavations at Khorsabad, Victor Place dis- 
covered the supply-depot of the palace of Sargon. One 
of the store-rooms contained pottery of all sorts and sizes, 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



57 



and another utensils and implements made of iron. Here 
were found arranged in beautiful order abundant supplies 
of cHains, nails, plugs, mattocks, and boes, and tbe iron 
bad been so admirably wrought and was so well preserved 
that it rang like a bell when struck ; and some of these 
implements which were then twenty-five centuries old 
could be forthwith put into 
actual use by the Arabian 
workmen. 

This drastic intrusion of 
Assyrian antiquity upon our 
own days naturally fills us 
with amazement, and yet it is 
nothing more than what has 
happened in the intellectual 
domain. When we distinguish 
the twelve signs of the zodiac 
and call them Aries, Taurus, 
Gemini, etc. (see Fig, 55) , 
when we divide the circle into 
360 parts, the hour into 60 
minutes, and the minute into 
60 seconds, and so on, — in all 
this, Sumerian and Babylo- 
nian civilisation still lives with us to-day. 

And possibly I have also been successful in my en- 
deavor to show that many Babylonian features still cling, 
through the medium of the Bible, to our religious think- 
ing. 

The elimination from our religious thought of the 
purely human conceptions derived from these admittedly 




Fig. 53. Babylonian DhViL. 

Demon of the Southwest Wind. 

(Louvre. After Smith ) 



58 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



talented peoples, and the liberation of our thought gen- 
erally from the shackles of deep-rooted prejudices, will in 
no wise impair true religion and the true religious spirit, 
as these have been taught us by the prophets and poets 
of the Old Testament, but most sublimely of all by 
Jesus; on the contrary, both will come forth from this 






-. Alii 3^} j.4ii % 

''1'/i '" I 1 \ W ^ 








Fig. 54 A Demon Supporting a Tablet.' 
(Assyrian bronze tablet. After Lenormant.) 

process of purification far truer and far more intensified 
than ever they were before. 

I may be allowed finally a word with regard to the 
feature that invests the Bible with its main significance 

' The two upper horizontal strips in the left-hand side of the figure represent 
the heavens (the celestial bodies and the celestial genii). The third strip exhibits 
a funeral scene on earth. The fourth strip represents the Underworld bathed in 
the floods of the ocean. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



59 



from the point of view of general history, — its monothe- 
ism. Here too Babel early opened a new and undreamt-of 
prospect. 

It is remarkable, but no one can definitely say what 
our Teutonic word God originally signified. Philologists 
vacillate between "inspiring timidity" and "delibera- 
tion." But the word which the Semitic Canaanite races, 




Fig. 55. Sagittarius and Scorpio. 
Signs of the Zodiac, as represented by the Babylonians. (Lenormant, V., p. 180.) 

to whom the Babylonians are most nearly related and 
from whom the Israelites afterward sprang, coined for 
God, is not only lucid as to its meaning, but conceives 
the notion of divinity under so profound and exalted a 
form that this word alone suffices to shatter the legend 
that "the Semites were, time out of mind, amazingly 
deficient in religious instinct; " while it also refutes the 



60 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

popular modern conception that the religion of Yahveh, 
and therefore also our Christian belief in God, is ulti- 
mately sprung from a species of fetishism and animism 
such as is common among the South Sea cannibals or the 
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. 

There is a remarkably beautiful passage in the Ko- 
ran, VI, 75 et seq., which so fascinated Goethe that he 
expressed the desire to see it dramatised. Mahomet has 
mentally put himself in the place of Abraham, and is 
endeavoring to realise the manner in which Abraham had 
reached the monotheistic idea. He says: "And when 
the gloom of night had fallen, Abraham stepped forth 
into the darkness ; and behold, there was a star shining 
above him. Then he cried out in his gladness : ' This is 
my Lord! ' But when the star grew dim, he said: 'I 
love not those that grow dim.' And when the moon rose 
radiantly in the firmament, he cried out in exceeding 
gladness : ' This is my Lord ! ' But when it set, he said : 
'Alas, I shall surely be one of the people that must needs 
err.' But when the sun rose dazzlingly in the morning, 
he said: 'This is my Lord, this is the greatest of all! ' 
But when the sun set, then he said: 'O, my people, 
verily I am rid of your idolatry of many gods, and I lift 
up my countenance to him alone that created the heavens 
and the earth.' " 

That ancient Semitic word for God, so well known 
to us from the sentence, Eli Eli lama azabtani^ is El^ 
and its meaning is the goal ; the goal toward which are 
directed the eyes of all men that look Heavenward only, 
"which every man sees, which every man beholds from 
afar" (Job xxxvi. 25) ; the goal to which man stretches 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



61 



forth liis hands, for which the human heart longs as its 
release from the uncertainties and imperfections of this 
earthly life, — this goal the ancient Semitic nomads called 
El^ or God. And inasmuch as there can in the nature of 
things be only one goal, we find among the old Canaanite 
races which settled in Babylonia as early as 2500 years 
before Christ, and to whom Hammurabi himself be- 
longed, such beautiful proper names as "God hath 
given," "God be with thee," "With the help of my God 
I go my way," etc. 




Fig. 56. Clay Tablets Containing the Words " Yahveh is God." 
(Time of Hammurabi or Amraphel. British Museum.) 



But more ! Through the kindness of the director of 
the Egyptian and Assyrian department of the British 
Museum I am able to show you here pictures of three 
little clay tablets (Fig. 56). What, will be asked, is to 
be seen on these tablets, fragile broken pieces of clay, 
with scarcely legible characters scratched on their sur- 
face? True enough, but they are valuable from the fact 
that their date may be exactly fixed as that of the time of 
Hammurabi, one of them having been made during the 
reign of his father, Sin-muballit ; but still more so from 



62 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

the circumstance that they contain three names which 
are of the very greatest significance from the point of 
view of the historj^ of religion. They are the words : 

^ ^ ^ »f 
la- ah- ve- ibi 

la- hu- inn- ilu 
Yahveh is God. Yahveh, the Abiding One, the Perma- 
nent One (for such is, as we have reason to believe, the 
significance of the name) , who, unlike man, is not to- 
morrow a thing of the past, but one that endures forever, 
that lives and labors for all eternity above the broad, re- 
splendent, law-bound canopy of the stars, — it was this 
Yahveh that constituted the primordial patrimony of 
those Canaanite tribes from which centuries afterward 
the twelve tribes of Israel sprang. 

The religion of the Canaanite tribes that emigrated 
to Babylonia rapidly succumbed, indeed, before the poly- 
theism that had been practised for centuries by the an- 
cient inhabitants of that country. But this polytheism 
by no means strikes an unsympathetic chord in us, at 
least so far as its conception of its gods is concerned, all 
of whom were living, omnipotent, and omnipresent be- 
ings that hearkened unto the prayers of men, and who, 
however much incensed the^- might become at the sins of 
men, were always immediately ready again with offers of 
mercy and reconciliation. And likewise the representa- 
tions which these deities found in Babylonian art, as for 
instance that of the sun-god of Sippar enthroned in his 
Holy of Holies (Fig. 57)' are far removed from every- 

' See also Fig. 31. 







Fig 57. The Sun-God of Sippar Enthroned in His Holy of Holies. 
(Lenormant, V., p. 301.) 



64 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



thing that savors of the ugly, the ignoble, or the gro- 
tesque. The Prophet Ezekiel (chap, i.) in his visions of 
his Lord saw God enter on a living chariot formed of four 
winged creatures with the face of a man, a lion, an ox, 
and an eagle, and on the heads of these cherubim he saw 
(x. 1) a crystal surface supporting a sapphire throne on 
which God was seated in the likeness of a man, bathed in 
the most resplendent radiance. Noting carefully these 




Fig. 58. Babylonian Cylinder-Seal with Representation 
Resembling the Vision of Ezekiel. 



details, can we fail to observe the striking resemblance 
which his vision presents to the representation of a god 
which has been found on a very ancient Babylonian cjd- 
inder-seal (Fig. 58) ? Standing on an odd sort of vessel, 
the prow and stem of which terminate in seated human 
figures, may be seen two cherubim with their backs to 
each other and with their fac^s, which are human in form, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 65 

turned to tlie front. Their attitude leads us to infer that 
there are two corresponding figures at the rear. On their 
backs reposes a surface, and on this surface stands a 
throne on which the god sits, bearded and clothed in long 
robes, with a tiara on his head, and in his right hand 
what are apparently a scepter and a ring : and behind the 
throne, standing ready to answer his beck and call, is a 
servitor of the god, who may be likened to the man 
"clothed with linen" (Ezekiel ix. 3, and x. 2) that exe- 
cuted the behests of Yahveh. 

Notwithstanding all this, however, and despite the 
fact that many liberal and enlightened minds openly ad- 
vocated the doctrine that Nergal and Nebo, that the 
moon-god and the sun-god, the god of thunder Ramman, 
and all the rest of the Babylonian Pantheon w^ere one in 
Marduk, the god of light, still polytheism, gross poly- 
theism, remained for tJirce thousand years the Babylonian 
state religion, — a sad and significant warning against the 
indolence of men and races in matters of religion, and 
against the colossal power which may be acquired by a 
strongly organised priesthood based upon it. 

Even the religion of Yahveh, under the magic stand- 
ard of which Moses united into a single nation the twelve 
nomadic tribes of Israel, remained infected for centuries 
with all manner of human infirmities, — with all the un- 
sophisticated anthropomorphic conceptions that are char- 
acteristic of the childhood of the human race, with Israel- 
itic particularism, with heathen sacrificial customs, and 
with the cult of legal externalities. Even its intrinsic 
worth was impotent to restrain the nation from worship- 
ping the Baal and the Astarte of the indigenous Canaan- 



66 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ite race, until those titanic minds, the prophets, discov- 
ered in Yahveh the god of the universe, and pleaded for 
a quickening of the inner spirit of religion with exhorta- 
tions like that of Joel, " to rend their hearts and not their 
garments," and until the divinely endowed singers of the 
Psalms expressed the concepts of the prophetic leaders in 
verses which awaken to this day a living echo in the 
hearts of all nations and times, — until, in fine, the proph- 
ets and the psalmists paved the way for the adhortation 
of Jesus to pray to God in spirit and truth and to strive 
by dint of individual moral endeavor in all spheres of life 
after higher and higher perfection, — after that perfection 
which is our Father's in Heaven. 



SECOND LECTURE 



IN EXPLANATION. 

WHO is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? 
This that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his 

strength ? 
"It is I (Yahveh) that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." 
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth 

in the vvinefat ? 
"I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the peoples there was no man 

with me : 
Yea, I trod them in mine anger, and trampled them in my fury ; 
And their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my 

raiment. 
For the day of vengeance was in mine heart, and the year of my redemption was 

come. 
And I looked, and there was none to help ; and I wondered that there was none to 

uphold : 
Therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and my fury, it upheld me. 
And I trod down the peoples in anger, and made them drunk with my fury, 
And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. 

In language, style, and sentiment, forsooth a genuine Bedouin 
song of battle and victory ! Not at all ! This utterance of Isaiah 
Ixiii. 1-6, and a hundred other prophetic utterances full of inex- 
tinguishable hatred toward the races round about : toward Edom 
and Moab, Asohu and Babel, Tyre and Egypt, mostly masterpieces 
of Hebrew rhetoric, are to be accepted as representing the ethical 
prophetism of Israel, and this at its high tide ! These outpourings 
of political jealousy and of passionate hatred on the part of long 
vanished generations, born of certain contemporary conditions and 
perhaps comprehensible from a merely human standpoint, must 
serve us children of the twentieth century after Christ, must serve 



70 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

even Occidental and Christian races, as a religious guide for refine- 
ment and edification! Instead of losing ourselves "in grateful 
admiration " in the contemplation of God's manifestation in our 
own people, from primitive Germanic times down to the present 
day, we continue, from ignorance, indifference or blindness, to 
concede to those early Israelitic oracles the character of a "revela- 
tion," which cannot be justified either in the light of science or in 
that of religion or of ethics. 

The more deeply I dive into the spirit of the prophetic writ- 
ings of the Old Testament, the more I shrink from Yahveh, who 
slaughters the nations with the insatiable sword of his wrath, who 
has but one favorite child, and surrenders all other nations to night 
and shame and destruction, who said even to Abraham (Genesis 
xii. 2): "I will bless them who bless thee, and those who curse 
thee, them will I curse" — and I seek refuge with him who taught 
in life and in death : "Bless them that curse you," and I hide, full 
of trust and joy and earnest longing for moral perfection, in the 
God to whom Jesus taught us to pray, the God who is a loving and 
just father to all men on earth. 

Charlotteneurg, May i, 1903. 



SECOND I.ECTURE. 

WHY this opposition to "Babel and Bible" when 
logic itself compels this sequence of the words? 
And how can anyone expect to be able to suppress these 
serious questions, which involve the entire Bible with the 
catchword "Primitive Revelation," when this is shown 
to be false by a single forgotten verse of the Old Testa- 
ment? And does in fact "the ethical monotheism of Is- 
rael" in its function as " a real revelation of the living 
God," constitute the unassailable bulwark in the conflict 
of opinions which Babel has aroused in these later days? 

It is a pity that so many people permit their delight 
in the great advantage which Babel is constantly offering 
us as " interpreter and illustrator" of the Bible to be 
spoiled by a narrow regard for dogmatic questions to such 
a degree that they even entirely ignore that advantage. 
And yet, how grateful all readers of and commentators 
on the Bible must needs be for the new knowledge which 
has been revealed, and is constantly being revealed, to us 
by the laborious excavations among the ruins of Babylon 
and Assyria ! 

On principle I too avoid continually speaking of 
"confirmations" of the Bible. For indeed the Old Tes- 
tament as a source of ancient history would be in a bad 



12 



BABEIv AND BIBLE. 



case if it required everywhere confirmatiou by cuneiform 
inscriptions. But when the Biblical Books of Kings (2 



^.^'IciliSc^ 



m w^:^^*:'^r^^:^: 



22^ 



F'g- 59- The Ruins at Tell Ibrahim, Site of the City of Kutha. 

Kings xvii. 30) states that the inhabitants of the city of 
Kutha who settled in Samaria worshipped the god Nergal, 




Fig. 6o. Nergal, the 1\\tron God of Kutha. 

and we now know, not alone that this Babylonian city of 
Kutha (Fig. 59) lies buried under the ruins at Tell Ibra- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



73 



him, twenty-one miles northeast of Babylon, but also that 
a cuneiform inscription expressly informs us that the 
patron god of Kutha was called Nergal (Fig. 60) , — this 
is really valuable information. 

While there seemed to be no prospect of ever dis- 
covering the town and district of Chalach, to which a 
portion of the Israelites taken captive by Sargon were 







.-!^\1X'-i>r- 



'/^ 










Fig.6i. Black Obelisk 
OF Shalmaneser n. 



Fig. 62. Assyrian Letter. 

Written from Chalach, the Babylonian home of 

the exiled Israelites. 



transplanted (2 Kings xvii. 6 ; xviii. 11), we now pos- 
sess, from the library of Asurbanipal at Nineveh, a letter 
written from Chalach (Fig. 62) , in which a certain Mar- 
duk-nadin-achi, laying emphasis upon his steadily mani- 
fested lo^^alty, petitions the king to help him regain his 
estate, which had been given him by the king's father, 
and which had supported him for fourteen 3^ears until at 



V^t«4?TlT 




n^Hf ^ 







f ^ ^T#y^' 7 ^ ^ ^-wW^i¥^^^x^>^T^ T^ 




Fig. 63. 



'>ijfr^ ^^ ^^^-i 




f ' 



» ' 











Fig. 64. 







>^1T4M/I^^>r^<t^>0 r>w^ ^ ►•^^ ^TT^^TrTI^ 




Fie; 65. 



^ "^ M.^:^^UU^^-^ '^<^.LM 




phk- ^^^^^>^^^f^>f^)::^ \>^ ^ ^ 




!4R5«H<THTi<^TF)^ W H"^,<^T(« ^ ^ ^ 




^• 



r.>!i^f-< >^T^'*V*^„ fe«^^,>^. 




Fig. 66. 



78 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



last the governor of the land of Mashalzi had taken it 
from him. 

As to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of 
Israel, who are presented to oui eyes so vividly by the 
famous black obelisk of Shalmaneser II. (Fig. 61) in its 
second row of relief figures (Figs. 63-66) — they are the 
ambassadors of King Jehu (840 B. C.) with gifts of vari- 
ous sorts, — we now know all three 
of the localities where the ten tribes 
found their grave: Chalach, some- 
what farther east than the moun- 
tainous source of the upper Zab, 
called Arrapachitis ; the province 
of Goshen along the Chabor prob- 
ably not far from Nisibis ; and 
thirdly, the villages of Media. 

Until recent times the con- 
quest and plundering of Egyptian 
Thebes mentioned by the prophet 
Nahum (iii. 8 ff.) has been a 
puzzle, so that no one knew to 
what the words of the prophet re- 
ferred : 

"Art thou (Nineveh) better 
than No-amon (i. e., Thebes), that is situate in the 
waters of the Nile, with waters round about her. . .? 
Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her 
young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all 
the streets, and they cast lots for her honorable men, and 
all her great men were bound in chains." 

But then there was discovered at Nineveh the mag- 




Fig. 67. Assurbanipal's Ten 
Sided Clay Prism. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



79 



iiificent ten-sided clay prism of Asurbanipal (Fig. 67) , 
whicli reports in its second column that it was Asurbani- 
pal who, pursuing the Egyptian king Urdamane from 
Memphis, reached Thebes, conquered it and carried away 
silver, gold, and precious stones, the entire treasure of 
the palace, the inhabitants, male and female, a great and 
immeasurable booty, from Thebes to Nineveh the city 
of his dominion. 

And how much the language of the Old Testament 




Fig. 68. Antelope Leukoryx. 

is indebted to the cuneiform literature ! The Old Testa- 
ment mentions repeatedly an animal called re'em, a fierce, 
untamable animal armed with fearful horns (Psalms xxii. 
22) and most nearly related to the ox (Deuteronomy 
xxxiii. 17; Psalms xxix. 6; comp. Isaiah xxxiv. 7), to 
use which in field labor on the plain like a common ox 
seems to the poet of the Book of Job (xxxix. 9 ff.) a ter- 
rible, an inconceivable thought: "Will the wild ox be 
content to serve thee, or will he abide by th}^ crib? Canst 



80 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



tiiou bind the wild ox with his guiding-band in thy fur- 
row? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? " 

Despite the fact that the buffalo now roams in herds 
the forests beyond the Jordan, it w^as nevertheless diffused 
over Asia Minor from Arachosia onl^^ a short time before 
the beginning of our era ; hence it had become customary 
as a result of comparison with Arabian usage, which 
styles the antelopes "cattle of the desert" and applies 
the name I'l^'m, to anlilopc Icukojyx (Fig. 68) , to under- 




Fig. 6g. The Re'em,' or Wild Bull. 
(After a bas-relief in the palace of Sennacherib.) 

stand under the Hebrew re'em this species of antelope. 
But as this antelope, despite its long, sharp horns, is a 
slender-limbed and soft-eyed creature, it was be3'ond com- 
prehension liow^ it should occur to a poet to imagine it 
hitched to a plow and then to shudder at the thought. 

The cuneiform inscriptions have informed us what 
the remit is: it is the powerful, fierce-eyed, wild ox with 
stout curved horns, an animal of the w^ood and the moun- 
tain, which scales the highest summits, an animal of tre- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



81 



mendous physical strength, the chase for which, like that 
for the lion, was especially popular with the Assyrian 
kings on account of its hazardousness. The presence of 




Fig. 70. Hunting the Re'em. 



this animal, which is most closely related to the bos urus 
of Csesar (Bell. Gall. VI. 28) and to the wiseiit (bison) 




Fig. 71. The Hill of Babil. 

of Middle-High-German literature, is scientifically estab- 
lished for the region of Alt. Lebanon : the cuneiform in- 
scriptions mention the re'em countless times, and the 
alabaster reliefs of the Ass3-rian royal palace present it 
very clearly to our eyes. (Fig. 69.) 



!( I 






■-Bmu 

4 ssW ! : , , ,:■■ 





CL, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



83 



King Nebuchadnezzar reports that he adorned the 
city gate of Babylon which is dedicated to the goddess 
Istar with burned bricks upon which were represented 
renins and gigantic serpents standing upright. The re- 
discovery of this Istar Gate and its excavation to a depth 
of fourteen meters, where the underflow begins, consti- 
tutes one of the most valuable achievements of recent 
years in our exploration of the ruins of Babylon. 

Hail to thee, thou hill of Babil (Fig. 71) , and to all 
thy fellows on the palm-bordered banks of the Euphrates ! 




Fig. 73. The Wild Bull (Re'em) on the Istar Gate. 
Brick mosaic in enameled colors. 

(Fig. 72.) How the heartbeats quicken when, after 
weeks of picking and shoveling under the glowing sun- 
beams of the East, suddenly the structure that has been 
sought is revealed, when upon a giant block of stone cov- 
ered with characters the name "Istar Gate" is read, and 
gradually the great double gate of Babylon, flanked 
northward on each side by three mighty towers, rises in 
a splendid state of preservation from the bowels of the 



84 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

earth! And wherever 3^011 may look, on the surfaces of 
the towers as well as upon the inner walls of the gate- 
way, droves of remus carved in relief, the uppermost row 
in brilliant contemporary enamel, standing forth in fasci- 
nating splendor of colors against the deep blue back- 
ground. (Fig. 7?>.) 

"Vigorously strides the wild ox with long paces, 
with proudly curved neck, with horns pointed threaten- 
ingly forward, ears laid back, and inflated nostrils; his 




Fig. 74. The Lion of Babylon. 
Brick mosaic in enameled colors. 

muscles are tense and swelling, his tail raised and yet 
falling stiffly downwards, — all as in Nature, but ideal- 
ised."' Where the smooth hide is white, horns and hoofs 
shine like gold ; where the hide is yellow, these are of 
malachite green, while in both kinds the long hair is col- 
ored dark blue. But a truly imposing effect is produced 
by a white ox in relief, in which the long hair, as well as 
the horns and hoofs, is tinted a delicate green. Thus 

' From a treatise on these relief figures by Walter Andrae. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 85 

the re 'em of the Istar Gate through which led the tri- 
umphal highway of Marduk proves to be a worthy com- 
panion for the widely known "lion of Babylon" which 
adorned the triumphal highway itself. (Fig. 74.) 

And Biblical science is enriched by still another ani- 
mal of the strangest sort, a fabulous animal, familiar to 
us from the days of our youthful religious instruction, 
and which could not fail to make a fascinating impression 
upon all who passed through the Istar Gate toward the 




Fig. 75. The Dragon of Babel. 
Enameled brick mosaic. 

palace of Nebuchadnezzar, — I refer to the Dragon of Ba- 
bel. (Fig. 75.) "With neck stretched far forward and 
looks darting poison the monster marches along," — it is 
a serpent, as is shown by the elongated head with its 
forked tongue, the long, scale-covered trunk and the 
wriggling tail, but at the same time it has the fore-legs 
of the panther while its hind-legs are armed with mon- 
strous talons ; in addition to all this it has on its head 
long, straight horns and a scorpion's sting in the end of 



86 ^ BABEL AND BIBLE. 

its tail. Thanks are due to all whose faithful labor con- 
tributes to secure such choice and exceedingly important 
archaeological treasures ! 

Quite apart from many such individual interpreta- 
tions and illustrations, Assyriology is restoring confi- 
dence in the authenticity of the text of the Old Testa- 
ment, which has for some time been so violently assailed. 
For, finding itself constantly face to face with more and 
more difficult texts full of rare words and phrases, it real- 
ises that there are also in the Old Testament scriptures 
great numbers of rare and even unique words and phrases ; 
it takes delight in these, attempts to interpret them from 
their context, and in not a few cases finds its efforts re- 
warded by the presence of these very same words and 
phrases in Assyrian. In this manner it recognises what 
a fatal error it is on the part of modern exegesis to make 
conjectural interpretations of such rare words and diffi- 
cult phrases, to "emend" them, and only too frequently 
to replace them with meaningless substitutes. In truth 
every friend of the Old Testament Scriptures should as- 
sist with all his might in bringing to light the thousands 
of clay tablets and all other sorts of written monuments 
that lie buried in Babylon, and which our expedition will 
bring to light as soon as the first objects set before it are 
accomplished, thereby making possible for the textual 
interpretation of the Old Testament more rapid and more 
important progress than it has experienced within the 
two thousand years preceding. 

Indeed, entire narratives of the Old Testament re- 
ceive their interpretation from Babylon. In our early 
youth we inherit the burden of the foolish notion of a 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 87 

Nebuchadnezzar who was turned into a beast ; for the 
Book of Daniel tells us (iv. 26-34) how the King of 
Babylon walked upon the roof of his palace, and after 
feasting his eyes once more on the splendor of the city 
he had built, received from heaven the prophecy that he 
should live, an exile from among men, with the beasts of 
the field and after the fashion of the beasts. Thereupon, 
according to account, Nebuchadnezzar ate grass in the 
wilderness like unto an ox, wet by the dew of heaven, 
while his hair grew like unto the feathers of the eagle and 
his finger-nails like unto birds' claws. 

Yet no educator of youth should ever have ventured 
to teach such things, and especially not after the appear- 
ance of Eberhard Schrader's treatise on The Insanity of 
Nebuchadnezzar ^ without at the same time pointing out 
the fact that the purer and more primitive form of this 
story has long been known in a Chkldasan legend trans- 
mitted to us in Abydenus. This tells us that Nebuchad- 
nezzar, after reaching the zenith of his power, went out 
upon the roof of his palace, inspired by a god, he ex- 
claimed' "I here, Nabuchodrosor, announce to you the 
coming of the calamity which neither Bel nor Queen 
Beltis can persuade the Fates to avert. Perses (that is, 
Cyrus) will come . . . and bring servitude upon you. O 
would that he, before my fellow-citizens perish, might be 
driven through the desert, where neither cities nor the 
track of men can be found, but where wild beasts graze 
and birds fly about, while he wanders about solitary in 
caves and gorges. But may a better lot . . . befall me." 

Who could fail to perceive in this that the Hebrew 
writer has made a free version of the Babylonian legend, 



88 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

especially since lie lets us see plainly in verse 16 that the 
very wording of the original was quite familiar to him ! 
What Nebuchadnezzar wishes for the enemy of the Chal- 
daeans, this the author of the pamphlets full of errors and 
carelessness which are combined to make the Book of 
Daniel, has Nebuchadnezzar suffer himself, in order to 
exemplify as drastically as possible to his countrymen, 
who were being persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes, the 
truth that God the Lord is able to humble deeply even 
the mightiest king who rebels against Yahveh. 

When shall we finally learn to distinguish the form 
from the content even within the covers of the Old Tes- 
tament ? 

The author of the Book of Jonah preaches to us two 
lofty doctrines : that no one can escape from God, and 
that no mortal dare presume to dictate terms to God's 
mercy and patience, or even toset limits for them. But 
the form in which these truths are clothed is human, is 
fancifully Oriental, and if we should continue to believe 
to-day that Jonah while in the whale's belly prayed a 
conglomeration of passages from the Psalms, part of which 
were not composed until several centuries after the de- 
struction of Nineveh, or that the King of Nineveh did 
such deep penance that he gave commands even to oxen 
and sheep to put on sackcloth, we should be sinning 
against the reason bestowed upon us by God. 

But all these are details which sink into insignifi- 
cance under an intenser light. 

It was an exceedingly happy thought which struck 
the representatives of the various German ecclesiastical 
bodies who went to Jerusalem as guests of the German 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 89 

Emperor to take part in tlie dedication of the Churcli of 
Our Saviour, that of founding in Jerusalem a "German 
Kvangelical Institute for the Archaeology of the Holy 
Land." O would that our young theologians might go 
thither, and not merely in the cities, but better still out 
in the desert, familiarise themselves with the manners 
and customs of the Bedouins, which are still so com- 
pletely the same as in the times of Ancient Israel, and 
plunge deeply into the Oriental mode of thought and ex- 
pression : might listen to the story-tellers in the tents of 
the desert or hear the descriptions and accounts of the 
sons of the desert themselves, full of fancy that bubbles 
up vigorously and unhampered and only too often ex- 
ceeds unconsciously the bounds of fact ! 

And if even the modern Orient, wherever we go and 
listen and look, furnishes such an abundance of sugges- 
tions for the interpretation of the Bible, how much more 
will this be the case with the study of the ancient litera- 
ture of the Babylonians and Ass3"rians which is in part 
contemporary with the Old Testament! Everywhere 
there are more or less important agreements between the 
two literatures which are most closely related in language 
and style, in mode of thought and expression. 

I will cite here the sacredness of the number seven 
as well as that of the number three, for which we have 
evidence in both literatures : "Land, land, land, hear the 
word of the Lord," exclaims Jeremiah (xxii. 29) ; "Hail, 
hail, hail to the king, my lord," more than one Assyrian 
scribe begins his letter. And as the seraphim before the 
throne of God call one to another: "Holy, holy, holy is 
Yahveh Zebaoth" (Isaiah vi. 3), so we read at the be- 



90 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ginning of tlie Assyrian temple liturgy a threefold asiir^ 
that is, "salutary," or "holy." 

"God created man out of the dust of the earth and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man be- 
came a living soul," — thus runs the so-called Yahvistic 
account of creation (Genesis ii. 7) . The very same con- 
ceptions are found among the Babylonians : man is formed 
of earth (mud, clay) , as for instance Eabani is created 
out of a pinched off and moisted piece of clay (compare 
Job xxxiii. 6 : "I too am made of a pinch of clay ") , and 
for that reason he returns again thither (so Genesis iii. 
19) ; but he becomes a living being through the breath 
of God. In the opening of a letter to the Assyrian king 
the writers characterise themselves as "dead dogs" (cf. 
2 Samuel ix. 8) , whom the king, their master, had caused 
to live by "putting the breath of life into their nostrils." 

According to Babylonian notions the spittle of human 
beings possesses in a marked degree magic power. Spittle 
and spells are closely related conceptions, and spittle has 
death-dealing as well as life-giving power. "O ]\Iar- 
duk," — thus runs a prayer to the patron deity of Babel, 
— ^" O Marduk ! thine is the spittle of life ! " Who is not 
reminded by this of New Testament narratives such as 
that of Jesus taking the deaf and dumb man aside, put- 
ting his fingers in his ears, spitting and touching the 
man's tongue with the spittle, sa3'ing, "Hephata," "Be 
opened!" (Mark vii. Zli ff., and compare viii. IZ^ John 
ix. 6 ff.) 

Yahveh conducts his people on the march through 
the desert by means of a pillar of cloud by day and a pil- 
lar of fire by night (comp. also Isaiah iv. 5) ; but P^sar- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 91 

haddon, King of Assoria, before setting out upon a cam- 
paign, also receives the prophetic message: "I, Istar of 
Arbela, will cause to rise upon thy right hand smoke and 
upon thy left fire." 

''Set thine house in order," says the prophet Isaiah 
to King Hezekiah when he is sick unto death, "for thou 
art sick and wilt not live" (Isaiah xxxviii. 1) , while the 
Assyrian general Kudurru, to whom the king has sent 
his own personal ph^^sician, thanks the king with the 
words: "I was dead, but the king, my lord, has made 
me to live." The soul of a man sick unto death is con- 
ceived as already straying in the underworld, has already 
gone down into the pit (Psalms xxx. 4) . For this reason 
the goddess Gula, the patron genius of phj'sicians, has 
the title "Awakener of the dead " : an Oriental physician 
who did not raise people from the dead would be no phy- 
sician at all. 

How great the similarity between all things in Babel 
and Bible ! Here as well as there the fondness for ren- 
dering speech and thought vivid by symbolical actions (I 
cite here merely the scapegoat which is chased away into 
the desert) ; here as well as there the same world of con- 
stant wonders and signs, of perpetual revelations of the 
divinity, particularly through dreams, the same naive 
conceptions of the divinity ! As in Babel the gods eat and 
drink and even retire to rest, so Yahveh goes walking in 
Paradise in the cool of the evening, or takes delight in 
the smell of Noah's sacrifice. And just as in the Old 
Testament Yahveh speaks to Moses and Aaron and to all 
the prophets, so also in Babel the gods speak to men. 



92 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

either directl}^ or tlirougli the mouth of their priests and 
divinely inspired prophets and prophetesses. 

Revelation ! For a long time all scientifically trained 
theologians, whether Evangelical or Catholic, have for 
centuries been firmly convinced that it was a grievous 
error to have regarded the invaluable remains of ancient 
Hebrew scriptures collected into the Old Testament as 
constituting collectively a religious canon, as being from 
beginning to end a revealed book of religion. For among 
them are writings such as the Book of Job, which ques- 
tions the very existence of a just God, and in language 
that sometimes borders on blasphemy, and other very 
profane compositions, such, for example, as wedding 
songs (the so-called Song of Solomon) . In the pretty 
love-song, Ps. 45, we read, v. 11 ff. : "Hear, O daughter, 
and consider and incline thine ear : forget also thine own 
people and thy father's house; and if the king vshall de- 
sire thy beauty — for he is thy lord — fall down before 
him . ' ' 

It is very easy to imagine what the results must be 
when books and passages like these were forced to submit 
to a theological, and even a Messianic, interpretation (cf. 
the Epistle to the Hebrews i. 8 f.) , — the result could not 
fail to be such as it was in that mediaeval Catholic monk 
who, when he read in his Psalter the Latin viaria^ ''the 
seas," crossed himself as in the presence of "Maria," 
meaning Mary, the mother of Christ. But for the re- 
mainder of the Old Testament literature also the doctrine 
of verbal inspiration has been surrendered even by the 
Catholic Church. The Old Testament itself has com- 
pelled this result, with its mass of contradictory duplicate 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 93 

accounts, and with tlie absolutely inextricable confusion 
which, has been brought about in the Pentateuch by per- 
petual revision and combination. 

And to be perfectly serious and frank, — we have not 
deserved such an immediate and personal revelation from 
the divinity anyway. For mankind has unto this day 
treated with absolute flippancy the most primitive and 
genuine revelation of the holy God, the ten command- 
ments on the tables of the law from Sinai. Dr. Martin 
Luther said : 

"Das Wort sie sol/en lassen s/ahn.''^ 
(Inviolate the Word let stand !) 

and yet in the Smaller Catechism, from which our chil- 
dren are instructed, the entire second commandment has 
been suppressed, the same upon w^hich God laid such 
especial emphasis (Exodus xx. 22 f.) : "Thou shalt not 
make unto thyself any image or any likeness," etc., and 
have put in its place the last commandment, or rather 
prohibition of covetousness (wicked desire) , after having 
torn it in two, which might easily have been recognised 
as unpermissible by comparing Exodus xx. 17 and Deu- 
teronomy V. 18. 

The command to honor father and mother is not the 
fourth but the fifth, and so on. And in the Catholic 
Catechism, which has the same method of numbering the 
commandments, the first commandment is, indeed, fuller : 
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me; thou shalt 
not make unto thyself an3^ graven image, to worship it," 
but immediately after we read: "Nevertheless, we make 
images of Christ, of the mother of God and of all the 



94 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

saints, because we do not worship them, but onl}- rev- 
erence them." This entirely ignores the fact that God 
the Lord expressly says : ' ' Thou shalt not make unto 
thyself any graven image to worship and to reverence.' 
(Consider also Deuteronomy iv. 16.) 

But if we regard the matter for a while from the 
standpoint of the letter of the Thora, this reproach falls 
still more heavily upon Moses himself, a shrill and unani- 
mous reproach from all the people of the earth who ask 
after God if haply they may find him. Just think of 
it: The Almighty God, "the All-container, the All-sus- 
tainer," the inscrutable, unapproachable, proclaims from 
the midst of fire and cloud and to the accompaniment of 
thunder and lightning his most holy will, Yahveh, "the 
rock whose work is perfect," with his own hands carves 
two tablets of stone and engraves upon them M'itli his 
own fingers, those fingers that keep the world in equilib- 
rium, the Ten Commandments, — and then Moses in 
anger hurls away the eternal tables of the eternal God 
and breaks them into a thousand pieces ! And this God 
a second time writes other tables, which present his last 
autograph revelation to mankind, the most unique and 
tangible revelation of God, — and Moses does not consider 
it worth while to report literally to his people, and thus 
to mankind, what God had engraved upon those tables. 

We scholars regard it as a serious reproach to one of 
our number if, in dealing with an inscription by any one 
soever, though but a shepherd who may have perpetuated 
his name upon some rock on the Sinaitic peninsula, he 
reports it inaccurately or incorrectly in even a single 

*R. v., "serve." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 95 

character; whereas Moses, when he impresses the ten 
commandments upon his people once more before cross- 
ing the Jordan, not only changes individual words, trans- 
poses words and sentences, but even substitutes for one 
long passage another which, however, he also emphasises 
expressly as being the very literal word of God. And 
accordingly we do not know to this day whether God 
commanded that the Sabbath day be kept holy in memory 
of his own rest after finishing the six days' labor of crea- 
tion (Exodus XX. 11 ; comp. xxxi. 17) , or in commem- 
oration of the incessant forced labor of his people during 
their stay in Egypt (Deuteronomy v. 14 ff.) . 

The same carelessness has to be regretted in other 
points that concern God's most sacred bequest to men. 
To this day we are hunting for the peak in the mountain- 
chain of the Sinaitic peninsula which corresponds with 
all that is told, and while we are most minutely informed 
regarding vastly less important things, such, for in- 
stance, as the rings and the rods of the box which con- 
tained the two tables, M-e learn absolutely nothing about 
the outward character of the tables themselves, except 
that they were written upon both sides. 

When the Philistines capture the ark of the covenant 
and place it in the temple of Dagon at Aslidad, they find 
on the second morning following the image of the god 
Dagon lying in fragments before the ark of Yahveh (1 
Samuel v. f.) . And then when it is brought to the little 
Jewish border-town of Beth Shemesh and the inhabitants 
look at it, seventy of them pay for their presumption by 
death, — according to another account fifty thousand ( ! ) 
(1 Sam. vi. 19) . Even one who touches the ark from 



96 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

inadvertence is slain by the wrath of Yahveh (2 Sam. 
6-7 f.). 

But as soon as we touch the soil of the historical 
period, history is silent. We are told in detail that the 
Chaldseans carried away the treasures of the temple at 
Jerusalem and the gold, silver, and copper furnishings of 
the temple, the fire pans and basins and shovels (2 Kings 
xxiv. 13 ; XXV. 13 ff.) , but no one is concerned about the 
ark with the two God-given tables ; the temple goes down 
in flame, but not a single word is said of the fate of the 
two miracle-working tables of the Almighty God, the 
most sacred treasure of the Old Covenant. 

We do not propose to ask the cause of all this, but 
only to record the fact that Moses is exonerated by the 
critical study of the Pentateuch from the reproach which 
belongs to him according to the strict letter of the Thora, 
For, as is confirmed by many and among them Dillmann 
{Commoitajy to the Books of Exodus and Leviticus^ p. 
201) , this authority so highly valued even on the Catholic 
side, "We have the ten commandments in two different 
revisions neither of which is based upon the tables them- 
selves, but upon other versions." 

And similarly all the other so-called Mosaic laws 
are transmitted to us in two comparatively late revisions, 
separated from each other by centuries, whence all the 
differences are easily enough accounted for. And we 
know this also, that the so-called Mosaic laws represent 
regulations and customs part of which had been recog- 
nised in Israel from primitive times, and part of which 
had not received legal recognition until after the settle- 
ment of the people in Canaan, and were then attributed 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 97 

bodily to Moses, and later, for tlie sake of greater sacred- 
ness and inviolability, to Yabveb himself. The same 
process we see in connection with the laws of other races 
— I will mention Here the law-book of Mann — and it is 
precisely the case with tlie law-making Babylon. 

In my first lectnre on this subject I pointed out the 
fact that we find in Babylon as early as 2250 B. C. a 
State with a highly developed system of law, and I spoke 
of a great Code of Hammurabi which established civil 
law in all its branches. While at that time we could 
only infer the existence of this Code from scattered but 
perfectly reliable details, — the original of this great Law 
Book of Hammurabi has now been found, and therewith 
a treasure of the very first rank has been conferred upon 
science and especially upon the science of law and the 
history of civilisation. It was in the ruins of the acrop- 
olis of Susa, about the turn of the year 1901-1902, that 
the French archaeologist de Morgan and the Dominican 
monk Scheil had the good fortune to find a monument of 
King Hammurabi in the shape of a diorite block 2.25 
meters high. It had apparently been carried away from 
Babylon along with other plunder by the Elamites. On 
it had been engraved in the most careful manner 282 
paragraphs of law (Fig. 76) . As the King himself says, 
they are "laws of justice which Hammurabi, the mighty 
and just King, has established for the use and benefit of 
the weak and oppressed, of widows and orphans." "Let 
the wronged person," thus we read, "who has a case at 
law, read this my monumental record and hear my pre- 
cious words ; my monument shall explain his case to him 
and he may look forward to its settlement ! With a heart 



98 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



full of gratitude let liim then say : ' Hammurabi is a lord 
who is like a real father to his people.' " But although 





Fig. 76. A Portion of the Inscription of the Laws of Hammurabi. 

the King says that he, the sun of Babylon, which sheds 
the light over North and South in his land, has written 



BABEIy AND BIBLE. 



99 



down these laws, nevertheless he in his turn received 
them from the highest judge of heaven and earth, the 




Fig. 77. Hammurabi Before Shamash, the God of Law. 



Sun god, the lord of all that is called "right," and there- 
fore the mighty tablet of the law bears at its head the 



100 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

beautiful bas-relief (Fig. 77) , which represents Hammu- 
rabi in the act of receiving the laws from Shamash, the 
supreme law-giver. 

Thus and not otherwise was it with the giving of the 
Law on Sinai, the so-called making of the Covenant be- 
tween Yahveh and Israel. For the purely human origin 
and character of the Israelitic laws are surely evident 
enough ! Or is any one so bold as to maintain that the 
thrice holy God, who with his own finger engraved upon 
the stone tablet Id tirzach "thou shalt not kill," in the 
same breath sanctioned blood-vengeance, which rests like 
a curse upon Oriental peoples to this day, while Hammu- 
rabi had almost obliterated the traces of it? Or is it pos- 
sible that any one still clings to the notion that circum- 
cision, which had for ages before been customary among 
the Egyptians and the Bedouin Arabs, was the mark of 
an especial covenant between God and Israel? 

We understand very well, according to Oriental 
thought and speech, that the numerous regulations for 
every possible petty event in daily life, as for instance, 
the case of a fierce ox that kills a man or another ox 
(Exodus xxi. 28 f., 35 f.) , that the prohibitions of foods, 
the minute medicinal prescriptions for skin diseases, the 
detailed directions regarding the priest's wardrobe, are 
represented as derived from Yahveh. But this is alto- 
gether outward form ; the God who prefers the offerings 
of *' a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart (Ps. 
li. 17) , and who took no pleasure in the worship by burnt 
offerings after the fashion of the ''heathen" peoples, cer- 
tainly did not ordain this worship by burnt offerings with 
its minute details, nor devise the recipes for ointment 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 101 

and burnt incense ^' after the art of the perfumer," as the 
expression runs (Exodus xxx. 25, 35) . 

It will be the business of future investigators to de- 
termine to just what extent the Israelitic laws both civil 
and levitical are specifically Israelitic, or general Semitic, 
or how far they were influenced by the Babylonian code 
which is so much older and which had certainly extended 
beyond the borders of Babylon. I think, for instance, of 
the law of retribution, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a 
tooth, of the feast of the new moon, the so-called "shew 
bread," the high priest's breast plate, and man^^ other 
things. For the present we must be thankful that the 
institution of the Sabbath day, the origin of which was 
unclear even to the Hebrews themselves, is now recog- 
nised as having its roots in the Babylonian Sabattu^ 
"the day par excellence." 

On the other hand, no one has maintained that the 
Ten Commandments were borrowed even in part from 
Babylon, but on the contrary it has been pointed out 
very emphatically that prohibitions like the Fifth, Sixth, 
and Seventh spring from the instinct of self-preservation 
which is common to all men. In fact, the most of the 
Ten Commandments are just as sacred to the Babylo- 
nians as to the Hebrews: disrespect for parents, false 
witness, and every sort of covetousness are also punished 
severely in Babylonian law, generally with death. Thus, 
for instance, we read in the very third paragraph of Ham- 
murabi's code : " If in a law suit any one on the witness- 
stand utters falsehoods and cannot support his testimony, 
he shall himself be punished with death if the life of an- 
other is involved." 



102 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The Second Commandment is specifically Israelitic, 
the prohibition of every sort of image-worship, which in 
its direct application seems to have a distinctly anti- 
Babylonian point. 

But in connection with the eminently Israelitic First 
Commandment, "I am Yahveh, thy God; thou shalt 
have no other gods beside me," may I be permitted to 
treat more fully one point which deeply and permanently 
concerns all who are interested in Babel and Bible, — the 
monotheism of the Old Testament. From the standpoint 
of Old Testament theology I can understand how, after 
it has unanimously and rightly given up the verbal in- 
spiration of the ancient Hebrew scriptures and thus rec- 
ognised, perhaps unintentionally but quite logically, the 
wholly unauthoritative character of the Old Testament 
writings as such for our belief, our knowledge and our 
investigations, — I say I can understand how theology 
now claims as divine the spirit that pervades them and 
preaches with so much the greater unanimity the "ethi- 
cal monotheism of Israel," the "spirit of prophecy" as 
" a real revelation of the living God." 

Great consternation seems to have been produced by 
the names mentioned in my first lecture, which we find 
in surprisingly great numbers among the North-Semitic 
nomads who immigrated into Babylon about 2500 B.C.: 
"El (i. e., God) hath given," "God sits in control," 
"If God were not my God," " God, consider me," "God 
is God," " Jahu (i. e., Yahveh) is God." I really do 
not understand this uneasiness. For since the Old Testa- 
ment itself represents Abram as preaching in the name 
of Yahveh (Gen. xii. 8) , and since Yahveh had already 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 103 

been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those old 
names such as Jahu-ilu, i. e., Joel, ought really to be 
welcomed with joy. And these names should prove very 
opportune, particularly for those theologians who regard 
themselves as affirmative and who hold that ' ' all divine 
inspiration has undergone a gradual historical develop- 
ment," thereby turning the orthodox notion of inspira- 
tion upside down, as it seems to me. 

However, the great majority of theologians feel and 
fear rightly that these names, which are more than a 
thousand years older than the corresponding names in 
the Old Testament, which attest the worship of a single 
god named Jahu, "the permanent" (whether a tribal 
god or what not) , and which moreover might indicate the 
initial point of an historical development of the belief in 
Yahveh as existing in very much \vider circles than 
merely among the descendants of Abram, will thereby 
throw serious doubt upon its claim to be a special revela- 
tion. And therefore they are laboring and tormenting 
themselves in the effort to explain away these names, 
hesitating at no means. But though the waves spew and 
foam, like a lighthouse in the dark night stand fast the 
names of the descendants of North Semitic Bedouins from 
2300 B. C, "God is God," "Jahu is God." 

It seems to me that exaggerations should be avoided 
in either direction. I have never ceased to emphasise 
the gross polytheism of the Babylonians, and am far 
from feeling obliged to disguise it. But I regard it as 
just as much out of place to make the Sumerian-Babylo- 
nian pantheon and its representation in poetry, particu- 
larly in popular poetry, the butt of shallow wit and sar- 



104 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



castic exaggerations, as we should properly condemn 
such ridicule if directed at tlie gods of Homer. Nor 
should the worship of divinities in images of wood or 
stone be in any wise glossed over. Only it should not 
be forgotten that even the Biblical account of creation 

has man created "in the 
likeness of God," in dia- 
metrical contradiction of 
the constantly emphasised 
"spirituality" of God, — 
as has rightly been pointed 
out by students of theology. 
And in view of this fact we 
can understand after all how 
the Babylonians reversed 
this method and conceived 
and represented their gods 
in the image of man. 

The prophets of the Old 
Testament do exactly the 
same thing, at least in spirit. 
In perfect agreement with 
the Babylonians and Ass}-- 
rians the prophet Habakkuk 
(chap, iii.) sees Yahveh ap- 
proach with horses and char- 
iot, bow and arrows and lance, and even with "horns at 
his side,"' with horns, the symbol of authority and 
strength and victory (cp. Numbers xxiii. 22) , the cus- 
tomary adornment of the headdress of both higher and 




Fig. 78. Horns the Emblem of 
Strength. 



^R. v., "rays coiyiiiig forl]i from his hand 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



105 



lower divinities among the Assyrio-Babylonians (Fig. 
78) . And the representations of God the Father in 
Christian art: in Michael Angelo, Raphael, and all our 
illustrated Bibles, — the representation of the first day of 




mill' \\ 

Fig. 79. The Ancient of Days. (After Schnorr von Karolsfeld.) 

creation (Fig. 79) is taken from Julius von Schnorr's 
illustrated Bible,— are all derived from a vision of the 
Prophet Daniel (vii. 9) who sees God as the "Ancient of 
Days, his garments white as snow and the hair of his 
head like unto pure wool." 



106 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

But tlie Babylonians can endure with tlie same equa- 
nimity as tlie Catholic Church the wearisome ridicule of 
the Old Testament prophets cast upon the Babylonian 
idols who have eyes but see not, ears but hear not, a nose 
but smell not, and feet but cannot go. For just as intel- 
ligent Catholics see in the images merely the representa- 
tions of Christ, Mary, and the saints, so did the intelli- 
gent Babylonians : no hymn or prayer was addressed to 
the image as such, — they are alwa3^s appealing to the 
divinity that dwells beyond the bounds of earth. 

In passing judgment upon the ''ethical monothe- 
ism ' ' of Israel also a certain moderation would seem to 
be desirable. In the first place, we must except from 
consideration in this connection much of the pre-exilic 
period, during which Judah as well as Israel, kings as 
well as people, were dominated by an ineradicable 3^et 
quite natural predilection for the indigenous Canaanitish 
polytheism. 

Furthermore, it seems to me a particularly unwise 
proceeding on the part of certain hotspurs to j^ortray the 
ethical level of Israel, even that of the pre-exilic period, 
as elevated far above that of the Babylonians. It is un- 
deniable that the warfare of the Assyrio- Babylonians was 
cruel and sometimes barbarous. But so was the conquest 
of Canaan by the Hebrew tribes accompanied by a tor- 
rent of innocent blood ; the capture of ' ' the great and 
goodly alien cities, of the houses full of all good things, 
of the cisterns, the vineyards, the olive-groves" (Deuter- 
onomy vi. 10 f.) was preceded by the "devoting" (Deu- 
teronomy vii. 2, R. v., margin) of hundreds of villages 
on both sides of the Jordan, that is, by the merciless 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 107 

massacre of all the inhabitants, even of the women and 
the very smallest of children. And as for right and jus- 
tice in state and people, the persistent denunciations by 
the prophets of both Israel and Judah of the oppression 
of the poor, of widows and of orphans, taken in conjunc- 
tion with stories such as that of Naboth's vineyard (1 
Kings xxi) , reveal a profound corruption of both kings 
and people, while the almost two thousand years' exist- 
ence of the nation of Hammurabi would seem to justify 
the application to it of the saying : ' ' Righteousness ex- 
alteth a nation." 

We actually possess a monumental tablet which 
warns the Babylonian king himself most insistently 
against every species of injustice! *'If the king takes 
the money of the people of Babylon to appropriate it to 
his own treasury, and then hears the suit of the Babylo- 
nians and permits himself to be inclined to partisanship, 
then Marduk, the Lord of heaven and earth, will set his 
enemy against him and give his possessions and his 
treasure to his enemy." 

In the matter of love of one's neighbor, of compas- 
sion upon one's neighbor, as has already been remarked, 
there is no deep gulf to be discovered between Babylon 
and the Old Testament. 

In passing let me call attention here to one other \ 
point. Old Testament theologians make very merry 
over the Babylonian account of the Flood with its poly- 
theism, and yet it contains one element which appeals to 
us much more humanely than that of the Bible. "The 
Deluge," thus Xisuthros tells us, "was over. I looked 
forth over the v/ide ocean, lamenting aloud because all 



108 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

humankind had perished." Eduard Siiss, the celebrated 
Austrian geologist, confessed long since that in touches 
like this ' ' the simple narrative of Xisuthros bears the 
stamp of convincing truth." We find no report of any 
compassion on the part of Noah. 

The Babylonian Noah and his wife are transformed 
into gods ; this too would have been impossible in Israel. 
Of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the Feast of Weeks we 
read, Deuteronomy xvi. 11 (comp. also xii. 18) : "And 
thou shalt rejoice before Yahveh, thy God, thou and th3^ 
son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maid- 
servant," — but where is the wife? It is generally recog- 
nised that the position of women in Israel was a very 
subordinate one from earliest childhood. We find in the 
Old Testament scarcely a single girl's name which ex- 
presses in the cordial manner customary in the case of 
boy's names, joyful gratitude to Yahveh for the birth of 
the child. All the tender pet-names of girls, such as 
"Beloved," "Fragrant One," "Dew-born," "Bee," 
"Gazelle," "Ewe" (Rachel), "Myrtle" and "Palm," 
* ' Coral ' ' and ' ' Crown ' ' cannot in my opinion deceive us 
on this point. The woman is the property of her parents 
and afterwards of her husband ; she is a valuable ' ' hand ' ' 
upon which in marriage a great share of the heaviest do- 
mestic burdens are laid. And above all, as in Islam, she 
is disqualified for performing religious rites. 

All this was different and better in Babylon : for in- 
stance, we read in the time of Hammurabi of women who 
have their chairs carried into the temple ; we find the 
names of women as witnesses in legal documents, and 
other similar things. Right here in this matter of the 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 109 

position of women we may perceive clearly how pro- 
foundly the Babylonian civilisation was influenced by the 
non-Semitic civilisation of the Sumerians. 

And how variously pitched is that instrument, the 
human temperament ! While Koldewey and others with 
him are astonished anew that the excavations in Babylo- 
nia bring to light absolutely no obscene figures, a Catho- 
lic Old Testament scholar knows of ' ' numberless statu- 
ettes found in Babylon which have no other purpose but 





..jJ 



Fig. 80. Babylonian Clay Figures Representing the Goddess of Birth. 



to give expression to the lowest and most vulgar sensual- 
ity." Thou poor goddess of childbirth, poor goddess Is- 
tar! However, although thou be moulded only of clay, 
yet needst thou not blush to appear in this company 
(Fig. 80) ; for I am certain thou wilt give no offence, 
just as certain as that we are none of us offended but on 
the contrary love to give ourselves up to the contempla- 
tion of the glorious and familiar marble statue of Eve 
with her children (Fig. 81) . 



110 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 



And although an Evangelical specialist in the Old 
Testament, finding occasion in a passage of a Babylonian 
poem, which has not yet received its definitive interpre- 
tation, exclaims with similar ethical indignation, that we 
* ' must needs search through the most vulgar corners of 
Further Asia in order to find its analogues," I cannot, 
indeed, boast of equal knowledge of local details, but I 

would like to remind him of 
the reasons why our school 
authorities so urgently de- 
manded extracts from the Old 
Testament, and to warn him 
against throwing stones, lest 
all too speedily his own glass- 
house come crashing about his 
ears. 

However, these skirmishes, 
provoked by my opponents, 
into the realm of the moral 
level of the two nations in- 
volved, seem to me of infinitely 
less importance than a final ob- 
servation in connection with 
the proclamation of the ' ' eth- 
ical monotheism ' ' of Israel or of the ' ' spirit of prophet- 
ism " as "a genuine revelation of the living God," 
which in my opinion has not yet received fitting atten- 
tion. 

Five times a day and even more frequently the ortho- 
dox Moslem prays the Paternoster of Islam, the first Sura 
of the Koran, which closes with the words : *' Lead us, O 




Fig. 8i. Eve and Her Children. 
(A marble statue by Adolf Briitt.) 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 111 

Allah, the right way, the way of those whom thou hast 
favored, who are not smitten by thy wrath [like the Jews] 
and who are not in error [like the Christians]." The 
Moslem alone is the one favored by Allah, he alone is the 
one chosen by God to adore and worship the true God. 
All other men and races are kafiriin^ heretics, whom God 
has not predestined to eternal salvation. Just such and 
not otherwise, deeply rooted in the nature of the Semite, 
does the Yahvism of Israel show itself to be, in the pre- 
exilic as well as in the post-exilic period. Yahveh is the 
only true (or highest) God, but at the same time he is 
the God of Israel solely and exclusively, Israel is his 
chosen people and his inheritance ; all other nations are 
Gojmi or heathen, given over by Yahveh himself to god- 
lessness and idolatry. This is a doctrine absolutely ir- 
reconcilable with our nobler conception of God, but which, 
nevertheless, is uttered in uncloaked language in the 
nineteenth verse of the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, a 
passage which at the same time destroys with a single 
phrase the illusion of a " primitive revelation " : " Lest 
thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven and when thou seest 
the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of 
heaven, thou worship them and reverence them, which 
Yahveh, thy God, hath divided unto all the peoples under 
the whole heaven ; but you Yahveh hath taken and 
brought forth out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of 
inheritance." According to this, the worship of the 
heavenly bodies and of idols was willed and decreed by 
Yahveh himself upon the peoples under the whole heaven. 
So much the more dreadful is the shock when in Deute- 
ronomy vii. 2, Yahveh gives the command to exterminate 



112 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

mercilessly on account of tlieir impiety the seven great 
and powerful peoples whom Israel may expect to find 
already in possession of Canaan, or when we read, verse 
16 : "And thou shalt consume all the peoples which Yah- 
veh thy God shall deliver unto thee ; thine 63^6 shall not 
pity them." 

It goes hard to regard as inspired bj^ the hol3^ and 
just God this monotheism of the exclusively national 
type. It is not manifested in the nature of the case in 
such passages as the account of the creation, but in gene- 
ral it runs throughout the Old Testament undeniably 
from Sinai on: "I am Yahveh, thy God," to Deutero- 
Isaiah : "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," and to 
Zechariah's prophecy (xx. 8, 23) : "Thus saith Yahveh 
Zebaoth : In those daj^s it shall come to pass that ten 
men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the na- 
tions ^Gojifii) ^ shall even take hold of the skirt of him 
that is a Jew, saying: 'We will go with 3^ou, for we 
have heard that God is with you.' " It is this monotheism 
that left all the other nations of the earth "without hope" 
and "without God in the world," as for instance the 
Apostle Paul assumes (Hphesians ii. 11 f.)- And 3^et 
we have all been so hypnotised from 3^outh up b3' this 
dogma of the " exclusive inheritance of Israel" (Ephe- 
sians ii. 12) , that we regard the histor3^ of the ancient 
world from an entirely wrong point of view and are even 
satisfied to claim for ourselves at this day the role of a 
"spiritual Israel," forgetting the niight3' historical revo- 
lution which was accomplished in the New Testament 
times under the influence of John the Baptist and the 
preaching of Jesus, that dramatic conflict between Juda- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 113 

ism, Jewish Christianity, and Gentile Christianity, which 
made it possible for Peter to exclaim (Acts x. 34 f.) : 
* ' Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of per- 
sons, but that in every nation, he that feareth him and is 
acceptable to him," thus tearing down the partition be- 
tween the Oriental-Israelitic and the Christian-philosophic 
conception of the universe. 

For my own part, I live firm in the belief that the 
early Hebrew scriptures, even if they lose their standing 
as "revealed" or as permeated by a "revealed" spirit, 
will nevertheless always maintain their great importance, 
especially as a unique monument of a great religio-histo- 
rical process which continues even into our own times. 
The lofty passages in the prophets and the psalms, filled 
with a living confidence in God and with longing for re- 
pose in God, will always find a living echo in our hearts, 
despite the particularistic limitation of its literal text and 
its literal meaning, which are largely obliterated anyway 
in our translation of the Bible. Indeed, words like those 
of the prophet Micah (vi. 6-S) : "Wherewith shall I 
come before Yahveh, and bow myself before the high 
God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
calves of a year old? Will Yahveh be pleased with thou- 
sands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Or shall 
I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my 
body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O 
man, what is good; and what doth Yahveh require of 
thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God! " — words like these, insisting on 
an ethical manifestation of religion in the life (and which 
are also found in Babylonian writings) , come, as it were, 



114 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

from die very soul of all sincerely religious people to- 
day. 

But on tlie other hand, let us not blindly cling to 
antiquated and scientificall3' discredited dogmas from the 
vain fear that our faith in God and our true religious life 
might suffer harm ! Let us remember that all things 
earthly are in living motion and that standing still means 
death. Let us look back upon the mighty, throbbing 
force with which the German Reformation filled the great 
nations of the earth in every field of human endeavor and 
human progress ! But even the Reformation is only one 
stage on the road to the goal of truth set for us by God 
and in God. Let us press forward toward it, humbly but 
with all the resources of free scientific investigation, J03- 
fully professing our adherence to that standard perceived 
with eagle eye from the high watch-tower and courage- 
ously proclaimed to all the world : " The further develop- 
ment of religion." 



THE STRUGGLE FOR BABEL 
AND BIBLE 



LITERATURE ON BABEL AND BIBLE. 



J. Barth, Bahel und israelitisches Religio7iswescn. A Lecture. Ber- 
lin, 1902 ; 36 pp. 

Prof. Dr. Karl Budde, Das Alte Testamejit und die Ausgrabungen. 
Giesen, 1903. (A Lecture, delivered May 29, 1902, at the 
Theological Conference at Giessen); 39 pp., of which, how- 
ever, only pp. I- 10 are pertinent. 

Dr. Johannes Doller, Imperial and Royal Court Chaplain and 
Director of Studies at the Frintaneum, Vienna, Bibcl und 
Babel oder Babel und Bibel? Eitie Entgegnung auf Prof. F. 
Deliizscli's "Babel und Bibel." Padernborn, 1903. 

Prof. Dr. Hommel, Die altorienialischen Denkmaler und das Alte 
Testament. Eine Erwiderung auf Prof. Fr. Delitzsch's "Babel 
und Bibel.'" Berlin, 1902; 38 pp. 

Dr. Alfred Jeremias, pastor of the Lutheran Church at Leipzig, 
Im Kampfe u?n Babel und Bibel. Ein Wort zur Verstdndigung 
und Abwehr. Leipzig, 1903; 35 pp. 

Prof. D. R. Kittel, Die babylonischen Ausgrabungen und die biblische 
Urges c hi elite. Leipzig, 1902 ; 36 pp. See also under Sec- 
tion II., p. 91. 

W. Knieschre, pastor at Sieversdorf, Bibel und Babel, El und Bel. 
Eine Replik auf Friedrich Delitzschs's Babel und Bibel. West- 
end-Berlin, 1902 ; 64 pp. 

Dr. Eduard Konig, Prof. (5f theolog}'. Bibel und Babel. Eine 
kulturgesehichtliclie Skizzc. Sixth, enlarged edition, with ref- 
erence to the most recent literature on the subject of Babel 
and Bible. Berlin, 1902; 60 pp. 



118 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Prof. D. Sam. Oettli, Dcr Kampf um Bihel und Babel. Et?i reli- 
giofisgescJuchtlicher Vortrag. Second edition. Leipzig, 1902; 
32 pp. 

Rabb. Dr. Ludw. A. Rosenthal, Babel und Bibel oder Babel gegen 
Bibel ? Ein Wort ziir Kldrung. Berlin, 1902; 31 pp. 

Prof. Bruno Baentsch, Jena, "Babel und Bibel. Eine Priifung 
des unter diesem Titel erschienenen Vortrages von Friedrich 
Delitzsch, besonders auf die darin enthaltenen religions- 
geschichtlichen Ausfiihrungen," in the Protestantische Alo7iats- 
heftc, edited by D. Julius Websky. Vol. VI., No. 8 (August 
15, 1902). Berlin, 1902. Cf. also two articles, signed B. B., 
"Noch einmal Babel und Bibel," in the T/mri/iger Rinid- 
seliaii, March 2nd and 9th, 1902. 

Prof. Dr. C. H. Cornill, Breslau, Deutsche Litter aturzeitung, 
1902, No. 27 (July 5). 

Heinrich Danneil (Schonebeck a. E.), "Babel und Bibel," 
MagdeburgiscJie Zeitung, No. 25, 1902, Beiblatt. 

Privatdocent Dr. W. Engelkemper, Miinster, "Babel und Bibel," 
Wisscnschaftliclie Bella gc ziir Gcrmauia, 1902, Nos. 31 (July 
31) and 32 (August 7). Berlin, 1902. 

Prof. D. Gunkel, "Babylonische und biblische Urgeschichte." 
Christliche Welt, XVII., 1903, No. 6 (Feb. 5), cols. 121- 

134- 

Prof. Dr. Peter Jensen, "Babel und Bibel," Die christliche Welt, 
XVI., 1902, No. 21 (May 22), cols. 487-494. 

Franz Kaulen, Bonn, "Babel und Bibel," Literarischer Hand- 
iveiscr zundchst fiir alle Katholikcn deutscher Zunge. XL., 
Nos. 766 and 767, 1901-1902. 

P. Keil, London, "Babel und Bibel." Pastor bonus. Zeitschri/t 
fiir kirchliche Wisscnschaft und Praxis, edited by Domkapitular 
Dr. P. Einig. XV., parts i, 2, 3 (Oct. i, Nov. i, Dec. i, 
1902). 

Prof. D. R. Kittee, Leipzig, "Jahve in Babel und Bibel," TJieo- 
logisches Literaturblatt, XXIII. , No. 17 (April 25, 1902). 
Also, "Noch einmal Jahve in Babel und Bibel," ibid., No. 
18 (May 2, 1902), and "Der Monotheismus in Babel und 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 119 

Bibel," AUgemeine evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, igo2, 
No. 17 (April 25, 1902). 

Rabbi Dr. S. Meyer, Regensburg, "Die Hypothesenglaubigen," 
Deutsche israclitische Zcitung, XIX., No. 8 (20th February, 
1902); and "Nochmals Babel und Bibel," ibid., No. 10 
(6th March). 

"Babel und Bibel," Ncue prciissische (^Krcuz-') Zeititng, 1902, No. 

211 (7th May). Signed 1- [Lie. theol. Prof. Riedel, 

Greifswald]. 

Wolff, "Babel und Bibel," Evajigelische Kirchenzeitung, 1902, No. 
28 (cols. 657-662). 



OPINIONS ON '/BABEL AND BIBLE." 

EMPEROR WILLIAM ON "BABEL AND BIBLE." 

(A Letter from His Majesty Emperor William II to Admiral Hollman, President 
of the Oriental Society ) 

February 15, 1903. 
Afy Dear Hollmati: 

My telegram to you will unquestionably have removed the 
doubts which you still entertained regarding the concluding pas- 
sage of the lecture, which was clearly understood by the audience 
and therefore could not be altered. I am glad, nevertheless, that 
the subject-matter of the second lecture has again been taken up, 
and I gladly seize the opportunity after a perusal of a copy of the 
proofs to state again clearly my position with regard to it. 

During an evening's entertainment with us Professor Delitzsch 
had the opportunity to fully confer and debate with Her Majesty, 
the Empress, and Dr. Dryander, while I listened and remained 
passive. Unfortunately he abandoned the standpoints of the strict 
historian and Assyriologist, going into religious and theological 
conclusions which were quite nebulous or bold. 

When he came to speak of the New Testament, it became 
clear at once that he developed such quite divergent views regard- 
ing the person of our Saviour that I had to express the diametri- 
cally opposite view. He does not recognise the divinity of Christ 
as a deduction therefrom and asserts that the Old Testament con- 
tains no revelation about him as the Messiah. 

Here the Assyriologist and the historical investigator ceases 
and the theologian begins, with all his light and shadow sides. In 
this province I can only urgently advise him to proceed cautiously, 
step by step, and at any rate to ventilate his theses only in the 
theological books and in the circle of his colleagues. Spare us, 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 121 

the laymen, and, above all, the Oriental Society, from hearing of 
them. 

We carry on excavations and publish the results in behalf of 
science and history, but not to conform or attack religious hypoth- 
eses. 

Professor Delitzsch, the theologian, has run away with Profes- 
sor Delitzsch, the historian ; his history is exploited merely for the 
benefit of his theology. 

I regret that Professor Delitzsch did not adhere to his original 
program which he developed last year; viz., to determine, on the 
basis of the discoveries of our society and by means of critically 
verified translations of the inscriptions, the extent to which these 
materials shed light on the history of the people of Israel or eluci- 
date the historical events, customs and habits, traditions, politics 
and laws of the Israelites. In other words, he should have shown 
the mutual relationship in which the undeniably powerful and 
highly developed civilisation of the Babylonians stood to that of 
the Israelites, and the extent to which the former might have in- 
fluenced the latter or have impressed upon it its own stamp. He 
could thus have saved, so to speak, from a purely human point of 
view, the honor and good name of the Babylonian people which 
has certainly been depicted in the Old Testament in a revolting 
and grossly one-sided manner. This was indeed his original inten- 
tion, — at least as I conceive it, — and certainly his is a most fruit- 
ful and interesting field, the investigation, elucidation, and expla- 
nation of which necessarily interests us laymen in the highest 
degree and would have placed us under the highest obligation to 
him. At precisely here is the place where he should have stopped 
but beyond which unfortunately his ardent zeal led him. As was 
not otherwise to be expected, the excavations brought information 
to light which has a bearing also on the religion of the Old Testa- 
ment. He should have mentioned this fact and should have em- 
phasised and explained whatever coincidences occurred ; but all 
purely religious conclusions it was his duty to have left for his hear- 
ers themselves to draw. Thus the interest and the favor of the lay 
public would have been gained in the fullest measure for his lec- 
ture. 

He approached the question of revelation in a polemical tone, 
more or less denying it or reducing it to a matter of purely human 
development. That was a grave error, for thereby he touched on 
the innermost, holiest possession of many of his hearers. 



122 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

And whether he did so justifiably or unjustifiably, — and that is 
for our present purpose quite indifferent, since we are concerned 
here not with scientific conventions of theologians but with lay 
people of all ages and professions, — he still either demolished or 
endangered the dearest conceptions, or it may be, the illusions of 
many of his hearers, — conceptions with which these people had in- 
terwoven their oldest and dearest associations. And unqestionably 
he shattered or at least undermined for these people their faith. It 
is a deed that only the greatest genius should venture to attempt 
and for which the mere study of Assyriology did not justify him. 

Goethe also once discussed this question, calling emphatic at- 
tention to the fact that one must be on one's guard in speaking to 
the general public not to destroy even such insignificant structures 
as mere "pagodas of terminology." The fundamental principle, 
that it is very important to distinguish precisely between what is 
and what is not adapted to the place, the public, etc., appears to 
have escaped the excellent Professor in his zeal. As a professional 
theologian it is permissible for him to publish in technical reviews 
and for his colleagues theses, hypotheses, and theories, nay, even 
convictions which it would not be proper for him to utter in a pub- 
lic lecture or book. 

I should now like to advert again to my personal attitude 
toward the doctrine of revelation and to state it in terms similar to 
those I have formerly employed toward you, my dear Hollman, 
and toward other gentlemen. - 

I distinguish between two different kinds of revelation, — one 
progressive, and, as it were, historical ; the other purely religious, 
as preparing the way for the future Messiah. 

Regarding the former, it must be said for me, it does not ad- 
mit of a doubt, not even the slightest, that God reveals himself 
continuously in the race of man created by him. He breathed into 
man the breath of his life and follows with fatherly love and inter- 
est the development of the human race. In order to lead it for- 
ward and develop it, he reveals himself in this or that great sage, 
whether priest or king, w'hether among the heathen, the Jews, or 
the Christians. Hammurabi was one. So was Moses, Abraham, 
Homer, Charlemagne, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, and 
Emperor William the Great. These he sought out and endowed 
with his grace to accomplish splendid, imperishable results for 
their people, in their intellectual and physical provinces, according 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 123 

to hiy will. How often my grandfather pointed out that he was 
only an instrument in the Lord's hands. 

The achievements of the great intellects of the world were do- 
nated by God to the nations in order that they might through their 
aid make further progress, and might feel their way farther and 
farther through the labyrinths which yet remained uninvestigated. 
Unquestionably God did "reveal" himself differently to the differ- 
ent races according to their position and rank in the scale of civil- 
isation, and he does the same to-day. For just as we may be over- 
whelmed by the grandeur, magnificence, and might of nature when 
we look upon it and wonder while so doing at the grandeur of God 
who is revealed in it, so assuredly are we justified, when we con- 
template the grand and splendid deeds that a man or a nation has 
accomplished, in wondering with gratitude at the splendor of the 
revelation made by God in them. He works directly upon us and 
among us. 

The second form of revelation, the more religious, is that which 
leads to the manifestation of our Lord. It was introduced with 
Abraham, slow but forward looking and omniscient, for humanity 
was lost without it. Now begins the most astonishing activity of 
God's revelation. Abraham's race and the peoples developing from 
it regard faith in one God as their holiest possession, and, it fol- 
lows, hold fast to it with ironlike consistency. It is their duty to 
foster and cherish it. Split up during their Egyptian captivity, 
the divided elements were again welded together by Moses, ever 
trying to hold fast to their monotheism. It was the direct inter- 
vention of God that caused the rejuvenation of this people, thus 
proved through centuries, till the Messiah, heralded by prophets 
and psalmists, finally appeared, the greatest revelation of God in 
the world, for he appeared in the son himself. Christ is God, God 
in human form. He redeemed us and inspires, entices us to follow 
him. We feel his fire burning in us. His sympathy strengthens 
us. His discontent destroys us. But also his intercession saves 
us. Conscious of victory, building solely upon his world, we go 
through labor, ridicule, sorrow, misery, and death, for we have in 
him God's revealed word, and he never lies. 

That is my view of these matters. 

For us of the Evangelical Denomination the Word has, through 
Luther, been made our all, and as a good theologian Delitzsch 
should not have forgotten that our great Luther taught us to sing 
and believe • 



124 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

" Inviolate the Word let stand." 

It is to me self-evident that the Old Testament contains many 
sections which are of a purely human and historical nature, and are 
not God's revealed word. These are merely historical descriptions 
of incidents of all kinds which happen in the political, religious, 
moral, and intellectual life of this people. 

The legislative act on Sinai, for example, can be only regarded 
as symbolically inspired by God. When Moses had to reburnish 
well known paragraphs of the law, perhaps derived from the code 
of Hammurabi, in order to incorporate and bind them into the 
loose, weak fabric of his people, here the historian can perhaps 
construe from the sense or wording a connection with the laws of 
Hammurabi, the friend of Abraham. That is perhaps logically 
correct. But that will never disguise the fact that God incited 
Moses thereto and in so far revealed himself to the people of Israel. 

Accordingly it is my opinion, that henceforward in his lectures 
before our society it will be better for our good Professor to let 
matters of religion alone. On the other hand, he may depict un- 
disturbed the relation which the religion, customs, etc. of the Baby- 
lonians bear to those of the Old Testament. 

For me the following conclusions result from the foregoing 
discussions. 

1. I believe in the one and only God. 

2. We human beings need a form in order to teach his exist- 
ence, especially for our children. 

3. This has hitherto been the Old Testament. The present 
version of this will be possibly and substantially modified under the 
influence of research through inscriptions and excavations. That 
does not matter. Neither does it matter that much of the nimbus 
of the chosen people will thereby disappear. The kernel of the 
contents of the Old Testament will remain always the same, — God 
and his works. 

Religion has never been the result of science, but the pouring 
out of the heart and being of man from intercourse with God. 
With cordial thanks and greetings. 

Your Faithful Friend, 

WiLHELM, I. R. 

P. S. — You may make the utmost use of these lines. Let all 
who are interested read. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 125 



PROFESSOR HARNACK ON THE EMPERORS ATTITUDE TOWARD 
"BABEL AND BIBLE." 

The Emperor has spoken, in order to express his position 
v/ithout ambiguity in an historico-theological dispute. This is 
something new, but in view of all the circumstances the Emperor's 
decision is quite easily explained. The opinion was likely to be- 
come widespread, had indeed become widespread, that the Em- 
peror occupied the same theological standpoint as Dr. Delitzsch. 
Not wishing to permit this misunderstanding to continue, the Em- 
peror wrote as the public has read. 

From the point of view of scholars there was, indeed, no real 
controversy. It has long been known that a portion of the myths 
and legends of the Old Testament, together with important ele- 
ments of ancient Israelitish civilisation, had their origin in Baby- 
lon. It was equally beyond question that this fact is fatal to the 
current notion of the inspiration of the Old Testament. For the 
refutation of this belief there was no need of reference to Babylon : 
a hundred other observed facts had contributed to destroy it. 

But the knowledge of these facts had not become common 
property. However, the theologians cannot be held to blame for 
this. They had done their duty toward spreading the information 
in books and pamphlets and lectures. Our German literature points 
with pride to a work of such eminence as Wellhausen's History of 
Israel; it appeals to all educated people and is classic in form and 
content. And beside it stand a half dozen other excellent works, 
each of which gives full and accessible information regarding Old 
Testament literature and history. But Church and School have 
been in league to suppress this knowledge by excluding it from 
their domain. And indeed they are not alone to blame. Indolence 
and fear have done their share. 

To Delitzsch's lectures is due the credit for the fact that we 
now hear preached from the house-tops what before was but like a 
voice in the wilderness. "Credit," indeed, is scarcely the word ; 
it is due to the force of circumstances. But we do not need to 
weigh the individual credit for the result ; we hail with gratitude 
the fact that Delitzsch has given wide currency to a more correct 
view of the Old Testament. 

But has he in fact done this? Unquestionably he has removed 
a great error : the belief that the materials of the Old Testament 



126 BABElv AND BIBLE. 

are all original. But how little does the material amount to in the 
history of religion and of the spirit! If to-day some one should go 
before the public and announce to it: "Gentlemen, I come to re- 
relieve you from a great error; you have hitherto believed that 
Goethe's I^aust was an original work, while in fact it is only a recent 
secondary product ; for the entire material of it is found in a popu- 
lar legend of the sixteenth century," — what would be the reply to 
him? He would be laughed to scorn, and Delitzsch would join in 
the laugh. 

Without doubt he is very far from trying to determine the 
value of the Old Testament religion on the ground of its depend- 
ence upon Babylon, but in my opinion he has not done enough to 
prevent the establishment of a false conception of the matter in his 
hearers and readers. This public is very far from conceding to the 
prophets and the psalmists what it concedes without hesitation to 
a Goethe, Furthermore, for the very reason that there has pre- 
vailed hitherto a notion of the supernatural character of the Old 
Testament, the pendulum of opinion, following a familiar psycho- 
logical law, now swings to the opposite extreme. To-day it is the 
talk of the streets that "the Old Testament no longer amounts to 
much." 

At this point the Emperor enters the arena with his letter. 
But meantime the chasm had become deeper. As the result of an 
interview the monarch had become convinced that Professor De- 
litzsch did not hold the -orthodox belief regarding the divinity of 
Christ, and that the examination of the Old Testament among other 
reasons prevented his holding this belief. In the face of this nega- 
tive conviction the Emperor wished to leave no doubt regarding 
his own positive conviction. 

We must thank him for the way in which he did this. It is 
true, the reproof which Delitzsch has received cannot fail to be 
painful to him, and he must feel deeply his being excluded from 
the domain of theology upon which the Emperor himself now en- 
ters. But that was surely not the intention : the Emperor means 
to say, and he is right in so saying, that Delitzsch's authority as an 
Assyriologist does not also extend to his theological doctrines. Be- 
yond this he concedes absolute freedom to the convictions of the 
scholar. 

Absolute freedom, — this sentiment shines forth from the Em- 
peror's utterances with pleasing and inspiring effect. He has no 
thought of issuing a peremptory decree ; the whole letter is per- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 127 

meated with the spirit of freedom. He knows very well that com- 
mands are out of place in connection with these delicate and sacred 
matters, and he knows that theology cannot pass by these ques- 
tions, but that they must be treated most seriously, with liberty 
and courage. He leaves them to theological science. 

But still more pleasing is the effect of the positiveness, the 
frankness and warmth with which the Emperor himself takes his 
stand in these matters. What he has written is from the depth of 
his heart ; he utters it just as he thinks and feels it, and he has 
written it down like one who is trying to take account of his own 
mind, with all the minute marks of individual feeling and individ- 
ual experience. He feels his soul bound to Christ, and he is not 
willing to speak of religion without praising him and confessing his 
allegiance to him. 

The Emperor's utterance professes to be a personal confession 
of faith, and as such it deserves respect. But it would certainly 
not be in accordance with the spirit of the imperial author if we 
were to give no other response than silence. In the Evangelical 
Church the ultimate and supreme questions are always open to dis- 
cussion, and each generation must work out the answers anew. 
Our spiritual life also depends upon crises and finds its very vitality 
in them. How should we be silent when the profoundest and most 
solemn questions challenge us in this form? 

All Evangelical Christians will frankly and joyfully agree with 
the final sentence of the Emperor's letter: ** Religion was never 
the result of science, but an overflow of the heart and being of man 
from his intercourse with God." Theology subscribes to this prop- 
osition ; it knows right well that it does not work creativel}', but 
merely tries to follow reverently in thought something that already 
is. 

Not less will be the general accord with the Emperor's convic- 
tion that religion must have forms, so that we may explain our- 
selves and give mutual instruction, but that these forms cannot be 
imperishable. I think that even Professor Delitzsch has attained 
the capital feature of his purposes in the concession that the cus- 
tomary forms of the current school traditions regarding the Old 
Testament are in urgent need of change. 

But questions and disputes will arise chiefly in connection with 
two convictions expressed by his majesty : the theory of a twofold 
revelation, and the divinity of Christ. And the two are closely con- 
nected. 



128 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The difference between faith and science in connection with 
religion becomes clear immediately on the mention of the word 
"revelation." Science in the strictest sense cannot admit the no- 
tion at all, finding it too transcendental. On the other hand, faith 
cannot permit itself to be deprived of revelation. But in the course 
of development there has been an approach between the two sides. 
Aside from the reverent contemplation of the universe the Evan- 
gelical faith has ceased to recognise revelation through any medi- 
ums but persons. The whole lower series of alleged revelations 
has been put aside. There are no revelations by means of things. 
The Emperor's letter also took this ground : the revelations of God 
in his humanity are persons, especially great persons. Now in so 
far as great personages have their mystery even for science in their 
individuality and power, in so far harmony is established between 
faith and science. But the recognition by me and others of these 
personages as revelations of God is an act of subjective experience 
which no science can either create or prevent. 

But upon this common ground the Emperor's letter distin- 
guishes two sorts of revelation : a general one, and a peculiarly re- 
ligious one. There is a great element of strength in this distinc- 
tion, for it brings out vigorously the fact that there is no more seri- 
ous concern for man than his relation to God, and that everj^thing 
is dependent on this relationship. But on the other hand, the 
thinking mind cannot possibly repose in the assumption of two 
revelations running, as it were, parallel with each other, and the 
imperial letter has given utterance to this observation by putting 
Abraham into both categories. Accordingly there cannot be two 
revelations, — for religion, moral force, and knowledge stand in most 
intimate union, — but one revelation, the bearers of which were, and 
still are, very different in nature and greatness, calling and function. 
If Jesus Christ loses nothing of his individuality and uniqueness 
when he is placed in the series with Moses, Isaiah, and tlie psalm- 
ists, neither does he suffer by the comparison when we see him in 
the line with Socrates and Plato and the others who are mentiond 
in the Emperor's letter. The religious conception of history must 
in the last analysis be one and the same: it must be mankind led 
forth by God out of the state of primitive nature, out of error and 
sin, and saved and brought into the estate of the children of God. 
Here, however, we make reservation of the fact that the divine his- 
tory finds its specific line in ancient times in Israel. 

The Christian Church must reject every estimate of Christ 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 129 

which ignores the difference between him and other masters. He 
himself, his disciples and the history of the world have spoken so 
distinctly on this point that there should be no room for doubt, and 
he still speaks to us in his word as distinctly as to his disciples of 
old. But it may and must be questioned whether the inflexible 
formula "divinity of Christ" is the correct one. He himself never 
used it, but chose other designations, and it is at least very doubt- 
ful whether any of his disciples ever uttered it. And the early 
Church, too, did not speak directly of the divinity of Christ, but 
always of his divinity and humanity. "God-man," therefore, is the 
only correct formula even in the intent of the ancient dogma. In 
this phrase we have almost restored the mystery which according 
to the will of Christ himself was to remain in this matter. He 
made no secret of the fact that he was the Lord and Saviour, and 
his disciples were expected to observe and experience the fact in 
his words and deeds. But how his relation to the Father arose, 
he withheld from us and kept to himself. In my historical opinion, 
therefore, and according to my feeling in the matter, even the for- 
mula "man and God" (God-man-hood) is not bej^ond criticism, 
inasmuch as it has already begun to intrude upon a mystery into 
which we are not permitted to look. 

But the formula may be allowed to stand, because at bottom it 
does not pretend to explain anything, but only protects the extra- 
ordinary from profanation, just as does the expression "Son of 
God." The Pauline expression "God was in Christ" seems to me 
to be the last word that we are permitted to speak in this matter, 
now that we have liberated ourselves slowl}^ and painfully from the 
erroneous notion of ancient philosophers that we can penetrate the 
mysteries of God and Nature, humanity and history. 

"If ye love me, keep my commandments;" "In this shall 
every one recognise that ye are my disciples, that ye love one an- 
another," — it is more important to meditate upon these words and 
try to live up to them than to put the incomprehensible and the 
venerable into formulas. The time is coming and even now is near 
when Evangelical Christians will join hands sincerely in the con- 
fession of Jesus Christ as their master and in the determination to 
follow his words, and our Catholic brethren will then be obliged to 
join with us to the same end. The burden of a long history of mis- 
understandings, of formulas that bristle like swords, of tears and 
blood, weighs upon us, but in it there is also preserved to us a pre- 
cious inheritance. The two seem to be united inextricably, but 



130 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

nevertheless they are gradually separating, although the "Let there 
be light" has not yet been spoken across this chaos. Frankness 
and courage, honesty with ourselves, freedom and love, — these are 
the levers which will lift the burden. And the Emperor's letter 
also is intended to aid in this lofty undertaking. 

M. HALEVY'S OPINION. 

M. Joseph Hal^vy, the French coryphaeus of Oriental research, 
born December 15, 1827, says about Babel and Bible: "Sincerity 
nevertheless compels me to point out certain inept, inaccurate, and 
redundant statements which disfigure this otherwise beautiful lec- 
ture. The meaning of Numbers vi. 26 (page 29, Babel and Bible) 
is perfectly clear in itself and parallel to the passage in Job xxii. 
26. The Babylonian form of expression adds absolutely nothing 
new. There is not a vestige of a proof that the Ur of Kasdim, the 
home of Abraham, is identical with the city of Ur of Babylonia 
(page 4); the appellation Kasdim designates in the Pentateuch 
'territory which is exclusively Aramean' ; Babylonia is called there 
'the land of Sincar.' To make a princess of Arj^an blood and blond 
complexion out of the wife of Sardanapalus, of whom we have only 
an old and hastily executed sketch; to call the converted Jew Jean 
Astruc 'zealously orthodox' (page 41); to attribute to the Koran 
the beautiful legends of the Talmud, and to pass over almost in 
silence the magnificent results of the French excavations in Assyria 
and Babylonia, is carrying cleverness to an unjustified extreme. 
The picture (page 48) of the First Sin, borrowed from Mdnant, 
and the comparison of the destruction of Rahab, a name for Egypt 
(Psalms Ixxiv. 13, Ixxxix. 11; Job xxvi. 12), with the splitting in 
twain of the body of the chaotic goddess Tiamat by Marduk, who 
made of it the earth and the heavens, will not stand before exami- 
nation. In the first picture, the man and the woman who are seated 
opposite each other on the two sides of the tree are extending 
toward each other their hands and are not gathering the fruit that 
hangs upon the lower branches of the tree near their feet. And 
furthermore, the undulating line behind the woman is not beyond 
all doubt a serpent. The same disposition to rest content with 
superficial appearances shows itself in the interpretation which is 
put upon Figure 58, page 64, which has no points of resemblance 
with the chariot of Ezekiel. 

"Must it be repeated for the tenth time that the institution of 



BABEL AND BIBLE. I3l 

Sunday rest is nowhere mentioned in cuneiform literature? The 
abstinences prescribed for the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth (an 
awkward date omitted by the lecturer), twenty-first, and twenty- 
eighth days of the second Elud, which is an exceptional month, 
have nothing whatever to do with the Jewish Sabbath? 

''Absolutely fantastical also is the attribution of the head of a 
patesi or priest-king preserved in the Berlin Museum to the imagi- 
nary and undiscoverable race of Sumerians who, although the origi- 
nators of the great Babylonian civilisation, are said to have been 
unable to count beyond 60 ! This error is an old one; the number 
6 could never have formed a primitive multiple; the first series 
obtained by actual counting, which is based on the fingers of the 
hand, finds its natural termination at the number 3 ; Delitzsch has 
confounded instinctive counting with the artificial or scientific mode 
ofi computation by 6o's, which has its advantages. We must deplore 
indeed the sad lot of these great allophylian creators of the most 
ancient civilisation who have left as a witness of their vanished 
glory only a single head of stone, fac-similies of which can be found 
by the hundreds in real flesh and blood in the ghettos of Podolia 
and Morocco. 

"But the acme is reached in the following. Delitzsch affirmed 
in his Paradise that the name Yahveh came from the Sumerian Y 
and the consonants hvh. He now declares, — and this is the culmi- 
nation of his lecture, — that he has found on three Babylonian tab- 
lets names belonging to Canaanites establisJicd in Babylon, and com- 
posed of the element Yahveh (page 61). Now, the spelling of the 
second form, j'^-?/-?/w-// (written an), signifies in good Babylonian 
'Yaum [with mimmation for iauT=iam-mu, Okeanos, god of the sea] 
is god.' The first form, written ia-ah-pi-il, exhibits a general Se- 
mitic name Yahpcel (El covers, protects, '^>?r~- analogous to ^??f"!). 
The possible reading Yahvch-ill ^o\\\(\ be equivalent to the Aramean 
^N""!:, <God exists,' and would not necessarily signify 'Yahveh is 
god.' In no case could a name like Yahveh-el be Canaanite-Phoe- 
nician ; for these people express the verb to be by ^13, and not by 

nin- 

"With so alluring a subject and before an audience chosen 
from among the highest intellects of the nation, it would have been 
more prudent to limit oneself to established facts, and not to offer 
ephemeral conjectures which can serve no other purpose than to 
dazzle superficial and inquisitive minds." 



132 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



CORNILL ON "BABEL AND BIBLE." 

^^ Babel and Bihie offers nothing essentially new to Old Testa- 
ment scholars. There is doubtless not a single professor of Old 
Testament research in any German university that has not already 
told all these things to his students in his lectures on Genesis. And 
Delitzsch does not gainsay this. He maintains only that the world 
at large has as yet heard very little of the silent labors of the As- 
syriologists and that it is now time for this knowledge to burst the 
barriers of the scholars' study and enter the broad path of life. 

"If this is to be interpreted as an aspersion upon us scholars, 
it may be answered that we have never treated this knowledge as 
an esoteric doctrine, and that any one who desired any information 
about it had ample opportunity to obtain such, and further that 
there are matters and problems in science concerning which exces- 
sive discretion is the lesser evil. Now, in the exercise of this nec- 
essary discretion Delitzsch has been extremely c\\2.xy. The im- 
pression that the lecture is apt to make on unprofessional readers 
is that the Bible and its religion is to a certain extent a mere off- 
shoot of Babylonian heathendom which we have 'in purer and 
more original form' in Babel; and this impression is intensified by 
the fact that Delitzsch by his own statements actually expects from 
the results of the Assyrio-Babj'lonian excavations the advent of a 
new epoch in the i7iierpretation as well as in the understanding of 
the Old Testament. I shall consider Delitzsch's statements under 
this point of view. 

"The Babylonians also had their sJiahatiit, he says, and 'there 
can therefore be scarcely the shadow of a doubt that in the last re- 
sort we are indebted to this ancient nation on the banks of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris for the plenitude of blessings that flows 
from our day of Sabbath or Sunday rest.' What now was this 
Babylonian shabaitu'i Not the seventh day of each week, for the 
Babylonians regarded the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty- 
first, and twenty-eighth calendar days of every month as days in 
which no work could be done; and for what reason? For fear of 
the wrath of the gods. These were the days that the Romans 
called dies airi, and are we now to believe that these dies atri of the 
Babylonians, which were inseparably linked with the dates of the 
calendar, are our Biblical Sabbath? Never! The Sabbath as the 
'day of the Lord,' the view that on one day in every week we 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 133 

should cast aside all the trials and tribulations of our earthly life 
and live for God alone and be happy in communion with Him, is 
exclusively the property of the Bible, and for the 'plenitude of 
blessings' contained in it the world is indebted, not to Babel, but 
to Bible. 

"We have long known that the Biblical story of the Creation 
(Genesis i. ) reposed on a Babylonian foundation; but the only 
genuinely religious and imperishable fact of this history, the al- 
mighty God, creator of heaven and earth, who speaks and it comes 
to pass, who commands and it is so, the holy personal God, who 
created man in his own image and entrusted him with the duties 
attendant upon morality and a religious life, was given to the 
world, not by Babel, but by Bible. 

"And how is it with the story of Paradise and the Fall of Man 
(Genesis ii. and iii.)? Delitzsch reproduces on page 48 the well- 
known ancient Babylonian clay cylinder which is said to contain a 
pictorial representation of this story. Assyriologists of the stand- 
ing of Oppert, M^nant, Hal^vy, and Tiele vigorously contest this 
interpretation, even explaining the figures on the cylinder as two 
men, and are absolutely unable to recognise a serpent in the undu- 
latory line in this picture. No Babylonian text corresponding to 
Genesis iii. has yet been discovered, and if the reader of page 38 
of Delitzsch's book imagines that the clay tablet there mentioned 
containing 'the Babylonian legend of how it came to pass that the 
first man forfeited the boon of immortality' is the Biblical story of 
Genesis iii., 'in much purer and more primitive form,' I have only 
to say that he is sorely mistaken. But even granting that such is 
the case and that it has been proved that the Babylonians had a 
story according to which the first woman, tempted by the serpent, 
ate of the forbidden fruit and thereby brought sin and death into 
the world, it will be distinctly seen from the picture that, leaving 
everything else out of account, the Babylonian pair are clothed, and 
that therefore what is perhaps the profoundest and most significant 
feature of the story of Genesis iii. belongs to Bible, and not to 
Babel. 

"The conception of angels is without doubt 'characteristically 
Babylonian.' But whether they are also such in the Biblical sense 
as so grandly expressed in Psalms xci, verses 11 and 12, and in the 
utterance of Jesus, Matthew xviii. 10, is another question. In the 
Biblical representations Babylonian angels and eunuchs surround 
only the throne of the great king. And before Delitzsch wrote 



134 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

(page 55) his remarks concerning the demons and the devils which 
he says were possible only for the ancient Persian dualism, an-d 
were so destined to be committed forever and aye to the obscurity 
of the Babylonian hills from which they rose, he should have re- 
called to mind the important role which these concepts played in 
the religious life of Jesus, so that we might be justified in saying 
that there are 'still many Babylonian traits clinging even to the re- 
ligious thoughts' of Jesus. But these concepts in the Bible are no 
Parsee importation ; for the Bible can think of Satan and his an- 
gels under no other form than that of creatures of God who had 
fallen through their own sins and who stand thus on the most essen- 
tial point in the sharpest imaginable contrast with the afore-men- 
tioned Persian dualism. And does Delitzsch mean to say, when 
he affirms that the 5th, 6th, and 7th commandments occur 'in pre- 
cisely the same order' in the Babylonian records, that Moses, or 
whoever else composed the Decalogue, sought advice from Babel, 
in the face of the fact that the order of the treasures which man 
seeks to protect, namely, life, famil}^ and property, could not pos- 
sibly be more natural and obvious, and that the humane Baby- 
lonian commandments have also their parallel in the Egyptian 
Book of the Dead ? 

"And how do matters stand with the Biblical problems con- 
cerning which we are led to believe that Babel only can explain 
Bible? Delitzsch sees in the Bible Amraphel of Genesis xiv. the 
great Babylonian king Hammurabi, the founder of the old Baby- 
lonian kingdom. I shall not gainsay that this identification is pos- 
sible ; and since Amraphel was 'the contemporary of Abraham' we 
shall certainly be glad to reckon the period of Abraham by that of 
Hammurabi. But if we consult the Assyriologists we shall find 
that in fixing the chronological place of the fifty-five years of the 
reign of this king they vary between 2394-2339 B. C. and 1923- 
1868 B. C, with all the intermediate possibilities. From the point 
of view of method, therefore, is it not better to follow the plan of 
the Assyriologist Hommel, who, convinced of the correctness of 
the equation Amraphel ^Hammurabi, as of the historical authen- 
ticity of the events narrated in Genesis xiv., starts, contrariwise, 
from the Bible and moulds the Babylonian chronology until it ac- 
cords with the Biblical? 

"Delitzsch's statements (page 61) concerning the three clay 
tablets containing the name of Yahveh are quite new. I cannot 
revive here, much less resolve, the question of the original mono- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 135 

theism of the Semites, or at least of 'the old Canaanite races which 
settled in Babylonia 2500 years before Christ, and to whom Ham- 
murabi himself belonged'; but I have to confess that I cherish the 
gravest doubts concerning the correctness of the meaning of these 
tablets, or at any rate of the interpretation of the names Ya-ah-ve- 
ilu and Ya-hu-um-ilu. Of names containing the proper names of a 
god, and asserting additionally that this god is God, there are no 
instances whatever among the thousands of Semitic proper names 
which we know. Even the well-known Biblical y(5'^/ does not mean 
'Yahveh is God.' But even granting that these old 'Canaanites' 
did possess the theophorous name Yahu, is this any proof that they 
also possessed the Biblical concept of Yahveh? How does it hap- 
pen that of these 'monotheistic' kings one is called Sinmu-ballit 
which means 'Sin gives life,' and another is Samsu-iluna, which 
means 'the sun is our god.' 

"There are also other evidences \n Babel and Bible that De- 
litzsch's statements must be accepted with reserve. We read on 
page 50: 'In the Book of Job (xxiv. 18), which appears to be ex- 
tremely conversant with Babylonian modes of thought, we find 
comparisons drawn (xxiv. 18 et seq. ) between the arid, waterless 
desert which is reserved for those that have sinned, and the garden 
with fresh, clear water which is reserved for the pious.' I believe 
that I also am tolerably well acquainted with the Book of Job, and 
I was consequently not a little astonished at reading these words, 
for as a matter of fact there is absolutely nothing of the kind in Job 
xxiv. 18, and if Delitzsch possibly introduced this meaning into 
the passage conjecturally, it was entirely inadmissible on his part 
to deal with it as with something that had been absolutely estab- 
lished. 

"Again, the passage on pages 51-52 concerning Mahomet's 
Paradise, — namely: ' Two and seventy of these Paradisian maidens 
may every god-fearing man choose unto himself, in addition to the 
wives that he possessed on earth, provided he cares to have them 
(and the good man will always cherish desire for the good),' — is 
not to be found at all in the Koran, but has been taken from E. W. 
Lane's Ct4stoms arid Manners, part I., page 59, of the German trans- 
lation. 

"We are delighted and proud that Germany also is at last 
taking an independent part in the excavations in the valle}^ of the 
Euphrates. But in entering upon this undertaking it is only ful- 
filling a national obligation of honor toward the educated world, 



136 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

and no one could entertain greater sympathy with these labors or 
wish them greater success than we theological investigators of the 
Old Testament, for we know the light which will be shed from that 
source upon the object of our studies. But we are far from be- 
lieving that a new interpretation of the Old Testament will ever be 
brought to pass by these investigations, nay we are firmly con- 
vinced that in the struggle between Babel and Bible the Bible will 
ultimately come out victorious. Gunkel spoke for us all when he 
said : 

" 'How incomparably superior the Hebrew legend is to the 
Babylonian ! Should we not really be delighted at having found 
in this Babylonian parallel a criterion for estimating the real sub- 
limity of the conception of God in Israel, — a conception of so much 
intrinsic power that it can purge and recast in such a manner ma- 
terial so repellent and outlandish? And this also we may say, that 
the Babylonian legend strongly impresses us by its barbaric charac- 
ter, whereas the Hebrew legend is far nearer and more human to 
us. Even granting that we have been accustomed from childhood 
to the Hebrew legends, we yet learn from this example that in our 
whole world of ideas we owe far more to these Hebrews than to the 
Babylonians." 

The same theologian wrote to the editors of The Open Court 
after the appearance of Professor Delitzsch's First Lecture as fol- 
lows : "You are to be commended for having made the American 
public acquamted with Delitzsch's Babel and Bible, for the little 
book contains an extraordinary amount of stimulating and instruc- 
tive matter, and it has been cleverly constructed, so as to appeal 
at once to the great reading public. Yet while there is no direct 
polemical attack made in it against the Bible, you will nevertheless 
understand that we theologians have witnessed the appearance of 
this essay and the great sensation which it has made with solici- 
tude, nay even with distress ; for the impression which it is inevi- 
tably destined to make on the unprepared reader is one that we 
could never wish to see." 

A ROMAN CATHOLIC VERDICT. 

The Catholic Neius of New York, a journal "recommended by 
the Catholic hierarchy and the clergy as a model family paper," 
takes the following view of the situation: "The school of which 
Professor Dclitzsch is a distinguished member is by no means pre- 
occupied about establishing the veracity of the Bible. The gene- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 137 

ral purport of this lecture is to indicate that the Bible has borrowed 
almost all its religious and moral elements from the pagan Assyrians 
and Babylonians, and that it is merely a human compilation. The 
success which has attended the propagation of this view is to be seen 
in the total disintegration of all Protestant behef. It is the climax 
of irony that the sects which broke away from the Catholic Church 
with the cry, 'A free Bible; the Bible is the sole rule of faith,' 
are to-day giving up all supernatural belief because they have lost 
faith in the inspiration of the Bible, consequent upon the attacks 
of the higher criticism. Meanwhile the Catholic Church stands un- 
disturbed on her old platform. The Catholic repeats the profession 
of St. Augustine: 'I would not accept the Bible except on the au- 
thority of the Church.' He is confident that in the long run, when 
all facts have been garnered and after hasty theories shall have 
been tried and found wanting, the light thrown by science on all 
the complications of the Biblical question will serve to corroborate 
the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church, whose more than 
human prudence is nowhere more conspicuous than in her few 
guarded but comprehensive declarations concerning the fact and 
the nature of inspiration. Students who may not have time to 
study larger volumes dealing with Assyriology will find this little 
book a handy one to consult for the interpretation given to many 
archaeological discoveries by the representatives of the higher criti- 
cism." 

ALFRED JEREMIAS ON DELITZSCH.i 

Alfred Jeremias, in an interesting pamphlet bearing the title 
Itn Kampfe um Babel und Bibel, thoroughly reviews the situation 
and calls attention from another point of view to this very topic. 
Confuting the expressions of fear that Assyriological science is 
shaking the foundations of the sanctuary of Holy Scriptures, he 
remarks that it is strange the situation has been so completely re- 
versed with years. In the first periods of Assyriological research, 
the inscriptions on the excavated monuments were stridently ad- 
duced as evidence in corroboration of the traditional views of the 
Bible. It was triumphantly proclaimed that now (Luke xix. 40) 
the very bricks of Babylon cried out in confirmation of the Holy 
Scriptures, and the world should hold its peace. Exact copies of 
the writings of Moses and the children of Israel during their so- 

1 Written by Thomas J. McCormack. Extracted from The Open Court, Vol. XVII., No. 3, pp. 
130-132. 



138 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

journ in the desert were supposedly recovered from Nabataean in- 
scriptions; the historical existence of Abraham was confirmed by a 
brick ; and the wall was actually discovered on which Belshazzar 
saw written the fateful words, Mcne mene tekel upharsin ! 

But in Herr Jeremias's opinion the use of Assyriology as a 
weapon of destructive criticism for the overthrow of the traditional 
Bible is just as wicked as the preceding specimens of its applica- 
tion are stupid. One very advanced critic, cited by Jeremias, goes 
so far even as to wish for the time when the bricks of Babylon shall 
compel a more truthful view of the Old Testament, shall shatter in 
shards the doctrine of inspiration, and pave the way for a deeper, 
more spiritual, and more "pious" conception. Verily, Babel Jias 
"laid her mailed fist on the Old Testament." 

But we need have no fear. Orthodoxy and piety may yet lie 
down in harmonious union with Assyriology ; and Herr Jeremias, 
who takes both the strictly religious and the strictly scientific view, 
well expresses the terms of the compromise as follows: "In so far 
as the Old Testament as a document of God's education of the hu- 
man race may lay claim to being a fides divina, it stands in no need 
of corroboration by any auxiliary science. Here Babel can never 
promote the comprehension of the Old Testament, nor put it to 
hazard in any way, be the philological and scientific imbroglio what 
it may. Any ten of the marked passages of Luther's Bible are suf- 
ficient to demonstrate^ how superior the spirit of the Old Testa- 
ment is to that of Babylon. But the Old Testament has also its 
human side, — a side so stupendously interesting that no literature 
of antiquity can be mentioned with it in the same breath. Much 
of this remained obscure so long as the historical and cultural 
framework in which the life of Israel was enacted was veiled. But 
now the world around about Canaan is flooded with light; we can 
contemplate the people of the Old Testament in their relationship 
with the political and cultural conditions out of which it evolved 
and which have exerted a determining influence upon its destinies. 
In this domain cuneiform research can perform important services 
for the comprehension of the Bible. But the imperishable jewel 
which Israel possesses will shine only more brilliantly under this 
illumination, and likewise \\iQ. fides Jiumana upon which this unique 
book of literature rests its claims will stand triumphantly the ordeal 
of fire to which it has been subjected." 

IThe most significant passages of the Bible are printed in Luther's translation in bold-faced 
type. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 139 

There has been little criticism of Delitzsch's book from the 
side of the Assyriologists proper. There are many points on which 
all Assyriological inquirers do not agree, but upon the whole it is 
the universal verdict of the Assyriologists that Delitzsch's lecture 
"gives, so far as the monuments are concerned, those facts that 
may be regarded as indubitably established results of cuneiform in- 
quiry." And the advantage in the bout will doubtless also remain 
with Delitzsch. For in purely technical and Assyriological matters 
it is with him, as opposed to most of his theological critics, a case 
of Krupp guns against "halberds and blunderbusses." 

HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE EMPEROR. 

BY DR. PAUL CARUS. 
Manager of The Open Court Publishing Co. 

Emperor William criticises Delitzsch for "abandoning the 
standpoint of the strict historian" and "straying into religious and 
historical conclusions and hypotheses which are quite nebulous and 
bold." He says that "Delitzsch the theologian has run away with 
Delitzsch the historian." 

The Emperor means to say that in his historical research work 
Delitzsch is carried away by his liberal theological views ; but the 
case is probably just the reverse. Professor Delitzsch, the son of 
an equally famous Hebrew scholar and a pious Christian, was from 
the start an orthodox theologian, and his theology was modified 
under the influence of his historical investigations. The Emperor, 
who still clings to the old conception, concedes that "the Old Tes- 
tament contains many sections which are of a purely human and his- 
torical nature," and goes even so far as to add that they "are tiot 
God's revealed word." He declares "that the legislative act on 
Sinai, for example, can only be symbolically regarded as inspired 
of God." Apparently the Emperor makes a difference between the 
Jewish and the Christian Scriptures, and in this sense he says : 
"Neither does it matter that much of the nimbus of the chosen 
people will thereby disappear." 

The Emperor's letter is an important document in the evolu- 
tion of religion. He is a pronounced upholder of militant and 
pious Protestantism, and his views may be regarded as typical for 
large classes of all Protestant denominations. 

The struggle over Babel and Bible opens to the Christian laity 
a period of discussion concerning the nature of the Old Testament 
which is bound to lead to an investigation of the New Testament. 



140 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

The battle concerning the Old Testament is as good as ended. 
Whether or not Delitzsch is right in his sundry contentions as to 
the names "El" and "Yahveh," the identification of the Ruins of 
Mugheir with the home of Abraham, and his interpretation of Baby- 
lonian seal-cylinders, is quite indifferent. The essential point lies 
deeper and there is no need to conceal it. No one who has investi- 
gated the subject will any longer deny that the Old Testament is 
the product of an historical evolution. Of course, it is Jewish, not 
Babylonian ; nevertheless, the Babylonian civilisation forms the 
background, and many things which were formerly believed to 
have been dictated by the Holy Ghost are now seen to be the nat- 
ural outcome of historical conditions. But on that account the 
nimbus of the chosen people will no more disappear than the glory 
of Homer, and Phidias, and Pericles, and Socrates can be dimmed 
because we can trace their greatness to conditions and understand 
how they naturally grew and rose into being. 

The old narrow view cannot be abandoned at once, and many 
intermediate steps are being taken which attempt compromises. So 
we read for instance in the interesting pamphlet of Alfred Jeremias 
that we must grant the prevalence of a monotheism among the pa- 
gan nations long before the rise of Israel as a nation. Hammurabi, 
for instance, a contemporary of Abraham who lived more than half 
a millennium before Moses, introduces his code of laws with the 
invocation, "Thus speaketh ILU SIRU, i. e., God the Supreme." 
"But," adds Professor Jeremias, "there is this difference between 
the pagan monotheism which can be traced among all the nations, 
and Hebrew monotheism, that 'God himself filled the latter with 
his own revelation." In other words, when Plato speaks of God, 
we have to deal with a purely human speculation, but when David 
danced before the ark of the Lord we are expected to believe that 
then God was personally present. 

The truth is, we are familiar with the Hebrew view, for our 
own belief has developed out of it. We are not so familiar with 
pagan views. Therefore when Zarathustra speaks of Ahura Mazda, 
the Lord Omniscient, we admire his wisdom, but fail to find any 
connection with our own belief. The term sounds strange to our 
ears because it remains unassociated with our prayers and has no 
relation to the traditions that have become sacred to us. It ap- 
pears as the natural product of human thought, while the Hebrew 
names Jehovah, Zebaoth, Elohim, even when the context betrays 
a pagan or even polytheistic conception, are filled with a sanctity 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 141 

and a religious awe that is to us the evidence of a supernatural 
revelation. 

How true this is appears from the fact that the original and 
correct form Yahveh, which is not used in our churches, does not 
possess the same sacred ring to our ears as the corrupted form Je- 
hovah. The name Yahveh is written in our brains, not in our 
hearts. Yahveh is the name of a deity with which we have become 
acquainted through the study of Hebrew literature, and we would 
deem it all but a sacrilege, a kind of paganism, to pray to Yahveh 
or to sing hymns to him. The word Jehovah, an unmeaning and 
positively nonsensical combination of the consonants of the word 
"Jahveh," with the vowels of another, "Adonai," was invented in 
the days of Luther. It was unknown before the year 1519; but 
having slipped into our prayers, we still sing the triumphal strain, 
"Jehovah is King." 

When we become acquainted with the monotheism of Ham- 
murabi, we put him down as a philosopher, but the God of Moses 
is the same God to whom Christians bend the knee. That makes 
a difference. The associations with our own religious life, our 
forms of worship, our prayers, are important for obvious psycho- 
logical reasons. 

Through Delitzsch, the Emperor became familiar with the re- 
ligion of ancient Babylon, and he took a liking to the Assyrians. 
The Assyrian guards were so much like the Prussian grenadiers; 
their kings were generals enjoying the display of armies ; they be- 
lieved in the religion of the mailed fist and bestowed much atten- 
tion upon military attire, even as to the minute details of hair- 
dressing. While the Emperor's court barber patented the fashion 
of an upturned mustache under the name Es ist crreicht, which 
means "surpassing all," Delitzsch speaks of the official style of 
the Assyrian beard as Noch uicht erreicht, i. e., "still unsurpassed." 
Whether Delitzsch intended the joke or was serious in making this 
comparison we have no means to tell. Certainly the similarities 
were so many and so striking that the Emperor felt the thrill of 
kinship and showed himself willing to transfer the nimbus from 
the chosen people to the rulers of ancront Babylon. 

Truly, the Emperor is right when he says that '*God reveals 
himself continuously in the race of men." It is a good old doc- 
trine, and orthodox too, that "God spoke not to Moses alone," and 
St. John the Evangelist says that "that was the true light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 



142 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

But it is natural that Christians raised in the traditional dog- 
matism should shrink from the idea that the New Testament (as 
well as the Old) should be conceded to be the product of historical 
conditions. "Here," they argue, "Christ speaks himself," and (to 
use the Emperor's own words) "Christ is God, God in human form 
. . . .We have in Him God's revealed word, and He never lies." 

Certainly, God never lies. But do we have in the New Testa- 
tnent Christ's own words? We have reports about Jesus, and these 
reports are as human as are the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
Christianity would be in a sad plight if the New Testament had in- 
deed to be regarded as inspired verbatim by God. We cannot en- 
ter here into details but would suggest only that the mere contra- 
victions in the Gospels alone force us to look upon them as human 
compositions. 

The difficulties of regarding the Bible as literally the word of 
God are almost greater in the New Testament than in the Old. 
Any one who has studied the Scriptures knows that the problem is 
grave and cannot be easily disposed of. 

The great question back of all these discussions is simply this • 
"Shall we, or shall we not, grant Science the right io modify Re- 
ligion?" And the question need not be answered. Men of science 
know that whether or not we grant science the right to modify reli- 
gion, science is shedding her light upon religious problems, and 
she is constantly and continuously modifying religion. Science 
(represented in physics, astronomy, physiology, psychology, his- 
tory, text-criticism, etc., etc.) has enlarged our view of the world 
and deepened our conception of God. The scientific spirit of the 
age has begotten a new theology, a truly scientific treatment of the 
problems of God, inspiration, and revelation, which we call theon- 
omy, for it ranges as high above the antiquated theology as astron- 
omy is superior to astrology.^ 

After all, Christians are not pledged to dogmas, but to the 
truth. Orthodoxy means the right doctrine, and the right doctrine 
is that which can stand the test of critique. Orthodoxy so called 
is a misnomer and ought to be called dogmatism. The truth can 
be found only by searching, and the methods of an exact search 
are called science. 

Science is not human ; science is divine, and the development 

ICf. the writer's articles "Theology as a Science " in The Monist, \'o\. XII., No. 4, and Vol 
XIII., No. I. 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 143 

of science is the coming of the spirit of God, — of the true God, of 
the God of Truth, who is "the light that lighteth every man." 

The dogmas of Christianity are formulations of the Truth as 
interpreted by our forefathers. Let no Athanasius with his limited 
knowledge bind the conscience of a Delitzsch. Had Delitzsch lived 
in the days of the Alexandrian church-father, he would most likely 
have acquiesced in the Nicene formulation of the Christian creed ; 
but new issues have arisen and some of the traditional beliefs have 
become untenable. Dogmas may be venerable on account of their 
antiquity, but they cannot stand against Truth. Truth alone is 
holy, and the Truth of Science will finally win the day. 

The struggle for Babel and Bible is important not on its own 
account but because it forces upon us in a new form the issue of 
Science versus Faith, and compels us to revise our conception of the 
nature of divine revelation. It is a mere skirmish which will soon 
be followed by the more important struggle over the Gospels. The 
issues at stake are graver there, and thus we anticipate that the 
latter will be a more bitter and obdurate battle. The main histor- 
ical questions of Christianity lie in the New Testament, and though 
Assyriology contributes its goodly share toward the solution of the 
religious problem, it is after all a side issue only, which must be 
complemented by work along other lines of research. 

Delitzsch sums up his position in these words : " Do not let 
us blindly cling to dogmas which science has shown to be super- 
annuated, merely for fear of abandoning them. Faith in God and 
the true religion may thereby be injured." 

Whatever the final result of the present discussion shall be, 
we may rest assured that the modification of our religious faith will 
not be for the worse. Christianity has again and again adapted it- 
self to a more scientific conception of the world. How strong was 
the opposition of the so-called orthodox to the Copernican system, 
how fierce were their attacks on the doctrine of evolution ! But 
that is now a matter of the past, and religion has certainly been 
broadened as well as deepened by a broader and deeper insight 
into the constitution of nature. 

The task of the theology of to-day is a reconstruction of our 
conception of Christianity upon a strictly scientific basis. In the 
background of the several historical questions there is looming up 
the struggle for a scientific world-conception, and rightly considered, 
the philosophical problem is the main issue which over-shadows all 
others. 



144 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

It is not difficult to foresee the final result of the whole move- 
ment. It will not lead to a destruction of religion, but to its puri- 
fication and reconstruction upon a more solid foundation. There- 
fore let us have faith in the Truth. 

Says Esdras : "As for the truth, it endureth, and is always 
strong; it liveth and conquereth for evermore. 

"With her there is no accepting of persons or rewards ; but 
she doeth the things that are just, and refraineth from all unjust 
and wicked things ; and all men do well like of her works. 

"Neither in her judgment is any unrighteousness ; and she is 
the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all ages. Blessed 
be the God of Truth." (i Esdras iv. 38-40.) 



REPLY TO CRITICS OF THE FIRST LECTURE. 

THE ETHICAL ASPECT. 

In his Dcr Kampf urn Babel tind Bihel, p. 20 ff., Professor 
Samuel Oettli says: "The materials transmitted to us in the Old 
Testament have been plunged into an atmosphere of ethical inono- 
theisi7i and purified by this bath from all ethically or religiously 
confused and confusing elements. We no longer find the deluge 
here as the product of the blind wrath of a god, but as the ethically 
warranted punishment sent by a just god upon a degenerate race." 

This is an error. Even the report of Berosus shows us that to 
^.he Babylonians also the world-flood was a sin-flood.^ Consider 
his words: "The others cried aloud when a voice commanded 
them to fear God, as Xisuthros had been translated to the gods 
because lie had been godfearing." While we may assure ourselves 
from this alone that the Babylonian Noah escaped from the judg- 
ment of the deluge because of his piety and the remainder of man- 
kind were destroyed because of their ever-increasing sinfulness, 
the inference is confirmed by the words in the cuneiform inscrip- 
tion, spoken by Ea after the deluge to Bel who had caused it : 
"Lay up his sin against the sinner," etc. 

Professor Edward Konig, in his essay Bihel und Babel, p. 32, 
says: "The spirit of the two traditions (Babylonian and Hebrew) 
is totally different. This is shown by a single feature : The Baby- 
lonian hero rescues his inanimate as well as his living property, 
while in both the Bible accounts we have the higher point of view 
represented by the rescue of the living creatures only." What 
blind zeal ! Even in the fragment of Berosus we read that Xisu- 
thros was commanded to "take in winged and fourfooted animals," 
and the original cuneiform account says expressly: "I brought up 
into the ship the cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the field.' 

lAn untranslatable German pun and popular etymology (Sintflut= "universal flood ": Siind- 
flut = " sin-flood "). 



146 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Accordingly, the "higher point of view" must be conceded to the 
Babylonian account by Konig himself. 

THE PRIMORDIAL CHAOS. 
With reference to mythological features in the Biblical account 
of the creation something further may be said. Oettli remarks with 
much truth, p. 12, on the presumption of the existence of a chaos : 
"The notion of a primitive matter which was not derived from 
God's creative activity but which had rather to be overcome by it, 
cannot have grown up on soil of the Religion of Israel, which is 
strictly monotheistic in its thought, at least on the prophetic 
heights, and consequently excludes the dualistic conflict of two 
hostile primitive principles." I call attention here to the remark 
of Wellhausen also: "If we take Chaos for granted, everything 
else is developed out of this ; everything else is reflection, syste- 
matic construction, which we can figure out with little difificulty." 

TRACES OF POLYTHEISM. 

In the Elohistic account of the creation also there are traces 
of polytheistic elements. When we read (Genesis i. 26): "Let us 
make men in our^ own image, after our semblance," Oettli says 
with justice : "Moreover, that plural of self-appeal preceding the 
creation of man is not so easily to be reconciled with the later strict 
monotheism, nor the 'image of God' in which man is created, 
with the spirituality of Yahveh which is afterwards so strongly em- 
phasised, when once, rejecting all exegetic arts, we give to words 
their simple and obvious meaning. And this, notwithstanding the 
fact that the Biblical author, in accordance with his religious posi- 
tion, has given a higher value to these originally foreign elements." 

In fact. Genesis i. 26 and Isaiah xlvi. 5 are in irreconcilable 
opposition. The polytheistic coloring of Genesis i. 27 with its im- 
plied distinction of gods and goddesses would appear peculiarly 
drastic if the three members of the sentence are thought of as quite 
closely connected : "And God created man in his own image, in 
the image of God created He him, male and female created He 
them." But we cannot regard this as sure. 

BABYLONIAN MONOTHEISM. 
It may be recalled that I said in my first lecture: "Despite 
the fact that free and enlightened minds publicly taught that Nergal 

IThe assumption that we have here a case of pluralis ntajestaticus is not, indeed, precluded 
by general Hebrew usage, but it is far-fetched ; compare lii 2, the saying of Yahveh : " Lo, man 
has become as one of us." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 147 

and Nebo, moon-god and sun-god, the thunder-god Ramman and 
all the other gods were one in Marduk, the god of light, polytheism 
remained for three thousand years the state religion of Babylon." 

Jensen has felt warranted in accompanying this remark with 
the following observations, which have been carried further by 
Konig and others with much gratification, as was to be expected : 
"This would indeed be one of the most significant discoveries ever 
made in the realm of the history of religion, and therefore we must 
regret exceedingly that Delitzsch does not cite his source. I be- 
lieve that I may declare with all positiveness that nothing of the 
sort can be derived from the texts that are accessible to me. There- 
fore we beg urgently that he publish soon the text of the passage 
which deprives Israel of the greatest glory that has hitherto illu- 
mined that race, — that of being the only one that worked its way 
out into pure monotheism." 

Very good, if indeed Jensen stands by his expression, Israel is 
now actually deprived of this its greatest glory, and this by the 
Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablet 8 1, 11-3, in, known since 1895 
and published in \\\& Jotirnal of the Transactions of the Victoria Insti- 
tute by Theo. G. Pinches, — a tablet which is indeed preserved only 
as a fragment, but the remaining portion of which shows us that 
upon it all the divinities of the Babylonian pantheon (or at least 
the chief ones) are indicated as being one with and one in the god 
Marduk. I quote only a few lines •} 

"The god Marduk is written and called Ninib as the possessor 
of power, Nergal or perhaps Zamama as lord of combat or of battle, 
Bel as possessor of dominion, Nebo as lord of business (?), Sin as 
illuminator of the night, Samas as lord of all that is right, as lord 
of rain." 

Accordingly, Marduk is Ninib as well as Nergal, moon-god as 
well as sun-god, etc., in other words, the names Ninib and Nergal, 
Sin and Samas are only various designations of the one god Mar- 
duk; they are all one with him and in him. Is this not "indoger- 
manic monotheism, the doctrine of the unity which develops only 
out of variety"? 



ilNin-ib 


Marduk sa alii 


ii Nergal 


Marduk sa kablu 


ilZa-m.'i-ma 


Marduk sa tahazi 


ilBS'I 


Marduk sa bg'lutu u miduktu 


ilNabu 


Marduk sa nikasi 


iiSin 


Marduk munammir musi 


il Samas 


Marduk sa kOnSti 


ilAddu 


Marduk sa zunnu 



148 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



THE NAME "EL." 

O71 il, ^?>* God. — All Semitic prepositions were originally sub- 
stantives. For the preposition "7N!, which is originall}^ //, "toward, 
to, at," the fundamental significance which from the start seems 
most probable, "aim, direction," is still preserved in Hebrew^ al- 
though this was until recently overlooked. It is found in the 
phrase, "This or that is ^7t "^^?>" that is, "at the disposal of thy 
hand," "it is in thy control." 

The opinion that "'N* in this phrase means "power" may have 
the support of tradition, like thousands of other errors in the He- 
brew lexicography, but it has never been demonstrated, and there- 
fore it is not true, as Konig declares (p. 38), that "^/ is surely equiv- 
alent to 'power' or 'strength.'" The only meanmg that can be 
demonstrated is "aim, direction," which carries with it as a matter 
of course the concrete significance "that toward which one directs 
himself, end, goal." 

The Sumerians conceived of their gods as dwelling up above 
where the eye of man is directed, in and over the sky ; we ourselves 
use "heaven" figuratively for "God" (comp. Daniel iv. 23); and 
furthermore, a Babylonian psalm calls the sun-god digil irsiiiyn 
rapostitn, the "goal of the wide world," that is, the end toward 
which the eyes of all the earth-dwellers are directed, and, finally, 
the poet of the Book of Job (xxxvi. 25), in harmony with an abun- 
dance of other passages in Semitic literatures, glorifies God as the 
one "on whom all eyes hang, toward whom man looks from afar." 
And just so the earliest Semites called the "divine" being whom 
they conceived of as dwelling in the heavens above and ruling 
heaven and earth //, el, "that toward which the eye is directed,' 
(cp. the analogous application of ?2? to God and things divine in 
Hosea xi. 7). In my opinion the first and original meaning of the 
word is "goal of the eye," as is the case with the sun and the sky. 

Inasmuch as il is thus demonstrated to have the meaning 
"aim, goal," and as the designation of the deity by this word is 
perfectly in accord with the Semitic habit of thought, and it is 
therefore not permissible to assume another primitive noun //, my 
interpretation of el, the name of God, is established in every point. 

It is just as useless and impermissible to seek after a verb cor- 
responding to such a primitive noun as // (see Konig, p. 38), as to 
seek after a verbal stem to match others of these most ancient bi- 
consonantal nouns, such as y'/w, " day," or mi/l, "man." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 149 

Besides, the etymology of the word //, el is not the most im- 
portant consideration. The chief thing is rather the fact that those 
North-Semitic tribes which we find estabhshed about 2500 B. C. 
both north and south of Babylon, and whose greatest monarch in 
later times (about 2250) was King Hammurabi, conceived of and 
worshipped God as a unitary, spiritual being. Let it be observed 
that this applies to the North-Semitic tribes which had in part im- 
migrated to Babylonia and afterwards established themselves 
there, not to Sumerian-Semitic Babylonians. 

A number of journals have represented it as my opinion that 
"even the Jewish conception of God was derived from the Baby- 
lonian cosmology"; and Oettli (p. 4) says that in my view even 
"the name and the worship of Yahveh himself, united with a more 
or less definitely developed monotheism, was a primitive posses- 
sion of Babylon." But these are misrepresentations. 

As to those names of persons which occur so freqiiently in the 
time of the first Babylonian dynasty, Konig is utterly mistaken in 
declaring (p. 40, 42) that among notorious polytheists the names 
must needs be translated and interpreted as "<? god hath given"; 
and so is Oettli (p. 23) when he asks: "Who can prove that those 
names are not to be taken polytheistically, ^a god hath given,' ^ a 
god be with me' "? To say nothing of other reasons, this interpre- 
tation breaks down in the case of such names as Ilu-amranni, "God 
consider me!" Ilu-turani, "God, turn thee hither again!" and 
others. Or, on the other hand, are we to cease to render Bab-ihi 
"Gate of God," and say "Gate of a god"? No! For the time of 
Hammurabi we hold fast to those beautiful names which signify so 
much for the history of religion : Ilu-ittia, "God be with me," Ilu- 
amtahar, "I called upon God," Ilu-abi, Ilu-tni/ki, "God is my fa- 
ther," or "my counsel," larbi-ilu, "Great is God," lamlik-ilu, 
"God sits in power," Ibsi-itia-ili, "Through God came he into be- 
ing," Avel-ilu, "Servant of God," Mut{uni)-ilu, "Man of God" 
(=r=Methuscha'el), //z^w^-/(fV, "God is xm^X.y,''^ Iluma-abi, "God 
is my father," IWuna-ilu, "God is God," Summa-ilu-Id-ilia, "If God 
were not my God," and so on. 

The names must of course be judged collectively. In the case 
of certain of them (as in certain Assyrian names, like Na'id-ilu) we 
might certainly see in "God" merely an appellative, as perhaps in 
the phrase from the laws of Hammurabi : mahar-ili, to assert any- 
thing "before God"; or in the phrase that occurs hundreds of 
times in the Babylonian contracts of that period, "to swear by God 



150 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

(^ilu) and the king" (cp. i Samuel xii. 3, 5: "by Yahveh and the 
king"), but taking them all together it seems to me that they make 
it impossible to think that ilu means a "city or family god," or the 
"special tutelary deity." 

Precisely in "the endeavor of a people without philosophical 
development to be as concrete and specific as possible in its notions 
and expressions," we should inevitably expect to find in each case 
the name of the particular divinity intended, or on the other hand 
if the tutelary divinity of the family or of the infant was meant we 
should expect to find "my God," or "his God." An unprejudiced 
and unsophisticated consideration of all these and other names of 
the Hammurabi period leads rather to the renewed assumption that 
they are rooted in a religious conception different from the poly- 
theistic views that were native in Babylon. What was the nature 
and value of that monotheism the contemporary sources do not 
enable us to determine, but only to infer them from the later de- 
velopment of "Yahvism." 

THE NAME "YAHVEH." 

We must insist with all positiveness that in the two names 
Ya-a'-ve-ilu and Ya ve-ilu the reading Ya've is the onl}^ one that 
can be regarded as within the realm of possibility. 

The assault upon my reading — which in the light of our pres- 
ent knowledge is irrefutable — has revealed a lamentable state of 
ignorance in the critics : this ignorance may account for the mis- 
cellaneous insinuations which have been indulged in, as when Pro- 
fessor Kittel ventures to speak of my reading as a "partisan ma- 
neuver." 

In order to at least correct this ignorance, I beg to make the 
following brief and condensed exposition of the matter for the ben- 
efit of my theological critics and of certain of the Assyriologists 
who have volunteered to advise them. The sign vu has the follow- 
ing syllabic values : /// tal; tii; tarn, and besides in Babylonian in 
particular: """/z/^'' fn^ l^d.; a; {ini), or as would be perhaps bet- 
ter; ve; Vil; a; {yii). But any one who has become measurably 
familiar with the style of writing of the Hammurabi period knows 
that, even if the reading Ya-'u-md, be granted, this md cannot pos- 
sibly be interpreted as the emphasising particle tna. Accordingly 
Konig (p. 48 f. ) and Kittel and others are mistaken; on the con- 
trary, ma is without exception written with its customary sign. 



BABEL AND BIBLE- 151 

Thus the interpretation of the names in question as "Ya, Ya'u is 
God" is absolutely precluded. Let him who denies this cite one 
single instance in which the emphatic particle ma is written with 
the character vie. And in the case of Ya-ii-u/n ilu, I may remark 
incidentally, the in may be only mimation and not an abbreviated 
fna. 

Neither is the reading proposed by Bezold, Ya-\x-bi-iiu, pos- 
sible, for in the time of Hammurabi the sign hi does perhaps rep- 
resent also the S3dlable //, but the reverse, sign tni for bi, is never 
the case. And on mature reflection the reading Ya\ay-pi-ilu can- 
not be considered. It is true that the sign inc is found for //in the 
time of Hammurabi, as frequently in the contracts published by 
Meissner in his Beitrdgc zuin altbahylonischen Privatreclit, and also 
in the Code of Hammurabi, but the regular sign for// occurs much 
more frequentl}^ For instance, in the 79 letters from this very 
period, published by King,// is represented exclusively by its regu- 
lar sign. 

Besides this, a "canaanitish" verb form /a'//, iapi could be 
derived only from a stem ncn, which does not exist. Instead of 
Ya(^^ve ilu we might then at most read Ya-^' a /w-)vd /ji-i/u, with 
radical v, but by this very emendation we should expose ourselves 
to the dreaded recognition of a god TuTC Accordingly my reading 
Ya-a'-ve-ilu, Yave-ilu remains the most obvious as well as the only 
one deserving serious consideration. 

I venture on the interpretation of the name Ya(^^vc-ilu with 
less confidence than on the reading of it. The interpretation pro- 
posed by Konig (p. 50), "May God protect" (why not, "May<z 
god protect"?), from Arabic hama, "to protect," as well as that 
of Barth (p. ig), "God gives life" {Ya-ah-vc-ihi), is highly improb- 
able. As names from a foreign language they would needs appear 
as Yahve-ilu, not Ya've-ilu or even Yavc-ilu, and only in the last ex- 
tremity would one be justified in the assumption that these foreign 
personal names had gradually been Bab5donised in pronunciation, 
at the same time becoming wholly unintelligible. No, if we are to 
concede that there is a verb-form contained in yd've, ydve, then it is 
certainly the most obvious thing to think of the verb t^^tx, the older 
form of n*n which is assumed in Exodus iii. 14, and to interpret it 
with Zimmern as "God exists." My interpretation, "Ja've is 
God," would accordingly remain by far the most probable in and 
of itself. 



152 BABEL AND BIBLE. 



THE NAME "YAHUM-ILU." 

The name Ya u-um-ilu is and remains a foreign name. It 
belongs among the North-Semitic tribes, more precisely Canaan- 
itic. Among these tribes there is no other god Ya-i't but the god 
in^, Yahii, that god who is contained in the name Ya-u-ha-zi and 
others. 

Now this name of the divinity Yahu which is found at the be- 
ginning and especially at the end of Hebrew names of persons, is 
the shorter form of Yahve, "the Existing," and consequently pre- 
supposes the fuller form Yahve. Now even to the Jews of the exilic 
and post-exilic periods the name Yahveh was by no means a nomen 
ineffabile, as is shown by the many names of this later time : Ya-se'- 
va-a-va^= Isaiah (^n^JJii'?'), Pi-li-ya-a-va, and others. So much the less 
could it have been such to that primitive period in which the name 
of God, Yahveh, was very far from possessing the sanctity which it 
was to attain later in Israel. 

The name Yahum-ilu, therefore, presupposes a fuller equiva- 
lent name Ya've-ilu. Now when such a name is really twice docu- 
mented, in Ya'-ve-ilu, Ya-ve ilu, should It not be recognised as such 
without reserve, and the more so as the refusal to recognise it will 
after all not obliterate the fact of the existence of the North-Semitic 
("Canaanitic") name of the divinity Yahti, which is perfectly iden- 
tical with Yahveh, nor the existence of a name Yahu-ilu, "Yahu is 
God," similar to the Hebrew ^^<"'' (Joel), a thousand years before 
the prophet Elijah's utterance upon Carmel, "Yahveh is God'' 
(i Kings xviii. 39)? 

It needs no demonstration to convince competent judges that 
Earth's interpretation (p. 19) of Ya-hu-um-ilu as abbreviated from 
Ya-ah-we-ilu must be rejected. 

Jensen too regards it as "certainly in the highest degree prob- 
able that both composita contain the name of God Yavch-Yahu," 
adding very correctly : " Now since the Ya'wa in the name cannot 
be of Assyrio-Babylonian origin, it is surely of foreign origin, and 
hence, in all probability, the whole name is ' Canaanitic,' and its 
wearers, or wearer, also 'Canaanites.' " But when he goes on to 
say: "But because a Miiller or a Schultze is met with in Paris, we 
are not warranted in assuming that the Germans are the prevalent 
race in Paris; and just as little does an Ya'wa-iK^ii), appearing in 
Babylon 2000 years ago, need to prove anything more than that 
the bearers of this name occasionally came to Babylon," — when he 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 153 

reasons thus I confidently leave it to the unprejudiced reader to 
decide whether, in view of all the names like Yarbi-ilu, Yavilik-ilu, 
and so on (not to mention Ha7tiniurabi, Attitni-zadtlga, and other 
Canaanitish names), the delicate parallel of Miiller and Schulze is 
even remotely justified. Furthermore, even Jensen is compelled, 
as we see, to admit that the evidence is good for the existence of 
the divine name Yahvc ( Yahvu') before 2000 B. C. Moreover, Zim- 
mern makes this concession: "Even supposing that we have in 
ya-ii-tifu the name of a divinity, which is not i?nprobabIe, and even 
the name Yahu, Yahvc, 7uhich is possible. '' That is enough for the 
present; the admission of the reading Kz-(a')z'<? and of my inter- 
pretation will probably follow. 

And accordingly, if Ya-h-um holds its own as equivalent to 
1.T, i.T, then the names of that same period: Ilu-idinnam, "God 
hath given," Sd-iii, "Belonging to God," Ilu-amtahar, "I called 
upon God," Ilu-iiiraffi, "God, turn to me," etc., may with double 
right be regarded as equivalent in their content to the correspond- 
ing Hebrew names. 

PROCESSIONS OF THE GODS. 

Jensen would not countenance my proposition that processions 
of Gods are mentioned in Isaiah. We read (xlv. 20): "They 
have no knowledge that carry their graven image of wood, and pray 
unto a God that cannot help," and again (xlvi. i): "Bel has sunk 
down, Nebo is bowed down, their idols are fallen to the lot of the 
beasts and to the cattle, the things (i. e., fabrications) that ye car- 
ried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beasts." There 
can be but few commentators here who do not think in connection 
with these passages of the Babylonian processions of the gods, in 
which Bel and Nebo were carried in ceremonious progress through 
the streets of Babel. 

AARON'S BLESSING.' 

What I have said as to the significance of the phrase in the 
Aaronite blessing, "Yahveh lift up his countenance to thee," i. e. , 
"turn his favor, his love, towards thee," holds good in spite of my 
critics. When spoken of men, "to lift the countenance to any one 
or to anything" means nothing more than "to look up at" (so it is 
used in 2 Ki. ix. 32). It is used in Job xxii. 26 (cf. xi. 15), as well 
as in 2 Sam. ii. 22, with reference to a man who, free from guilt 

1 Num. vi. 24 ff. 



154 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

and fault, can look up God and to his fellow-men. This meaning, 
of course, is not appropriate if the words are spoken of God. Then 
it must mean precisely the same thing as the Assyrian, "to raise 
the eyes to anyone," that is to say, to find pleasure in one, to direct 
one's love towards him ; therefore not quite the same as to take 
heed of one (as in Siegiried-Stade's /fi-/>ra/si/ifs Wortcrbucli, p. 441). 
If it were so, "the Lord lift up his countenance to thee" would be 
equivalent to "the Lord keep thee." When Jensen (^op. cit., col. 
491) insists that the Assyrian expression is literally, not to lift up 
"the face," but to lift up "the eyes," he might with equal justice 
deny that Assyrian bit Amman means the same thing as the He- 
brew b^nc Atnmon. In fact, whereas the prevailing Hebrew usage 
is "if it be right in thine eyes," the Assyrian says in every case, 
"if it be right in thy countenance" {ina pdnika; cf. siimma \ind\ 
t>dn sarri mahir); "eyes" and "countenance" interchange in such 
phrases as this. 

In Hebrew we find "to lift up the e3'es to one" used as equiv- 
alent to "to conceive an affection for one," only with reference to 
human, sensual love (Gen. xxxix. 7). The value of the Assyrian 
phrase, "to lift up the eyes to any one," in its bearing on the 
Aaronite blessing, rests in the fact that it is used with preference 
(though not exclusively, as Jensen thinks) of the gods who direct 
their love towards a favored person or some sacred spot. In reply 
to Jensen who claims (p. 490) that the choice of my example of 
the usefulness of Assyrian linguistic analogies is "a failure," I 
comfort myself with the thought that the recognition of our in- 
debtedness as to a deepening of the meaning of the Aaronite bless- 
ing to cuneiform literature, was many years ago publicly endorsed 
by no lesser one than Franz Delitzsch. 

J. Barth attacks on trivial grounds my statement that Canaan 
at the time of the Israelite Incursion, was a "domain completely 
pervaded by Babylonian culture." This fact, however, obtains 
ever wider recognition. Alfred Jeremias in the '■'■ZeitgeisV of the 
Berliticr Tageblatt, February 16, 1903, says: "Further, at the time 
of the immigration of the 'children of Israel,' Canaan was sub- 
ject to the especial influence of Babylonian civilisation. About 
1450 the Canaanites, like all the peoples of the Nearer Fast, wrote 
in the Babylonian cuneiform character, and in the Babylonian lan- 
guage. This fact, proved by the literature of the time, forces us 
to assume that the influence of Babylonian thought had been ex- 
erted for centuries previously. Of late Canaan itself seems to wish 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 155 

to bear witness. The excavation of an ancient Canaanite castle by 
Professor Sellin has brought to light an altar with Babylonian 
genii and trees of life, and Babylonian seals." 

It may be briefly recalled here that the religion of the Cana- 
anites with their god Tammuz, and their Asherahs, bears unmistak- 
able marks of Babylonian influence, and that before the immigration 
of the children of Israel a place in the neighborhood of Jerusalem 
was called Bit-Ninib (house of Ninib), after the Babylonian god 
Ninib. There may have been actually in Jerusalem itself a bit 
Ninib, a temple of the god Ninib. See Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, 
v.. No. 183, 15, and cf. Zimmern, in the third edition of Schra- 
der's Die Keilinschriftcn und das Alte Testament, second half, p. 411. 
Cf. also Lecture II., p. 184. 

THE SABBATH. 

The vocabulary (II. R. 32, No. i) mentions, among divers 
kinds of days, a titn mih libbi (1. 16, a, b), a day for the quieting of 
the heart (viz., of the gods), with its synonym sa-pat-tum, which 
word, in view of the frequent use of the sign pat for bat (e. g., sti- 
t>at, var. bat, "dwelling"; Tig. vi. 94), might be interpreted to 
mean sabattum, and on the authority of the syllabary (82, g-i8, 
4159, col. I, 24) where UD (Sumer. t'l) is rendered by sa-bat-tmn, 
it must be so. 

The statement in the syllabary not only confirms the view that 
the word sabattum means a day, but it may also explain the sabat- 
tum to be the day par excellence, perhaps because it is the day of 
the gods. 

Jensen in Z. A. iv., 1889, pp. 274 et seq. says that sabattu 
means "appeasement (of the gods), expiation, penitential prayer," 
and the verb sabdtu "to conciliate" or "to be conciliated" (Jensen 
in Christliche Welt, col. 492). But, neither from 83, 1-8, 1330, col. 
I, 25, where ZUR is rendered sa-bat-tim (following immediately 
n^orv nuhhii), nor from IV. 8, where TE is rendered by sa-bat-tim 
[why not, as elsewhere, in the nominative?], ma)' Jensen's propo- 
sition be inferred with any degree of certainty. The verb sabdtu 
is hitherto only attested as a synonym of gamdru (V. R. 28, 14, <?,/). 
Therefore, the only meaning that may be justifiably assumed for 
sabattu at present is "cessation (of work), keeping holiday." It 
seems to me that the compiler of the syllabary 83, 1-8, 1330, de- 
rived his statement ZUR and TE^:=sabbatim from the equations 
UD. ZUR and UD, TE^=^uni nuhhi ox pussuhi^^^um sabattitn. 



156 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

Accordingly, the Babylonian sabattu is the day of the quieting 
of the heart of the gods and the rest day for human work (the latter 
is naturally the condition of the former). 

If in the well-known calendar of festivals (IV. R. 32/33) the 
seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of a month 
are expressly characterised as days whereon every kind of labor 
should rest, should we not see in these days no other than the sa- 
/>attu-ddiy} 

The mooted words in the calendar of festivals run, according 
to our present knowledge, thus: "The shepherd of the great na- 
tions shall not eat roasted or smoked (?) meat (variant : anything 
touched by fire), not change his garment, not put on white raiment, 
not offer sacrifice." [It is doubtful whether these prohibitions are 
of universal application, binding also the flocks of the shepherd. 
Then the particular prohibitions follow] ; "the King shall not 
mount his chariot, as ruler not pronounce judgment; the Magus 
shall not give oracles in a secret place [i. e., removed from pro- 
fane approach], the physician shall not lay his hand on the sick, 
[the day being] unauspiscious for any affair whatever" (.? ana kal 
sihlti; sibutu here, it seems used like 13V, in Dan. vi. 18 ; "afffair, 
cause"). 

Accordingly we must acquiesce in the fact that the Hebrew 
Sabbath, ultimately is rooted in a Babylonian institution. More 
than this was not claimed. 

We need not quarrel with Konig who emphasises that the 
Israelite Sabbath received its specific consecration on account of 
its "humanitarian tendency towards servants, and animals." 

The setting apart of the seventh day as the day in which we 
are to refrain from labors of any kind finds its explanation, as I 
showed years ago, in the fact that the number seven was in this as 
in other instances to the Babylonians an 'evil' number, and this 
is the reason why the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty- 
eighth days in the above-mentioned calendar are called UD. HUL. 
GAL., i. e., evil days. 

Alfred Jeremias (1. c, p. 25) aptly recalls the Talmudic story, 
according to which Moses arranged with Pharaoh a day of rest for 
his people, and when asked which he thought the most appropriate 
for the purpose, answered : "The seventh, dedicated to the Planet 
Saturn, labors done on this day will anyhow not prosper, in any 
case." 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 157 



THE FALL. 

Any one who reads without bias my comments on the cylinder 
seal (Fig. 47) representing a Babylonian conception of the Fall, 
will grant that in comparing it to the Biblical story of the Fall, 
that I merely proposed to emphasise the circumstance that the 
serpent as the corrupter of the woman was a significant feature in 
either version. The dress of the two Babylonian figures, naturally 
prevented me also from regarding the tree as the tree "of knowl- 
edge of good and evil." 

It seems to me that possibly there may loom back of the Bib- 
lical story in Gen. chapters ii.-iii. another older form which knew of 
one tree only in the middle of the garden, the Tree of Life. The 
words in ii. 9, "and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," 
seem to be superadded, and the narrator, quite engrossed with the 
newly introduced tree of knowledge, and forgetful of the tree of 
life inadvertently makes God allow man to eat of the tree of life 
which is in contradiction with iii. 22. 

As to the tree, but that alone, I agree with the late C. P. Tiele 
who sees in the mooted Babylonian picture, "a god with his male 
or female worshippers partaking of the fruit of the tree of life," "a. 
symbol of the hope of immortality," and also with Hommel, who 
says (p. 23): "It is most important that the original tree was ob- 
viously conceived to be a conifer, a pine or cedar with its life and 
procreation promoting fruits. There is, accordingly, an unmistak- 
able allusion to the holy cedar of Eridu, the typical tree of Para- 
dise in the Chaldaean and Babylonian legends." 

Jensen (col. 488) argues as follows: "If the picture has any 
reference to the story of the Fall, it is likely to represent a scene 
in which a god forbids the first-created woman to partake of the 
fruit of the tree of life." 

That one of the figures is distinguished by horns, the usual 
symbol of strength and victory (see Amos vi. 13) in Babylonia as 
well as in Israel, is in my opinion a very ingenious touch on the 
part of the artist, in order to give an unmistakable indication as to 
the sexes of the two clothed human figures. Those who see in the 
serpent behind the woman a "meandering line " or "an ornamental 
division," may do so if they please, but they will find few that will 
concur. 

I do not stand alone with my opinion. Hommel, for instance, 
says (p. 23); "The woman and the writhing serpent behind her 



158 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

express themselves clearly enough"; and Jensen (col. 488): "a 
serpent stands or crawls behind the woman." 

As to the nature of this serpent, nothing definite can be said 
so long as we depend upon this pictorial representation alone. We 
might regard it as one of the forms of Tiamat, who, like Leviathan 
in Job iii. 8, and the old serpent in the Apocalypse, would be as- 
sumed to be still in existence. But this is very uncertain. 

Yiz.u.-pi's Akkadische und sumerische Keilschrifttexic, p. iig, con- 
tain a bilingual text (D. T. 67) which may deserve a passing notice 
in this connection: It mentions a fallen hand-maid, the "mother 
of sin," who being severely punished, bursts into bitter tears — "in- 
tercourse I learned, kissing I learned" — and we find her later on 
lying in the dust stricken by the fatal glance of the deity. 

LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

In the code of Hammurabi (xxvii. 34etseq. ), the sinner is 
cursed in the words: "May God utterly exterminate him from 
among the living upon earth, and debar his departed soul from the 
fresh water in Hades." 

The last passage confirms the great antiquity of the Babylonian 
conception concerning the life of the pious after death. 

The Book of Job which shows a close acquaintance with Baby- 
lonian views, describes the contrast in the underworld between a 
hot, waterless desert destined for the wicked, and a garden with 
fresh Clearwater for the pious. The passage is rendered in a phil- 
ologically unobjectionable translation in my book Das Buck Job, 
Leipzig, 1902: "Cursed be their portion on earth. Not does lie 
turn to vineyards. Desolation and also heat will despoil them. 
Their prayer for snow-water will not be granted. Mercy forgets 
him, vermin devours him ; no longer is he remembered." 

Thus in its right interpretation this passage forms a welcome 
bridge to the New Testament conception of a hot, waterless, and 
torture-inflicting Hell, and the garden which to the Oriental mind 
cannot be conceived of as lacking water, abundant, running, living 
water. 

The concluding verse of the prophetic book of Isaiah (ch. Ixvi. 
24): "and they shall go forth and look with joy upon the dead 
bodies of those that have revolted from me : how their worm dieth 
not, neither is their fire quenched : and they are an abomination to 
all flesh," means that those whose bodies are buried in the earth 
will forever be gnawed by worms, and those whose bodies are 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 159 

burnt with fire shall forever suffer the death of fire. In two respects 
the passage is important : first, it shows that cremation is thought 
of as standing entirely on the same level with burial, and that, ac- 
cordingly, not the slightest objection can be made to cremation on 
account of the Bible ; secondly, it follows that the words, "where 
their worm dieth not," in Mark's account of the description of hell- 
fire as given by Jesus ^ should not have been admitted ; they are 
out of place. 

TIAMAT. 

Jensen (/. c, p. 489) observes with reference to Tiamat: "Be- 
rossus calls this being 'a woman,' she is the mother of the gods,' 
has a husband and a lover, and nowhere throughout Assyrian or 
Babylonian literature is there found even the slightest hint that 
this creature is regarded otherwise than as a woman." 

Nothing can be farther off the mark than this assertion, which 
contradicts not merely me, but also a fact recognised by all Assyri- 
ologists. Or is it not true that a human woman gives birth to 
human beings, while a lioness brings forth young lions? Therefore, 
a creature which gives birth to sinnahhe, i. e., gigantic serpents 
{ittalad, see Creation-epic, IIL, 24 and passitn'), must itself be a 
great, powerful serpent, a SpaKwv /xeyas or some serpent-like mon- 
ster. As a matter of fact, Tiamat is represented in Babylonian art 
as a great serpent. (See, e. g. , Cheyne's English translation of 
the Book of the Prophet Isaiah in Haupt's edition of the Bible, p. 
206.) 

I see by no means in the scene reproduced in my First Lec- 
ture (Fig. 46, p. 46) an exact portrayal of Marduk's fight with the 
Dragon, as described to us in the creation-epic ; on the contrary, I 
speak expressly and cautiously of a battle between "the power of 
light and the power of darkness" in general. 

The representation of this battle, especially of the monster 
Tiamat, naturally left a wide scope to the imagination of the artist. 
A dragon could be represented in various ways, such as we see in 
Figure 44, page 44. The beast which lies at the feet of the god 
Marduk has since been palpably proved by the German excavations 
to be, as explained by me, the dragon Tiamat. The relief of the 
sirrussii found on the Gate of Ishtar at Babylon unmistakably 
agrees with the figure familiar to us from our illustration. 

Oettli, following Gunkel (^Schopfung u.nd Chaos, pp. 29—114), 

1 Mk. ix. 44, 46, 48. 



160 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

practically agrees with my conclusion when he says: "There are 
enough references in the prophetical and poetical books of the Old 
Testament to make it obvious that the old [Babylonian] creation- 
myth survived in the popular conceptions of Israel, and that in a 
highly-colored form." And again: "There are indeed enough 
cases where the original mythical meaning of the monsters Tehom, 
Leviathdn, Tannin, Rahab, is unmistakable."^ Isaiah proceeds (li. 
lo): "Art thou not it that dried up the sea, the water of the great 
Tehom, that made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to 
pass over?" Here the prophet actually couples "those mythical 
reminiscences" with the deliverance from Egypt, as another tri- 
umph of Yahveh over the waters of Tehom. And when we con- 
sider how in other passages (e. g., Ps. cvi. 9-1 1, Ixxviii. 13) Yah- 
veh's achievement of the passage of the children of Israel through 
the Red Sea is described and celebrated, we cannot apply to any 
but primaeval times the words in Ps. Ixxiv. 13 sq.: "Thou brakest 
the heads of the dragons in the waters, thou didst dash to pieces 
the heads of the sea-monsters" (^Leviathcin^. Leviathdn, accordmg 
to Job iii. 8 also, is a personification of the dark chaotic primaeval 
waters, the sworn enemy of light. 

Even Konig reluctantly grants (p. 27) that the Book of Job^ 
"alludes, in all probability, to the conquest of the primaeval ocean ; " 
Jensen accordingly seems to stand quite alone when he says (/. c, 
p. 490): 

" Wherever the Old Testament mentions a struggle of Yahveh against serpents 
and crocodile-like creatures, there is no occasion to assume with Delitzsch and 
with a goodly number of other Assyriologists [add: also with Gunkel and most 
Old Testament theologians] a reference to the Babylonian myth of the struggle 
with Tiamat." 

Oettli is right when he declares (p. 17): 

"To submit the researches of Natural Science to the Biblical version of the 
creation is a wholly erroneous proceeding, which is the more unintelligible as the 
details of the second account of Genesis and many other passages in the Old Testa- 
ment are quite incompatible with the first. Let us, therefore, unreservedly give to 
Science that which belongs to Science." 

Oettli proceeds : 

" But let us also give to God that which is God's ; the world is a creation of 
God's omnipotence, which supports it as its law of life,- — this the first page of Gen- 
esis tells us. " 

1 Oettli cites Job ix. 13 and Isaiah li. g, wliere. moreover, " pierced " ini^ht be better than 
dishonored." 

2 " God turns not his anger, the helpers of ritAi?;!' brake in pieces under him"(ix. 13). and 
in his power he smote the sea and in his wisdom he dashed rOhSb to pieces " (xxvi. 12). 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 161 

In this I can no longer concur. Our faith claims, and many 
passages in the Old Testament assert, that God is the Almighty 
Creator of heaven and earth, but this truth is certainly not stated on 
the first page of Genesis, where we read: "In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth, — and the earth was waste and 
desolate," etc. ; for this passage leaves unanswered the question, 
"Whence did chaos originate?" Besides, even among the Baby- 
lonians the creation of the heavens and of the earth is ascribed to 
the gods, and the life of all animate creatures is regarded as rest- 
ing in their hands. 

* 
* * 

I will call attention to a passage in II. R. 51, 44^;, where a 
canal is named after "the Serpent-god who bursts (or destroys) 
the house of life," apparently referring to some as yet unknown 
Babylonian myth. This, however, would upset Jensen's view, that 
we may perhaps see in the two figures, two gods dwelling by the 
tree of life, and in the serpent, its guardian. 

Zimmern^ regards the serpent-god as ultimately identical with 
the chaos-monster. 

ANGELS. 

Cornill (/. c, p. 1682), also, comes to the conclusion that "the 
conception of angels is genuinely Babylonian." When I spoke of 
guardian angels who attend on men (Ps. xci. ii et seq., Matt, 
xviii. 10), I had in mind such passages as Apia's well-known letter 
of consolation to the queen-mother (K. 523). The Babylonian 
officer writes: "Mother of the king, my lady, be comforted (?) ! 
Bel's and Nebo's angel of mercy attends on the king of the lands, 
my lord." Further the writing addressed to Esarhaddon (K. 948): 
"May the great gods send a guardian of salvation and life to stand 
by the king, my lord ; " and also the words of Nabopolassar, the 
founder of the Chaldaean kingdom: "To lordship over land and 
people Marduk called me. He sent a Cherub of mercy (a tutelary 
god) to attend on me, and everything I undertook he sped" (see 
Mitteilimgcn dcr deutschen Oric7it-Gesellschaft, No. 10, p. 14 et seq.). 

In "the Old Serpent which is the Devil and Satan" is pre- 
served the ancient Babylonian conception of Tiamat, the primaeval 
eneni)^ of the gods, while Satan, who appears several times in the 
later and latest books of the Old Testament, and is always the 
enemy of man, not of God,'' owes his origin to Babylonian demon- 

1 Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3rd ed., second half, p. 504 et seq. 
2See Job, ch. i. et seq., i Chron. xsi. i, Zech. iii. i et seq. 



162 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

ology in which we become acquainted with an //// Ihnnu or * evil 
god' and a. gallu or 'devil.' 

BABYLONIAN SUPERSTITIONS IN SWEDEN. 

How much Assyria intrudes into our own time can be seen 
from G. Hellmann's most interesting communion on the Chaldaean 
origin of modern superstitions about the understorms (in the Mr- 
teorologische Zcitsclirift, June, i8g6, pp. 236-238), where it is proved 
that an ancient Babylonian belief survives even at the present day 
in the popular Swedish book, Sibyllae Prophetia, in which a chapter 
entitled "Tordons marketecken " treats of the prognostics of the 
weather and fertility as indicated by the thunder in the several 
months. 

CANAANITES. 

The term used by me in its usual linguistic sense (see, e. g., 
Kautzsch, Hebrdische Grammatik, 27th ed., p. 2), has been replaced 
in later editions by "North Semites," simply because the name was 
frequently misunderstood. That the kings of the first Babylonian 
dynasty, Sianu-abi and his successors, do not belong to that Semitic 
stock of Babylonian Semites who had become fused with the Sume- 
rians, but rather to later immigrants, is proved by the ancient Baby- 
lonian scholars, for they deemed the names of the two kings Hafn- 
murabi (also Ammurabi^ and Ammisadtiga (or Airimizaduga) to be 
foreign and stand in need of explanation, rendering the former by 
Kimta-rapasium, "wide- spread family" (cf. C^''3n"i, Rehoboam), and 
the latter hy Kimtum-kcttuiti, "upright family" (VR. 44, 21, 22, a, 
b^. The replacement of the u (in C^, people, family) by h in the 
name Ha7n7nurabi shows that these Semites, unlike the older stock 
that had been settled for centuries in Babylonia, still pronounced 
the iJ as an 37. Further, their pronunciation of sh as an s,^ no less 
than the preformative of the third person of the perfect tense with ia 
(not /^), proves that these Semitic tribes were quite distinct, which 
fact, first stated by Hommel and Winckler, is and remains true, in 
spite of Jensen's opposition (/. c, p. 491). Linguistic and his- 
torical considerations make it more than probable than these im- 
migrant Semites belonged to the Northern Semites and are most 
closely affiliated with the linguistically so-called "Canaanites" (i. 
e., the Phoenicians, Moabites, Hebrews, etc.). The knowledge of 

ISamsu in Sa-am-su-iliina fcf. also Samu-ahi) as contrasted with the older Babylonian 
Shamshu. 

2 In the personal names of that age Vatnlik-ilu, Varbi-ilu, Vak-hani-ilu, etc 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 163 

this we owe to the acumen of Hugo Winckler (see his Geschichte 
Israels), who thereby made a particularly important addition to his 
many other merits. The na of ihina (in Satnsu ibina), which is 
alleged to mean "our God," is not sufficient to prove tribal rela- 
tionship with Arabia, since, in view of the names Atnmi-zadTiga, 
Ammi-ditana, it is at least equally probable that iluna represents an 
adjective. 1 \{.o^q,vq.x, zadiig, "righteous," may indicate a "Cana- 
anite" dialect, both lexically^ and phonetically;^ and the same may 
be said, too, of such personal names as Ya-su-tib-ilu belonging to 
the same age.* Will Jensen be able ever to produce an unobjec- 
tionable explanation from the Babylonian language of such names 
as Yasiib-ilu} 

1 Note the personal n^Tae T-lu-na xaMeissaex's Beitriige zum altbabylontschen Privatrecht ^ 
No. 4 ; cf. ■jfns ? 

"^ZadUg must be the Hebrew pil^il for ih^ verbal stem, compare saduk, "he is righteous," 
in the Amarna tablets, 

3The vowel S is obscured to o, ft ; e. g., in anitki, signifying the pronoun '' I " in the Amarna 
tablets, etc. 

4Cf. Phoen. Ba-a-al-ia-sft-bu, VR, 2, St-. 



REPLY TO CRITICS OF THE SECOND LEC- 
TURE. 

That a discussion of these momentous theological or religio- 
historical questions, if they are but treated in the right spirit, 
could be considered an injury or even an insult to Judaism, least of 
all to the modern Jewish faith, is in my opinion absolutely ex- 
cluded. Dispassionate, strictly objective inquiry into the origin 
of the Sabbath, of the position of woman in Israel as well as in 
Babylonia, and of kindred questions, can only sharpen our judg- 
ment and promote the truth. In the same way we shall gradually 
witness in Jewish circles a unanimity regarding the worth of Old 
Testament monotheism, which at present is not yet attained. In 
contradiction to the universalism of the belief in God which several 
Jewish writers of open letters assume to prevail in the Old Testa- 
ment (and they imagine they prove their case by quotations of Scrip- 
tural passages), the opinion of other Israelites, authorities both for 
their general knowledge and Biblical scholarship, has been voiced, 
the purport of which appears in the following private letter of Jan- 
uary 14, 1903: 

"Irrefutable is your assertion that Jewish monotheism is egotistic, particular- 
stic, and exclusive ; equally irrefutable, however, in my opinion, is the fact that 
this rigorously particularistic monotheism alone could preserve Judaism for thou- 
sands of years in the midst of all kinds of persecution and hostility. From the 
Jewish standpoint, the national theism is brilliantly justified; to give it up means 
to give up Judaism ; and though much can be said in favor of such a surrender, 
there are many points that militate against it." 

The divine character of the Torah, of course, will have to be 
excluded from scientific discussion, at least so long as a complete 
neglect of the results of Pentateuch-criticism on the Jewish side 
can be regarded as "exact science," and so long as reviews of 
Bahcl and Bible based on such a neglect are looked upon as "scien- 
tific criticism." 



BABEIy AND BIBLE. 165 

A deep pain seizes me, who myself am sprung from a strictly 
orthodox Lutheran house, when I consider the abyss of obscurant- 
ism, confusion, halfheartedness, contradiction, let alone worse fea- 
tures, of the evangelical orthodoxy displayed towards the questions 
raised by Babel and Bible. From all quarters and corners the cry is 
raised that I have said "nothing essentially new": but, if that be 
so, why this extraordinary excitement? 

On the one hand, a deep lamentation and bitter accusation of 
Assyriology comes from Aix-la-Chapelle, because the Old Testa- 
ment traditions, e. g. , Nebuchadnezzar's madness, are arbitrarily 
assumed to be borrowed from Babylonian myths; on the other 
hand, an "orthodox pastor" exclaims in the columns of a journal 
of central Germany that I am fighting windmills, because the story 
of Balaam's ass, of the sun standing still, of the fall of the walls of 
Jericho, of the fish which swallows Jonah, of Nebuchadnezzar's 
madness, are not contained in the historical books of the Bible. 
"They are accounts," he says, "whose historical trustworthiness 
may be contested even according to orthodox views." 

Accordingly even evangelical orthodoxy set aside "revela- 
tions" which are no longer deemed in accord with the spirit of the 
age : will not the orthodoxy once for all condescend to an open 
c:onfession, and explain unequivocally which books and narratives 
of "Holly Scripture" they think proper to surrender? 

Professor Ernst Sellin of Vienna, one of the first and most 
meritorious among the positive Old Testament investigators, gladly 
acknowledges in his glosses on Babel and Bible {^Neue Freie Presse, 
January 25, 1903) "the innumerable helps, elucidations, and cor- 
rections which in grammatical and lexicographical questions as 
well as in the field of the history of civilisation and general history 
Old Testament investigation owes to the decipherment of the Baby- 
lonian inscriptions. Yet, on the other, he is of opinion that if I 
dispose of the fact of a divine revelation in the Bible on account 
of the Songs of Songs and the amalgamation of tradition out of 
heterogeneous sources, I appear on the scene a hundred years too 
late. This is, to say the least, a gross exaggeration. When my 
dear father, Franz Delitzsch, towards the end of his life, found 
himself compelled by the weight of the facts of the Old Testament 
text criticism to make some, and indeed the smallest possible, con- 
cessions for the book of Genesis, he was persecuted, even on his 
deathbed (i8go), by the denunciation of whole synods. And the 
great commotion excited by my Second Lecture serves to show 



166 BABEL AND BIBLE. 

convincingly enough that the circles which govern Church and 
school cherish a different conviction from that of my highly- 
esteemed critic. 

The several clergymen who have not wasted their time at the 
university adhere to freer views, but Church and School — especially 
the public schools — have remained unaffected, and this inconsist- 
ency is no longer endurable, as stated in my First Lecture and also 
freely granted by Harnack. 

And this inconsistency produces an increasingly widening gulf. 
When, e. g., a theologian of no less authority writes (26th January, 
4903): "You criticise a conception of Revelation that sensible 
Protestants no longer share ; it is that of the antiquated Lutheran 
Dogmatists. . . . All divine revelation is, of course, affected by the 
human medium, and must therefore have historically developed; " 
he describes exactly the standpoint that I myself advocate, only I 
regard the conceptions of ' 'divine revelation " as held by the Church 
and as a historical, i. e., human, development to be irreconcilable 
contradictions. Either we take the one or the other. Tcrtium non 
datur. 

I hold the view that in the Old Testament we have to deal 
with a development effected or permitted by God like any other 
product of this world, but, for the rest, of a purely human and his- 
torical character, in which God has not intervened through a "spe- 
cial, supernatural revelation." 

The Old Testament monotheism plainly shows itself to be 
such a process marked by an advance from the imperfect to the 
perfect, from the false to the true, here and there indeed by occa- 
sional retrogression. The modification of the original conception 
of revelation, deeply rooted in ancient Orientalism, by a surrender 
of the verbal inspiration, made by both, evangelical and Catholic 
theology, and even by the Church, irretrievably divests the Old 
Testament of its character as the "Word of God," ushering in, as 
it seems to me, the end of the theological and the beginning of the 
religio-historical treatment of the Old Testament. 

The present resurrection of the Babylonio-Assyrian literature 
has certainly not been accomplished without God's will. It has 
suddenly taken its place by the side of the ancient Hebrew litera- 
ture, the only one of Hither-Asia heretofore known to us, and com- 
pels to revise our conception of revelation bound up with the Old 
Testament. Would that we might more and more become con- 
vinced that only b}' a dispassionate reinvestigation of the docu- 



BABEL AND BIBLE. 1^' 

ments we can reach our aim, and that in th.s controversy, neitl,er 
::: oTwhen its solution has been approached, our p.ety and the 
communion of our hearts with God can suffer the least. 

CONCLUSION, 

I shall endeavor to reply only to scientific criticisms, but I fear 
that i I adhere to this mLim, I shall have little opportunity, ■ 
m t';;"c:ntinue as heretofore, to concern -V-" ^'^'^^Evange cal 
Orthodoxy. Their method of warfare, especially that °f 'he bvan 
get 1 Orthodox Press, fills me with profound d-gus.^ In the 
%.ange,iscke Kirc,.en.ciU,n,, founded by the venerable Hengs. n 
burg. Pastor P. Wolff, of Friedensdorl, Seelow, one of its regular 
contributors, writes (No. 4, January 25, .903) as follows: 



children." 



And again: 

..Dem.sch intend, .0 deliver another lecture o„ Baby lo;- and .he New Te^ta- 
„en.;perhapshe,.,.al30,rea..hes„hi»..Bahe,^^^^^^ ^^ 

rrs.T:rr-:i.tXrpro.ed.hate,en.e^^^^^^^^^ 
rived from Babylon. On a monolith preserved ■" '^;'^"'f^.'J;;=3„„j ,L neck, 
Ramnran IV., is represented wearing upon ^'^"^'^^'^l ^J^^^l „,,, („, „,ders 
a cross, which appears '° ^";-| f, ;^^%>,:^„t;°: ^ ^r comp-hension of the 
What a newbght ,s shed ^^ 'h' '^^' ^^j^J^/^ l^^, „j ,„, Red Eagle of the 
real meanmg of orders Even ,D Baby'o are unquestionably derived 

;:rBr,.Tf :virt"th:r:ur rd:rr -"lisation is steeped .hr„ugh and 
through with Babylonian ideas 

What a slough of mental and moral depravity in a German 
clergT-n these lords bespeak ! And samples like th.s could be 

"'"Tcon't:attt'this, I, as an Evangelical Chrisfan greet with 
gratitude Rev. Dr. Friedrich Jeremias of Dresden, whose dtscus- 
sion of -y lecture (^Drcsiner Joun.al, February 4, -gos).. '-"K 
according to his standpoint he naturally rejects my postt.on. ts 
trulv noble both in diction and substance. , ^ ,. , ,, 

A third lecture on "Babel and Bible" will be dehvered as 
as soon ale views on these two lectures shall have become clear 
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11' ThrfJ n?""''"«^ *"' '"■'""'"^' "' ""•"«" Knowledge. By George Berkeley. 25c is 60 

49- Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. By George Berkeley. 2c cents ,s6d 

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GAYLORD 






PRINTEDIN U.S.A. 



BS1180.D3461903 
Babel and Bible; 



Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 




i'm. 



 

 GAYLORD PRINTEDIN U.S.A. BS1180.D3461903 Babel and Bible; Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library i'm.

 

Filed Under: 5* INFO, ANCIENT HISTORY, Babel and Bible, BABYLONIAN RELIGION, BIBLE AND MESOPOTAMIA

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Categories

  • "The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" (2)
  • “A land without a people for a people without a land” (4)
  • 5* BULLSHIT (10)
  • 5* INFO (505)
  • A Brief History of Humankind (1)
  • A Historical List Of Ancient Texts That Predate The Bible (5)
  • A Moral Argument Against Absolute Authority of the Torah (4)
  • AA NEW-TGP (10)
  • AAA TGP 1 RED CURCUMCUSION (3)
  • AAA TGP 2 YELLOW – EXODUS (6)
  • ABSOLUTE BULSHIT 5* (1)
  • Academia. (28)
  • An Incomplete History (3)
  • Ancient 'outlaw temple' discovered in Israel (9)
    • 18-19th CENTURY AUTHORS BIBLICAL CRITICISM (8)
      • Chilperic Edwards (1)
  • ANCIENT HISTORY (10)
  • Ancient Israel: A Brief History (1)
  • Ancient Mesopotamian underworld (3)
  • Ancient Near Eastern Parallels to the Bible and the Question of Revelation 5* for INFO and 10* for total bulllshit (1)
  • Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (1)
  • Ancient Sumerian Origins of the Easter Story (1)
  • and Readmission of the Jews (1)
  • ANTI ZIONISM (1)
  • Anti-Zionism (1)
  • Antisemitism (1)
  • Arno C. Gaebelein (1)
  • ATHEIST BIBLE (1)
  • AUTHORS (110)
    • Alison Weir (5)
    • Assmann_Jan (1)
    • Benjamin Freedman (1)
    • Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions, by T. W. Doane (4)
    • Donald Morgan (1)
    • Donald Morgan (8)
    • DOUGLAS REED (1)
    • Dr Michael David Magee (9)
    • GEORGE SMITH (14)
    • GEORGE SMITH (5)
    • Irving Finkel (3)
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    • Joshua J. Mark (8)
    • Journalist H.L. Mencken's Account of the Scopes Trial (1)
    • Leonard W. King (1)
    • Nahum Sokolow LEADING ZIONIST OFFICIAL AND DIPLOMAT1859 – 1936 (2)
    • REV. A. H. SAYCE (1)
    • RICHARD FREIDMAN (1)
    • Robert G. Ingersoll (6)
    • STANLEY WILKIN (5)
    • Stephen Sizer (3)
    • The 10 Worst Old Testament Verses by Dan Barker (1)
    • The Chaldean Account of Genesis – George Smith (2)
    • THE CHURCH OF TRUTH (3)
      • The Bible Is Wrong About Moses (2)
    • The Greatest Lie Ever Told" by historian W H Uffington. (1)
    • THOMAS SHOEMAKER (4)
    • Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld (15)
    • WHITNEY WEBB (2)
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  • Babel and Bible (3)
    • William Jennings Bryan – Woodrow WIlson – SCOPES TRIAL (2)
  • BABYLONIAN RELIGION (9)
  • Babylonian tablet shows how Noah's ark could have been constructed (1)
  • BALFOUR DECLARATION (15)
    • The Ambition of Mr. House (1)
  • BANKSTERS AND WARMONGERS (3)
  • Baron Edmond de Rothschild & Palestine (2)
  • BIBLE AND MESOPOTAMIA (15)
  • BIBLE AND MESOPOTAMIA FACTS AND DETAILS (1)
  • BIBLE AND MESOPTMNIA (10)
  • Bible Atrocities (1)
  • Bible Is Fiction (1)
  • Bible is Fiction: A Collection Of Evidence (1)
  • BibleMythsandTheirParallelsinOtherReligions (7)
  • Biblical archaeology (32)
  • Biblical Assyria and Other Anxieties in the British Empire (1)
  • Biblical Contradictions (3)
  • Biblical Understanding & 19th-century CE Archaeology (4)
  • BRITTIANICA INFO – HISTORY OF JUDASIM AND MORE (1)
  • BULLSHIT NONSENSE GOOD FOR INFO – The Top Ten Attacks Against the Bible’s Historical Reliability — And How to Answer Them (6)
  • Canaanite and origins of Ancient Israel (6)
  • Charles Taze Russell (1)
  • Chart of All The Supernatural Events Recorded in the Bible (1)
  • Christian Fundamentalism (83)
  • CHRISTIAN ZIONISM/EVANGELICALS (92)
  • Christianity and its unashamed plagiarism (1)
  • Churchill (6)
    • Churchill (5)
    • the Jews and Israel – Part 1 (2)
  • CHURCHILL AND ROTHSCHILDS (5)
  • Circumcision (3)
  • Circumcision: History, Scope, and Aim: Part I (1)
  • COL HOUSE (1)
  • CONSPIRACY TRUTHS – Establishing The Zionist State of Israel (1)
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  • CONSPIRACY TRUTHS – Rothschild Zionism (2)
  • COPPER/METAL (GOD) (2)
  • COPYCAT – JEWISH SABBATH NOT ORIGINAL – COPIED FROM THE SUMERIANS (2)
  • Darwin, Evolution, and Faith (3)
  • Deadly logic of "absolute anti-Zionism" (1)
  • DID MOSES EXIST? (2)
  • Did the Jews invent God? (1)
  • Did YHWH have a female consort? (1)
  • Difference Between Science and Scientism (2)
  • Do we have extra-biblical evidence for the origins of the Israelites? 5*info (1)
  • DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE? (1)
  • DODGY INFO (6)
  • Domination by Deception (2)
  • Doré Bible (1)
  • Early Egyptology and the Hebrew Sojourn/Exodus Tradition (1)
  • Eden's Serpent: Its Mesopotamian Origins (3)
  • EDNUND DE ROTHSCHILD (2)
  • Egyptian paper claims Jewish Temple was never in Jerusalem (1)
  • EL AND YAHWEH (1)
  • EPIC OF GILIMESH (2)
  • Errant or Inerrant? That is the Question. (2)
  • Ezekiel’s Bizarre Siege Drama (1)
  • fake jews (1)
  • FEDERAL RESERVE (1)
  • FEDERAL RESERVE its creation under Woodrow Wilson (5)
  • FESTIVALS AND CALENDARS IN MESOPOTAMIA (2)
  • First World War Hidden History (1)
  • FORGOTTEN BOOKS (4)
  • General Jan Christian Smuts – A True Friend Of Zion (4)
  • Genesis (8)
  • Germans (1)
  • Greek and Old Testament Mythology (1)
  • Haaretz (12)
  • HAARETZPAPER (14)
    • For You Were (Not) Slaves in Egypt: The Ancient Memories Behind the Exodus Myth (1)
    • How the Jews Invented God (2)
  • Hammurabi's Code (3)
  • HENRY FROWDE (1)
  • High priest (4)
  • HISTORY – NINEVAH (1)
  • HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER (9)
  • History of Israel (2)
  • HOLOCAUST EXPLIANED (1)
  • HOW DID GOD GET STARTED (Great article on the origns of how faith was invented) 5*+++ (2)
  • How Did God Get Started? (2)
  • How did we get the New Covenant teaching? (1)
  • How the Serpent Became Satan (2)
  • HUMANIST THINKING (2)
  • Humanists (1)
  • If the Messiah Isn't Here Yet, Does Israel Belong to the Jews? 5+++INFO (1)
  • Imagined_Beginnings (1)
  • Influence of Anthony Ashley-Cooper's Religious Thought – VII Lord Shaftesbury – on British Political Zionism. (1)
  • Influence of Gilgamesh on the Bible (1)
  • Is a Long-Dismissed Forgery Actually the Oldest Known Biblical Manuscript? (2)
  • Is Genesis merely a rip-off of other ANE lit? (7)
  • Is the Bible "Inerrant" or "Errant"? (1)
  • Is the Bible a True Story? (1)
  • Israel and the Palestinians: a history of conflict in 8 key episodes (4)
  • Israel deliberately forgets its history (4)
  • Israel Has No Right To Exist (11)
    • Why Israel can’t be a ‘Jewish State’ (3)
  • Israel’s Exodus (1)
  • Israelite History in the Context of the Ancient Near East (1)
  • January – March 2007 DANCING AROUND THE GOLDEN CALF – PART 5 (1)
  • Jerusalem: The Not-so-eternal Capital of the Jewish People (1)
  • Jewish God Yahweh Originated in Canaanite Vulcan, Says New Theory (1)
  • John Nelson Darby (10)
  • JUDAISM – REDDIT (2)
  • Khazars (1)
  • King Solomon's Tablet of Stone (2)
  • Legal Codes in the Ancient World (1)
  • LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION (1)
  • Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East (8)
  • LORD SHAFTSBURY (1)
  • Louis D. Brandeis: Zionist Leader (2)
  • Man or Biblical Myth: The Archaeological Evidence (1)
  • Manna Is Real and Not So Heavenly (2)
  • MARI AND THE BIBLICAL AMORITES (MAN) (1)
  • Maximilien Robespierre FRENCH REV (1)
  • Menasseh Ben Israel (2)
  • Mesopotamian Priests and Priestesses (1)
  • Monopolizing Knowledge by Ian Hutchinson (2)
  • MOSES AND THE EXODUS (8)
  • Nineveh (1)
  • NOAH'S ARK -THE FLOOD (5)
  • OLD TESTAMENT/TORAH STORYTELLING (13)
  • Oldest Ancient Civilizations (5)
  • OLIVER CROMWELL – CHARLES 1ST – JEWS RETURNING TO THE UK (7)
  • ON THE RELIABILITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (1)
  • ORIGINAL SIN (10)
  • Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland' (2)
  • Origins Of The Hebrew Bible (91)
  • Origins of the Holy Bible via Archaeology (6)
  • OUT OF EGYPT OUT OF CAANAN (1)
  • OWLCATION (1)
  • Oxford Movement was also criticised for being both secretive and collusive. (1)
  • Pan-Babylonianism (5)
  • Pawns in the Game – William Guy Carr (1)
  • PDF (52)
  • Peoples of the Bible: The Legend of the Amorites (1)
  • Philosemitism in the British Isles is the basis of the Jewish state (1)
  • Plagiarism of the bible (27)
  • President Kennedy, The Fed And Executive Order 111 From APFN By Cedric X (2)
  • PRIESTHOODS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST (1)
  • Probable Source of Aspects of Biblical and Homeric Literature (1)
  • Process of copying the Old Testament by Jewish Scribes (1)
  • Proof that religion is a man-made device and why it is outdated (2)
  • Pul, King (Tiglath-Pileser III) of Assyria (1)
  • Religion on Trial (4)
  • RESEARCHGATE (2)
  • ROGER GAHOLOCAUST DENIAL IN THE ARAB MEDIA (1)
  • ROTHSCHILD (33)
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  • ROTHSCHILDS BANKSTERS AND WARMONGERS (7)
  • ROTHSCHILDS TIMELINE (3)
  • SACRIFICES IN MESOPOTAMIA AND ISRAEL (4)
  • Samuel Untermeyer (24)
  • SCIENTIFIC ERRORS IN THE BIBLE (2)
  • SCOFIELD (41)
  • Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925) (2)
  • SCRIBED (1)
  • Secular Web Kiosk (20)
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (1)
  • SHAKESPEARE (1)
  • SMUTTS – A Reevaluation of the Balfour Declaration (1)
  • Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (2)
  • Sumerian King List still puzzles historians after more than a century of research (1)
  • Sumerian Polytheism, Sin and a Great Flood (2)
  • Sumerian religion/COPYCAT Hebrews (17)
  • Sumerians (11)
  • Sykes-Picot and the Zionists (2)
  • TGP – ARK OF THE COVENANT (1)
  • TGP -THE GREAT PRETENDER (7)
  • Thales Idea of natural and super natural. (2)
  • THE ANTINOMIES OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM (1)
  • The Ark of the Covenant in its Egyptian Context (1)
  • The Atheist Atrocities Fallacy – Hitler, Stalin & Pol Pot (1)
  • The Balfour Declaration: Enduring colonial criminality (3)
  • THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY (1)
  • The Bible and Belief in Victorian Britain (1)
  • The Development of Zionism Until the Founding of the State of Israel (1)
  • THE DIVINE SERPENT (2)
  • The entire bible is rife with historical errors … 5*INFO (TAKEN FROM QUORA) (1)
  • THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE (5)
  • The Evolution-Creationism Controversy: A Chronology (1)
  • The Exodus Debunked: Chronology (1)
  • The Federal Reserve's Role During WWII (1)
  • The Fool Says in His Heart, “There is no God (1)
  • THE GILGMESH EPIC AND OLD TESTAMENT (3)
  • The Great Flood: Comparison (2)
    • The Great Flood (1)
  • The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark (2)
  • THE INCREDIBLE SCOFIELD AND HIS BOOK By JOSEPH M. CANFIELD 5*INFO (2)
  • The Invention of God (1)
  • The Invention of the Land of Israel by Shlomo Sand (1)
  • The Jewish concept of God as their tribal protector, who would save them from being conquered or exiled, had to undergo revision. (2)
  • the Jews and Israel – Part 1 (1)
  • The Kuzari Principle (4)
  • THE LAWS OF HAMMURABI AND THE COVENANT CODE: (5)
  • The Myth of Abraham (1)
  • THE MYTH OF MOSES AND SINAI (16)
  • THE MYTH OF SIN (1)
  • The national revelation at Sinai never happened (11)
  • The Old Testament and Its Authors (1)
  • The Origins of Judaism (14)
  • The Politics of the Exodus Myth (1)
  • The Problem of the Bible: Inaccuracies, contradictions, fallacies, scientific issues and more. (1)
  • The Reformation (1)
  • The Reformation, Cromwell, the Commonwealth, and Readmission of the Jews (1)
  • The roots of the creation story: An atheist's take on the Bible (1)
  • The Sabbath (4)
  • The Scopes Monkey Trial, 80 Years Later CLARENCE DARROW (2)
  • The Sephardi Aristocracy in Jerusalem-500 Years after the Expulsion from Spain (1)
  • The Serpent in the Garden of Eden (4)
  • The Sumerian Flood Story (2)
  • THE SUMERIAN HOAX: IS PSEUDO-SCIENCE TURNING WESTERN OCCULTISM INTO A RELIGION FOR DUMMIES? PROBABLY 5* BULLSHIT HOWEVER THER ARE SOME INTERESTING POINTS! (1)
  • The Three-Story Universe (1)
  • The Torah is True – Even if It’s Not Fact (1)
  • The World before 1000 BCE (3)
  • THE_GILGAMESH_EPIC_AND_OLD_TESTAMENT_PAR.pdf"] (1)
  • The_Rise_of_Monotheism_in_Ancient_Israel. (1)
  • The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine (1)
  • Theodor Herzl (5)
  • There Was Pastor Russell: A Neglected Chapter of Zionism (1)
  • THIS IS MY REPLY TO THE SERIOUS BS THAT ASSAILS STHE XTIAN MIND!!5*INFO BIG TIME LOL (2)
  • Torah based on Mesopotamian (and other) sources (1)
  • TOTAL BULLSHIT – JUDAISM (18)
  • TRIOLOGY (3)
  • Ugaritic Texts (1)
  • url links (1)
  • VATICAN BANK (1)
  • VICTORIANS: RELIGION (1)
  • Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration (2)
  • Was Adam the First Human? (1)
  • Was Passover Originally An Ancient Canaanite Ritual Festival Meant To Stop The Winter Rain From Ruining Spring Crops? (1)
  • Were Hebrews Ever Slaves in Ancient Egypt? Yes (1)
  • Western Civilizations (1)
  • What is sin? (1)
  • What is the circle of the earth in Isaiah 40:22? (1)
  • When Biblically Inspired Pseudoscience (1)
  • Who invented the idea that man made God? (1)
  • Why Did God Plagiarise the Bible (6)
  • Why Everything You Think You Know About Christian Zionism Is Wrong (1)
  • Why Moses’s brother worshipped a golden calf (1)
  • Why No Truly Ancient Bible Writings Have Been Found (1)
  • Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism, and Why It Matters .The Original "No": (2)
  • Why was the Gilgamesh flood tablet such a sensation? (2)
  • WIKIPEDIA (18)
  • WIKIWAND (1)
  • William E. Blackstone (1)
  • William Gladstone Prime Minister (2)
  • Woodrow Wilson (18)
  • World of Humanism ATHIEST ARTICES (1)
  • WORLD WAR 1 – THE GREAT WAR (2)
  • World War I (1)
  • World War One (3)
  • Yahweh (14)
  • Year 6000 Wikipedia – last date the jewish messiah can be revealed? (1)
  • You’ve Seen on Elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? (1)
  • YOUTUBE (2)
  • ZIONISM (100)
    • 1903) (1)
    • Lovers of Zion: A History of Christian Zionism (2)
    • Zionist Congress: The Uganda Proposal (August 26 (1)
  • ZIONISM — THE HIDDEN TIRANNY (4)
  • Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (3)
  • Zoroastrian /Judaism (12)
    • TIMELINE JEWISH (7)

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