THE DEEP
The second verse of Genesis states, "And the earth was without form and
void [_i. e._ waste and empty] and darkness was upon the face of the
deep." The word _teh[=o]m_, here translated _deep_, has been used to
support the theory that the Hebrews derived their Creation story from
one which, when exiles in Babylon, they heard from their conquerors. If
this theory were substantiated, it would have such an important bearing
upon the subject of the attitude of the inspired writers towards the
objects of nature, that a little space must be spared for its
examination.
The purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is to tell us that--
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
From it we learn that the universe and all the parts that make it
up--all the different forms of energy, all the different forms of
matter--are neither deities themselves, nor their embodiments and
expressions, nor the work of conflicting deities. From it we learn that
the universe is not self-existent, nor even (as the pantheist thinks of
it) the expression of one vague, impersonal and unconscious, but
all-pervading influence. It was not self-made; it did not exist from all
eternity. It is not God, for God made it.
But the problem of its origin has exercised the minds of many nations
beside the Hebrews, and an especial interest attaches to the solution
arrived at by those nations who were near neighbours of the Hebrews and
came of the same great Semitic stock.
From the nature of the case, accounts of the origin of the world cannot
proceed from experience, or be the result of scientific experiment. They
cannot form items of history, or arise from tradition. There are only
two possible sources for them; one, Divine revelation; the other, the
invention of men.
The account current amongst the Babylonians has been preserved to us by
the Syrian writer Damascius, who gives it as follows:--
"But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass
over in silence the one principle of the Universe, and they
constitute two, Tavthê and Apasôn, making Apasôn the husband
of Tavthê, and denominating her "the mother of the gods." And
from these proceeds an only-begotten son, Mumis, which, I
conceive, is no other than the intelligible world proceeding
from the two principles. From them also another progeny is
derived, Lakhê and Lakhos; and again a third, Kissarê and
Assôros, from which last three others proceed, Anos and
Illinos and Aos. And of Aos and Dakhê is born a son called
Bêlos, who, they say, is the fabricator of the world."[26:1]
The actual story, thus summarized by Damascius, was discovered by Mr.
George Smith, in the form of a long epic poem, on a series of tablets,
brought from the royal library of Kouyunjik, or Nineveh, and he
published them in 1875, in his book on _The Chaldean Account of
Genesis_. None of the tablets were perfect; and of some only very small
portions remain. But portions of other copies of the poem have been
discovered in other localities, and it has been found possible to piece
together satisfactorily a considerable section, so that a fair idea of
the general scope of the poem has been given to us.
It opens with the introduction of a being, Tiamtu--the Tavthê of the
account of Damascius,--who is regarded as the primeval mother of all
things.
"When on high the heavens were unnamed,
Beneath the earth bore not a name:
The primeval ocean was their producer;
Mummu Tiamtu was she who begot the whole of them.
Their waters in one united themselves, and
The plains were not outlined, marshes were not to be seen.
When none of the gods had come forth,
They bore no name, the fates (had not been determined)
There were produced the gods (all of them)."[27:1]
The genealogy of the gods follows, and after a gap in the story, Tiamat,
or Tiamtu, is represented as preparing for battle, "She who created
everything . . . produced giant serpents." She chose one of the gods,
Kingu, to be her husband and the general of her forces, and delivered to
him the tablets of fate.
The second tablet shows the god An[vs]ar, angered at the threatening
attitude of Tiamat, and sending his son Anu to speak soothingly to her
and calm her rage. But first Anu and then another god turned back
baffled, and finally Merodach, the son of Ea, was asked to become the
champion of the gods. Merodach gladly consented, but made good terms for
himself. The gods were to assist him in every possible way by entrusting
all their powers to him, and were to acknowledge him as first and chief
of all. The gods in their extremity were nothing loth. They feasted
Merodach and, when swollen with wine, endued him with all magical
powers, and hailed him--
"Merodach, thou art he who is our avenger,
(Over) the whole universe have we given thee the kingdom."[28:1]
At first the sight of his terrible enemy caused even Merodach to falter,
but plucking up courage he advanced to meet her, caught her in his net,
and, forcing an evil wind into her open mouth--
"He made the evil wind enter so that she could not close her lips.
The violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and
her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted.
He swung the club, he shattered her stomach;
he cut out her entrails; he over-mastered (her) heart;
he bound her and ended her life.
He threw down her corpse; he stood upon it."[28:2]
The battle over and the enemy slain, Merodach considered how to dispose
of the corpse.
"He strengthens his mind, he forms a clever plan,
And he stripped her of her skin like a fish, according to his
plan."[28:3]
Of one half of the corpse of Tiamat he formed the earth, and of the
other half, the heavens. He then proceded to furnish the heavens and the
earth with their respective equipments; the details of this work
occupying apparently the fifth, sixth, and seventh tablets of the
series.
Under ordinary circumstances such a legend as the foregoing would not
have attracted much attention. It is as barbarous and unintelligent as
any myth of Zulu or Fijian. Strictly speaking, it is not a Creation myth
at all. Tiamat and her serpent-brood and the gods are all existent
before Merodach commences his work, and all that the god effects is a
reconstruction of the world. The method of this reconstruction possesses
no features superior to those of the Creation myths of other barbarous
nations. Our own Scandinavian ancestors had a similar one, the setting
of which was certainly not inferior to the grotesque battle of Merodach
with Tiamat. The prose Edda tells us that the first man, Bur, was the
father of Bör, who was in turn the father of Odin and his two brothers
Vili and Ve. These sons of Bör slew Ymir, the old frost giant.
"They dragged the body of Ymir into the middle of Ginnungagap,
and of it formed the earth. From Ymir's blood they made the
sea and waters; from his flesh, the land; from his bones, the
mountains; and his teeth and jaws, together with some bits of
broken bones, served them to make the stones and pebbles."
It will be seen that there is a remarkable likeness between the
Babylonian and Scandinavian myths in the central and essential feature
of each, viz. the way in which the world is supposed to have been built
up by the gods from the fragments of the anatomy of a huge primæval
monster. Yet it is not urged that there is any direct genetic connection
between the two; that the Babylonians either taught their legend to the
Scandinavians or learnt it from them.
Under ordinary circumstances it would hardly have occurred to any one to
try to derive the monotheistic narrative of Gen. i. from either of these
pagan myths, crowded as they are with uncouth and barbarous details. But
it happened that Mr. George Smith, who brought to light the Assyrian
Creation tablets, brought also to light a Babylonian account of the
Flood, which had a large number of features in common with the narrative
of Gen. vi.-ix. The actual resemblance between the two Deluge narratives
has caused a resemblance to be imagined between the two Creation
narratives. It has been well brought out in some of the later comments
of Assyriologists that, so far from there being any resemblance in the
Babylonian legend to the narrative in Genesis, the two accounts differ
_in toto_. Mr. T. G. Pinches, for example, points out that in the
Babylonian account there is--
"No direct statement of the creation of the heavens and the
earth;
"No systematic division of the things created into groups and
classes, such as is found in Genesis;
"No reference to the Days of Creation;
"No appearance of the Deity as the first and only cause of the
existence of things."[30:1]
Indeed, in the Babylonian account, "the heavens and the earth are
represented as existing, though in a chaotic form, from the first."
Yet on this purely imaginary resemblance between the Biblical and
Babylonian Creation narratives the legend has been founded "that the
introductory chapters of the Book of Genesis present to us the Hebrew
version of a mythology common to many of the Semitic peoples." And the
legend has been yet further developed, until writers of the standing of
Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch have claimed that the Genesis narrative was
_borrowed_ from the Babylonian, though "the priestly scholar who
composed Genesis, chapter i. endeavoured of course to remove all
possible mythological features of this Creation story."[31:1]
If the Hebrew priest did borrow from the Babylonian myth, what was it
that he borrowed? Not the existence of sea and land, of sun and moon, of
plants and animals, of birds and beasts and fishes. For surely the
Hebrew may be credited with knowing this much of himself, without any
need for a transportation to Babylon to learn it. "In writing an account
of the Creation, statements as to what are the things created must of
necessity be inserted,"[31:2] whenever, wherever, and by whomsoever that
account is written.
What else, then, is there common to the two accounts? _Tiamat_ is the
name given to the Babylonian mother of the universe, the dragon of the
deep; and in Genesis it is written that "darkness was upon the face of
the _deep_ (_teh[=o]m_)."
Here, and here only, is a point of possible connection; but if it be
evidence of a connection, what kind of a connection does it imply? It
implies that the Babylonian based his barbarous myth upon the Hebrew
narrative. There is no other possible way of interpreting the
connection,--if connection there be.
The Hebrew word would seem to mean, etymologically, "_surges_,"
"_storm-tossed waters_,"--"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy
waterspouts." Our word "_deep_" is apt to give us the idea of
stillness--we have the proverb, "Still waters run deep,"--whereas in
some instances _teh[=o]m_ is used in Scripture of waters which were
certainly shallow, as, for instance, those passed through by Israel at
the Red Sea:--
"Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea:
his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The
_depths_ have covered them."
In other passages the words used in our Authorized Version, "_deep_" or
"_depths_," give the correct signification.
But deep waters, or waters in commotion, are in either case natural
objects. We get the word _teh[=o]m_ used continually in Scripture in a
perfectly matter-of-fact way, where there is no possibility of
personification or myth being intended. Tiamat, on the contrary, the
Babylonian dragon of the waters, is a mythological personification. Now
the natural object must come first. It never yet has been the case that
a nation has gained its knowledge of a perfectly common natural object
by de-mythologizing one of the mythological personifications of another
nation. The Israelites did not learn about _teh[=o]m_, the surging water
of the Red Sea, that rolled over the Egyptians in their sight, from any
Babylonian fable of a dragon of the waters, read by their descendants
hundreds of years later.
Yet further, the Babylonian account of Creation is comparatively late;
the Hebrew account, as certainly, comparatively early. It is not merely
that the actual cuneiform tablets are of date about 700 B.C., coming as
they do from the Kouyunjik mound, the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib
and Assurbanipal, built about that date. The poem itself, as Prof. Sayce
has pointed out, indicates, by the peculiar pre-eminence given in it to
Merodach, that it is of late composition. It was late in the history of
Babylon that Merodach was adopted as the supreme deity. The astronomical
references in the poem are more conclusive still, for, as will be shown
later on, they point to a development of astronomy that cannot be dated
earlier than 700 B.C.
On the other hand, the first chapter of Genesis was composed very early.
The references to the heavenly bodies in verse 16 bear the marks of the
most primitive condition possible of astronomy. The heavenly bodies are
simply the greater light, the lesser light, and the stars--the last
being introduced quite parenthetically. It is the simplest reference to
the heavenly bodies that is made in Scripture, or that, indeed, could be
made.
There may well have been Babylonians who held higher conceptions of God
and nature than those given in the Tiamat myth. It is certain that very
many Hebrews fell short of the teaching conveyed in the first chapter of
Genesis. But the fact remains that the one nation preserved the Tiamat
myth, the other the narrative of Genesis, and each counted its own
Creation story sacred. We can only rightly judge the two nations by what
they valued. Thus judged, the Hebrew nation stands as high above the
Babylonian in intelligence, as well as in faith, as the first chapter of
Genesis is above the Tiamat myth.
FOOTNOTES:
[26:1] _Records of the Past_, vol. i. p. 124.
[27:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16.
[28:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16.
[28:2] _Records of the Past_, vol. i. p. 140.
[28:3] _Ibid._ p. 142.
[30:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 49.
[31:1] _Babel and Bible_, Johns' translation, pp. 36 and 37.
[31:2] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 48.