670 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
record is thoroughly anthropocentric ; and man is not only (as in Gn 1) the goal and crown of creation, but to such a degree is he its central point that the world of animals is created solely on his account, with the result that in no way do they come up to his dignity and exalted position. It requires a second, wondrous new creation to provide man with the ‘help’ who is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. God Himself brings her to him; so that upon His appointment rests that fellowship against which even the strongest ties of blood are not to prevail. If we note, further, that it is only upon the basis of monogamy that this whole description attains to its full mean- ing, all the more must we pronounce that we have here a view of the nature and the mystery of marriage as beautiful and worthy as could be conceived of. Here, again, the religion of Israel exercised a powerful influence on its estimate of earthly relationships and duties.
(6) Lf an underlying Babylonian source for Gn 2 can be proved only in part, and not at all for ch. 3 as yet, it is different with other components of the Hebrew primitive history. In these a far- reaching Babylonian influence has been assumed, and the traces of this have been sought almost everywhere in the OT down to the latest times. But it has become more and more evident that a strong scepticism is justified in face of the excessive zeal of the ‘ Panbabylonists.’* We are not, indeed, to be held as calling in ques- tion the possibility of an extensive influence of Babylonian culture and religious ideas upon Canaan. The cuneiform letters discovered in 1887 at Tel el- Amarna in Egypt, which were addressed about B.c. 1400 from the Euphrates lands to two Pharaohs, prove the existence of a very active intercourse between Babylon and Egypt vid Canaan, and it is possible (though not strictly proved) that even then a footing had been gained in Canaan by the ancient Babylonian mythology, which was subsequently taken over by the Israelites when they entered the Promised Land. <A great influx of Babylonian ideas has been claimed also for the time of world - wide intercourse in the reign of Solomon, not to speak of the numerous occasions of direct contact with Assyria from the middle of the 9th cent. B.C. downwards. Still the only instance where the dependence of the Biblical narrative upon a Baby- lonian archetype is absolutely unquestionable ‘is (a) the story of the Deluge. And even here the dependence shows itself rather in subordinate points (like the repeated sending out of birds), and not in the main point—the cause of the judg- ment of the Flood. In the Biblical record this is always traced to moral causes: the Flood comes as a well-merited punishment on the wholly de- generate race of man; Noah only, on account of his righteousness, finds favour in God’s sight. The mythological background, which presents itself sometimes in a very offensive way in the Babylonian narrative, wholly disappears in Genesis, Over against men responsible for their actions stands the righteous and almighty God alone.
(8) Of late, special emphasis has been laid on what are supposed to be a number of OT allusions to the Babylonian story of Creation, or, more precisely, to the victorious struggle of the god
_* Amongst these the first place belongs to Frdr. Delitzsch, in view of his first two Berlin lectures on Babel und Bibel (Leipzig, 1902 and 1903), which have given birth to a violent controversy and an interminable literature. We content ourselves here with naming two of the most recent writings which treat soberly of the points in dispute: Zimmern, Biblische und Babylonische Urgeschichte3, Leipzig, 1903 [cf. also his Keilin- schriften und Bibel, Berlin, 1903]; and Gunkel, Israel und Babylonien: der Hinfluss Babyloniens auf die israelitische Religion, Gottingen, 1903.
Marduk with the ocean, personified as a woman, Tiamat (7.e., as appellative, ‘sea’), and the mon- sters that assist her. A large part of Gunkel’s able and ingenious work (Schépfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung iiber Gn 1 und Apoc. Joh. 12, Got- tingen, 1895) is devoted to an attempt to discover numerous traces of this myth in the OT. He rightly repels the objection that Gn 1 now forms a part of the latest Pentateuchal source, P. This circumstance does not exclude the possibility that this cosmogony, which in its present form is accommodated to the very highest conception of God, may be based upon a far older form of the myth. ‘The points of contact between Gn 1 and the Tiamat-myth are, however, few and uncertain. The Heb. ¢éhom (ninn), over which darkness hangs (v.7), is, it is true, the masculine corresponding to the Bab. ti@mat; but there is nothing to suggest any other meaning than the simple ‘ sea’ or ‘ ocean.’ As little can it be proved that the large water- animals of v.2! are originally of a mythological cast.
But the recollection of the conflict of Marduk’ with the dragon is supposed to be preserved, above all, in certain mythological names—Rahab, Levi- athan, Behemoth. The fact that all * the passages where these occur are very late (Ezekiel, Deutero- Isaiah, Job, late Psalms) might not count for much. It would be quite intelligible if the ancient mythologumena were again dragged to the light and utilized for poetical ends, when once the triumph of absolute monotheism appeared to have removed all danger of their being misunderstood or misapplied. A stronger objection is, that a considerable number of the alleged allusions can be referred only by very artificial methods to the conflict with Tiamat. How, for instance, if the kernel of the Tidmat-myth consists in the killing and cutting in pieces of ‘Tiamat, can the serpent at the bottom of the sea, which Jahweh commands to bite (Am 9%), possibly be Tiamat? Of the fahab passages, Is 51°, Ps 89, Job 26'% and 9% (‘Rahab’s helpers’) should in all probability be referred to the defeat of Tiamat, only that the conqueror is naturally not Marduk, but Jahweh. In Ps 874 Rahab is a symbolical name of Egypt, while in Ps 40°) the plural réhabim is a designa- tion of the false gods, but surely not in the sense of ‘dragons of chaos.’ Of the Leviathan passages, Ps 741 should perhaps be interpreted mythologi- cally. On the other hand, in Ps 104% there is absolutely no necessity for such an interpretation. In Is 27! Leviathan the fleeing serpent, and Levi- athan the coiled serpent, coupled with the dragon in the sea (Egypt), are again nothing but symboli- cal designations of two world-powers. In Job 38 it is much more natural to interpret Leviathan as a monster in the heavens which threatens to swallow up the sun. The poetical author of Job 40°" (4179) certainly means by Leviathan nothing but the crocodile. And his Behemoth (40%) stands in the same way simply for the hippopotamus. As little are we compelled to explain Job 7%, Ps 442009), Jer 51%: %- 42 as allusions to the Tiamat-myth ; and even in Ezk 29° and 327" there is, at most, only a general comparison of the Pharaoh to a bound monster, In all the passages, finally, where Gunkel sees an allusion to the binding of the primeval ocean (Ps 104%, Job 3888, Pr 82, Jer 5% 31%, Ps 337 655(), all that the present writer can discover is a reference to the omnipotence of Jahweh, who commands even the waves of the