naturally by that of the stars. The arrangement of the remaining works, which must have been mentioned in lost parts of Tabs. V. and VI., is, of course, uncertain; but the statement of Berossus suggests that the creation of land animals followed instead of preceding that of man. At the same time it is very significant that the separate works themselves, apart from their order: Firmament, Luminaries, Earth, Plants, Animals, Men,—are practically identical in the two documents: there is even a fragment (possibly belonging to the series) which alludes to the creation of marine animals as a distinct class (King, CT, lix, lxxxvi). Gordon (Early Traditions of Gen.) holds that the differences of arrangement can be reduced to the single transposition of heavenly bodies and plants (see his table, p. 51).
In view of these parallels, it seems impossible to doubt that the cosmogony of Gn. 1 rests on a conception of the process of creation fundamentally identical with that of the Enuma eliš tablets.
3. There is, however, another recension of the Babylonian creation story from which the fight of the sun-god with chaos is absent, and which for that reason possesses a certain importance for our present purpose. It occurs as the introduction to a bilingual magical text, first published by Pinches in 1891.[1] Once upon a time, it tells us, there were no temples for the gods, no plants, no houses or cities, no human inhabitants:
The Deep had not been created, Eridu had not been built;
Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not been made.
All lands were sea (tāmtu).
Then arose a 'movement in the sea'; the most ancient shrines and cities of Babylonia were made, and divine beings created to inhabit them. Then
Marduk laid a reed[2] on the face of the waters;
He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed,
That he might cause the gods to dwell in the habitation of their heart's desire.
He formed mankind; the goddess Aruru together with him created the seed of mankind.
Next he formed beasts, the rivers, grasses, various kinds of animals, etc.; then, having 'laid in a dam by the side of the sea,' he made reeds and trees, houses and cities, and the great Babylonian sanctuaries. The whole description is extremely obscure, and the translations vary widely.
- ↑ JRAS, 1891, 393 ff.; translated in King, CT, 131 ff.; KIB, 39 ff.; ATLO2, 129 ff.; Texte u. Bilder, i. 27 f.; Sayce, Early Israel, 336 f. Cf. the summary in KAT3, 498.
- ↑ So King; but Je. 'a reed-hurdle' (Rohrgeflecht); while Jen.
renders: 'Marduk placed a canopy in front of the waters, He created earth and heaped it up against the canopy'—a reference to the
firmament (so KAT3).
