The naturalisation of Babylonian myths in Israel is conceivable in a variety of ways; and the question is perhaps more interesting as an illustration of two rival tendencies in criticism than for its possibilities of actual solution. The tendency of the literary school of critics has been to explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian documents, and to bring it down to near the dates of our written Pent. sources.[1] Largely through the influence of Gunkel, a different view has come to prevail, viz., that we are to think rather of a gradual process of assimilation to the religious ideas of Israel in the course of oral transmission, the myths having first passed into Canaanite tradition as the result (immediate or remote) of the Babylonian supremacy prior to the Tell-Amarna period, and thence to the Israelites.[2] The strongest argument for this theory is that the biblical versions, both of the Creation and the Flood, give evidence of having passed through several stages in Hebrew tradition. Apart from that, the considerations urged in support of either theory do not seem to me conclusive. There are no recognisable traces of a specifically Canaanite medium having been interposed between the Bab. originals and the Hebrew accounts of the Creation and the Flood, such as we may surmise in the case of the Paradise myth. It is open to argue against Gu. that if the process had been as protracted as he says, the divergence would be much greater than it actually is. Again, we cannot well set limits to the deliberate manipulation of Bab. material by a Hebrew writer; and the assumption that such a writer in the later period would have been repelled by the gross polytheism of the Bab. legends, and refused to have anything to do with them, is a little gratuitous. On the other hand, it is unsafe to assert with Stade that the myths could not have been assimilated by Israelite theology before the belief in Yahwe's sole deity had been firmly established by the teaching of the prophets. Monotheism had roots in Heb. antiquity extending much further back than the age of written prophecy, and the present form of the legends is more intelligible as the product of an earlier phase of religion than that of the literary prophets. But when we consider the innumerable channels through which myths may wander from one centre to another, we shall hardly expect to be able to determine the precise channel, or the approximate date, of this infusion of Bab. elements into the religious tradition of Israel.
It is remarkable that while the patriarchal legends exhibit no traces of Bab. mythology, they contain a few examples of mythical narrative to which analogies are found in other quarters. The visit of the angels to Abraham (see p. 302 f.), and the destruction of Sodom (p. 311 f.), are incidents of obviously mythical origin (stories of the gods); and to both, classical and other parallels exist. The account of the births of Esau
