Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being...

"The great majority of the writers of the Old Testament had no other source of information about the past history of Israel than simple tradition. Indeed, it could not have been otherwise, for in primitive times no one used to record anything in writing, and the only way of preserving a knowledge of the past was to hand it down by word of mouth. The father told the son what his elders had told him, and the son handed it on to the next generation.

"Not only did the historian of Israel draw from tradition with perfect freedom, and write down without hesitation anything they heard and what was current in the mouths of the people, but they did not shrink from modifying their representation of the past in any way that they thought would be good and useful. It is difficult for us to look at things from this point of view, because our ideas of historical good faith are so utterly different. When we write history, we know that we ought to be guided solely by a desire to represent facts exactly as they really happened. All that we are concerned with is reality; we want to make the old times live again, and we take all possible pains not to remodel the past from the point of view of to-day. All we want to know is what happened, and how men lived, thought, and worked in those days. The Israelites had a very different notion of the nature of historical composition. When a prophet or a priest related something about bygone times, his object was not to convey knowledge about those times; on the contrary, he used history merely as a vehicle for the conveyance of instruction and exhortation. Not only did he confine his narrative to such matters as he thought would serve his purpose but he never hesitated to modify what he knew of the past, and he did not think twice about touching it up from his own imagination, simply that it might be more conducive to the end he had in view and chime in better with his opinions. All the past became colored through and through with the tinge of his own mind.

Our own notions of honor and good faith would never permit all this; but we must not measure ancient writers by our own standard; they considered that they were acting quite within their rights and in strict accordance with duty and conscience."[97:4]

This we have done because we could not go into an extended investigation, and because his words are very expressive, and just to the point. To those who may think that his ideas are not the same as those entertained by other Biblical scholars of the present day, we subjoin, in a note below, a list of works to which they are referred.[98:1]

Egypt, the country out of which the Israelites came, had no story of the Creation and Fall of Man, such as we have found among the Hebrews; they therefore could not have learned it from them. The Chaldeans, however, as we saw in our first chapter, had this legend, and it is from them that the Hebrews borrowed it.

The account which we have given of the Chaldean story of the Creation and Fall of Man, was taken, as we stated, from the writings of Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great (356-325 B. C.), and as the Jews were acquainted with the story some centuries earlier than this, his works did not prove that these traditions were in Babylonia before the Jewish captivity, and could not afford testimony in favor of the statement that the Jews borrowed this legend from the Babylonians at that time. It was left for Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, to establish, without a doubt, the fact that this legend was known to the Babylonians at least two thousand years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus. The cuneiform inscriptions discovered by him, while on an expedition to Assyria, organized by the London "Daily Telegraph," was the means of doing this, and although by far the greatest number of these tablets belong to the age of Assurbanipal, who reigned over Assyria B. C. 670, it is "acknowledged on all hands that these tablets are not the originals, but are only copies from earlier texts." "The Assyrians acknowledge themselves that this literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources, and of course it is to Babylonia we have to look to ascertain the approximate dates of the original documents."[98:2] Mr. Smith then shows, from "fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Creation and Fall" which have been discovered, that, "in the period from b. c. 2000 to 1500, the Babylonians believed in a story similar to that in Genesis."

It is probable, however, says Mr. Smith, that this legend existed as traditions in the country long before it was committed to writing, and some of these traditions exhibited great difference in details, showing that they had passed through many changes.[99:1]

"The two chapters which refer to this (i. e., the Garden, the Tree, and the Serpent), as indeed the whole of the first eight of Genesis, are now generally admitted by scholars to be made up of fragments of earlier books or earlier traditions, belonging, properly speaking, to Mesopotamia rather than to Jewish history, the exact meaning of which the writers of the Pentateuch seem hardly to have appreciated when they transcribed them in the form in which they are now found."[99:2]

Professor Goldziher also shows, in his "Mythology Among the Hebrews,"[99:5] that the story of the creation was borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babylonians. He also informs us that the notion of the bôrê and yôsêr, "Creator" (the term used in the cosmogony in Genesis) as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into use by the prophets of the captivity. "Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon."

Strange as it may appear, after the Genesis account, we may pass through the whole Pentateuch, and other books of the Old Testament, clear to the end, and will find that the story of the "Garden of Eden" and "Fall of Man," is hardly alluded to, if at all. Lengkerke says: "One single certain trace of the employment of the story of Adam's fall is entirely wanting in the Hebrew Canon (after the Genesis account). Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the woman's seduction of her husband, &c., are all images, to which the remaining words of the Israelites never again recur."[100:1]

It is worthy of notice, that this story of the Fall of Man, upon which the whole orthodox scheme of a divine Saviour or Redeemer is based, was not considered by the learned Israelites as fact. They simply looked upon it as a story which satisfied the ignorant, but which should be considered as allegory by the learned.[100:2]

"We must not understand, or take in a literal sense, what is written in the book on the Creation, nor form of it the same ideas which are participated by the generality of mankind; otherwise our ancient sages would not have so much recommended to us, to hide the real meaning of it, and not to lift the allegorical veil, which covers the truth contained therein. When taken in its literal sense, the work gives the most absurd and most extravagant ideas of the Deity. 'Whosoever should divine its true meaning ought to take great care in not divulging it.' This is a maxim repeated to us by all our sages, principally concerning the understanding of the work of the six days."[100:3]

Philo, a Jewish writer contemporary with Jesus, held the same opinion of the character of the sacred books of the Hebrews. He has made two particular treatises, bearing the title of "The Allegories," and he traces back to the allegorical sense the "Tree of Life," the "Rivers of Paradise," and the other fictions of the Genesis.[100:4]

Many of the early Christian Fathers declared that, in the story of the Creation and Fall of Man, there was but an allegorical fiction. Among these may be mentioned St. Augustine, who speaks of it in his "City of God," and also Origen, who says:

"What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an husbandman? I believe that every man must hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is concealed."[100:5]

Origen believed aright, as it is now almost universally admitted, that the stories of the "Garden of Eden," the "Elysian Fields," the "Garden of the Blessed," &c., which were the abode of the blessed, where grief and sorrow could not approach them, where plague and sickness could not touch them, were founded on allegory. These abodes of delight were far away in the West, where the sun goes down beyond the bounds of the earth. They were the "Golden Islands" sailing in a sea of blue—the burnished clouds floating in the pure ether. In a word, the "Elysian Fields" are the clouds at eventide. The picture was suggested by the images drawn from the phenomena of sunset and twilight.[101:1]

Eating of the forbidden fruit was simply a figurative mode of expressing the performance of the act necessary to the perpetuation of the human race. The "Tree of Knowledge" was a Phallic tree, and the fruit which grew upon it was Phallic fruit.[101:2]

In regard to the story of "The Deluge," we have already seen[101:3] that "Egyptian records tell nothing of a cataclysmal deluge," and that, "the land was never visited by other than its annual beneficent overflow of the river Nile." Also, that "the Pharaoh Khoufou-cheops was building his pyramid, according to Egyptian chronicle, when the whole world was under the waters of a universal deluge, according to the Hebrew chronicle." This is sufficient evidence that the Hebrews did not borrow the legend from the Egyptians.

Mr. Smith discovered, on the site of Ninevah, during the years 1873-4, cylinders belonging to the early Babylonian monarchy, (from 2500 to 1500 B. C.) which contained the legend of the flood,[101:4] and which we gave in Chapter II. This was the foundation for the Hebrew legend, and they learned it at the time of the Captivity.[101:5] The myth of Deucalion, the Grecian hero, was also taken from the same source. The Greeks learned it from the Chaldeans.

What was said in regard to the Eden story not being mentioned in other portions of the Old Testament save in Genesis, also applies to this story of the Deluge. Nowhere in the other books of the Old Testament is found any reference to this story, except in Isaiah, where "the waters of Noah" are mentioned, and in Ezekiel, where simply the name of Noah is mentioned.

According to the Chaldean account—which is the oldest one known—there were seven persons saved in the ark.[102:2] There were also seven persons saved, according to some of the Hindoo accounts.[102:3] That this referred to the sun, moon, and five planets looks very probable. We have also seen that Noah was the tenth patriarch, and Xisuthrus (who is the Chaldean hero) was the tenth king.[102:4] Now, according to the Babylonian table, their Zodiac contained ten gods called the "Ten Zodiac gods."[102:5] They also believed that whenever all the planets met in the sign of Capricorn, the whole earth was overwhelmed with a deluge of water.[102:6] The Hindoos and other nations had a similar belief.[102:7]

It is well known that the Chaldeans were great astronomers. When Alexander the Great conquered the city of Babylon, the Chaldean priests boasted to the Greek philosophers, who followed his army, that they had continued their astronomical calculations through a period of more than forty thousand years.[102:8] Although this statement cannot be credited, yet the great antiquity of Chaldea cannot be doubted, and its immediate connection with Hindostan, or Egypt, is abundantly proved by the little that is known concerning its religion, and by the few fragments that remain of its former grandeur.

"It seems," says George Smith, "from the indications in the (cuneiform) inscriptions, that there happened in the interval between 2000 and 1850 B. C. a general collection of the development of the various traditions of the Creation, Flood, Tower of Babel, and other similar legends." "These legends were, however, traditions before they were committed to writing, and were common in some form to all the country."[103:1]