The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

We encounter this goddess Aruru in the Gilgamesh epic,[796] where she is represented as creating a human being,—Eabani; and, curiously enough, she creates him in agreement with the Biblical tradition, out of a lump of clay. It has already been pointed out that according to one tradition Ea is the creator of mankind,[797] and the conjecture has also been advanced that at Nippur, Bel was so regarded. In Aruru we have evidently a figure to whom another tradition, that arose in some district, ascribed the honor of having created mankind. The Gilgamesh story is connected with the city of Erech, and it is probable that the tale—at least in part—originated there. It becomes plausible, therefore, to trace the tradition ascribing the creation of man to Aruru to the same place. A passage in the Deluge story, which forms an episode of the Gilgamesh epic, adds some force to this conjecture. After the dreadful deluge has come, Ishtar breaks out in wild lament that mankind, her offspring, has perished: "What I created, where is it?"[798] She is called 'the mistress of the gods,'[799] and if Jensen is correct in an ingenious restoration of a defective text,[800] Aruru is given the same epithet in a lexicographical tablet. The Ishtar occurring in the Gilgamesh story is the old Ishtar of Erech. I venture to suggest, therefore, that Aruru and Ishtar of Erech are one and the same personage. Ishtar is, of course, as has been pointed out, merely a generic name[801] for the 'great goddess' worshipped under many forms.

The more specific name by which Ishtar of Erech was known was Nanâ, but Nanâ again is nothing but an epithet, meaning, as the Babylonians themselves interpreted it, the 'lady' par excellence. Have we perhaps in Aruru the real name of the old goddess of Erech? At all events, the occurrence of Aruru in this second 'creation' story points to her as belonging to the district of which Erech was the center. In this way, each one of the three most ancient sacred towns of Babylonia would have its 'creator,'—Bel in Nippur, Ea in Eridu, and Aruru in Erech. The chief deity of Erech, it will be recalled, was always a goddess,—a circumstance that supports the association of Aruru with that place. Aruru being a goddess, it was not so easy to have Marduk take up her rôle, as he supplanted Bel. Again, Erech and Babylon were not political rivals to the degree that Nippur and Babylon were. Accordingly a compromise was effected, as in the case of Marduk and Ea. Aruru is associated with Marduk. She creates mankind with Marduk, and it would seem to be a consequence of this association that the name of Marduk's real consort, Sarpanitum, is playfully but with intent interpreted by the Babylonian pedants as 'seed-producing.'[802]

Our second version thus turns out to be, like the first, an adaptation of old traditions to new conditions. Babylon and Marduk are designedly introduced. In the original form Nippur, Eridu, and Erech alone figured, and presumably, therefore, only the deities of these three places. Among them the work of creation was in some way parceled out. This distribution may itself have been the result of a combination of independent traditions. In any early combination, however, we may feel certain that Marduk was not introduced.

The text at this point becomes defective, but we can still make out that the clay as building material is created by Marduk, and that he constructs houses and rears cities. Corresponding to the opening lines, we may supply several lines as follows:

Before leaving the subject, a brief comparison of these two versions with the opening chapters of Genesis is called for. That the Hebrew and Babylonian traditions spring from a common source is so evident as to require no further proof. The agreements are too close to be accidental. At the same time, the variations in detail point to independent elaboration of the traditions on the part of the Hebrews and Babylonians.

A direct borrowing from the Babylonians has not taken place, and while the Babylonian records are in all probabilities much older than the Hebrew, the latter again contain elements, as Gunkel has shown, of a more primitive character than the Babylonian production. This relationship can only be satisfactorily explained on the assumption that the Hebrews possessed the traditions upon which the Genesis narrative rests long before the period of the Babylonian exile, when the story appears, indeed, to have received its final and present shape. The essential features of the Babylonian cosmology formed part of a stock of traditions that Hebrews and Babylonians (and probably others) received from some common source or, to put it more vaguely, held in common from a period, the limits of which can no longer be determined. While the two Babylonian versions agree in the main, embodying the same general traditions regarding the creation of the heavenly bodies and containing the same general conception of an evolution in the world from confusion and caprice to order, and the establishment of law, the variations in regard to the terrestrial phenomena must not be overlooked. According to the first version, mankind appears as the last episode of creation; in the second, mankind precedes vegetation and animal life.

If we now take up the two versions of creation found in Genesis, we will see that the same differences may be observed. According to the first, the so-called Elohistic version,[803] mankind is not created until the last day of creation; according to the second,[804] the so-called Yahwistic version, mankind is first created, then a garden is made and trees are planted. After that, the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven are called into existence.

might serve almost as a translation of the second line of the Babylonian counterpart. The reference to the Tigris and Euphrates in the second Babylonian version reminds one of the four streams mentioned in the Yahwistic version, two of which are likewise the Tigris and Euphrates. Again, Tiâmat is mentioned only in the first Babylonian version, and T'hôm similarly only in the Elohistic version; while, on the other hand, the building of cities is included in the Yahwistic version,[805] as it forms part of the second Babylonian version. The points mentioned suffice to show that the Elohistic version is closely related to the larger creation epic of the Babylonians, while the Yahwistic version—more concise, too, than the Elohistic—agrees to an astonishing degree with the second and more concise Babylonian record.

The conclusion, therefore, is justified that the variations between the Babylonian versions rest upon varying traditions that must have arisen in different places. The attempt was made to combine these traditions by the Babylonians, and among the Hebrews we may see the result of a similar attempt in the first two or, more strictly speaking, in the first three chapters of Genesis. At the same time, the manner in which both traditions have been worked over by the Hebrew compilers of Genesis precludes, as has been pointed out, the theory of a direct borrowing from cuneiform documents. The climatic conditions involved in the Hebrew versions are those peculiar to Babylonia. It is in Babylonia that the thought would naturally arise of making the world begin with the close of the storms and rains in the spring. The Terahites must therefore have brought these cosmological traditions with them upon migrating from the Euphrates Valley to the Jordan district.

The traditions retained their hold through all the vicissitudes that the people underwent. The intercourse, political and commercial, between Palestine and Mesopotamia was uninterrupted, as we now know, from at least the fifteenth century before our era down to the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and this constant intercourse was no doubt an important factor in maintaining the life of the old traditions that bound the two peoples together. The so-called Babylonian exile brought Hebrews and Babylonians once more side by side. Under the stimulus of this direct contact, the final shape was given by Hebrew writers to their cosmological speculations. Yahwe is assigned the rôle of Bel-Marduk, the division of the work of creation into six days is definitely made,[806] and some further modifications introduced. While, as emphasized, this final shape is due to the independent elaboration of the common traditions, and, what is even more to the point, shows an independent interpretation of the traditions, it is by no means impossible, but on the contrary quite probable, that the final compilers of the Hebrew versions had before them the cuneiform tablets, embodying the literary form given to the traditions by Babylonian writers.[807] Such a circumstance, while not implying direct borrowing, would account for the close parallels existing between the two Hebrew and the two Babylonian versions, and would also furnish a motive to the Hebrew writers for embodying two versions in their narrative.