Thomas Kelly Cheyne

“ For no beast however mighty, no bird however graceful, was a fit companion for God’s masterpiece, and, apart from the serpent, the animals had no faculty of speech. All therefore that Adam could do, as they passed before him, was to name them, as a lord names his vassals. But here arises a difficulty. How came Adam by the requisite insight and power of observation? For as yet he had not snatched the perilous boon of wisdom. Clearly the Paradise story is not homogeneous. ”

“ There is an equally striking difference among the disputed prophecies themselves, and one of no small moment as a subsidiary indication of their origin. We have already spoken of the difference of tone between parts of the latter half of the book; and, when we compare the disputed prophecies of the former half with the Prophecy of Israel’s Restoration, how inferior (with all reverence be it said) do they appear! Truly “in many parts and many manners did God speak” in this composite book of Isaiah! ”

“ We, therefore, venture to hold that it is an insufficient account to give of the story in the Gilgamesh epic that it is a combination of a local tradition of the destruction of a single city with a myth of the destruction of mankind—a myth exaggerated in its present form, but based on accurate knowledge of the yearly recurring phenomenon of the overflow of the Euphrates. ”

“ The principal feature of the oldest fiood-story is the part assigned to the fish, which warns Manu of the deluge, and ultimately saves him by drawing his ship to a northern mountain. The selection of the fish (which is clearly divine) is so out of character with the most genuine portions of Aryan mythology that it proves the foreign origin of the Indian narrative, perhaps we may even say, the Semitic origin. Not that the fish-god is peculiar to the Semitic world, but that he is un-Indian, and can so easily have reached India from a Semitic source. ”

“ How can a man like Jeremiah have advocated any such panacea? He was indeed not at first a complete pessimist, but to be a preacher of Deuteronomy required a sanguine temper which a prophet of the school of Isaiah could not possess. Besides, there is a famous passage (viii. 8, see R.V.) in which Jeremiah delivers a vehement attack upon the “scribes” (or, as we might render, “bookmen”) and their “false pen.” If, as Wellhausen and Duhm suppose, this refers to Deuteronomy (i.e. the original Deuteronomy) , the incorrectness of the theory referred to is proved. ”

“ The Serpent.—The keen-witted, fluently speaking serpent gives rise to fresh riddles. How comes it that Adam’s ruin is effected by one of those very “beasts of the field” which he had but lately named (ii. 19) , that in speech he is Adam’s equal and in wisdom his superior? Is he a pale form of the Babylonian chaos-dragon, or of the serpent of Iranian mythology who sprang from heaven to earth to blight the “good creation”? It is true that the serpent of Eden has mythological affinities. ”

“ But if the terrestrial deluge is really (see below) only a transformation of the celestial, there is no reason why the story should not have grown up in Egypt, if the imagination of its inhabitants had invited such a develop ment ; for the germs of the deluge-story certainly existed in Egypt. The Book of the Dead constantly refers to the sun-god, Ra, as voyaging in a boat on the celestial ocean ; and a story in an inscription of the archaic period (Seti I.) embodies a conception altogether analogous to that of the narrative in Genesis. ”

“ That he cannot find a single just and honest man; that high and low, rich and poor, are all ignorant of the true method of worshipping God (“the way of Yahweh,” v. 4) . It would seem as if Anathoth were less corrupt than the capital, the moral state of which so shocked Jeremiah. And yet he does not really go beyond the great city-prophet Isaiah who calls the men of Jerusalem “a people of Gomorrah” (i. 10) . ”

“ It is unlikely that so richly gifted a race as the Aryans of India should not have produced their own flood-story out of the same primeval germs which grew up into the earliest Babylonian flood-story,Indian myth recon-sidered. ”

“ As we have seen, various myths of Creation may have been current both in N. Arabia (whence the Israelites may have come) and in Canaan prior to the great extension of Babylonian influence. These myths doubtless had peculiarities of their own. From one of them may have come that remarkable statement in Gen. i. 2b, “and the spirit of God (Elohim) was hovering over the face of the waters,” which, until we find some similar myth nearer home, is best illustrated and explained by a Polynesian myth (see Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, ad loc.) ”

“ As the old serpent deceived man of old, so shall it be again. And as at the head of the first age stands the first Adam, whose doings affected all his descendants to their harm, so at the head of the second shall stand the second Adam, whose actions shall be potent for good. ”

“ The narrator considered that Israel had to be a prophet to the “nations” at large, that Israel had, like Jonah, neglected its duty and for its punishment was “swallowed up” in foreign lands. God had watched over His people and prepared its choicer members to fulfil His purpose. This company of faithful but not always sufficiently charitable men represented their people, so that it might be said that Israel itself (the second Isaiah’s “Servant of Yahweh”—see Isaiah) had taken up its duty, but in an ungenial spirit which grieved the All-merciful One. ”

“ But the phenomena of the sky and especially of the sun are, to the primitive man, daily miracles. Hence the theory (Schirren and Gerland) that the deluge of the stories we are considering has been transferred from the sky to the earth, that it is in a word an ether-myth. This mode of explanation is not set aside by referring to quasi- historical details in the deluge-stories. For as soon as the mythic stage begins to be outgrown, rationalism appears. In this transitional period (commonly of long duration) the old nature-myths are modified. ”

“ That a didactic element entered the deluge-tradition but slowly, may be surmised, not only from the genuinely old N. American stories, but from the inconsistent statements, to which Jastrow has already referred, in the Babylonian story. We may imagine that between the creation and the deluge some great and wise Being had initiated the early men, not only in the necessary arts of life, but in the “ways” that were pleasing to the heavenly powers. The Babylonians apparently think of neglected sacrifices, the Australians of a desecrated mystery as the cause of the flood. ”

“ An important element in this culture would be mythic representations of the origin of things, such as the Babylonian Creation and Deluge-stories in various forms. Indeed, not only Canaan but all the neighbouring regions must have been pervaded by Babylonian views of the universe and its origin. Myths of origins there must indeed have been in those countries before Babylonian influence became so overpowering, but, if so, these myths must have become recast when the great Teacher of the Nations half-attracted and half-compelled attention. ”

“ He may have been a prince among the demons, as the magic tree was a prince among the plants. Hence perhaps his strange boldness. For some unknown reason he was ill disposed towards Yahweh-Elohim (See iii. 3b) , which has suggested to some that he may be akin to the great enemy of Creation. To Adam and Eve, however, he is not unkind. He bids them raise themselves in the scale of being by eating the forbidden fruit, which he declares to be not fatal to life but an opener of the eyes, and capable of equalizing men with gods (iii. 4, 5) . ”

“ It is true that commercial prosperity had put a severe strain on the old morality, and that contact with other peoples, as well as the course of political history, had appeared to lower the position of the God of Israel in relation to other gods. Still, some adherents of the old Israelitish moral and religious standards must have survived, only they were not to be found in the chief places of concourse, but as a rule in coteries which handed on the traditions of Amos and Isaiah in sorrowful retirement. ”

“ Gradually, as the waters fell, Manu descended the mountain; he then sacrificed and prayed. In a year’s time his prayer was granted. A woman appeared, who called herself his daughter Idā (goddess of fertility) . It is neither stated, nor even hinted, that sin was the cause of the flood.
Another version occurs in the great epic, the Mahābhārata. The lacunae of the earlier story are here supplied. Manu, for instance, embarks with the seven “rishis” or wise men, and takes with him all kinds of seed. The fish announces himself as the God Brahman, and enables Manu to create both gods and men. ”

“ But though there are in Gen. i. six days of creative activity, and the creative works are not six, but eight, if not ten in number, and indirect Babylonian influence is more strongly indicated. Jewish thinkers would have been attracted by the emphatic assertion of the creatorship of the One God in the royal Persian inscriptions more than by the traditional cosmogony. See further Ency. Bib., “Creation,” § 9.
9. Phoenician and Greek.—Phoenician cosmogonies would appear, from the notices which have come down to us, [24] to have been composite. The traditions are pale and obscure. ”

“ Thus Manui the hero of the Indian flood-story, was, by permission of Brahma, the creator of the present human race. Noah is called by Arabic writers " the second Adam," and Maui might with as good a right be called the Noah as the Adam of New Zealand. We, in the adult age of the world, have renounced those mythical forms of expression, but we still retain much of the feeling which prompted them. The wonder of creation is even to us constantly renewed in spring ”

“ So at least the authors of Jeremiah’s biography tell us. They add that in the next year Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch read the prophecies of Jeremiah first to the people assembled in the Temple, then to the “princes,” and then to the king, who decided his own future policy by burning Baruch’s roll in the brazier. We cannot, however, bind ourselves to this tradition. Much more probably the prophecy was virtually a new one (i.e. even if some old passages were repeated yet the setting was new) , and the burden of the prophecy was “The king of Babylon shall come and destroy this land.” ”

“ In Gen. ii. 4b-8 we read thus:—”At the time when Yahweh-Elohim [1] made earth and heaven,—earth was as yet without bushes, no herbage was as yet sprouting, because Yahweh-Elohim had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and no men were there to till the ground, but a stream [2] used to go up from the earth, and water all the face of the ground,—then Yahweh-Elohim formed the man of dust of the ground, [3] and blew into his nostrils breath of life, [4] and the man became a living being. ”

“ And if he is the sea-god, we must remember that there is a heavenly as well as an earthly ocean; hence the clouds are sometimes called Tangaloa’s ships. It is true, the popular imagery is unworthy of such a god. Sometimes he is said to live in a shell, by throwing off which from time to time he increases the world; or in an egg, which at last he breaks in pieces ”

“ Shamash, who can cross it?’ For though the sea in the epic is no doubt the earth-circling ocean, it was hardly this in the myth from which the words were taken.” [18] And, what is still more important, we can understand better how, in the Gilgamesh epic (lines 115–116) , the gods, after cowering like dogs, go up to the “heaven of Ana.” They, too, fear the deluge, and only in the highest heaven can they feel themselves secure.
Such an explanation seems indispensable if the wide influence of the Babylonian form of the deluge-myth is to be accounted for. ”

“ In Jeremiah, as in Isaiah, we must constantly ask to what age do the phraseology, the ideas and the implied circumstances most naturally point? According to Duhm there are many passages in which metre (see also Amos) may also be a factor in our critical conclusions. Jeremiah, he thinks, always uses the same metre. Giesebrecht, on the other hand, maintains that there are passages which are certainly Jeremiah’s, but which are not in what Duhm calls Jeremiah’s metre; Giesebrecht also, himself rather conservative, considers Duhm remarkably free with his emendations. ”

“ Elsewhere eating the fruit of the “tree of wisdom” is given as the cause of the expulsion of the human pair. In the Wisdom of Solomon (x. 1, 2) we find another view. Here, as in Ezekiel, the first man is pre-eminently wise and strong; though he transgressed, wisdom rescued him, i.e. taught him repentance (cp. Life of Adam and Eve, §§ 1-8) . Elsewhere (ii. 24; cp. Jos. Ant. i. 1, 4) death is traced to the envy of the devil, still implying an exalted view of Adam. It is held that, but for his sin, Adam would have been immortal. Clearly the Jewish mind is exposed to some fresh foreign influences. ”

“ When, for instance, we find such a peculiar point as the sending out of the birds to see whether the flood had abated, we are disinclined to build any argument on the circumstance. We do find, it is true, strange points of agreement between the Greek and the Polynesian myths, yet considering the vast extent of Christian missionary activity in America, we are bound to special caution. ”

“ By uttering a sacred formula the good spirit throws the evil one into a state of confusion for a second 3000 years, while he produces the archangels and the material creation, including the sun, moon and stars. At the end of that period the evil spirit, encouraged by the demons he had produced, once more rushes upon the good creation to destroy it. ”

“ EDEN, the name of the region in which, according to the Hebrew paradise-tradition in its present form, God planted a garden (or park) , wherein he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. ii. 8) . Research into primitive beliefs, guided by the comparative method, leads to the view that the “garden” was originally a celestial locality (see Paradise) , and we cannot therefore be surprised if, now that paradise has been brought down to earth, the geographical details given in the Bible are rather difficult to work into a consistent picture. ”

“ He, therefore, summoned the serpent or dragon who controlled the cosmic ocean, and had been subjugated at creation, to overwhelm the earth, after which the creator remade it better, [7] and the survivor and his family became the ancestors of a new human race. ”

“ The Babylonian story, as represented in the llth Izdubar lay, suggests a similar theory. The names of the hero and his father mean " the (morning) sun " and " the evening-glow." The flood is a rain-flood, and the " father of the rain " (cf. Job xxxviii. 28) is the celestial ocean, which in the original myth must have been itself the deluge; and the " ship " is like that in which the Egyptian sun-god voyages in the sea of ether. ”