Ernest Renan

“ Who can assert that we have here an intellectual group of which it is impossible to prove its origin and unity? Take away, to avoid the appearance of begging the question, the four Nabathæan works which have come down to us, still what Arabian writers inform us concerning the Sabians; what we know of the School of Harran, which perpetuated the traditions of the Syro-Babylonian school, improved by hard study, to the twelfth century of our era ”

“ There is no longer any doubt in the present age, that a Babylonian literature did exist, composed of works connected with the arts and sciences, which are nearly always written in a religious form. The age and the character of the intellectual labours of the Chaldæans are uncertain; but there are many evidences, more especially in the monuments that have descended to our days, to prove that Babylon was, from the most remote antiquity, the centre of civilization for all the East. ”

“ Criticism which entrenches itself obstinately in possibilities, careless of thus accumulating against itself improbabilities, is undoubtedly irrefutable; but it is no longer criticism. The difficulty which results to Dr. Chwolson by these allusions to the Greeks, which are found in “The Nabathæan Agriculture,” becomes the more grave, from the fact, that the Greeks are mentioned not only by Kúthámí, but by one of the authors whom he quotes, Mási the Suranian. According to Dr. Chwolson’s theory, Mási cannot have lived later than two thousand years before Christ. ”

“ The writers of Babylon must have been thinkers with distinct views, discussing step by step, and in the minutest details, the opinions of their adversaries. The founders of Babylonian religions must have been philosophers gifted with clear perceptions, amicably opposing each other, and debating one and all, like academical professors. ”

“ In the field of historical criticism, all should be admitted as possible. Civilization and literature flourished in Babylon at a very ancient period. Entire systems of civilization have disappeared without leaving any traces; literatures of high antiquity are only represented by shreds, passed through a thousand transformations, and are scarcely recognisable. I willingly admit that Babylon may have had books and schools fifteen centuries before Christ. ”

“ The progress which criticism has effected during the last half century consists precisely in discarding, in the majority of cases, those very convenient solutions, which would explain every puzzling passage in ancient writings by characterising them as interpolations: it is more willing to admit of the hypothesis of successive retouching and remodelling carried on from age to age. ”

“ One deduction appears to me to arise from the analysis to which we have subjected “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” and the other Nabathæan writings, and that is that the School to which they belong, taken altogether, cannot be anterior to the third or fourth century of our era; and that the literary movement which they suggest as earlier, does not allow us to place it before Alexander. I am far from insisting that the work of Kúthámí could not have preserved to us many most ancient fragments, remodelled in the course of time in all sorts of way. ”

“ The Assyrians, in fact, are not of the race of Adam, while the Chaldæans are his descendants. Thus, the language of the Assyrians, and the names by which they call different objects, cannot be older than Adam, who first gave to everything its name, and was the first who established and organized language itself. Therefore it is not the Chaldæans whom the Assyrians oppose, but Adam; for Adam named this plant akermaï. Now, it is universally acknowledged that what Adam ordained is true and wise; and what others have ordained is without foundation. ”

“ Judicial astrology leads to the belief of an earlier regular astronomy; magic, which pretends to direct the secret forces of Nature, presupposes a certain development of the physical sciences. [39] But we cannot allow ourselves to doubt that Babylonian studies had greatly degenerated at the time of the Seleucides; one cannot, in fact, conceive that Babylonia should have spread abroad nothing but chimerical science, [40] had she possessed a sound philosophy. We cannot, then, shut our eyes to the exaggeration of the part which Dr. Chwolson ascribes to Babylonia in the history of the human mind. ”

“ A source more fertile, however, than any which we have hitherto pointed out, has been opened to us in these last few years. Ingenious criticism has shewn that it is in the heart of Arabian literature that we must seek for the most precious collection of Babylonian writings. Independently of the numerous facts which can be deduced from Arabian historians and general writers on ancient Babylon, there exists in Arabic a series of writings translated from the Babylonian or Nabathæan language. All these translations were the work of one man. ”

“ This may in some way be accounted for by the ignorance of scholars before our day of the principles of Comparative Grammar, that ingenious art of criticism which becomes the key by which modern philology is enabled to enter the deep recesses of the past, and expose to view records which, for want of it, were inaccessible to the ancient Greeks and Romans and the great scholars of the last three centuries ”

“ Kúthámí, in the name of the Chaldæans, disputes their literary priority with the Canaanites on the most futile subjects; thorough and engrossing national vanity throws an insipid air over the whole work. ”

“ Our Adami is thus most undoubtedly the Adamas or apocryphal Adam of the Babylonian sects. [41] Can there remain any doubt about this identity, when it is seen that Adam bears, in “The Agriculture,” the title of ابو البشر‎ Father of Mankind, [42] a title which all the Moslem East gives to Adam. [43]
Ishíthá, [44] the son of Adami, described as a religious legislator, as the founder of astrology and of astrolatria, is undeniably Seth. "We know that among all the apocryphal legends of the antediluvian patriarchs, that of Seth is the most ancient, and appears already in Josephus. ”

“ Startling as it is to find in its pages mention of a literature and civilization so far beyond the earliest records of the Bible and other known sources of information, it has ever since been treated, when not passed over in utter oblivion, more as one of the curiosities of literature than as a valuable record of the past ”

“ The position of a critic is extremely painful when he is obliged to combat the opinions which a conscientious scholar has formed on a work which he alone has read in its entirety, and from which he only gives extracts which bear out his own theory. ”

“ Chwolson, [62] we shall find in it all the evidences of lower antiquity:—no grandeur of expression; a flimsy method of reasoning, bordering on puerility, in a word, strikingly analogous to that of Arabian authors; and, above all, that flat and prolix style of those periods of much writing consequent upon an influx of paper or other writing materials; whilst throughout the whole work the style is essentially personal and reflective, so contrary to that of works of high antiquity. ”

“ It is very far removed from Greek science of the period of Alexander, so free from all superstition, so fixed in method, so infinitely beyond all those idle chimeras which afterwards led astray and retarded the scientific progress of the mind for nearly sixteen centuries. ”

“ Egyptian and Babylonian science appear to have had analogous destinies. Lacking that purely analytical, experimental, and rational principle which gave force to the Greek, as it still does to the modern mind, they have not been able to defend themselves from the charge of charlatanism, a term fatal to all culture which rests on anything but purely scientific researches. ”

“ Chwolson [2] confesses that he has discovered one,—that of Antioch (Anthakia) ; but he thinks, according to his usual method, that it is only a modern name which Ibn Wahshíya has substituted for one more ancient: nothing can be more gratuitous. The Orientals have never made the name of Anthakia respond to any city but that founded by Seleucus Nicator; and we know, in the most precise manner, that when Seleucus founded his capital on the banks of the Orontes, he only found an insignificant place there, whose name even has not descended to us. ”

“ The habit of fraud and untruth which infested the East towards the close of the period of the Seleucides, has furnished criticism with enigmas which cannot be explained; for those natural deductions, which are so sure a guide, in considering honest productions of the mind, are entirely at fault, when dealing with these equivocal and artificial compositions, the fruit of enfeebled reason and sordid passions. ”

“ Ibn-Abi-Oceibia [18] takes a singular mythology of Æsculapius from a Syriac work; in another place [19] he connects him expressly with Babylon. It is strange that Dr. Chwolson attaches any importance to such chimeras. He even supposes that his Askolábita [20] must be considered as the prototype of the Asklepios of the Greeks. In the same ephemeral spirit he asks in another place [21] whether Asklepios and Hermes were not, in reality, ancient sages deified after their death. [22]
Kúthámí, however, does not only make allusions to Greece. ”

“ Rectitude of thought, surety of judgment, exclusive love of truth—without which science cannot keep itself from degenerating into routine, and interested self-complacency—are the essential qualities of philosophical creation. ”

“ It remains now to be seen whether we do not possess other works, the bringing of which into juxtaposition may assist us in fixing yet more precisely the character of the singular work which engages our attention. ”

“ The first, that the name of Canaanites with the Babylonians did not always refer to the ancient inhabitants of Phœnicia; and the second, that this theory of a Canaanite dynasty of which Nimrod was the founder, is of Biblical origin. “After the deluge,” says Masoudi, “mankind established themselves in different countries; such were the Nabathæans, who founded the city of Babylon, and those of the descendants of Ham, who settled in the same province, under the guidance of Nimrod, son of Kanaan, son of Sínkhárib, son of Ham, and grandson of Noah.” ”

“ A scholar, already known by one of the most important works which Oriental learning has produced of late years, Prof. Chwolson, of St. Petersburgh, the author of a work on the Sabian Religion and the School of Harran, has just taken a decisive step towards the solution of the question which occupies us. ”

“ Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, drawing from Sabian sources, calls Enoch (اخنوخ‎‎) . [50] We know the part of “inventor” which this patriarch filled of old. The Arabs, also following these Sabian traditions, identify him with Hermes. [51] No doubt the Babylonian Akhnúkha, often quoted in the same line with Armísá, is the legendary Enoch, who rises into such high favour towards the commencement of our era. ”

“ The real Sabians, the as-Sábiún of the Koran, were an Aramaic or Syro-Chaldæan race, on the borders of Persia, inhabiting the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. These heathen had El-Hasaih as the founder of their religion. He is the Ἠλχασαί of Hippolytus, the Elkesai of Theodoretus, and the Ἠλξαί or Ἠλξαίος of Epiphanius, and taught the doctrine of two principles in the Creation, a male and a female, active and passive power, mind and matter. ”

“ In collecting together and examining his materials for this important work, Professor Chwolson necessarily had to dip deeply into the sources of old Babylonian or Nabathæan literature, greatly encouraged in the pursuit by the previous labours of M. Quatremère; [1] and men, who were fully competent to judge of his high linguistic attainments, began to look anxiously forward to the time when the fruits of this industry should be placed before them. ”

“ Only one of these names positively corresponds with those known to us elsewhere, and that is Númrúda, which, as we have seen, carries us back to a fabulous antiquity. Another name, that of Kerúsáni, may possibly, I think, correspond with pre-historical traditions. A hero, common to the literature of the Vedas, and in the Zend-Avesta, and who therefore may be carried back to ancient Arian mythology, is Kerúsaní, who, like Nimrod, fills the part of an archer and a hunter. ”

“ There the author keeps ever in the background, to render more prominent the doctrines which he enunciates, and the facts which he relates; here, on the contrary, throughout the whole composition we find pitiful squabbles, polemics, a class of writings belonging to those forms of literature which mark the decay of human intellect. ”

“ It is because she possessed these qualities, to a degree of originality which constitutes genius, that Greece holds a place in the education of the mind, of which it is not probable that she will ever be dispossessed. ”

“ The total want of judgment and accuracy which characterises Arabian historians, when treating of ancient history, does not however admit of any safe conclusions being drawn from these passages. Besides which, one fact is sure to spoil every hypothesis which might be formed from them ”