The Scriptures of Mankind: An Introduction by Charles Samuel Braden
Chapter 4: Babylonian Sacred Literature
Archaeology seems to be of perennial interest to modern man. Probably as many articles on the subject appear in the Sunday supplements as on any other topic except those which are of romantic interest. Men of this age seem to be very much interested in either digging up the remains of past civilizations, or reading of the work of those who have themselves done so. Of all of the civilizations uncovered by the archaeologists probably that of the Babylonians and Assyrians has been of greatest interest. Why should this be?
Well, one reason for the interest of western civilization in ancient Babylonia and Assyria, lies in the close connection of that part of the world with the Bible. Indeed, a major incentive to
archaeological discovery lay precisely in the desire of students of the Bible to find in the records of this ancient culture some support for their faith in the Bible. Concerning the Bible there was very little skepticism until about a hundred years ago, when the impact of the modern scientific age began to make itself felt. With the beginning of critical study of the Bible many questions were raised as to the accuracy of the historical record. It was in no small degree the desire to find corroboration for the Biblical narrative that led scholars to carry on their
excavations in the Near East. Archaeology has now largely outgrown this primary interest, but there is no doubt that it played an important part as an incentive to widespread digging in the Babylonian and Assyrian area.
It was of course known from the Bible that there had been a very close relationship between the civilizations of the Hebrews and the Babylonian-Assyrian people. Abraham himself had gone out from Ur of the Chaldees, a migrant toward the West. The Assyrians and Babylonians had long been a political threat to the independence of the Hebrew people before the latter finally succumbed to superior force and were either destroyed or dispersed, in the case of the ten
northern tribes, by Assyria, or continued, in the case of Judah, in a vassal relationship even after their return from the Babylonian captivity. Might there not therefore be left among the buried cities of the Mesopotamian region some records which would tell of these relationships and so
confirm the Biblical stories?
So they dug in dozens of sites. Excavation at one site uncovered eleven different cities
superimposed one upon the other. In a great many, there were as many as six or seven that had been built upon the same site; and out of these great mounds there came a vast wealth of
information disclosing the nature of the great civilization that had flourished there. Incidentally, among these ruins were found many things which did indeed tend to confirm the story of
Israel’s past. Old inscriptions of imperial movements did make mention of Israel and corroborate some of the assertions found in the books of the Kings and the Chronicles.
But other things were found which served not so much to confirm the Bible as to raise a question about it and its uniqueness. For amid the debris of these ancient cultures there were found remnants of literature so similar in general character to stories found in the Bible that at once the question was raised as to whether the Hebrew writers had not borrowed from their Eastern neighbors.
To suggest such a dependence of Hebrew upon Babylonian thought in the present day occasions no shock, and raises no serious question, but in an earlier day it proved very shocking indeed. If the Bible were the infallible word of God, in every respect, as was being constantly asserted, how could it have borrowed anything? Was God dependent upon any outside sources for his revelation? The finding of two things in particular, the Story of Creation and the Story of the Flood, stirred up a tempest which was long in subsiding, and which, even yet, in some circles, causes not a little difficulty. With the passage of time and more mature study of the nature of scripture, as disclosed by the application of the modern historico-critical method of
investigation, it is seen that the possible borrowing of Bible writers from another source in no way affected its intrinsic worth, or even the belief that these writers were inspired in their writing. For the whole conception of inspiration has undergone a change.
In all the discoveries made through extended archaeological research, there has never appeared what might be called a sacred scripture of the Babylonians or Assyrians. Apparently they, like the Egyptians, never arrived at the point where they set aside certain books as of divine origin and accorded them an authoritative place in the regulation of their religious beliefs or practices.
Why they did not do this, we can no more say than we could in the case of the Egyptians.
Possibly, they might, in time, have done so had outside influences not deflected their interest and changed their religious outlook. But the fact remains that they do not have a canonical scripture. To be sure so distinguished a scholar as Robert W. Rogers1 does affirm that they had sacred books, that indeed they had little else in their literature. But they had no Sacred Book.
What probably he means, for it is certainly true, is that they did have a great many writings which are of the nature of scripture, and might very well have been a part of a canonical
selection, had one been made. That is, they had a very substantial amount of literature of varied kinds which corresponds closely with the kind of thing that is to be found among the scriptures of other people, notably those of the Hebrews and Christians. Whether the Hebrews are actually
indebted to the Babylonians for anything found in their own scripture will always remain a question on which scholarly opinion may differ, but that there might have been some borrowing of one from another, there can be no doubt. That the dependence of either upon the other, if any, is probably that of the Hebrew upon the Babylonian, is indicated by the fact that the Babylonian is, in almost every case, obviously earlier than the Hebrew.
We shall mention five types of Babylonian writings: (1) The Creation Story and the Flood Story, that is, the story of mythological beginnings; (2) hymns and prayers, including their penitential psalms; (3) ritual texts; (4) their legal code; and (5) omens, all of which find some correspondence in the Bibles of most people.
The Babylonians did not, like the Egyptians, have at hand durable material in the form of stone upon which to carve their inscriptions. But they did have clay, and they early learned to write on it while it was still damp, then bake it in the fire, thus rendering it relatively permanent. Nor did they have the stones for building purposes that Egypt enjoyed. They built largely of sun- dried brick. This is very durable so long as it is protected from the rain, but once the roof falls in and the protective surface is worn away, the rain quickly erodes the buildings. It was in part this gradual eroding of the buildings that formed the mounds in which archaeologists now dig up the ancient culture. When enough of the eroded walls has been washed down it forms a covering of the lower part of the building. and this protecting layer preserves the remainder of the building from further erosion. So, into these mounds they have dug, and found innumerable clay tablets, shaped usually somewhat like a shredded wheat biscuit, in all sizes, from thumb-nail up to as large as an adobe brick. On these were written, in what is known as cuneiform, that is wedge- shaped characters, the texts they wished to communicate or preserve. Literally thousands of them have been dug up containing everything from profound moral and religious treatises to receipts for money paid; contracts for the sale of articles; personal letters; business letters;
letters from fathers to sons, and sons to fathers; and interestingly enough, they contained very much the same kind of material that such letters contain today. There are textbooks of
mathematics, books on astronomy, and a great many other things. Indeed, almost every kind of writing is found.
For a long, long time nobody could read these. They did not, as in Egypt, have the good fortune to find a Rosetta Stone where a single text was found in Egyptian -- two scripts -- and in Greek, which was easily understood. The account of the decipherment of the Babylonian text is one of the most interesting and romantic stories of scholarship. It is to be found very interestingly told in Robert W. Rogers, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria,2 and in They Wrote on Clay by Edward Chiera.3 It is well worth reading. Eventually the problem was solved, and specialists now read these ancient records with almost the same ease with which one reads a modern foreign language. Found in one of the ancient libraries one day was a group of rather better tablets of large size, which, when deciphered, turned out to be the story of creation. This aroused a veritable furor in the world of scholarship and of religion, for, as indicated above, it proved to be very similar in some respects to the story in Biblical Genesis.
The text is by no means complete, despite the fact that more than one set of tablets has been found containing the story, for most of the tablets have suffered some breakage; but its main lines can be discerned very well. If it proved to be alike in some respects to the Biblical story it proved very different in other respects. Over against the Hebrew creation story, "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the Babylonian story begins:
When on high the heaven had not been named Firm ground below had not been called by name.4
When none but the primordial Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat, mother of all, existed, then were the gods created one after another. But Apsu was not happy about his offspring and resolved to destroy them utterly that he might have rest.
Verily their ways are loathsome unto me.
By day I find no relief, nor repose by night.5
Tiamat sought to dissuade him, but to no avail. Learning of the plot to destroy them, Ea, one of the gods, slew Apsu. Tiamat, angered, created a host of monsters to do battle with the gods. The gods chose Marduk as their champion. He was probably not the god originally mentioned in the telling of the story, but by this time he had become chief god of the city of Babylon and
therefore greatest of the gods, so his name was substituted as champion. He drove a bargain with the other gods to recognize him as supreme if he led the battle. The story of the killing of Tiamat is dramatic in the extreme.
Marduk spread out his net to enfold her, The Evil Wind, which followed behind, he let loose in her face.
When Tiamat opened her mouth to consume him, He drove in the Evil Wind that she close not her lips.
As the fierce winds charged her belly
Her body was distended, and her mouth was wide open, He released the arrow, it tore her belly
It cut through her insides, splitting the heart.
Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life.
He cast down her carcass to stand upon it.
Her power was broken, her army scattered.
With his unsparing mace he crushed her skull He split her like a shell fish into two parts;
Half of her he set up and ceiled it as the sky.6
Presumably, the other half became the earth. Then he fixed the responsibilities of the various gods, before proceeding to the creation of life upon the earth. The particular tablet on which this is described is badly broken. Fortunately the account of man’s creation is preserved.
When Marduk hears the words of the gods His heart prompts him to fashion artful works.
Opening his mouth, he addresses Ea
To impart the plan he had conceived in his heart:
"Blood will I mass and cause bones to be.
I will establish a savage; ‘man’ shall be his name Verily savage-man will I create
He shall be charged with the service of the gods That they might be at ease!"
He then took Kingu who had led the uprising against the gods, severed his blood vessels and Out of his blood they fashioned mankind.7
Babylonia also has its flood story, which, in some points of detail, is much closer to the Biblical account than the creation story. It occurs in the Gilgamesh Epic, found upon twelve large tablets in the great library of Ashurbanipal, though much older than that in origin. It too is much
broken, but significant features of the story are still intact. Gilgamesh, lamenting the death of a loved companion, and fearful lest a like fate await him, goes away in search of an ancestor, Ut- Napishtim, who had been carried away to the life beyond. He is advised that the way to him leads over the sea of death, but with the help of a sailor of Ut-Napishtim he may be able to cross. Thus aided, he comes to the place of his ancestor, and there is told the story of Ut- Napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, in which appears the story of the deluge. In part it is as follows: Ea, god of waters, warns him to prepare for the flood.
Pull down thy house, build a ship,
Leave thy possessions; take thought for thy life, Thy property abandon, save thy life,
Bring living seed of every kind into the ship.
This he must do because of the hatred of Bel, or Enlil, god of Nippur.
The ship was built.
120 cubits high were its sides.
140 cubits reached the edge of its roof.
I traced its hull, I designed it.
I built it in six stories. . . .
Its interior I divided into nine parts. . . .
When it was finished he moved in. With all of his silver and gold, living things, cattle, beasts of the field, his family and household he filled it. Then
The senders of the rain in the evening sent heavy rain.
The appearance of the weather I observed.
I feared to behold the weather.
I entered the ship and closed the door.
The rains came, the water reached high And brought destruction upon men.
No man beheld his fellow No more were men recognized The gods feared the deluge
They drew back. They climbed up the heaven of Anu....
The gods sat bowed and weeping Six days and nights,
Blew the wind, the deluge and the tempest overwhelmed the land.
On the seventh day the tempest spent itself and the sea rested. The flood ceased.
I looked upon the sea. There was silence come.
And all mankind was turned to clay.
I sat down. I wept.
And over my face ran my tears.
Twelve days later an island arose, and to it the ship was fastened. Day after day the waters went down, and on the seventh day he sent forth a dove. The dove flew away and came back, for there was no resting place. He then sent forth a swallow which likewise returned, finding no resting place. Then he released a raven which flew away to show that the waters were receding and she came not back. The ark settled down, apparently on solid ground. He left the ship and immediately made sacrifice.
The gods smelled the savor,
The gods smelled the sweet savor,
The gods gathered like flies over the sacrifices.
Later the God, Ea, drew near and caused Ut-Napishtim and his wife to kneel before him, then
blessed them saying:
Formerly Ut-Napishtim was only a man but
Now let Ut-Napishtim and his wife be like the gods, even us.
Let Ut-Napishtim dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers.
They took me there afar off. At the mouth of the rivers they made me to dwell.8
With this, the story of the deluge ends. There is more to the epic than this, but we need not follow it further. In the end the search of Gilgamesh for eternal life was not successful, but he did find confidence in the assertion of the gods, that in the next world men find themselves among those whom they have known on earth.
Here is undoubtedly close parallelism to the Old Testament story at certain points. If one reads the entire story as found in both sources it is probable, however, that the differences rather than the likenesses will impress him most.
There is a great wealth of hymns, prayers, psalms of one kind or another in Babylonian literature, very much the sort that is found within the limits of the Hebrew Old Testament.
Sometimes there are songs and prayers addressed to a score or more of divine beings; but they do seem to be the authentic, prayerful expression of the human spirit in varying moods. One thinks for example of the long prayer to Ishtar, much too long to quote here, but from which the following are brief excerpts.
Thou judgest the cause of men with justice and right;
Thou regardest with mercy the despised man, thou settest right the down-trodden every morning.
How long wilt thou tarry, O lady of heaven and earth, shepherdess of pale-faced men?
How long wilt thou tarry, O lady whose feet are unwearied, whose knees do run?
How long wilt thou tarry, O lady of conflict and all battles?9 . . .
Where thou dost regard the dead live, the sick arise.
The unjust become just, beholding thy face,
I invoke, sorrowful, sighing, suffering thy servant.
Look upon me, O my lady, and accept my supplication, Pity me in truth, and hearken unto my prayer,
Speak deliverance unto me, let thy heart be appeased.
Deliverance for my suffering body, full of troubles and disorders?
Deliverance for my afflicted heart, full of sorrow and sighing?
Deliverance for my suffering bowels, troubled and confused?
Deliverance for my troubled house, pouring forth complaints?
Deliverance for my spirit, full of sorrow and sighing?10 . . . My heart hath taken wing, it hath flown away like
a bird on the heavens.
I moan like a dove, night and day.
I am made desolate, and I weep bitterly.
In pain and sorrow my soul is distressed.
What have I done, 0 my god and my goddess?
Is it because I feared not my god or my goddess that trouble has befallen me?
Sickness, headache, ruin and destruction are come upon me;
Miseries, turning away of countenance, and fullness of anger are my lot,
Indignation, wrath, anger of gods and men. . . . But unto my lady do I give heed, my ear is turned My prayer is unto thee, dissolve my ban.
Blot out my sin, my fault, my mockery and my offence!
Forgive my mockery, accept my supplication, Free my breast, send me comfort,
Guide my footsteps that happily and proudly among the living I may pursue my way.
Speak the word, that at thy command the angry god may be favorable.
And that the goddess who is angry may be gracious.11
From the Assyrian literature which is very closely similar to the Babylonian, comes a prayer to the chief of gods of which the following is a part:
O Lord Chief of the gods Who alone art exalted on earth and in Heaven, . . .
O Merciful Gracious Father in Whose hands rests the life of the whole world,
O Lord, Thy divinity is full of awe, like the far-off Heaven and the broad ocean
O Creator of the land . . . begetter of gods and men who dost build dwellings and establish offerings. . . O mighty Leader whose deep inner being no god