have been the result in certain districts of that land? Entire towns and villages would have been wiped out. I have no desire to attempt to explain how the deluge might have taken place; nor where it took place; nor even to attempt to prove that it did take place. I do desire, however, to show that under exceptional conditions, a great inundation could have occurred in certain parts of Amurru with rain as the cause. And furthmore, it is not at all improbable that the seat of the deluge was in the great Central Asian basin, north of "the mountains of Ararat," between the Black and the Caspian seas.18

The study, therefore, of the versions of the deluge found in Babylonia, shows conclusively that although that land, which is liable to floods, was good soil for deluge stories, the recensions found there do not state that the force which caused the deluge was the flooding of the rivers; but they do say it was rain, the same as the Amorite stories. What becomes then of the much-vaunted Babylonian coloring which has been used hundreds of times to prove that these stories originated in Babylonia? And recalling that the chief argument for the Babylonian origin of the story is based on the annual inundations caused by the rise of the rivers, how are Babylonists and Sumerists going to explain that this is not given as the cause of the deluge in any of the stories?

Before dismissing this discussion I cannot help recalling and emphasizing that Egypt in the Nile Valley, that great alluvium, where life also depends solely on the flooding of the rivers, is a notable exception among ancient nations in that it did not have a deluge story. True, the floods are not so large, and are better controlled than in Babylonia; but whether this was always the case is a question. In thinking, therefore, of the widely heralded idea that Babylonia was such good soil for deluge stories, one

18 A theory advanced by Mr. Reginald A. Fessenden.

cannot help asking why Egypt should be such a notable exception in not having its story.

And now let us inquire what other arguments have been advanced for the Babylonian origin of the Hebrew stories.

One writer states that three passages in the "Jehovistic" narrative "seem to imply an acquaintance with the Babylonian poem." One of these is the statement that the Lord shut the door of the ark, which "differs from the Babylonian account, according to which Xisuthros closed it himself." The second passage is concerning the sending out of birds; for he says, "it is clear that the Babylonian version is older than the Hebrew record, and the position of the raven in Genesis seems less logical than in the Babylonian." The third passage refers to the smelling of a sweet savor, which is identical in both the Biblical and the Babylonian; and "it is impossible not to believe that the language of the latter was known to the Biblical writer."19 It seems to me that there is but one point in these statements, which were made long ago, that need be discussed at the present time, and that is due to the Babylonian version being older than the accepted date of the Hebrew story. This is discussed in what follows.

The second of the two arguments for the Babylonian origin of the Biblical deluge story which have been effective above all others, is based upon the fact that the version, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library Collection, is dated above five hundred years prior to the time of Moses. The Sumerian epitome recently published, as we have seen, also may be earlier than the time of the lawgiver. It is, therefore, not a question as to whether the Jehovist writer could have borrowed these stories from Babylon to produce his narrative in the ninth or eighth century B. C., and the Priestly in the fifth century; nor even whether Moses produced these stories for the

19 Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments 118 f.

first time. The discovery of the early dated tablet answers these questions. But the question is, did Syria, which was surrounded by the advanced cultures of Asia Minor, Crete, Babylonia, and Egypt, have a civilization of its own; and if it did, then did the predecessors of Moses and the patriarchs, or in other words, the Amorites, possess or know these stories?

The burden of my entire thesis is that the land of the Amorites had such a civilization. The answer to this part of the question is found in the sum and substance of these researches. Let me,

however, refer in this connection to several points not previously discussed.

While certain critics have regarded it as impossible that these stories were as early as Moses, there are others who hold, because of their primitive simplicity, and also archaic character, that Genesis includes that which belonged to a great antiquity. The discovery of the Amarna letters has shown conclusively that an advanced civilization existed in Palestine in the time of Moses; and the recently discovered inscriptions in the Sinaitic peninsula at Serabit el-Khadim, prove that alphabetic writing was known to the Semites before the time of Moses.20 There are also other recent discoveries including those made in connection with the culture of Byblos (see Chapter II), which put the whole matter now in a new light.

The Hebrews throughout their history used almost entirely a perishable writing material. This statement does not need any proof. Papyrus, skins, and potsherds were suitable materials for the Semitic alphabetic script; but plastic clay was not. A short rock inscription of a few lines, a few seals and ostraca, are nearly all the original indigenous evidence we have of the literary activity

20 This is the view of Petrie, Gardiner, Cowley, Sayce, Sethe, Eisler, and Bauer. Schneider, however, takes issue with these scholars, and endeavors to show that the inscriptions belong to a later period. See OLZ 1921, 242 ff.

of the Hebrews. The Moabites, the Phoenicians, and the Aramaeans, also owing to climatic conditions, have likewise left us little evidence of their literary culture. While in Egypt considerable writings on papyrus have been found, in Palestine practically every trace of such has disappeared.

We know that the Hittites had their individual script, but they also used the Babylonian syllabary in writing their language, as did also the Mitanneans, the Vannic, and doubtless also many other peoples of Western Asia. There is no evidence that the Hebrews or other branches of the Western Semites used this syllabary for their language; for up to the present, not a single cuneiform tablet written in pure Hebrew or Aramaic has been found.21 Knowing what a highly literary people the Hebrews were, had they used the Babylonian syllabary, we would unquestionably have found evidence of this use in Palestine, as well as in Babylonia, where in certain periods they lived in large numbers.

A very good explanation can be offered for this in the fact that a script requiring the mastery of twenty-two simple characters was somewhat easier to learn than a system involving hundreds of complicated cuneiform signs, nearly all of which having at the same time many values. This fact also makes it easy to understand how Aramaic in time supplanted the Babylonian as the inter-commercial language.

If the Egyptians wrote on papyrus as early as 3000 B. C., it would seem that a land whose civilization had provided Egypt with one of its prominent deities at that early date, and had sent its religion centuries before into Babylonia, also had its means of communication, as had its neighbors. What the exact character of their script was in that early period, is a question on which we have at present no light.22

21 What I regard as Amorite literature in Babylonia has been Babylonized. 22 On the script used in early Amurru, see also see Empire of the Amorites 61 ff.

There is another thought to which I desire to give expression in this connection. As has been said, we have not a scrap of evidence from any original source prior to the time of Christ to show that the Old Testament actually existed. Fortunately, however, we have the remains of a literature from Babylonia covering several millenniums, which illustrates for us what had taken place at the hands of redactors. We now have, for example, a portion of a version of the Gilgamesh Epic written 2000 B. C., or thirteen hundred years earlier than the redaction of it, which had been found in the Library of Ashurbanipal. The study of the two versions enables us to see what changes had taken place during these centuries. But we have another example that is even closer to the present subject.

A recent study of the Morgan Library deluge tablet, written in the eleventh year of Ammi-zaduga, about 1966 B. C., shows that it is an early version of what was written about thirteen hundred years later, namely, a redaction of a portion of it.23 The study of the early and the late recensions, shows what has taken place during the intervening centuries. Moreover, the early dated version states that it is a copy of a still earlier document.

Naturally all this has been fully surmised by scholars, for it is exactly what should have been expected. Nevertheless, what has taken place in the handing down of literature in Babylonia, illustrates what certainly has taken place also in Syria and Palestine, where a more perishable writing material was used. And further, the illustration is helpful for those who, finding primitive thought and archaisms in Genesis, realize that in them they also have traces of very ancient documents.

In searching for other arguments for the Babylonian origin of the Biblical stories, I find the following: "The Babylonian home

23 A Hebrew Deluge Story 11 ff.