ANCIENT BABYLONIAN ASTROGONY. 399 



the book of Genesis, who describes the sun as the greatei 

 light It does not seem to follow very clearly, however, 

 from the tablet record, that the sun was considered inferior 

 to the moon in importance, and certainly we cannot imagine 

 that the Babylonians considered the moon a greater light. 

 The creation of the stars precedes that of the moon, though 

 manifestly the moon was judged to be more important than 

 the stars. Not improbably, therefore, the sun, though 

 following the moon in order of creation, was regarded as 

 the more important orb of the two. In fact, in the Baby- 

 lonian as in the (so-called) Mosaic legend of Creation, the 

 more important members of a series of created bodies are, 

 in some cases, created last man last of all orders of animated 

 beings, for instance. 



If we turn now from the consideration of the Babylonian 

 tradition of the creation of the heavenly bodies to note how 

 the biblical account differs from it, not only or chiefly in 

 details, but in general character, we seem to recognize in 

 the latter a determination to detach from the celestial orbs 

 the individuality, so to speak, which the older tradition had 

 given to them. The account in Genesis is not only simpler, 

 and, in a literary sense, more effective, but it is in another 

 sense purified. The celestial bodies do not appear in it as 

 celestial beings. The Babylonian legend is followed only so 

 far as it can be followed consistently with the avoidance of 

 all that might tempt to the worship of the sun, moon, and 

 stars. The writer of the book of Genesis, whether Moses 

 or not, seems certainly to have shared the views of Moses as 

 to the Sabaeanism of the nation from which the children of 

 Abraham had separated. Moses warned the Israelite, 

 " Take good heed unto thyself, lest thou lift up thine eyes 

 unto heaven ; and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, 

 and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be 

 driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy 

 God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven." 

 So the writer of Genesis is careful to remove from the tradi- 

 tion which he follows all that might suggest the individual 



