ON ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION. 249 



ill many details agrees in a remarkable manner with the first chapter of 

 Genesis ; and, although there are differences in some, it is those very 

 differences which enable us to judge of its antiquity. In the Hebrew 

 account of the creation of the great lights, it will be remembered that they 

 came in the order of the sun, the moon, and the stars ; but this order is 

 reversed in the Chaldean Tablet, where we get the stars, the moon, and then 

 the sun last of all. As I have pointed out in my book, this argues an 

 antiquity which is very great in one way, because we know that the moon, 

 in the old system, always had priority of the sun. Again, it indicates that 

 the tradition must have been drawn up by a pastoral people, to whom the 

 moon was always more favourable, and by whom it was held in greater 

 respect than the sun. In fact, the general grouping of this Tablet shows 

 that it was written at a time when the Babylonians had not shaken off the 

 earliest traditions of their old moon-worship, and become attached to 

 the worship of the sun, as they did at a later period. I now come to the 

 still more difficult and dangerous question of the earlier form of these 

 legends, and here I would refer those who wish to study the subject to two 

 remarkable articles that have recently appeared. One is a paper by 

 Professor Dillmann on the origin of the Hebrew traditions, which was read 

 before one of the Berlin Societies ; the other is an article written by Canon 

 Driver, in the January number of the Expositor. In both of these, the 

 first chapter of Genesis is discussed by these well-known scholars, who throw 

 great light upon the question. If you take the traditions of Chaldea and 

 those of Phoenicia, and place them side by side, you will find certain common 

 features. As I stated at the commencement of my remarks, you will find 

 that the three nations, having the thi"ee oldest cosmogonic traditions, all 

 came from the same locality ; and I was glad to see that Dr. Schriider had 

 come to the same conclusion as myself, namely, that these traditions are in 

 reality much older than we 'at first supposed, and that there might have been 

 a time when there was a common tradition of the beginning of all things 

 current among the Semitic people, which, perhaps, in Chaldea, became 

 slightly tainted with Accadianism, and in Phcenicia, probably, slightly 

 influenced by Egyptian teaching, so that it has come down to us in forms 

 diflerent from the primal tradition. Still, I say that underlying all this 

 there is a common tradition which, if you strip it, as an expert might 

 strip it, from its Accadianism and Egyptian influences, and lay it side by side 

 with the account in Genesis, will !?ho\v a remarkable agreement pointing to an 

 old primal stock from which all came. It is these traditions, then, which have 

 really to be considered. Of the Zoroastrian and Indian traditions it is difficult 

 to say anything, because we cannot discuss them on the same basis as the 

 other traditions, of which we really know the antiquity. Again, they are 

 full of decidedly mythological and philosophical matter, whereas the strong 

 point in the Chaldean and Hebraic traditions is that they are essentially 

 the work of men who were students of nature. To say the least of it, the 

 more one studies the account of Genesis and the Chaldean account, the 



