166 REV. ANDEEW CRAIG ROBINSON, M.A., ON THE BEARING OF 



through him, and by reason of the powerful influence of Baby- 

 lonian ideas prevailing in Palestine, and felt in Egypt also in 

 the centuries preceding the Mosaic age. There is no need to 

 trouble ourselves about the time of the conquest of Canaan, or 

 the reign of King Ahaz, or the age of the exile, as the time wlien 

 the people of Israel first became acquainted with these stories. 

 It is enough if we believe that the great ancestor of the nation 

 came from Babylonia — he and his descendants would naturally 

 be familiar with all these things. 



It would seem then that it is probably safe to assume that 

 the writer of the sublime account of creation, which forms the 

 proem of Genesis, was fully cognizant of the Babylonian stoiy. 

 On this the question next occurs — in what relation does this 

 account in Genesis stand to that contained in the Babylonian 

 Tablets ? 



To this question the answer given by Professor Sayce is, that 

 the Biblical account deliberately contradicts the Babylonian. 



After noticing the points of resemblance between the two 

 accounts. Professor Sayce declares that between the Babylonian 

 and the Biblical narratives there is a profound difference, a 

 difference which indicates not only the priority of the Babylonian 

 version, but also the deliberate purpose of the Hebrew writer 

 to contravene and correct it. He writes : — 



"The polytheism and mythology of the Babylonian theory are 

 met with a stern negative ; along with the materialism of the preface 

 to the epic." Monument Fads and Higher Critical Fancies, p. 106. 



This preface to the epic Professor Sayce translates : — 



" In the beginning was the deep which begat the heavens and the 

 earth, the chaos of Tiamat who was the mother of them all." 



Against this materialism of the Babylonian acconnt, wliich 

 represents a formless matter, independent of the Creator, gene- 

 rating itself, developing into the divine, and producing as by 

 spontaneous generation the heavens and the earth, there stands, 

 says Professor Sayce, 



" on the forefront of Genesis the declaration that, ' In the 

 beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth.' The earth was 

 indeed a formless chaos resting on the dark waters of the 

 ])rima3val deep ; — thus far the conceptions of the Babylonian 

 cosmology are adopted ; — hut the chaos and thn deep were not the 

 fii-st of things ; God was already there, and His l)reath or spii-it 

 brooded over the abyss — while the letter of the Babylonian story 

 has been followed the spirit of it has been changed. The Hel)rew 

 writer must have had the Jiabylonian version before him and 



