170 



T. G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S._, ON 



rejecting the " one-principle " of the universe, and constituting 

 two, namely, Tauthe and Apason (Tiawath and Apsu). These 

 two forms of the waste of creative waters, which the early 

 Babylonians conceived as existing, and as being the origin of all 

 things, can hardly be regarded otherwise than as spirits of evil, and 

 therefore, everything which they produced was, like themselves, 

 full of bad piinciples, confused in shape and conception, and 

 malevolent of disposition. The question witli the Babylonians 

 was not, therefore, how evil came to be, but in what way did 

 good arise from this crude, unformed, evil, and violent progeny 

 of those two principles ? 



And here we have an exceedingly interesting outcome of 

 Babylonian cosmogony, and a very natural way out of the 

 difficulty, namely, the doctrine of evolution. Not all the 

 offspring of these two " first principles " were evil — some of 

 them were good, and these good ones gave birth to others as 

 good as, or better than, themselves. These were the gods of the 

 heavens and all their host, whose perfection in goodness and 

 righteousness, however, aroused hostility in the minds of 

 Tiawath and Apsu, who, aided by their son Mummu, tried to 

 destroy them. The dragons of Chaos, however, inspired such 

 fear in the breasts of the good gods who had descended from 

 them, that none of them succeeded in destroying Tiawath, Apsu, 

 and their brood, until Merodach, the "Steer of Day " — the sun 

 in his youthful strength — took from Apsu the tablets of Fate, 

 which enabled him to rule the earth, and entrapped Tiawath in 

 his great net, afterwards dividing her body, and placing one 

 half as a covering for the heavens (the waters above the 

 firmament), while the other part of her remained below, as the 

 waters below the firmament. The ultimate I'esult of Babylonian 

 conceptions concerning the origin of the universe and the life 

 therein would therefore seem to have been three — the two 

 principles of evil with whom Creation originated on the one 

 side, and Merodach and the good and the just gods of heaven, 

 who created mankind " to redeem " (seemingly) Tiawath, Apsu, 

 and their evil offspring and followers (when the fulness of time 

 should come), on the other. 



How early the date of the first conception of this philosophy- 

 goes back we do not know, but the perfection of the theory of 

 evolution and redemption (?) may be set down at about 

 2000 15.C. Now my contention would be that the Hebrew 

 strictly Monotheistic revelation of this same event was not only 

 not derived from it, but was issued in opposition to it — to show 

 the beginning of all things, to emphasize the fact, that that 



