MODERN BIBLICAL SCHOLAESHIP. 



227 



our present purpose. The well-known Babylonian seal, which 

 cannot be of later date than 2500-2000 B.C., representing a man 

 and a woman and a tree bearing fruit and a serpent behind the 

 woman, presents a combination of details which irresistibly 

 points to the conclusion that the engraver was familiar with 

 some such story as that in Genesis iii. 



The contents of both these chapters are assigned by the 

 critics to the " J " document. But no adequate attempt is made 

 to account for their origin or for their preservation during so 

 many thousands of years. It is not enough to say that " J " 

 committed to writing a previous oral tradition, whether 

 amongst Hebrews or Babylonians. If they contain truth, 

 however veiled, oral tradition cannot account for man's 

 knowledge of that truth or of the events concerning his own 

 existence, which transpired before the dawn of his own 

 consciousness. Moreover, oral tradition is scarcely likely to 

 have preserved in any form a faithful account of what our 

 translators have not inaptly described as " man's shameful fall." 

 The only reasonable way out of these difficulties is to admit 

 the supernatural and to regard the original records, in whatever 

 language composed, as literature of far greater antiquity than 

 modern Biblical scholarship has been disposed to admit. 



(iii) Let us now look for a moment at the story of Cain and 

 Abel. Like the two previous stories, the New Testament puts 

 its imprimatur upon its historicity (Heb. iii, 4), and modern 

 Biblical criticism assigns it to the " J " document. It is true 

 we do not find its exact parallel in any of the legends of 

 antiquity, but what appear to be different forms of one original 

 story are found among different nations, looking much like a 

 legendary superstructure upon the Cain and Abel basis. It is 

 that of — 



Dumuzi and Innana among the Sumerians. 

 Tammuz and Ishtar among the Semites. 

 Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians. 



Adonis and Aphrodite, or Venus, among the Greeks and 

 Latins. 



The subject of the story dies a violent death ; in one instance 

 he is a shepherd, and it is his brother who strikes the blow ; or 

 it is supposed to have been transformed into a meteorological 

 myth and the summer is destroyed by the winter and reappears 

 to bring joy to earth again. In the sixth tablet of the 

 Gilgamesh series it is the youthful husband of the goddess 

 Ishtar who has come to a premature end, and growing out of it 



Q 2 



