310 THE VEN. ARCHDEACON POTTER, M.A._, ON THE INFLUENCE 



But (2) another way in which a knowledge of Babylonian 

 beliefs may have come was through the aboriginal inhabitants 

 of Canaan, on the return of the Israelites from Egypt. It seems 

 quite clear from the Tel-el-Amarna tablets that a widespread 

 knowledge of Babylonian ideas must have been current in 

 Palestine at least one hundred and fifty years before the time 

 of Moses, because these tablets contain letters written from 

 Palestine to the Egyptian king, asking for help against enemies, 

 etc., written in the Babylonian cuneiform script. It seems 

 stranoe that among these early nations in Palestine the 

 Babylonian language was the vehicle for communicating ideas. 

 It reminds one of the time of our Lord, when Greek was the 

 polite language in Palestine. But if Palestine before Moses was 

 permeated by the Babylonian language, we can understand its 

 being the home of Babylonian religious conceptions. In fact, in 

 view of the Tel-el-Amarna revelation, it would seem strange if 

 there were not a correspondence of ideas between the Mosaic 

 code and cosmogony and the Hebrew. The story of Adapa 

 being among these letters shows that religious conceptions weie 

 known iu Palestine then. 



Bishop Kyle says, " The probability that the Genesis cosmo- 

 gony is ultimately to be traced back to an Assyrian tradition 

 may be reasonably admitted." 



" The ancestors of Abraham were Assyrian. The various 

 creation legends current in Mesopotamia would presumably 

 have been preserved in the clan of Terah." 



In a letter which I received from Canon Driver, July 12th, 

 1911, he says, "Babylonian influence certainly is traceable in 

 the Old Testament, though the extent of it seems to me to have 

 been in some quarters exaggerated. It was mostly, it seems to 

 me, indirect, and it need not, I suppose, have all come in through 

 the same channel, or at the same time." 



(3) Traditions may have come through the exile. 



Further light may be thrown on this subject by a consideration 

 of the results at which the higher criticism has arrived. 



Dr. Sanday is a particularly conservative critic ; and he uses 

 the following words with reference to the composition of the 

 Pentateuch. He says, "If we accept, as I at least feel 

 constiained to accept, at least in broad outline, the critical 

 theory now so widely held as to the composition of tlie 

 Pentateuch, then there is a loner interval, an interval of some 

 four centuries or more, between the events and the main portions 

 of the record as we now have it." " In such a case," he adds, 

 " we should expect to happen just what we find has happened. 



