OP BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS ON JEWISH THOUGHT. 325 



considering, revising and amplifying the remarks I actually made. — 

 W. H. G. T.) 



Rev. J. J. B. Coles, M.A., said : From what sources were the 

 Babylonian myths and traditions derived 1 



In the comparative study of ancient religions an all-important 

 point is the question of origins. 



The origin of the religious faith of Abraham and the Patriarch 

 was the revelation of God which he communicated to them person- 

 ally and by the Mouth of His prophets since the world began. 



Genesis contains the written record of these earlier revelations, 

 and the oldest signs and symbols of the human race corroborate 

 these direct revelations and the subsequent written records of 

 them. 



Abraham, Isaac, and J acob, and Hebrew believers after them, had 

 no need to accept Babylonian traditions, and there is no evidence 

 whatever to show that they were indebted to them for their religious 

 conceptions, but on the contrary they knew that they were 

 surrounded by peoples who had corrupted primitive revelation and 

 who had debased and perverted the true meaning of the earliest 

 religious signs and symbols through their false system of astro- 

 theology. 



The similarities between Babylonian and Hebrew writings are to 

 be accounted for by the perversions and corruptions of an earlier 

 faith — on the part of those from whom Abraham and Isaac and his 

 descendants were instructed by God to separate themselves. 



The promised " Seed of the Woman " would eventually spring from 

 that Olive Tree of Promise, and to the descendants of Abraham, 

 Isaac, and Jacob were committed "the living oracles of God." 



Abraham doubtless saw through the astrotheology of the 

 Babylonians and Accadians, as Moses later on saw through the 

 Egyptian Osirian myths — for he was " learned in all the wisdom of 

 the Egyptians." 



The most fruitful source of Babylonian mythology was the early 

 perversion of the symbols of the cherubim and the constellation 

 figures which the patriarchs had mapped out in the heavens before 

 Babylon became a nation. 



These early symbols embodied the prophecies of the Coming// 

 Redeemer and to the perversion of these signs may be attributed/| 

 most of the myths and legends of antiquity. | 



