OF BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS ON JEWISH THOUGHT. 337 



as " the cow and her young, the steer, the ewe and her lamb, the 

 sheep of the fold," etc. 



vi. It is at least misleading to say, " In the sixth tablet, which 

 was published, I think, for the first time by Mr. King, the creation 

 of man is narrated," etc. A portion of the contents of the tablet, 

 as the author admits, has been long known from the writings 

 of Berosus. But what we owe to Mr. King is the publication of a 

 fragment which does not even contain half-a-dozen complete lines, 

 but with fractions of about twenty more lines — a very different 

 thing from saying, " the tablet has been published." Fortunately 

 this fragment confirms the statement of Berosus that it referred to 

 the creation of man, but it adds nothing to our knowledge. 



vii. There is no foundation whatever for connecting anything in 

 these tablets with the Fall of Man (p. 302). The author has followed 

 an old mistranslation of a fragment which was at first thought to 

 refer to the Fall, but was afterwards identified by Dr. Pinches as 

 constituting lines 130-138 of Tablet III, and describes a feast of 

 the gods which seems to have ended in their intoxication. The 

 lines are imperfect, but this is certain, " Bread they ate, they 

 produced wine . . . greatly did they linger (*?), their spirits 

 rose." 



viii. In quoting the inscription of Meren-ptah, " Yisrael is 

 desolate, its seed (which may be read 'crop') is not," he adds, 

 " this is a description of this king's victory over enemies in Canaan," 

 and concludes that " probably there were Israelites in Canaan 

 before the Exodus." But the allusion to " Yisrael " is preceded by 

 the expression " Devastated is Trhenu," or Libya, which was not in 

 Canaan but Africa. Moreover, the inscription was not dated until 

 the fifth year of the king's reign, and the name " Israel " might well 

 have been used for other Hebrew-speaking people. The Canaanites 

 and Moabites spoke Hebrew, and Joseph speaks of himself as 

 "stolen out of the land of the Hebrews." 



ix. May I point out another mistake 1 On p. 309 the author says, 

 " the Sabbath apparently was of Babylonian origin," and proceeds 

 to quote a translation from tablets published in W.A.L, Vol. IV, 

 pp. 32 and 33, though he does not tell us this. By these tablets we 

 learn that the division of days into seasons is of very ancient origin. 

 But the quotation he gives us has nothing to do with the Babylonian 

 shabattu, which was the name of the fifteenth day of the month 



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