THE BABYLONIAN STOEY OF THE CREATION. 



51 



Mr. Eg USE. — It is so stated in Professor Sayce's Higher 

 Criticism. 



Mr. BOSCAWEN. — No ; an augur does not make an augury. 



Mr. EousE. — The so-called prophets of Babylon might not 

 prophecy. An augur would be a priest, surely ! 



I would ask why we are to suppose that the documents that 

 Mr. Boscawen says are to be attributed to Babylon should be when 

 the text itself is so unlike them 1 



Then as to the creation of man from the blood of Merodach, that 

 is a little like man being made in God's own image and being a 

 rational spirit. Are we to suppose that the Jews borrowed it from 

 the Babylonians ? 



Again, there is something in the Bible itself which looks as if the 

 Jews had forgotten their language in Babylon, for we find that when 

 Ezra, the scribe, read out the law of God, the Levites had to give 

 the people the sense of it. I should think, decidedly, it meant that 

 they had forgotten their own tongue. Therefore, how is it 

 conceivable that they should invent those ancient Hebrew manu- 

 scripts which are constantly referred to in other parts of the 

 Bible ^ 



I entirely deny that in any possible sense can that second 

 chapter of Genesis be called " The Creation." If we suppose that 

 to be called the creation, then, according to that, man is created on 

 the bare earth with not a single herb in the ground, and then a 

 garden is made and he is put in that, and everything outside is 

 waste and empty until God makes the herbs of the field after he 

 goes out of the garden, for it is never mentioned until after. 

 Therefore, if that be an account of the creation, it is an exceedingly 

 poor one. 



May I ask Dr. Pinches who is referred to by that writer, 

 Damascius, as "the only begotten son'"? 

 Dr. Pinches. — Merodach. 



Mr. EousE. — That I hold to be a remarkable fact that this being, 

 whose ancestors, the dragons, emblems of light and evil, is called 

 " the only begotten son." We all know that in Egypt there is 

 Isis and Osiris and their son Horus, and we have, certainly, accounts 

 in Babylon of Istar and the son she is to have. Whether that is 

 Merodach or not I will get Dr. Pinches to answer. Then we have 

 the tradition of a wonderful woman, and her son, who was to work 



