NOTE A]

EVOLUTION

195

by any fact within our present knowledge, and therefore that believers in God may legitimately regard it as an act of creative power.

It is not of course pretended that these observations deal fully with the questions of evolution, but they present some considerations which may be worthy of reflection.

NOTE B. CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF
CREATION.

THE view stated in the text is confirmed if we set against the Biblical narrative the history of Creation which has in recent years been discovered in the cuneiform inscriptions on the bricks or tiles of the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon (many of which are now in the British Museum), and which have been represented by some persons to have been the original authorities from which the writer of Genesis derived his story. The following description and translation of the earliest of these inscriptions is given in the most recent work of authority, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylon,' by Dr. Pinches.

'Of the obverse of the first tablet very little, unfortunately, remains, but what there is extant is of the highest interest. Luckily we have the beginning of this remarkable legend, which runs, according to the latest and best commentaries, as follows:

When on high the heavens were unnamed,
Beneath the earth bore not a name:
The primeval ocean was their producer ;

Mummu Tiamtu was she who begot the whole of them.

Their waters in one united themselves and

The plains were not outlined, marshes were not to be

seen.

When none of the gods had come forth,

They bore no name, the fates [had not been determined].
There were produced the gods [all of them ?]:
Lahmu and Lahamu went forth [as the first ?] :

The ages were great, [the times were long?].
Ansar and Kisar were produced [and grew up ?];
Long grew the days, extended [was the time of their
existence?].

The god Anu

Ansar, the god Anu .

'Such is the tenor of the opening lines of the Babylonian story of the Creation, and the differences between the two accounts (of Babylon and Genesis) are striking enough. Before proceeding, however, to examine and compare them, a few words upon the Babylonian version may not be without value. First, we must note that the above introduction to the legend has been excellently explained and commented on by the Syrian writer, Damascius. The following is his explanation of the Babylonian teaching concerning the creation of the world :

"But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass over in silence the one principle of the universe, and they constitute two, Tauthe and Apason, making Apason the husband of Tauthe, and denominating her the mother of the gods. And from these proceeds an only-begotten son, Moumis, which I conceive is no other than the intelligible world proceeding from the two principles. From them also another progeny is derived, Dache and Dachos; and again a third, Kissare and Assoros, from which last three others proceed, Anos and Illinos and Aos. And of Aos and Dauke is born

NOTE B]

THE CREATION

197

a son called Belos, who, they say, is the fabricator of the world, the Creator.""""

Dr. Pinches then observes that after the lines above quoted there is a gap of nineteen lines in the narrative, and the next lines deciphered refer to a terrific combat among the gods, which he thus summarises.

'As will be gathered from the above, the whole story centres in the wish of the goddess of the powers of evil to get creation-the production of all that is in the world-into her own hands. In this she is aided by certain gods, over whom she sets one, Kiugu, her husband, as chief. In the preparations that she makes she exercises her creative powers to produce all kinds of dreadful monsters to help her against the gods whom she wishes to overthrow.'

It is astonishing that anyone should have thought that this farrago of childish and incoherent nonsense could be the original from which was derived the narrative of Genesis, at once so simple and so majestic, and yet so true to all that we have since learned. But, along with the mythology which was afterwards invented in Greece, it serves to illustrate the width of the gulf that lies between fables of human imagination and the teaching of the Spirit of God.