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CT
THE
CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF GENESIS.
BY
Sir GEORGE WILLIAM DENYS, Bart.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO.
11,
THE TERRACE,
FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Fourpence.
��THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF GENESIS *
N the thirteenth page of this most remarkable and
interesting work, Mr Smith says, “ The first series
I may call the ‘ story of the Creation and Fall/ and the
history is much fuller and longer than the correspond
ing account in the book of Genesis. With respect to
these Genesis narratives a furious strife has existed for
many years, every word has been scanned by eager
scholars, and every possible meaning which the various
passages could bear has been suggested; while the age
and authenticity of the narratives have been discussed
on all sides. In particular it may be said that the
account of the fall of man, the heritage of all Christian
countries, has been the centre of the controversy, for it
is one of the pivots on which the Christian religion
turns. The world-wide importance of these subjects will
therefore give the newly discovered inscriptions, and
especially the one relating to ‘the Fall’ an unparal
leled value.”
But is this “Fall of Man ” the heritage of Christian
countries only, as Mr Smith remarks ? Is not the old
story of temptation also the heritage of all heathen
times and countries ? Is there a cosmogony or theogony,
however ancient, in which, under one form or another,
the Adamic legend is not traceable ?
“ The symbol of the serpent associates itself with the
rise of all societies, is at the root of all mythologies, its
trace is lost in the far off depths of time, but amongst
animal symbol worship this is the most singular and
I
* By George Smith.
Sampson and Low, 1876.
�4
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
the widest spread.” Whether the serpent, prime agent
in “the fall,” be regarded as wisdom personified, as by
the Gnostic sect of Ophites, who honoured it as the
father of all science and knowledge, the key that un
locked for man the secret that should make him “ as
the gods knowing all things,” or as temptation under
the guise of a beautiful woman, (Bochart explains
how Eve in the Chaldee means serpent), the story
of Eden in the Mosaic narrative appears to be only
another phase of this ancient myth, though it is in
Genesis alone that the serpent is at once the prime
agent and symbol of evil.
Certainly the greatest interest must attach to the
unearthing of what we conceive to be the sources of
the Bible history, inasmuch as they tend to prove that
there is no more rational ground for accepting this
particular explanation of the origin of evil, than there
is for accepting any other hypothesis.
Mr Smith was certainly not sent out to Assyria by
the Daily Telegraph for the purpose of upsetting
the Mosaic cosmogony; but if in the course of his
investigations he was led materially to modify his own
previous convictions, we think that in the interest of
science and of truth he is bound to tell us so. We
do not hesitate therefore, “ in limine,” to put to him
the crucial question, Does he or does he not ascribe
to the Assyrian tablets an earlier origin than to the
Mosaic record? Eor it is upon this “pivot” that the
question of the inspiration of the Jewish record turns.
The art of reading Assyrian cuneiform is one of those
astonishing results of modern scientific research, which
appears destined to upset the time-honoured opinions
and beliefs of the greater part of the civilized world.
We know not whether to be sorry or glad; but few
there will be amongst those who have entered the last
decade of life, who will see without pain and sadness
that they have been trusting to the support of broken
reeds, and that they have to spend the remainder of
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
5
their lives in unlearning that which has taken them so
much time and pains to acquire.
Who that has passed middle life can there be who
has not thought long and seriously upon the origin and
destiny of the human race 1 Who has not waded
through innumerable works upon religion, history, and
science, in the hope of attaining an unassailable con
viction that the persuasions and convictions of his
earlier years were founded upon incontrovertible facts ?
Yet with every desire to stand by the ancient and timehonoured beliefs, truth compels us to say, the evidence
upon which we trusted, when weighed in the balance,
has been found wanting.
We cannot close our eyes to the light which is now
shining upon the dark pages of the primeval history of
man. The light will pierce whether we will or no.
Let us not waste the few remaining hours of life in
unavailing regrets, but rather thank God for the true
light which now shineth, and follow its beacon.
It is scarcely possible to speak of the “ Chaldean
Genesis ” without hurting the feelings of the orthodox.
My. desire is to speak tenderly and reverently of
writings which are still held sacred by the vast
majority of Christians, and of convictions which I
myself fully shared for the greater part of my life,
which are interwoven with all our dearest sympathies
and associations, hut still to speak with perfect sin
cerity.
If we hope to induce others to lay aside any of their
early prejudices, and to take heed to the results of
modern scientific discovery, we must lay aside all
hatred and uncharitableness, and in a calm and loving
manner place before them the results of the patient
labours of men, not a whit more irreligious than the
most orthodox of churchmen, and leave the remedy to
work its own cure.
The “Times” of December 4, 1875, reviewed with
its usual ability “ The Chaldean Account of Genesis,”
�6
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
but I venture in all humility to dissent in part from
the verdict of the writer in the leading journal. The
writer says “ that exegetical theology will see in it a
strong confirmation of the truth of an universal deluge.”
Possibly it may, but nobody else will. The existence
of the story at that early period, and of a universal
belief in it, would be no proof of the fact, but only of
the belief. It is the quod semper quod ubique quod
cd) omnibus, which never can prove a physical impossi
bility. Geological science no doubt proves that every
part of the stratified crust of the earth has not only
once, but repeatedly, been below the level of the sea;
but that fact will never prove “that the tops of the
highest hills ” were at one and the same time covered
with water.
It is also proved, by Geological Science, that at
sundry periods in past geological time the crust of the
earth has been unusually convulsed, great changes of
climate, great upheavals, great subsidings have occurred;
it is possible that not one, but several of these convul
sions may have happened since man first made his
appearance upon the earth, that a tradition of such a
catastrophe may have been retained by the early in
habitants, and clothed during the subsequent ages with
all the miraculous adjuncts natural to ages of ignorance.
The universal prevalence of such legends could only
strengthen a rational belief in local catastrophes.
Diodorus Siculus says, “ the ignorance prevailing re
garding the sense of the myths, on which religion is
founded, results from the thread of tradition having
been violently snapt by that great catastrophe which
we call the deluge, which caused the Pelasgians, the
ancestors of the Greeks, to lose the remembrance of
anterior events, and even the meaning of the graphic
signs destined to transmit them to posterity.” Hence
we may ask, can the Noachian deluge have occurred
anywhere near the Pelasgian era? Can we identify
the deluge of Diodorus with that of Berosus, with the
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
7
Assyrian tablets, and with the deluge of Noah ? We
find in Smith’s Classical Dictionary under Diodorus,
that in compiling his history, Diodorus exercised
neither judgment nor criticism. He simply collected
what he found in his different authorities, and thus
jumbled together history, myths, and fiction. He
cannot therefore be a trustworthy authority. Like
those impecunious Frenchmen who habitually ascribe
their poverty to having lost all “ dans la revolution,”
he ascribes his own ignorance, and that of his con
temporaries of these “graphic writings,” to the deluge.
May not these “graphic writings” have been these
very cuneiform inscriptions of which we are now
writing ? Of the Pelasgians we know very little, and
their fabled progenitor Pelasgus may have arisen out
of the sea like Joannes, or any other fabulous person
age ; but it is quite possible that Diodorus when on
his travels may have come across the same tradition of
a deluge which was related by Berosus.
Mr G. Smith has, we think, satisfactorily established
the identity of Noah, Hasisadra, and the Xisithrus of
the Assyrian tablets,—at least, the following accounts
from the “ clays” so exactly tallies with the Genesis
version of the flood that Noah and Xisithrus can
only be one and the same person. “ In the time of
Xisuthrus, tenth King of Chaldea, happened a great
deluge,” which is thus described : “ The Deity Cronos
appeared to Xisuthrus in a vision and warned him that
on the 15th day of the month Dsesius there would be
a flood by which mankind should be destroyed. Cronos,
therefore, enjoined Xisuthrus to write a history of the
beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things, and
to bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara, and to
build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends
and relations, and to convey on board everything neces
sary to sustain life, together with the different animals,
both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly
to the deep. Having asked the Deity Cronos (another
�8
‘ The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
name for Saturn)* whither he was to sail, he was
answered, “to the Gods,” upon which Xisuthrus offered
up a prayer for the good of mankind. He forthwith
obeys the “ divine admonition,” he builds a vessel of
five stadia in length and two in width, (we do not
know whether this is equivalent to Noah’s three hun
dred cubits) and conveys into it all the quadrupeds, and
his relations and friends. “ After the flood had been
upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent
out birds from the vessel, which not finding any food,
nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet,
returned to him again; he sent them forth a second
time and they returned with their feet tinged with
mud;” the parallel between the two accounts is further
continued : “ Noah when he left the ark built an altar
unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast and of
every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the
altar.” “ Xisuthrus when he found his birds returned
no more the third time judged the surface of the earth
had appeared above the waters; he therefore made an
opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found it
was stranded upon the side of some mountain, upon
which he inmediately quitted it with his wife, his
daughter, and the pilot.” “ On reaching terra firma,”
we read, “ Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the
earth; and having constructed an altar offered sacri
fices to the gods, and with those who had come out of
the vessel with him disappeared.” In Genesis we
read, that on descending from the ark, Noah also
offered sacrifice; but he did not disappear, and, hence
forward, the two accounts differ. The parallelism
between the Chaldean and the Genesis accounts of the
* In the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Syria, lately published
by Mr Waddington, we find mention of monuments of the worship
of Cronos or Kronos, as the Greeks called El. This word El means
chief or greatest, “ The Supreme.”
According to the great
Phoenician authority, Sanchoniathon, Kronos or Saturn was called
El by the Phoenicians. The God of Israel was also El-Elion, ElShaddai, El-Kanna. El in the Semitic pantheon is equivalent toDjaus in the Indo-European, the prefix of all gods.
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
9
flood up to this point are, however, so striking, that we
cannot resist the conclusion that the one springs from
the other.
If we turn for a moment to compare the account of
creation in the first chapter of Genesis with the Greek
cosmogony, we shall also find a parallelism.
In the cosmogony of the Greeks we read, according
to’ a learned authority, that “ Zeus,” the Supreme God
of the Greeks, engendered “ Ether and Chaos,” from
which he formed the egg of the world. Here we may
indeed be said to have arrived at the beginnings of
everything ! In all cosmogonies the “ Supreme God”
had somehow to engender this egg; the author of
“ Les Temps Mythologiques ” writes, “ Plutarch relates
that Osiris having produced the egg of the world there
shut up twelve white figures, but Typhon the Ethiopian
God, the genius of evil, introduced into it twelve black
figures, whence arose the mixture of good and evil.
The simple explanation of this is the fusion of the
black and white races.”
The Egyptian hieroglyphics very often place the
“ egg of the world” in the mouth of the viper Hof,
emblem of the sovereignty of Egypt.
In most of the cosmogonies the primordial egg is
floating on the waters ; Genesis repudiates the cos
mogonic egg, but we find there the primitive waters
anterior to all creation; “ And the Spirit of God moved
on the face of the waters.” * “ We have seen that all
mythologies express this singular idea of the waters
being coexistent with God before the formation of the
world, and in the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead there is
a passage which has perhaps served as text for the first
line of all cosmogonies. It is I,” said Osiris, “ who
have navigated the waters with the Celestial Gnomon,
* We may here remark how Professor Huxley’s scientific dicta
regarding all generative beginnings receives testimony from the
texts of these ancient cosmogonies, for he proves from long research
into the secrets of the womb of nature, that without a state of
fluid there is no possibility of life being engendered.
�io
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
and have manifested myself.” The very term “Spirit
of God ” is of Egyptian origin, and the Serpent holding
in his mouth the egg of the world is often called “ the
Spirit of God.”*
To quote again “Les Temps Mythologiques: ”—“The
most important truth that results from the study of
comparative mythologies is the identity of the principle
•on which all are based ; and we can only conclude that
there was but one theme on which all those documents
were based, and on which each successive race impressed
the genius of its special character.
“ Under what inspiration did this thesis spring to life ?
Was it due to the rhapsodical and imaginative East ?
to the pantheistic naturalism of India, which reached
the far off West ? Is it the heritage of the profound
wisdom of Egypt carried into Asia by her colonists,
and must we here seek for vestiges of the most ancient
of peoples ? There is no doubt that as time went on
the learned priests of different ages assembled together
to elaborate the grave questions as to the formation of
the world and the birth of man, in which, assisted by
the rare documents that had escaped the deluge, they
constructed the cosmogonies of their different countries.
“ Thus are explained the variations in the Phoenician
document, without doubt the nearest to our own times,
and which variation has greatly puzzled both French
and German savans as to them, there appeared many
cosmogonies, the same au fond but different in form.
This which first suggested doubts as to the authenticity
of the document became instead the strongest proof in its
support.”
In the Assyrian version of the deluge we read that
“ Xisuthrus deposited his account of all that had been
the procedure and the end of all things, in the City of
the Sun, Sippara.”
By a very singular coincidence, the writings of
Thoth are also said to have been discovered at this
* “Monsieur de Rouge.”
�The Chaldean Account of Cenesis.
1 I
same city of Sippara in Chaldea. Philon of Byblos,
who lived about a.d. 24, published in Greek a trans
lation of Sanchoniathon’s “History of the Phoenicians;”
the work is lost, a few fragments only of it being
preserved by Eusebius. Sanchoniathon is by some
thought to have been a contemporary of Semiramis,
b.c. 2000, by others of Moses, b.c. 1700; others again
as low as b.c. 1200. In the fragments preserved of
Philo, Byblos’ Greek translation, he states, that his
-document regarding the creation of the world was
written before the flood.
We read under the head of Thoth in Bouillet’s
“Dictionary of Universal History,” that Thoth was an
Egyptian God, that it was he who sent Osiris to the
earth. That the forty-two volumes of Egyptian sacred
books were written by him. He was represented
sometimes with an Ibis’ head. By some he is con
sidered the same as the Greek Hermes or Mercury;
and the Hermes Trismegistus of the Alchemists’ Trismegistus, meaning thrice great. This entirely fabulous
personage is placed also at B.c. 2000, at which distance
of time the invention of language, of the alphabet, of
writing, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and medicine,
together with all the arts and sciences, may be safely
attributed to him, for no one will be at the pains to
disprove it. Bouillet further states, that a quantity of
religious books were attributed to him, called “ Livres
hermetiques,” and that Hermes Trismegistus appears
to have been for the Ancients at once “ the symbol of
the divine intelligence, the Logos of Plato, and the
personification of the Egyptian priesthood.” Of these
works one remains entitled “ On the Nature of Things
and the Creation of the World,” probably as apo
cryphal as Hermes himself. The singularity, however,
remains, of the existence of the tradition that the
works of an Egyptian should have been buried in
Sippara, a city of Chaldea. We have probably here
also an identity of different phases of the same mythus,
�12
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
with a confusion of names and places. This would alsoexplain why “ the various cosmogonies that have come
down to us all bear such a family likeness, the Hebrew,
the Greek, and the Phoenician have all drawn from
the same source.”
The writer in the 11 Times,” to whom we must now
revert, says: “It is evident that the Chaldean
account differs essentially from the deluge of Noah.”
That the Hebrews had retained a simpler and conse
quently older version of the deluge is clear, for the
scriptural narrative at all events is prior to the building
of ships and construction of rudders.” In my opinion
the “ simpler” version of the Jews proves the compara
tively modern and improved edition of an old story
more suitable to the advanced conceptions of the Jews
at the time of the Babylonian captivity, during which
they had ample opportunities of studying the Baby
lonian records, when we know that the Old Testament
was in great part re-written.
Is it likely that at a time when the Jews as a nation
were non-existent, when they were a set of “ wandering
Nomads in search of a home,” * they should have been
in possession of more authentic records than a nation in
so high a state of civilization as the Babylonians ?
The “ Times ” continues, “ every effort will be made
to rescue and preserve the pieces which lie hidden in
the recesses of the valley of the Tigris. Till all these
pieces are visible to the eye of the discoverer, the pro
blems of chronology, mythology, and history, are am
biguous oracles or inexplicable riddles. They will
neither disturb faith nor dissipate doubt, but will be
the raw material for the intellect to spin and weave
into a connected woof.”
I venture to think that if every baked brick in
Assyria were discovered tomorrow, we should be no
nearer the solution of the “ inexplicable ” than we are
* Vide Introduction to Pentateuch and book of Joshua, by a
Physician. Scott’s Series.
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
13
now. History and chronology can never be founded on
myths or legends. Facts are what the historian wants.
Now the facts which have been proved by the
Assyrian discoveries are the following :—
The Assyrian baked bricks date from the fifteenth
century b.c. lt There is reason to think (says the
‘ Times ’) that some of the transcripts are as old as
twenty, and certainly not later than fifteen centuries
B.c. At such an early period the pentateuch could not
have been written (w'cte Introduction to Pentateuch,
before quoted), for it has long since been definitely
shown that writing in the proper sense of the word
appears not to have been practised by the Jews so
relatively recent as the days of David.
“ The Hebrew word for ink is of Persian derivation,
and the art of writing on prepared sheep and goat skins
among them, dates from no more remote an age than the
Babylonian captivity.”
We find, then, amid a vast series of records of myths,
legends, or whatever we may please to call them—stories
of the creation, of the fall, the tree of life, the serpent,
the war in heaven, and the casting out of the dragon,
the flood with the ark or ship, and the sending forth of
the raven and the dove, the grounding of the ark upon
a mountain; of the institution of the Sabbath, and of
the building of the tower of Babel, besides Bel and the
dragon, and many other fabulous tales. What are we
to infer from these things ? Is it not infinitely more
probable that the Jews copied from the Babylonians
during the captivity, adapting many things to their
then more advanced conceptions, than that the Baby
lonians copied from the Jews? We find that the
Assyrians did so, for these are all transcripts or copies,
and the Assyrians tell us so. Why not the Jews also ?
We know they took subsequently many religious ideas
from the Persians. But what follows if they did ? The
reverse of what the “ Times ” states, for faith will be
shaken and doubts will be disseminated. The faith of
�14
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
those who, in spite of all the biblical critics, Colenso,
Kalisch, Kuenen, and the rest, still believed in the
historical accuracy of Genesis ; for if the Mosaic narra
tive instead of being inspired from on high turns out to
be a copy, or rather an adaptation of an ancient tradi
tion, how can it do otherwise than shake their belief 1
“ The pious people who, in person or by delegate, have
been so busy excavating in Palestine and Babylonia
with a view to demonstrate the divine origin and his
torical truth of the Hebrew scriptures, seem verily to
be pursuing their work to their own discomfiture.” *
Those who doubted before will have their doubts
confirmed, for such an amount of cumulative evidence
it is impossible to withstand.
It is quite possible that Abraham, supposing him to
have been an historical personage, and to have come
from Ur of the Chaldees, may have brought away with
him many of the Babylonian traditions.
The author of the Chaldean Genesis modestly and
wisely refrains from dogmatising or pronouncing any
opinion which might excite the “ odium theologicum.”
He says, page 284, “ Biblical criticism is, however, a
subject on which I am not competent to pronounce an
independent opinion,” and that he “ could not take up
any of the prevailing views without being a party to the
controversy.” He thinks, however, “that all will admit
a connection of some sort between the biblical narrative
and the cuneiform texts.” I cannot, however, admit
that there was “ such a total difference between the
religious ideas of the two peoples (as he states), the
Jews believing in one God, the Creator and Lord of
the Universe, while the Babylonians worshipped gods
and lords many, every city having its local deity, and
these being joined by complicated relations in a poetical
mythology, which was in marked contrast to the severe
simplicity of the Jewish system,” p. 285. The pure
monotheistic worship to which the Jews ultimately at* Introduction to Book of Joshua, by a Physician.
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
15
tained was the work of ages.* Their entire history
proves how prone they were to worship the gods of the
surrounding nations. The great value of the inscrip
tions describing the Flood, p. 286, consists not in the
fact that they form an independent testimony in favour
of the biblical narrative at a much earlier date than any
other evidence, for the earlier narrative cannot testify
in favour of the later.
The two accounts are no doubt records of the same
event, of which other versions, over and above that of
Berosus, may one day be discovered, but the endeavour
to reconcile their many conflicting statements is about
as hopeless an affair as the endeavour to reconcile the
Mosaic cosmogony with modern geological science.
With regard to the vexed question of our chronology
and its correctness, I have no pretensions as a chronologist, but in so far as I have studied the subject I
must confess that I have no faith in the correctness of
any date prior to the first Olimpiad, or b.o. 776. The
verification of any dates subsequent to that, the identi
fication of the names of different kings in divers ancient
historical tablets downwards from a firm historical
standpoint is no doubt an interesting subject of study
for the archeologist, but from the moment we ascend
into the mythical period all chronology must be at
fault and whether we take the lists of Manetho,
Berosus, or his 380,000 years, the ante-diluvian
patriarchs or any other, we are compelled to class them
all together as rude attempts to explain the inexplicable,
to construct fact out of fiction.
Far easier would it be to write the history of our
paleolithic and neolithic ancestors, for they at any rate
have left no lying legends behind them to confuse us.
They have not left records of any ancestors with heads
* Sabaoth, the Jehovah of the Gnostics, recalls very closely
the Jupiter Sabazius of antiquity that the Jewish colony adored
in Rome, 139 B.c., and for which cause they were expelled from
the city, and even from Italy. Jao is also a name for Bacchus,
Sabazius, or Saturn.
�16
The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
of birds or of beasts. They had no need to invent
tales of the slaughter of giants and other fabulous
monsters of sea and land to bolster up their courage
with posterity, for the testimony of the rocks is there
to tell of their heroic deeds, of the ages they lived and
reigned upon this our earth. They needed no baked
bricks, for deep down in the bowels of the earth their
fossil bones lie buried side by side with those of the
elephas primigenius and other gigantic but real animals
with whom, in their hard struggle for existence, they
had to contend, and the simple instruments they wielded
in the contest. On the horns of the reindeer are admir
ably etched the portrait of the Mammoth, proving the
love of art even in that remote age.
When I look at these simple relics of an heroic
people, when I think of the “ antres vast and deserts
idle” in which they were compelled to live, of the
struggle for existence they were compelled to endure
with the huge extinct mammals, I am lost in admiration
at their hardihood and in pity at their fate; but when
I turn to look at a picture of Izdubar struggling with
a rampant bull, one hand holding the tail and the
other a horn, I am simply disgusted at such ludicrous
absurdity.
Izdubar may have been for all that a real king and
a hero, but when we come to fix his reign as the start
ing point of history, that is quite another matter.
Mr G. Smith puts the age of Izdubar, i.e. Nimrod, at B.c.
The deluge of IS oah, according to our chronology, was ,,
Menes founds the Egyptian monarchy
.
.
„
Nimrod, according to our chronology, founds Assyrian
monarchy ...
....
2500.
2348.
2233.
2233.
If our chronology is to be trusted, the two great
monarchies, the Egyptian and the Assyrian, were
founded 115 years after the flood. Where did the
people come from ? every soul having perished except
Noah and his family 115 years before.
If Smith’s date for Izdubar is right he must have
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
17
lived 152 years before the flood, and could not there
fore have founded an empire which that catastrophe
must have destroyed. The earliest monuments known,
date, according to Mr Smith, 250 years later than the
time of Izdubar, and the traditions on which those
legends are founded arose shortly after his death.
“ Chaldean Genesis,” p. 106.
Surely the flood, if it. happened at all, must have
swept away the traditions as it did the people.
Amid such a mass of fable the search for historical
truth is very like searching for the needle in the hay
stack.
Compare Izdubar, b.c.
Joshua, ,,
Hercules, ,,
Gideon,. „
Samson, ,,
2500 j
1451 ; also Deluge of Noah, b.c. 2348
1330
Deluge of Ogyges, ' „ 1796
1245!
Deluge of Deucalion ,, 1503
1136 J
If from mythical events, we turn to mythical in
dividuals, we cannot fail being struck with the extraor
dinary family likeness in the characters and deeds of
the different heroes. Mr Smith in speaking of Izdubar,
p. 294, says :—“Every nation has its hero, and it was
only natural on the revival of his empire, that the
Babylonians should consecrate his memory,” and in
another place he says that, “ the natural tendency of
those superstitious times was to invest their great men
with all sorts of miraculous powers, to attribute to
them heroic deeds, that we are not on that account
justified in doubting the real existence of the King or
Hero in question. He is of opinion that Izdubar was
the Nimrod of Genesis, that Hasisadra was the Noah
of Genesis, and that the Xisuthrus of Berosus, and his
account of the flood was only another version of the
Babylonian legend.
The labours of Hercules, and the deeds of Samson
are strangely alike, as are also the births of Moses and
Sargon the first, the latter having been placed by his
mother in an ark of rushes, launched upon the Euphrates,
�18
. •
The. Chaldean Account of Genesis.
and rescued by a water-carrier, who brought him up as
his son.” (Smith’s “ Assyrian Discoveries,” p. 228.)
Without entering upon the vexed question of the
dates of these legends, it must be allowed at all events,
that priority belongs to the profane rather than to the
sacred legends. The Assyrian Tablets constitute there
fore our earliest “ Book of Origins,” origins, it must be
allowed, not of history, for no one in his senses would
attempt to found history, or base his religion upon what
are after all nothing but the rude attempts of the most
ancient civilized nation we know of, to dive into the
secrets of the early ages of mankind. They are deeply
interesting and poetical myths, nothing more. What
then should be our conclusion 1
If the so-called Mosaic account “ turns out after all
to be neither history, nor original revelation from
Jehovah to the Jews, but stories found among neigh
bours.” If we have found out at last that we have
been building our house upon the sand, what then ?
Let us not be downhearted, neither let us be dismayed,
rather let us say, “ let God be true and every man a
liar.” Let us be thankful to God for the light given
to us in this our day, through the unwearied labours of
men like Rawlinson, Smith, Layard, Loftus, Rassam,
earnest seekers after truth and lovers of science. Dog
matic theology may suffer ; but true religion will never
suffer from any scientific discovery. The tendency not
of one, but of all the sciences, is to exalt all our religious
conceptions. Theology has debased them !
In concluding these remarks, I cannot do better than
by again quoting from the work of the able physician
(Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, p. 14).
“ Shah we who measure our distance from the sun
and fixed stars, calculate their masses, weigh them as
in a balance, analyse their light, and thereby learn that
they are all units in one stupendous whole, continue to
look with respect on tales that tell of the arrest of the
sun and moon in their apparent path through heaven,
�The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
19
to the end that a barbarous horde may have light
effectually to exterminate the unoffending people,
they have come—by God’s command, too, it is said—
to plunder and to murder ? It were surely time to
quit us of such worse than childish folly.”
May the spirit of truth guide us into all truth, to .
the truth which will break our fetters and make us free
indeed, to the truth which will widen our vision/
strengthen and exalt our hopes, and enlarge our
charity.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Chaldean account of Genesis
Creator
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Denys, George William [Sir, Bart.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 19 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A critique of 'The Chaldean Account of Genesis' by George Smith (Sampson and Low, 1876).
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1877]
Identifier
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CT202
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Bible
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Chaldean account of Genesis), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-O.T.-Genesis
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
George Smith