We cannot here enter into the question of the geographical position of the ʿÊden of the Bible, nor even inquire whether the original of the idea of Eden is found in the corresponding feature of Iranian tradition; but it may be assumed that the Biblical account of Eden also arose at Babylon. It may indeed be generally presumed that the Biblical accounts of the Cosmogony and the origin of all things had not, like the matter of the old mythology, lived a long life of perhaps many thousand years in the mouths of successive generations, before the first beginnings of literary record were reached. On the contrary, we find in these parts of the Bible so artistic a perfection of description, such a harmonious roundness of narrative, that we are justified in presuming that they were not preceded by the oral concatenations of a long life of tradition, but are rather sublime imaginations which were written down soon after they were conceived in the educated circles of the nation, so as to become the common property of the whole people. There was in this a double stimulus received from the Babylonians: first, to meditate on the earliest things—the origin of the world, man, and other things of a general nature—and secondly, to produce writings on these things. The Prophets of the Hebrews at Babylon unquestionably exercised a great influence on the production of these narratives, and gladly admitted whatever tended to promote the deepening of the idea of Jahveh, as elements in their religions conception of the world. For the Prophet did not occupy a position towards the masses like the member of a corporation which opposes the people; he grew up out of the people, and raised himself above them by his individual power of thought. Yet it is easily intelligible that the Prophet, while gladly appropriating the idea of Jahveh as bôrê ‘Creator,’ would not set much store by the petty details of the cosmogonic imagination. The second Isaiah, the Prophet of Babylon par excellence, goes so far as to exhort his people, ‘Record ye not beginnings, and antiquities contemplate ye not’ (Is. XLIII. 18); still he does not go into open opposition to this mental tendency, and sees nothing dangerous in it—the less so, as he has himself unconsciously adopted its conclusions and often employed them in his masterly addresses.
Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon, and therefore not long after the previous stories. A reference to the passage in Gen. II. 14, where the first three of the four rivers of the garden of Eden have their geographical position accurately defined, but the fourth is only mentioned by the words, ‘And the fourth river is Perâth (Euphrates),’ is of itself sufficient to show that those for whom the story was written must have known the Euphrates as their own river, requiring no further designation, and consequently that this must have been written on its banks. Now, although the expression ‘Garden of Eden’ occurs also before the Captivity (Joel II. 3), yet the Prophets of the Captivity make the first reference to that character and quality of Eden which is conspicuous in Genesis. In Joel’s words only the general idea of a ‘pleasure-garden’ appears to be connected with the name Eden. But in Ezekiel (especially frequently in Chap. XXXI.) we find the appellation ‘Garden of God’ used to designate Eden more fully; and in the parallelism of the members of the verse the Babylonian Isaiah (LI. 3) puts the ‘Garden of Jahveh’ in the succeeding member to correspond to ‘Eden’ in the preceding:
He makes her desert like Eden,
And her dry land like the Garden of Jahveh.
It is also evident from the same Prophet’s words (Is. XLIII. 27), ‘Thy first father sinned,’ that he connected the story of the Fall with Eden, or at least that he knew the story. The mention of the doctrine of the Fall takes us to a domain which has a close connexion with the subject of this chapter. I refer to the ideas of dogmatic religion pervading the stories formed during the Captivity, which subsequently, while the canon of Scripture was being drawn up, were admitted even into those parts of Scripture whose matter dated from an earlier period, came into full life in the second Hebrew commonwealth, and continued to live in the later Jewish Synagogue. Through the growth of Persian power and Persian influence in Western Asia, where there existed many states in a condition of vassalage to Babylon, the Iranian views of religion could not but exert a great influence on the parent-state also, even before Babylon was quite overwhelmed by them through its conquest by Cyrus at the end of the Captivity of the Hebrews. Opportunity was therefore not wanting to the Hebrews to become well acquainted with the main ideas of Iranian theology; and desire was also present, as their minds were then intent upon obtaining clear views on the origin of the physical and moral order of the world, and on the chief questions concerning the ‘Origins.’ This influence of the Iranians on the Hebrews was exhibited not only in relation to matter, but also to forms. For there is great probability in favour of the idea, that the first suggestion to codify the sacerdotal laws of sacrifice, purification and others, came to the Hebrews from the example of the Persians.[[722]] One portion of these ideas has found a place in the Babylonian sections of Genesis—that which belonged to the cosmogony; others were not expressed in the Canon at all, but lived in tradition, until tradition itself was fixed in writing. This question, which would at last shed light on the details of Iranian influence on the narratives of the Pentateuch, is perversely enough not grappled with at its starting-point by many persons who labour with nervous eagerness to discover in the Iranian writings every letter of the Jewish Agâdâ, even in cases in which such a proceeding is utterly unjustifiable, and borrowing can only be suggested through the wildest guesswork. Equally perverse is the unhistorical assumption, which point-blank denies the very possibility of the Hebrews having borrowed anything from the Persians, ‘among whom they never lived.’[[723]] Professor Spiegel, by referring to an acquaintance of Abraham with Zarathustra, has spirited the question off into the atmosphere of so distant a time that it is impossible with any regard for critical history to build upon his foundation,[[724]] and preferable even to adopt Volney’s forgotten theory,[[725]] which makes the influence of Magism on the Hebrews begin with the destruction of the Northern kingdom. Others, by assuming an influence exerted by the Semites on the Iranians, and by a mistaken reverence for Hebrew antiquity, have cut away the ground from any scientific investigation of the question.[[726]] It is a mistaken, and anything but the right sort of reverence, when we would rather leave unknown or misunderstood a region of literature which we all love and venerate, and to which we owe most of our moral and religious ideals, than trace its elements and analyse their psychological and literary history, so as to understand the object of our love. Has Homer lost his attractiveness since we have subjected him to critical analysis, or the divine Plato forfeited any of his divinity since we have discovered some of the sources of his ideas? For the fact of Originality is not the only criterion of the admirable. Not only that which is cast in one piece from top to toe, is one whole: an alien substance which becomes a civilising agent to that in which it rests, and a patchwork which has turned out a harmonious whole, are not less admirable or perfect. Julius Braun says very justly,[[727]] ‘There is another and indeed the highest kind of originality, which is not the beginning but the result of historical growth—the originality of mature age. We have this, when an individual or a nation has gathered up all existing means of culture, and then still possesses power to pass on beyond them and deal freely with all elements received from the past.’
Thus, then, it was quite possible for many Iranian elements to be received into the system of the literature and cosmic conceptions of the Hebrews; and we do nothing towards saving the honour of the Hebrew nationality by using force to make the Iranians pupils of the Hebrews. Karl Twesten saw the truth as to their mutual relation; and I quote his words, to show the impression made by the coincidences of Iranian and Hebrew antiquity on a sober-minded historian who considers the question free from any previous pledges to either side. ‘It cannot be pleaded that the Iranians may have borrowed from the Hebrews or drawn from the same source. For, on the one hand, these things are there an essential part of a system, whereas the Pentateuch makes no further use of them; and, on the other, they existed in times and places where, even if the possibility of a very early formation of these stories be conceded, the Hebrew theology could not possibly have any influence. The Israelites were so little known, and so rarely in contact with other nations, and the priesthoods of antiquity so exclusive, and oriental Îrân so distant, that no early influence of Mosaic doctrines on the theories of the Zend books is even conceivable. But Iranian influences on the nations of Western Asia are probable and inevitable, from the time when the Medes and Persians became the dominant powers.’[[728]]
Such, in general terms, were the causes which yielded an increase of matter to the Hebrew store of legends during the Captivity. Through the revision and literary elaboration of the old legends in the period of the Captivity also, many Babylonian features naturally entered into the picture. I may mention Nöldeke’s plausible idea (in his Untersuchungen), that the years and cycles of years in the Patriarchal history point to Babylon and are connected with astronomical systems. The last systematic revision of the Table of Nations (Gen. X.) may also be referred to the same time and influence. The preparation of such a survey of all known nations of the earth seems to have been possible in that ancient time only in an empire which through its wide-spread dominion had an extensive circle of view open to it in relation to geography and ethnology, and would be almost impossible within the limits of the kingdom of Judah. Although we have at the present day good reasons for treating as a mere fable the more extravagant ideas that were long current, and gave rise to many lamentable prejudices, of the utter seclusion of the Hebrews in Canaan, yet their view can hardly have reached to such a distance, and, if it did, cannot have taken in such special points, as are met with in the Table of Nations. But we should exaggerate the possible influence of the connexion with the Phenicians, if with Tuch[[729]] we were to derive from it the ethnographical information requisite to produce that Table. And we should be applying the measure of modern expeditions to David’s and Solomon’s navigation—to which Mauch attributes a colonisation of Africa by Jews in connexion with the discovery of Ophir—if we were to suppose that navigation to have yielded this same geographical and ethnographical knowledge as its scientific result.
The attention of the Hebrews could not be directed to ethnographical problems on so large a scale before their residence among the confusion of nationalities in the empire of Babylon and Assyria. That period is also the first at which interest could be felt in another problem—Biblical answer to which is avowedly given at Babylon. I mean the story of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel (Babylon) in Genesis XI. 4–9.
It is not difficult to understand that the Hebrews, who in Canaan, a country of such linguistic uniformity, had no occasion to pay attention to the fact of the variety of tongues, on entering the Babylonian empire with its varying languages were naturally led to ask the question to which the eleventh chapter of Genesis offers a reply. Why, even earlier than this the Northern empire was a nation whose tongue they did not understand (Deut. XXVIII. 49),[[730]] ‘a nation from afar, an ancient nation, a nation from of old, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say’ (Jer. V. 15). Whilst even in Hesiod’s time men were already called by the Greeks μέροπες ‘speaking variously’ (Works and Days, 109, 142), to the ancient Hebrew ‘the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.’ Now, as the impulse to ask this question arose in Babylon, the place where such a problem must force itself most irresistibly on the attention, so Babylon was found to be also the scene of the solution of the problem. It is so natural to place the origin of an event or a phenomenon at the place where it has first occurred to us or we have first perceived it. But, in fact, we find the story of the building of the Tower taking its place among the latest Cuneiform discoveries.[[731]] That the origin of the Table of Nations hangs together with the story of the origin of the diversity of languages is evident, not only from the inner connexion between the respective problems, but also from the fact that the Table of Nations always distinguishes the various races ‘after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, in their nations’ (Gen. X. 5, 20, 31).
The attempted etymology of Bâbhel from bâlal ‘to mix,’ which is tacked on to the story, is quite secondary; it is impossible to approve the notion that this etymology was itself the cause of the invention of the story that languages had their origin at Babylon. On the contrary, the essential part of the story is the origin at Babylon; the etymology is a secondary point, by which it was attempted to leave no part unexplained. People in antiquity, and even in modern times those who are more affected by a word than a thought, were fond of finding in the word a sort of reflexion of the corresponding thing. Indeed, many component parts of ancient stories owe their existence only to such false etymologies. Dido’s ox-hides and their connexion with the founding of Carthage are only based on the Greek byrsa, a misunderstood modified pronunciation of the Semitic bîrethâ ‘fortress, citadel.’ The shining Apollo, born of light, is said to be born in Delos or Lycia, because the terms Apollon Dêlios and Lykêgenês were not understood. The Phenician origin of the Irish, asserted in clerical chronicles of the middle ages, only rests on a false derivation of the Irish word fena, pl. fion, ‘beautiful, agreeable.’ Even the savage tribes of America are misled by a false etymology to call the Michabo, the Kadmos of the Red Indians (from michi ‘great’ and wabos ‘white’), a White Hare.[[732]] Falsely interpreted names of towns most frequently cause the invention of fables. How fanciful the operation of popular etymology is in the case of local names is observable in many such names when translated into another language. By the lake of Gennesereth lies Hippos, the district surrounding which was called Hippene. This word in Phenician denoted a harbour, and is found not only in Carthaginian territory as the name of the See of St. Jerome, but also as the name of places in Spain. The Hebrew chôph ‘shore,’ and the local names Yâphô (Jaffa) and Ḥaifâ, are unquestionably related to it. But the Greeks regarded it from a Grecian point of view, and thought it meant Horse-town. Did not they call ships sea-horses, and attribute horses to the Sea-god? Then, the Arabs directly translated this ἵππος Hippos into ḳalʿat al-Ḥuṣân: ḥuṣân being horse in modern Arabic.[[733]] The Persian town Rey was made the subject of a fable, which I mention here partly because it exhibits some similarity with the subject of the ‘Tower of Babel.’ The Persian chroniclers relate,[[734]] that the old king Keykâvûs had a chariot constructed, by which, after various preparations, he intended to ascend to heaven. But God commanded the wind to carry the king into the clouds. Arrived there, he was dashed down again, and fell into the sea of Gurgân. Keychosrau, son of Shâwush, coming to that coast, employed the same chariot to convey him to Babylon. When he came to the locality of the modern Rey, people said, bireyy âmed Keychosrau, ‘on a chariot came Keychosrau.’ He caused a city to be built at this place, which was called Rey, because a chariot is so called in Persian.[[735]]