Was The Flood A “Sin-Flood”?
That the Flood was a “sin-flood” (“dass die Sintflut eine Sündflut[301] war”) among the Babylonians as among the Hebrews has already been stated (p. [112]—cf. p. [107], I, II ff.), and with this Prof. Delitzsch, answering the criticisms of Oettli, agrees. Replying to König, he energetically repudiates the idea that “the Babylonian hero saves his dead and living property, but in both Biblical accounts there appears, instead of that, the higher point of view of the preservation of the animal-world.” He then cites Berosus, according to whom Xisuthros received the command to take into the ark winged and four-footed animals, and quotes the line translated on p. [103]: “I caused to go up into the midst of the ship ... the beasts of the field and the animals of the field—all of them I sent up.”
The Dragon And The Serpent-Tempter.
Prof. Delitzsch's notes upon the Dragon of Chaos are exceedingly interesting, as is also the picture which he gives, from a little seal in the form of a long bead, of the god Merodach “clothed in his majestic glory, with powerful arm, and broad eye and ear, the symbols of his intelligence, and at the feet of the god the captive Dragon of the primæval waters.” From our point of view the deity does not look very majestic, but it is an exceedingly interesting representation, the more especially as he bears in his left hand (in the drawing) the circle and staff of Šamaš, the sun, showing the correctness of the theory which made Merodach likewise a sun-god. It is noteworthy, however, that a similar object found by the German expedition to Babylonia shows a figure of Hadad, the wind-god, as the Babylonians conceived him, and accompanying him are a winged dragon and another creature—indeed, each deity seems to have had his own special attendant of this nature. Are we, therefore, to understand that each deity overcame a dragon or other animal? or may it not be, that Merodach had a kind of dragon as his attendant, and the one depicted sitting by his side, close to his feet, is the creature devoted to him, and not the Dragon of Chaos at all?
The Dragon of Chaos, Tiamtu or Tiawthu, appears in the inscriptions as the representative of the Hebrew tehôm, which [pg 530] is the same word without the feminine ending. It is also regarded, however, as being represented in the Old Testament by liwyāthān (leviathan), tannîn, and rahab, explained as “the winding one,” “the dragon,” and “the monster” respectively. As far as our knowledge at present goes, none of these names occur in the Babylonian inscriptions, but there is sufficient analogy between the Biblical passages which contain them and the story of Tiamtu to establish an identity between the two sources.
In the passage “Awake, awake,” etc. (Is. li. 9), the cutting of Rahab in pieces, and the piercing of the dragon, are made into similes typifying the drying up of the Red Sea, so that the Israelites might pass over, and on this account the words standing for these creatures seem to have become an allegorical way of referring to Egypt, caught, like Tiamtu, in a net (Ezek. xxxii. 2, 3). In Job ix. 13 the “helpers of Rahab” are mentioned, recalling the gods who aided Tiamtu, and in xxvi. 12 “he smiteth through Rahab” is a reminiscence of the piercing of the head of Merodach's opponent.
In Job xli. 3 the words “Lay thine hand upon him; remember the battle, and do so no more,” evidently refer to leviathan in v. 1, here typical of Tiamtu, the battle being that which Merodach fought with her. “Shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?” in verse 9, recalls the dreadful appearance of Tiamtu and her helpers, whose aspect filled the gods of the Babylonians with fear. Still another parallel is to be found in the verse “Their (the enemies') wine is the poison of dragons (tanninim),” Deut. xxxii. 33, reminding us of the monsters created by Tiamtu, whose bodies were filled with poison like blood.
All these passages naturally prove that the legend was well known to the Hebrews, and must also have been current among their neighbours. Though they identified her with the sea (tehom), they did not, to all appearance, use that word to indicate the Dragon of Chaos, as did the Babylonians—she was a serpent, a dragon, or a monster. Though she may be the type of the serpent-tempter (the difference of sex makes a little difficulty), the compiler of the first two chapters of Genesis rigorously excluded her from the Hebrew Creation-story. The story of leviathan, the dragon, or the monster, was a legend current among the people, and used by the Hebrew sacred writers as a useful simile, but it seems to have formed no part of orthodox Hebrew religious belief.
Prof. Delitzsch has boldly reproduced, on p. 36 of his Babel und Bibel (German edition), what has been regarded in England as the driving of the evil spirit from the temple built at Calah by Aššur-naṣir-âpli (885 b.c.), but he calls it “Fight with the [pg 531] Dragon.” The evil spirit represented is certainly a kind of dragon, but on the original slab in the British Museum the creature is a male, and not a female, as in the Babylonian Creation-story. Identification with the Dragon of Chaos is therefore in the highest degree improbable, and as it would seem from his answer to Jensen, Delitzsch does not regard it as having anything to do with the Creation-story, but a representation of “a fight between the power of light and the power of darkness in general.” This seems exceedingly probable, as is also his statement that in such a conception as that of Tiamtu, it may easily be imagined that plenty of room for fancy existed.
The serpent-tempter in Gen. iii. 1 is an ordinary serpent, naḫas, the type of the evil one. He had no part in the creation, and was to all appearance one of the beasts of the field created by God. Tiamtu, his Babylonian parallel, on the other hand, does not seem to have been in any sense a tempter—she simply tried to overcome the gods of heaven, aided by her followers and offspring, among whom were some of the divine beings created by the gods. That in consequence of this, she may have been regarded as having tempted those of her followers who were the offspring of the gods of heaven, is not only possible, but probable, and if provable, we should have here the identification of the Dragon of Chaos with the serpent-tempter.