Hailed then as the vanquisher of Kirbiš-Tiamtu, the great Dragon of Chaos, he is called by the name of Nibiru, “the ferry,” a name of the planet Jupiter as [pg 047] the traverser of the heavens (one of the points of contact between Babylonian and Greek mythology), the stars of which he was regarded as directing, and keeping (lit. pasturing) like sheep. (Gods and stars may here be regarded as convertible terms.) His future is then spoken of, and “father Bêl” gives him his own name, “lord of the world.” Rejoicing in the honours showered on his son, and not to be outdone in generosity, Aa decrees that henceforth Merodach shall be like him, and that he shall be called Aa, possessing all his commands, and all his pronouncements—i.e. all the wisdom which he, as god of deep wisdom, possessed. Thus was Merodach endowed with all the names, and all the attributes, of the gods of the Babylonians—“the fifty renowned names of the great gods.”
This was, to all intents and purposes, symbolic of a great struggle, in early days, between polytheism and monotheism—for the masses the former, for the more learned and thoughtful the latter. Of this we shall have further proof farther on, when discussing the name of Merodach. For the present be it simply noted, that this is not the only text identifying Merodach with the other gods.
The reference to the creation of mankind in line 29 of the obverse (p. [31]) is noteworthy, notwithstanding that the translation of one of the words—and that a very important one—is very doubtful. Apparently man was created to the despite of the rebellious gods, but there is also just the possibility that there exists here an idiomatic phrase meaning “in their room.” If the latter be the true rendering, this part of the legend would be in striking accord with Bishop Avitus of Vienne, with the old English poet Caedmon, and with Milton in his Paradise Lost. In connection with this, too, the statement in the reverse, lines 113 and 114, where “man's remote ages” is referred to, naturally leads one to ask, Have we here [pg 048] traces of a belief that, in ages to come (“in lateness of days”), Merodach was to return and live among men into the remote future? The return of a divinity or a hero of much-cherished memory is such a usual thing among popular beliefs, that this may well have been the case likewise among the Babylonians.
The comparison of the two accounts of the Creation—that of the Hebrews and that of the Babylonians, that have been presented to the reader—will probably have brought prominently before him the fact, that the Babylonian account, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, differs so much from the Biblical account, that they are, to all intents and purposes, two distinct narratives. That there are certain ideas in common, cannot be denied, but most of them are ideas that are inseparable from two accounts of the same event, notwithstanding that they have been composed from two totally different standpoints. In writing an account of the Creation, statements as to what are the things created must of necessity be inserted. There is, therefore, no proof of a connection between two accounts of the Creation in the fact that they both speak of the formation of dry land, or because they both state that plants, animals, and man were created. Connection may be inferred from such statements that the waters were the first abode of life, or that an expansion was created dividing the waters above from those below. With reference to such points of contact as these just mentioned, however, the question naturally arises, Are these points of similarity sufficient to justify the belief that two so widely divergent accounts as those of the Bible and of the Babylonian tablets have one and the same origin? In the mind of the present writer there seems to be but one answer, and that is, that the two accounts are practically distinct, and are the production of people having entirely different ideas upon the subject, though they may have influenced each other [pg 049] in regard to certain points, such as the two mentioned above. For the rest, the fact that there is—
No direct statement of the creation of the heavens and the earth;
No systematic division of the things created into groups and classes, such as is found in Genesis;
No reference to the Days of Creation;
No appearance of the Deity as the first and only cause of the existence of things—
must be held as a sufficient series of prime reasons why the Babylonian and the Hebrew versions of the Creation-story must have had different origins.
As additional arguments may also be quoted the polytheism of the Babylonian account; the fact that it appears to be merely the setting to the legend of Bêl and the Dragon, and that, as such, it is simply the glorification of Merodach, the patron divinity of the Babylonians, over the other gods of the Assyro-Babylonian Pantheon.