Among other trees of a sacred nature is “the cedar [pg 077] beloved of the great gods,” mentioned in an inscription of a religious or ceremonial nature, though exactly in what connection the imperfectness of the document does not enable us to see. It would seem, however, that there were certain priests or seers to whom was confided the “tablet of the gods,” containing the secret of the heavens and earth (probably the “tablet of fate,” which Merodach took from the husband of Tiamat after his fight with her for the dominion of the universe). These persons, who seem to have been the descendants of En-we-dur-an-ki (the Euedoranchos of Berosus), king of Sippar, were those to whom was confided “the cedar beloved of the great gods”—perhaps a kind of sceptre. They had, however, not only to be of noble race, but also perfect physically and free from every defect and disease. Moreover, one who did not keep the command of Šamaš and Addu (Hadad) could not approach the place of Ae, Šamaš, Marduk, and Nin-edina, nor the number of the brothers who were to enter the seership; they were not to reveal to him the word of the oracle, and “the cedar beloved of the great gods” was not to be delivered into his hands.
There is hardly any doubt, then, that we have here the long-sought parallel to the Biblical “tree of knowledge,” for that, too, was in the domain of “the lord of knowledge,” the god Ae, and also in the land which might be described as that of “the lord of Eden,” the “hidden place of heaven and earth” for all the sons of Adam, who are no longer allowed to enter into that earthly Paradise wherein their first parents gained, at such a cost, the knowledge, imperfect as it must have been, and evidently undesirable, which they handed down to their successors.
Adam.
The name of the first man, Adam, is one that has tried the learning of the most noted Hebraists to [pg 078] explain satisfactorily. It was formerly regarded as being derived from the root ādam, “to be red,” but this explanation has been given up in favour of the root ādam, “to make, produce,” man being conceived as “the created one.” This etymology is that put forward by the Assyriologist Fried. Delitzsch, who quotes the Assyrian âdmu, “young bird,” and âdmi summāti, “young doves,” literally, “the young of doves,” though he does not seem to refer the Assyrian udumu, “monkey,” to the same root. He also quotes, apparently from memory, the evidence of a fragment of a bilingual list found by Mr. Rassam, in which Adam is explained by the usual Babylonian word for “man,” amēlu.
The writer of Genesis has given to the first man the name of Adam, thus personifying in him the human race, which was to descend from him. In all probability, the Babylonians had the same legends, but, if so, no fragment of them has as yet come to light. That the Hebrew stories of the Creation had their origin in Babylonia, will probably be conceded by most people as probable, if not actually proven, and the fact that the word a-dam occurs, as Delitzsch has pointed out, in a bilingual list would, supposing the text to which he refers to be actually bilingual, be a matter of peculiar significance, for it would show that this word, which does not occur in Semitic Babylonian as the word for “man,” occurred in the old Akkadian language with that meaning.
And the proof that Delitzsch was right in his recollection of the tablet of which he speaks, is shown by the bilingual Babylonian story of the Creation. There, in lines 9, 10, we read as follows—
Akkadian (dialectic): Uru nu-dim, a-dam nu-mun-ia.
Babylonian: Âlu ûl êpuš, nammaššu ûl šakin.
“A city had not been made, the community had not been established.”
Here we have the non-Semitic adam translated by the Babylonian nammaššu, which seems to mean a number of men, in this passage something like community, for that is the idea which best fits the context. But besides this Semitic rendering, the word also has the meanings of tenišētu, “mankind,” amelūtu, “human beings.”