… going on in its path.”
* * * * *
On the back of this fragment, at the top, is found this inscription:
“Fifth tablet of When above
Country of Assurbanipal, King of Nations, King of Assyria.”
If, as we remarked above, the first tablet of When above be looked on as a general introduction to the whole subject, the remarkable fact becomes apparent that the Assyrian writer followed precisely the same division and order of the details of the creation which we find in Genesis. Tablet II. would correspond with the work of the first day, and Tablet III. and IV. with that of the second and third day, as here Tablet V. clearly is occupied with the work of the fourth day. It is generally acknowledged that the word day in the Mosaic account does not mean that the work there mentioned was done in the space of twenty-four hours. The term day is understood by many to mean an undetermined and probably a long period of time. It may even be, that the term day has been used by Moses not in an historical sense, as we ordinarily would take it, but rather in a liturgical or religious sense, paralleling and adapting the six divisions of the creative work, and the cessation from it, to the six days of labor and one day of rest which constituted the Jewish week. In this way Moses would give to the Jewish people an ever-recurring cycle of hebdomadal services, something like that still found in the Eastern liturgies, where on each day that day’s work is the chief and almost exclusive theme of religious service. Beyond this agreement in the mode of dividing the progress of creation—an agreement carried out in the tablets to follow—there are other points to be noted. In the first line of this fragment, as also on other fragments,
we read an approval of what has already been done: “It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great gods.” In Genesis we find the oft-repeated statement, “And God saw that it was good.” Moses places this approbation at the conclusion of each day’s work. The cuneiform writer places it at the beginning of the next day’s work.
We see, too, in the continued use of the personal pronoun He, that the work is attributed to the true and Supreme God. The plural phrase, the great gods, does not militate against this view; for this form, it seems to us, is a parallel to the early Hebrew name of God, Elohim, likewise a plural form. This form was used to convey to their minds by the very mode of speech a deeper sense of the infinite power and majesty of God, and served as a fuller expression of their reverence for him. Even in our modern languages there is a trace of some such feeling. It is generally more respectful to address one in the plural form—you, vous, sie—than in the singular. If we thus take the phrase, “the great gods,” in our cuneiform texts to mean, as it certainly may in many places, the one true and Supreme God, the primitive doctrine of monotheism will be found to stand out in bold relief in these texts, perhaps the earliest we have of human writing.
Even the mention of several gods by name, in succession, may have been consistent with monotheism. On one tablet we have glosses informing the reader that the six names there given in succession are all names of the same god; and another tablet speaks of the fifty names of the Great God. They seem not to have been interchangeable. The use of one or of another depended, perhaps, on some special