Of the spoil account is not taken.
Thou seest and I see.
The captives conquered come after; the food
Which in the tents is placed, is eaten.”
There immediately follows the closing colophon, written by the scribe under Assurbanipal:
“The twelfth tablet of the legends of Izdubar;
Like the ancient copy, written and made clear.”
When we place side by side this Chaldean account of the Deluge and that given by Moses, the minor discrepancies between them as to the size of the ship, and as to the duration of the rain and the deluge, sink, as it were, out of sight. These are such variations as would naturally arise in a case like this, where a legend, after having been transmitted orally from generation to generation, is at length reduced to writing, with, of course, careful corrections and supposed emendations, and where many centuries later it is again written out with other emendations, in order to “make it clear” for the benefit of those that would then read it. Some such discrepancies must necessarily creep in, even if the original form were supposed to have been without any error. This, however, can scarcely be taken for granted. Neither in its original form, nor in any later form which it may have had, does
this legend enjoy the guarantee of divine protection which the inspired account of Moses possesses.
On the other hand, we are irresistibly startled by the wonderful agreement of those two accounts in the main and substantial facts of the narrative. We feel that this agreement is not factitious. The writers were too widely separated in time and in country, as also by education, to allow it. If they agree, it can only be because of the historical verity of the facts they both record.