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Babylonian influence on the Bible and popular beliefs
Babylonian influence on the Bible and popular beliefs Author:Abram Smythe Palmer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: [angels] who were his enemies, and on account of their sin created mankind," l or, as M. Oppert translates it, " To form a counterpoise to them the god of life c... more »reated mankind."2 The Revolt in Heaven tablet has been translated as follows: " To those rebel angels [ill, gods] He prohibited return ; He stopped their service; He removed them unto the gods [1V/] who were His enemies. In their room He created Mankind. The first who received life dwelt with Him. May He give them strength never to neglect His word, According to the voice of the serpent3 whom His hands had made."4 4. Conflict between Tiamat and Mero- clach.—From what has been said we can see that Tiamat, the chaos of the great deep, came to be regarded as the manifestation of enmity to heaven and its ruler, and even as itself a hostile and resisting power which the good Creator had to subdue and force into submission. Tiamat, accordingly, waspersonified as a hideous female monster1 attended by a brood of evil and misshapen creatures. She is the great dragon of darkness, with which the god of light, Merodach, engages in deadly conflict. Inasmuch, then, as Tiiimat is the ideal representative of all disorder, anarchy and chaos, to counteract and vanquish her is to bring order out of confusion, to educe the beautiful Kosmos and the regular course of nature out of a " rudis indigestaque moles."2 It is, in the words of Carlyle, " a mighty conquest over chaos." Thus to the poetical mind of the Babylonian the divine work of creation appeared as a noble victory 3 gained by the good spirit over brute matter, by light over the power of darkness; and he depicted it, first mentally and then on his monuments, as a terrific struggle between the kindly sun-god and the dragon of disorder. Merodach, the benignant deity who is th...« less