The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

II. The Religion of Babylon ⁹

1. BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM AND BABYLONIAN RELIGION

The relation between the prophetic symbolism of Daniel and the Babylonian point of view is well phrased in a parallel expression of Millar Burrows, of Yale, in his discussion of the Genesis account and the Babylonian creation myths: “What the [Biblical] writer has done is to express the monotheistic faith of Israel in terms of the world-view of his day, the only terms which could have any meaning for him or his readers.” ¹⁰ He speaks of the two narratives as “related,” but points out that “the differences between the Hebrew and Babylonian accounts of creation are even greater than their resemblances.” ¹¹ After similar remarks on the Flood story, he continues: PFF1 918.1

“Again there is little reason to believe that the Hebrews derived their ideas directly from the Babylonians, but that both Babylonian and Hebrew accounts go back ultimately to a common origin can hardly be questioned. Those for whom the account in the Bible is a record of actual events are free to say that the inspired Hebrew narrative preserves the true story of what happened, while the Babylonian story is a corrupt and degenerate version.” ¹² PFF1 918.2

Scholars remark on the difference between the lofty ethical and religious tone of the Hebrew narrative and the polytheistic, superstitious, and fanciful elements of the Babylonian myths. This has been well expressed by G. Frederick Wright, in relation to the Flood story: PFF1 918.3

“Among them all, the narrative in Genesis stands out conspicuous for the grandeur and beauty of the divine attributes revealed, in connection with the catastrophe.... PFF1 918.4

“In the biblical account, nothing is introduced conflicting with the sublime conception of holiness and the peculiar combination of justice and mercy ascribed to God throughout the Bible, and illustrated in the general scheme of providential government manifest in the order of nature and in history; while, in the cuneiform tablets, the Deluge is occasioned by a quarrel among the gods, and the few survivors escape, not by reason of a merciful plan, but by a mistake which aroused the anger of Bel.... PFF1 918.5

“Close inspection of these peculiarities [fourteen of which the author has enumerated] makes it evident that the narrative in Genesis carries upon its face an appearance of reality which is not found in the other accounts.” ¹³ PFF1 918.6

In this connection it might be remarked, with Barton of the University of Pennsylvania, “There is no better measure of the inspiration of the Biblical account than to put it side by side with the Babylonian.” ¹⁴ PFF1 918.7

How, then, did these seeming similarities to mythology come to appear in the Bible? There was a time, after the early finds of Mesopotamian archaeology, when the “Pan-Babylonian” theorists were inclined to find a Babylonian source for all religious and cultural ideas of ancient times, including the Biblical accounts of creation and the Flood, and other allusions. ¹⁵ But later excavations in other parts of the Near East have to a great degree changed the picture. The experts have by no means become Fundamentalists, but they are ready to acknowledge the overen-thusiasm of the earlier Assyriologists. And they no longer insist unanimously that the parallels between Genesis and the Babylonian creation and Flood myths necessitate a derivation of the Biblical accounts from Babylonian. PFF1 918.8

The Bible traces the descent of the Hebrews through Abraham, who came from Mesopotamia, where the basic ideas of the origin of the race must have been the property of their common ancestors. The eminent American archaeologist, W. F. Albright, speaks in harmony with this when he says that the earlier material of the first part of Genesis, dealing with creation and the origin of the human race, “is mostly inexplicable unless we suppose that it was brought from Mesopotamia to Palestine by the Hebrews before the middle of the second millennium,” and he points out that “Mesopotamian parallels are many and striking, though they never suggest direct borrowing from canonical Babylonian sources.” ¹⁶ This does not seem to be so very far away from the following statement from the British expert, 50. W. King: PFF1 919.1

“Those who support the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch may quite consistently assume that Abraham heard the legends [of creation, deluge, etc.] in Ur of the Chaldees. And a simple retention of the traditional view seems to me a far preferable attitude to any attempt to rationalize it.” ¹⁷ PFF1 919.2

As for the figurative poetic allusions which some scholars cite as evidence of borrowing from Semitic mythology—such as God’s punishing “Leviathan the crooked serpent” of the sea (Psalm 74:13, 14; Isaiah 27:1)—Burrows says: PFF1 919.3

“Echoes of other mythological conceptions ... in the Old Testament are all in late and poetic books, in which the highest religious conceptions are expressed.... They do not, therefore, show a contamination of Hebrew faith.... Such allusions to early myths are comparable in significance to the Puritan Milton’s allusions to classical mythology.” ¹⁸ PFF1 919.4

2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION

In order to understand the religious background of Nebuchadnezzar’s day, it may be profitable to glean a few interesting bits of information about the Babylonian religion, principally from Stephen H. Langdon. ¹⁹ PFF1 919.5

The Babylonians inherited their religion from earlier ages and adapted it to the glorification of Marduk, patron deity of the city of Babylon. For the earlier Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia, and the still earlier non-Semitic Sumerians, the highest place among the gods was not held by Marduk, but rather by three great deities of sky, earth, and water. PFF1 920.1

Langdon points out that the later Sumerian pantheon of five thousand gods dwindles, as archaeology proceeds backward into the remote past, to an earlier five hundred, and then still further back, down to four, three, and even two gods—Anu, the god of heaven, and his consort. The trinity—An (Anu), god of heaven, or the sky; Enlil, god of the earth and of winds and storms; and Enki (or Ea), god of the fresh waters under the earth—ranked above the other later gods, who were all regarded as descended from Anu, the high god—evidently the original deity, says Langdon. The fully developed pantheon of Sumerian times was continued by the later Semitic dynasties, and when Babylon became the center of power and culture, for all Mesopotamia, from the time of Hammurabi (during the second millennium B.C.), the Babylonian adaptation of the old theology prevailed. ²⁰ PFF1 920.2

Anu tended to recede into the background as removed from the human sphere, and eventually became a remote principle of theology rather than a personal deity to be worshiped. ²¹ Enlil, the second god in rank, whose cult centered at Nippur, was called “the Great Mountain,” “the lord of the lands.” His temple at Nippur was called “the House of the Great Mountain of the Lands.” He tended to become a monotheistic deity through one school of thought; but a rival school, through the political supremacy of Babylon, elevated Marduk into the place of both Enlil, “the elder Bel,” and his son Ninurta, and indeed regarded Marduk as the supreme manifestation of deity. PFF1 920.3

Thus Marduk became the Bel (Baal, or “Lord”) of the Babylonian and Assyrian religion, acquired. the basic attributes of Enlil, the storm-god, and replaced Enlil’s son, Ninurta, the sun-god-slayer of Tiamat, the dragon of primeval chaos. ²² PFF1 920.4

When the warlike Assyrians gained political ascendancy, and Babylonia became a mere vassal state of the Assyrian Empire, the priests of Nineveh gave their national god Assur the role of dragon slayer in the Assyrian versions of the creation epic. ²³ Still Babylon continued to be the religious and cultural metropolis of the empire, and even the Assyrian overlords found it politically wise to submit to receiving Marduk’s authorization of their rule. Later, in the hour of Assyria’s decline, Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, revolted and re-established the power of Babylonia. In this final, short-lived renewal of her leadership—the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which reached its peak in Nebuchadnezzar’s day—Marduk rose higher than ever. Even when the Semitic empire gave place to the Aryan Persians, Cyrus came in as the avowed champion of Marduk and cultivated the worship that had been neglected by Nabonidus. ²⁴ And the old religion persisted in the city of Babylon still later, after Zoroastrian-ism replaced idolatry under the Persian Empire. The Chaldean priesthood, conciliated by the Persians, and patronized even after Alexander’s time by the Seleucid kings, continued to make Mesopotamia a center of schools of astronomy and astrology down to the classical period. ²⁵ PFF1 920.5