The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

OJBNESIS VI- VIII. M
it is only from the Babjlonian narrative that the selection
of the different birds becomes clear. The Babylonian sends
all three immediately after one another; in each case, as
soon as the bird that has been despatched returns, the
following one is sent forth. Accordingly the Babylonian
chooses on each occasion a different bird that was perhaps
better adapted to obtain for him the wished-for information.
Though the dove returned to the ark, loth to withdraw far
from his accustomed abode, yet this does not exclude the
possibility that the less confiding, swift and far-flying swal-
low might at length discover land , where the dove had not
yet found it. But the raven, who had not the same dread
of the water as the dove and did not shrink from a passage
through the element (evidently for the sake of the floating
carrion), was the first to discover land and on that account
did not return to the ark. Somewhat in this strain seems
to have been the process of thought in the mind of the
Babylonian narrator *. In the Biblical story the process 51
of thought appears obscured, and this is owing to the intro-
duction of the [three **j intervals of seven days. If such
periods existed, we cannot see why in that case the same
birds were not sent out after the lapse of each period.
Indeed after so long an interval the situation might have
so completely altered, that the same bird could now find
what he before searched for in vain, seeing that the Biblical
* Similarly Delitzsch, Paradies pp. 157 foil., who however would
regard Gen. VIII. 7 (raven) as separate from the Jahvistic account
and as the remnant of an abandoned Elohistic; compare, however,
VIII. 2 b, 3 (Jahv.).
** See on this point Ewald, Jahrbiicher VII. 17; my Studien zur
Kritik und Erklarung der biblischen Urgeschichte p. 152 ; Dillmann,
die Genesis erklart, on chap. VIII. 10.
4*