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

GENUSIS VI— VIII. 55
critics who derive the Elohistic portions of the early Biblical
history from a historian who wrote before the Jahvist.
The opinion of P. Haupt and Fr. Delitzsch (Paradies p. 94,
Sintfluth p. 20) that both the Biblical Flood-stories were
not composed till the Exile, when the Hebrews became
acquainted with the Babylonian legend, altogether breaks
do^^^l, since the Jahvistic narratives of early Biblical history
originated at a much earlier period, and these narratives
cannot be violently severed from the other Jahvistic-prophetic
portions of the Pentateuch. Moreover Noah is mentioned
in Ezekiel XIV. 14, 20 and also in Deutero-Isaiah LIV.
9 as a personage long familiar to the people Israel, and in
the latter passage there is also a reference to Gen. IX. 15,
VIII. 21 foil. Lastly the mention of the range of the
Ararat instead of the mountain Nisir (or of the Gordyenian
mountains) , as the point where Noah landed , leads us to
conclude that the story in its Biblical conception arose and
was committed to writing in Palestine, and not in Baby-
lonia, and therefore not in the period of the Exile.
I now propose to give a general survey of the contents
of the cuneiform Flood-legend. I shall then content myself
with the citation of a passage that shall exhibit in the most
characteristic manner the relation of this account to that
of the Bible*.
legends as well as the Creation-story were remoulded in the spirit of
Hebrew antiquity must of course be placed subsequent to the migration
of the Hebrews from their Babylonian home.
* The student may be referred to the original text published in the
fourth volume of the English work containing the inscriptions, IV Rawl.
50. 51 ; to the translation and comments of George Smith ('The Chal-
daean account of the Deluge' London 1872); 'The Eleventh tablet of
the Izdubar legends' in the Transactions of the Soc. of Biblical Archaeo-
logy III, 2 (1874) pp. 530 foil., and to his 'Assyrian Discoveries' Lond.