Geek, this might proof to be good reading material, I only read a bit myself, so i can't give you my conclusion on it yet.....

 

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION BY LEONARD W. KING, M.A., LITT.D., F.S.A. Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum Professor in the University of London King's College THE SCHWEICH LECTURES 1916

In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological and legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew achievements in the sphere of religion and ethics are only thrown into stronger relief when studied against their contemporary background.

But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are the Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year 1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents, on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves, in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while the corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made the vehicle of a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this fundamental difference, and also variations in detail, the resemblances are such as to leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew story of the Deluge are both derived ultimately from the same original as the Babylonian narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of Israel's religion, and infused by it with a new spirit."[1] Among the recently published documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one at least of those primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts were derived, while others prove the existence of variant stories of the world's origin and early history which have not survived in the later cuneiform texts. In some of these early Sumerian records we may trace a faint but remarkable parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's history between his Creation and the Flood. It will be our task, then, to examine the relations which the Hebrew narratives bear both to the early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis. ..........

Four centuries of complete silence lie between its close and the
beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the history of a nation as
contrasted with that of a family.[1] While Exodus and the succeeding
books contain national traditions, Genesis is largely made up of
individual biography. Chapters xii-l are concerned with the immediate
ancestors of the Hebrew race, beginning with Abram's migration into
Canaan and closing with Joseph's death in Egypt. But the aim of the
book is not confined to recounting the ancestry of Israel. It seeks
also to show her relation to other peoples in the world, and probing
still deeper into the past it describes how the earth itself was
prepared for man's habitation. Thus the patriarchal biographies are
preceded, in chapters i-xi, by an account of the original of the
world, the beginnings of civilization, and the distribution of the
various races of mankind. It is, of course, with certain parts of this
first group of chapters that such striking parallels have long been
recognized in the cuneiform texts........

It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in
Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of
suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national
life. And during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the
disappointment at the failure of expected help is reflected in
prophecies of the period. These great crises in Hebrew history have
tended to obscure in the national memory the part which both Babylon
and Egypt may have played in moulding the civilization of the smaller
nations with whom they came in contact. To such influence the races of
Syria were, by geographical position, peculiarly subject. The country
has often been compared to a bridge between the two great continents
of Asia and Africa, flanked by the sea on one side and the desert on
the other, a narrow causeway of highland and coastal plain connecting
the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.[1] .........

<!--StartFragment-->The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south,
across the eastern plateaus of the Haurân and Moab, and along the
coastal plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at
Pelusium, at first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the
plain of Esdraelon, which breaks the coastal range, and passing under
Hermon runs northward through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at
its most westerly point. Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as
they do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the `Arabah and west
of the Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present
Hajj route to Damascus. But the great highway from Egypt, the most
westerly of the trunk-roads through Palestine, was that mainly
followed, with some variant sections, by both caravans and armies, and
was known by the Hebrews in its southern course as the "Way of the
Philistines" and farther north as the "Way of the East"...........

During the second period, that of the settlement in Canaan, the
Hebrews came into contact with a people who had used the Babylonian
language as the common medium of communication throughout the Near
East. It is an interesting fact that among the numerous letters found
at Tell el-Amarna were two texts of quite a different character. These
were legends, both in the form of school exercises, which had been
written out for practice in the Babylonian tongue. One of them was the
legend of Adapa, in which we noted just now a distant resemblance to
the Hebrew story of Paradise. It seems to me we are here standing on
rather firmer ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning
of our process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites.

Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of
Babylonian culture into Palestine. That does not occur till our last
main period, the later Judaean monarchy, when, in consequence of the
westward advance of Assyria, the civilization of Babylon was once more
carried among the petty Syrian states. Israel was first drawn into the
circle of Assyrian influence, when Arab fought as the ally of Benhadad
of Damascus at the battle of Karkar in 854 B.C.; and from that date
onward the nation was menaced by the invading power. In 734 B.C., at
the invitation of Ahaz of Judah, Tiglath-Pileser IV definitely
intervened in the affairs of Israel. For Ahaz purchased his help
against the allied armies of Israel and Syria in the Syro-Ephraimitish
war. Tiglath-pileser threw his forces against Damascus and Israel, and
Ahaz became his vassal.[1] To this period, when Ahaz, like Panammu II,
"ran at the wheel of his lord, the king of Assyria", we may ascribe
the first marked invasion of Assyrian influence over Judah. Traces of
it may be seen in the altar which Ahaz caused to be erected in
Jerusalem after the pattern of the Assyrian altar at Damascus.[2] We
saw in the first lecture, in the monuments we have recovered of
Panammu I and of Bar-rekub, how the life of another small Syrian state
was inevitably changed and thrown into new channels by the presence of
Tiglath-pileser and his armies in the West.

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext00/beheb10.txt

 

 

it is lenghty. will try to rad it all. plutocracy is in unexpalined. moved it all tonite.