This is a test
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
Here is a complete translation of all the published cuneiform tablets of the various Babylonian creation stories, of both the Semitic Babylonian and the Sumerian material. Each creation account is preceded by a brief introduction dealing with the age and provenance of the tablets, the aim and purpose of the story, etc. Also included is a translation and discussion of two Babylonian creation versions written in Greek. The final chapter presents a detailed examination of the Babylonian creation accounts in their relation to our Old Testament literature.
Frequently asked questions
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes, you can access The Babylonian Genesis by Alexander Heidel in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Religion. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Topic
Theology & ReligionSubtopic
ReligionCHAPTER I
ENĂMA ELISH
Of All the Semitic inscriptions composed in cuneiform writing few have awakened as great a general interest as the epic known among the Babylonians and Assyrians as EnĂ»ma elish (âWhen aboveâ), which takes its name from the opening words of the poem. Aside from linguistic considerations, this widespread popularity of EnĂ»ma elish is in part due to its great significance for the study of the theogonic and cosmogonic views of the Mesopotamians, and thus for a comparative study of ancient Near Eastern religion in general; but above all else it is due to the fact that EnĂ»ma elish presents quite a number of analogies to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE TABLETS
This great epic is recorded on seven clay tablets and covers in all a little over one thousand lines. The first fragments to come to light were discovered by Austen H. Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and George Smith among the ruins of King Ashurbanipalâs (668âca. 630 B.C.) great library at Nineveh between the years 1848 and 1876. During their explorations at Ashur (the old capital of Assyria), from 1902 to 1914, the German excavators unearthed a number of fragments of an Assyrian version of the Babylonian story (especially of Tablets I, VI, and VII) which differs from the latter chiefly in that some copies substitute the name of Ashur, the king of the Assyrian gods, for that of Marduk, the king of the Babylonian deities, and in that they make La mu and La Ăąmu the parents of Ashur. In 1924â25 two almost complete tablets, I and VI, of a Neo-Babylonian version of the epic were discovered at Kish by the joint expedition of Oxford University and the Field Museum of Chicago. And in 1928â29 the Germans found quite a large Neo-Babylonian fragment of Tablet VII at Uruk (the biblical Erech). Thanks to these discoveries and to purchases of fragments which have been made from dealers in antiquities (the provenance of most of these fragments being uncertain), the epic has been restored almost in its entirety; the only tablet of which a large portion is still wanting is Tablet V.
THE PUBLICATION OF THE MATERIAL
The first to publish an account of the epic was George Smith, of the British Museum, who in 1875 described in a letter to the Daily Telegraph the contents of about twenty fragments of the creation series. In 1876 appeared his book The Chaldean Account of Genesis, which contained a translation and discussion of all the pieces which had been identified. All this material was very fragmentary, but the resemblance of its contents to the initial chapters of the Old Testament was unmistakable, and consequently it had an immediate appeal to a much wider circle of students than would otherwise have been the case. Since then this story has been copied and translated by a great many Assyriologists, especially as new tablets or portions of tablets have been found.
In 1890 Peter Jensen, in his work Die Kosmologie der Babylonier (Strassburg), published a translation together with a transliteration and a commentary; five years later Heinrich Zimmern issued a new and improved translation in Hermann Gunkelâs volume Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Göttingen, 1895); the very next year Friedrich Delitzsch issued Das babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos (Leipzig, 1896). Within a few years this was superseded by Jensenâs penetrating and still highly valuable study of EnĂ»ma elish in his book Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin, 1900), containing a transliteration, a translation, and an extensive commentary. At the turn of the century, L. W. King issued a large number of creation fragments in his two volumes The Seven Tablets of Creation (London, 1902), the first of which contains chiefly transliterations, translations, and discussions, while the second offers cuneiform texts only.
More recent publications dealing with this subject are A. Ungnad, Die Religion der Babylonier und Assyrer (Jena, 1921); Erich Ebeling, Das babylonische Weltschöpfungslied in Bruno Meissner, Altorientalische Texte und Untersuchungen, II, 4 (Breslau, 1921); Ebelingâs revised rendition in Hugo Gressmannâs volume Altorientalische Texte zum Alten Testament (Berlin and Leipzig, 1926); S. Langdon, The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Oxford, 1923) and Babylonian Penitential Psalms to Which Are Added Fragments of the Epic of Cre...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Copyright
- Title Page
- A map of the ancient Near East
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Symbols and Special Characters
- I. Enûma Elish
- II. Related Babylonian Creation Stories
- III. Old Testament Parallels
- Notes
- Appendix