NOTES

In the following Notes R.V. signifies the English Revised Version of the Bible. The recent German translation of the Old Testament is referred to by the name of the translator and editor, Kautzsch.

P. I. 'God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.' The Biblical account of the creation of man agrees remarkably with some even more detailed accounts of the same event which have been handed down among rude peoples in various parts of the world. It may be not uninstructive to compare a few of these accounts with the Biblical narrative. Thus, for example, the Maoris say that Tiki made man after his own image. He took red clay, kneaded it with his own blood, fashioned it into human form, and gave the image breath. See R. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 117; compare Shortland, Maori Religion and Mythology,' p. 21 sq. In Tahiti it was said that Taaroa, the Creator, made man out of red earth. One day he caused the man to fall asleep; and while he slept, the Creator took out one of his bones (ivi) and made a woman out of it, whom he gave to the man to be his wife. See Ellis, 'Polynesian Researches,' i. p. 110. The story of the creation of woman out of a rib of the first man seems to have been current in New Zealand also. See J. L. Nicholas, 'Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand,' p. 59. In the Pelew Islands there is a legend that the first men were made out of clay kneaded with the blood of various animals, and that the characters of these first men and of their descendants were determined by the characters of the animals whose blood had been kneaded with the primordial clay. See Kubary, 'Die Religion der Pelauer,' in Bastian's 'Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde,' i. pp. 3, 56. According to a Melanesian legend, told in Mota, one of the Banks Islands, the hero Qat made men of clay, the red clay from the marshy riverside at Vanua Lava. At first he made men and pigs just alike, but his brothers remonstrated with him, so he beat down the pigs on all fours and made men walk upright. See Codrington, 'The Melanesians,' p. 158. Some of the wild tribes of Borneo tell how in the beginning two great birds tried to make man. For this purpose they first made trees; but by this means they could not succeed. Then they tried to form him out of the rocks; but they only succeeded in making statues. Lastly they took earth, mixed it with water, and so modelled a man of red clay, and he

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lived. See 'Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London,' New Series, ii. (1863) p. 27. The Kumis of south-eastern India say that God made the world and the trees and the creeping things first, and then set about making man. He made a clay man and a clay woman; but at night, while God slept, a great snake came and ate up the clay figures. This happened twice or thrice, and God was at his wits' end, till at last he got up very early one morning and made a clay dog and put life into it; then he made the clay man and the clay woman, and set the dog to watch over them, and that night, when the snake came as usual to eat them up, the dog barked and frightened it away. See Lewin, 'Wild Races of South-eastern India,' p. 224 sq. The Kasyas of Assam tell the same tale (A. Bastian, ‘Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra,' p. 8). Some of the Australian blacks, in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, used to say that the Creator, whom they called Pund-jel, made the first two men of clay. He began by cutting three sheets of bark with his knife. Then he took a large lump of clay, kneaded it into a proper consistency, spread it out on the bark, and set to work to make a clay man. First he made the feet, then the legs, then the trunk, the arms, and the head. When he had made another of the same sort he was well pleased with his work, looked at the clay men for a long time, and danced round them. Next he took stringy bark from a tree, made hair of it, and stuck it on the heads of the clay men. Then he looked at them again, was much pleased, and danced round them again. Last of all he lay upon each of them, and breathed very hard into their mouths, noses, and navels, till they began to stir. Thereupon he danced round them for the third time, and made them get up and speak. See R. Brough Smyth, 'The Aborigines of Victoria,' i. p. 425. The Innuit or Eskimo of Point Barrow, Alaska, tell of a time when there was no man in the land; till a spirit of the name of 'á sẽ lu,' who resided at Point Barrow, made a clay man, set him up on the shore to dry, breathed into him and gave him life, and sent him out into the world. See 'Report of the International Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, (Washington, 1885), p. 47. The Greeks said that Prometheus fashioned men out of clay or earth kneaded with water, breathed the winds into them, and made them live. See Apollodorus, i. 7. 1; 'Etymolog. Magnum,' p. 471, line I sqq.; Stobæus, 'Florilegium,' ii. 27. As late as the second century of our era the remains of the clay out of which Prometheus had moulded the first men were pointed out at Panopeus in Phocis; we are told that the clay smelt very like the flesh of a man (Pausanias, x. 4, 4).

P. 2. 'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field,' etc. Some doubtful traces of a similar story of man's temptation and fall have been found on a Babylonian tablet within recent years. See H. E. Ryle, 'The Early Narratives of Genesis' (London 1892) p. 40 sq.

P. 5. 'The Great Flood.' Traditions of a great flood in which almost the whole of mankind perished are current in many parts of the world. They occur in western and southern Asia, Australia, New Guinea, the islands of the Pacific (Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia), and America, both North and South. On the other hand, genuine floodlegends seem to be almost or wholly wanting in Africa, central and northern Asia, China, and Japan. See R. Andree, 'Die Flutsagen' (Brunswick, 1891). The tradition most akin to the Biblical narrative is the Chaldean or Babylonian one, which, after being long partially known to us through fragments of the Babylonian historian Berosus, was discovered in 1872 in a much fuller form on a Babylonian tablet. The resemblance between the Hebrew and the Babylonian tradition is indeed so close that they cannot be independent of each other. Some scholars have held that the Hebrew narrative was directly borrowed from the Babylonian, but it is perhaps more probable that both were derived from a common Semitic original known to the ancestors of the two nations in the remote prehistoric days when they lived together as one people. See Eb. Schrader, 'The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament,' i. p. 46 sqq.; P. Jensen, 'Die Kosmologie der Babylonier' (Strassburg, 1890), p. 367 sqq.; H. E. Ryle, 'The Early Narratives of Genesis,' p. 96 sqq.; G. Maspero, 'Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient' (Paris, 1895), i. p. 566 sqq. It is now generally recognised that the Biblical narrative of the flood is itself compounded out of two independent versions, which differ from each other in some points of detail. Thus according to one of the versions (the Elohistic version, as it is called) two animals only of each kind went into the ark. But according to the other version (the Jehovistic, as it is called) there went into the ark seven animals of each of the clean kinds and two only of each of the unclean kinds. Again, the duration of the flood is quite different in the two versions. In the Jehovistic version the whole period from the warning down to the final subsidence of the waters was only sixty-eight days. In the Elohistic version, on the other hand, the catastrophe lasted more than a year. See H. E. Ryle, op. cit., p. 97 sqq.; W. Robertson Smith, 'The Old Testament in the Jewish Church' (2), p. 329 sq. The origin of all such legends is to be sought, partly in the recollection of real but local floods, partly in inferences drawn from the discovery of shells and fossil fish on the tops of hills and other spots remote from the sea. Compare E. B. Tylor, 'Researches into the Early History of Mankind' (3), p. 325 sqq.

P. 5. 'The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair,' etc. This passage is interesting as one of the very few fragments of old mythology which have been transplanted unaltered into the Hebrew scriptures. Compare W. Robertson Smith, 'Religion of the Semites' (2), p. 50; H. E. Ryle, 'The Early Narratives of Genesis,' p. 91 sqq.

P. 8. 'The waters asswaged,' etc. With this and what follows we may compare the corresponding passage in the Babylonian tradition, as it is preserved on the clay-tablet which has been already referred to. 'Six days and nights the wind blew, the flood and the tempest raged. When the seventh day dawned, the storm abated: the sea, which the tempest had tossed, grew calm; and the stormy wind ceased to blow. I looked upon the sea, I sent forth my voice, but all mankind was returned to clay. I opened the window; the light fell on my face; I bowed myself, I sat down, I wept; the tears ran down my cheeks. I beheld the world; all was horror and sea. After twelve days land appeared from the waters; the ship grounded on the mountain of the land of Nisir, and stirred not. One day, two days, three days, four days, five days, six days the mountain held the ship fast. When the seventh day dawned, I sent out a dove and released her. The dove flew hither and thither, but finding no place to rest, she returned. Then I sent out a swallow and released her. The swallow flew hither and thither; but finding no place to rest, she returned. Then I sent out a raven and released him. The raven flew, he saw the sinking of the water, he came near, flapping his wings and croaking, but he returned not again.' In this version of the passage, which is slightly abridged, chiefly by the omission of some doubtful words, I have followed the translations of Jensen ('Die Kosmologie der Babylonier,' pp. 379, 381) and Maspero ('Histoire Ancienne,' i. p. 569 sq.). In the ancient Greek version of the legend, Deucalion, who corresponds to Noah in the Biblical narrative, sent out a dove from the ark to see whether the flood had abated: if she returned, it was to be a sign that the waters still prevailed; if she flew away, it was to be a sign that they had sunk. See Plutarch, 'De solertia animalium,' 13.

P. 10. 'The Tower of Babel.' The legend of the Tower of Babel has not yet been discovered in Babylonian literature, but it is believed to have attached to one or other of two huge tower-like structures which still exist at and near Babylon (Babel). One of them, among the ruins of Babylon, is still called Babil; the other, situated at Borsippa, to the south of Babylon, is known as Birs-Nimrud. Both were built of brick, apparently in seven successive stages or platforms. The enormous size and height (about 153 feet) of the Birs-Nimrud tower has led many travellers to identify it as the Tower of Babel. But the name and the situation are in favour of Babil, which seems to have been the principal temple of ancient Babylon. We know from inscriptions that King Nebuchadnezzar restored the Birs-Nimrud tower. Bricks, bearing Nebuchadnezzar's name, have also been found at Babil, embedded in fine white mortar. See Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' ii. p. 574 sqq.; Schrader, 'The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament,' i. p. 106 sqq.; Perrot et Chipiez, 'Histoire de l'Art dans l'Antiquité,' ii. p. 399 sqq.; H. E. Ryle, 'The Early Narratives of Genesis,' p. 130 sq. An early English traveller, John Eldred, who visited Babylon in 1583 or 1584, tells how he saw there the 'Old