The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1915-08-09

seereta ragtur becomes a gardener
and In instructed Ia all plants by
Nintu, but Ia ordered not 70 eat Of the
cassia But Tagtug. or Noah, does not
obey and eats OF the cassia, where
upon Nintu Anficts him with bodily
weakness and he lives alone an indie
termined number of years. subject TO
Illness. and all his descendants die
early deaths. comparatively speaking.
@fnsea t.ese in f1fe.
According to Berosus this last King
ruled $500 years. This indicates that
he must have sinned late In life or
else he must have had long and hard
time of IL after eating OF the forbid
den fruit According TO the tablets
deoiphered by DF. Poebsl. none of this
Tagtugs successors with few excep-
tions, ruled more than normal years
They tnpered OF very suddenly from
the above enormous figures TO 2fo0
to 1890 TO ZOE. and finally to normal
length OF reigns. In the Bible the
same proportion Is shown. only the
figures are smaller The ten biblical
patriarchs live an average of over 500
years until the mood. then have few
hundred years of life for several gem
erations until the normal Is reached
Dr. Langdon thinks that Enoch In the
Bible was misplaced, and that Ii was
Noah who was translated as told In
another tablet.
1t appears that after Tagtug or
Noah. sinned, the gods provided him
remedies bat Noah had to work hard
and had all sorts of diseases and dis
ooursgemenis. wherefore the gods
seem to have pity and teach him all
the arts aud give him medicines so that
he shall not be utterly miserable, and
the struggle for existence is made
more toiefable bnt the old period of
long life innocence sud freedom from
care and sorrow is gone, II viii be
remembered that In the biblical nara
tive Noah sins By getting drunk. The
gods sent eight divine patrons to teach
men the arts and wisdom. There are
ten such patrons mentioned In Genesis.
The Hebrew gives these as descendants
Of man, but the Nippur tablet here
translated makes them divine beings
DIR. LaHRdon looks upon the nara
tives in the Bible concerning the
creation. fiood and fall OF man up to
the days OF Abraham TO be another
product evolved from the Bsbyionian
doctrines" lie considers the biblical
story of the fall through womans sin
and the punishment to be Theological
ly mastery combination OF the Eridu
doctrine and the doctrines In our Nip
pur tablet" As TO the early chapters
OF Genesis he says;
la Paradise Many Ages.
we are, ] believe. on safe grounds
in assuming that In agreement with
the saRes who wrote our epic OF the
fall OF man there was In Babylonia a
deeply rooted tradition that the great
est of all catsstrophes the loss of long
life. overlook mankind only after he
had lived in Paradise for many ages.
7 hA1t IN hnxf kA
trine adopted by the scribe TO whom
we owe the priestly narrative In He
brew. He surely pursued his investi-
cations beyond Semitic poems of Baby
ionia. rehearaed by the Canaanites be-
fore Hebrew occupation. He must have
come under the influence of the great
Babyloniaa renaissance which set In
the middle of the seventh century. an
age when the scholars of Babylon
studied the remote theological systems
OF the past. The theologians of Nippur
particularly attracted them as we
know from the corpus OF their lltur-
gies. The tablet which forms the sub
feet of this volume proves the pro-
fundity OF their thinking In the region
of ethics and philosophy. We venture
to think that no document has yet been
recovered from the ruins Of the past
10 which such volume of influence
can be traced from our own eivilixa~
tfon, or the immense period OF 1900
years. The great. Hebrew documents
tthe Old Testamsnt). which PROFOUND
the harrassiug problem OF the origin
Of human sorrows, would have been
Impossible WITHOUT the pious and
scholarly teaching OF these pre-semitie
Stppur poets
And we all realize, perhaps too lit
tie, the tncalcuiabia influence which
these Hebrew masterpieces have ex-
ercised upon the ethical and religious
mentality Of u considerable portion
OF the human race"
II Is certain that this tablet win
be the center OF theological study.
DR. Lansdon's views are those of the
higher criticism. he distinctly makes
the early chapters of the Bible depen-
dent on Samaritan theology first re-
Fesled 10 the world In the many tablets
at the University Museum There are
certain TO be those who will not ae-
eept this view In It's entirety.