Another more fragmentary version of the Flood-story from earlier than 2000 a.c. has been found at Nippur and recently published (1914), and there are still others. The Baby lonian poem is well worth reading as literature, far surpassing the Biblical in vividness and vigor, but as far surpassed in the inaccessible monotheistic sublimity of the latter. The cer tainty of community of origin in this caie is reflected upon other parallels less exact. The Flood seems to have been a favorite theme for Oriental imagining, but its primitive meaning has not yet been made clear.
Very recently (1915) Stephen Langdon has published (The Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood, and the Fall of Mankind) from a Nip purian tablet antedating 2000 B.C. It differs very widely from the accounts already men tioned, but Langdon's interpretation is very vigorously rejected by other scholars, such as Barton, Jastrow, Prince, who find nothing about Paradise, Flood or Fall, but rather an imagina tion concerning the origin of a city and of social life and the beginning of Agnculture,— a view certainly favored by their translations. The likeness of Tagtug (or Takku) to Adam and Noah is faint. One of the most important discoveries ever made amid the monuments was that of the Code of Hammurapi (2104-2061), on a block of black diorite in three pieces, ex humed (December 1901, January 1902) by the French under de Morgan at Susa, whither it had been taken from Marduk's temple in Baby lon, where the Semitic version of elder Su merian laws was set up for the Semite to read them. These judge-made statutes, 282 in num ber, the oldest known, present very many points of agreement with the. Mosaic law, and naturally very many more of difference. They contem plate a far more complex and highly organized state of society than the Hebrew, though more than a millennium older. The consciousness that dominates them is moral and jural, whereas that of the Pentateuch is ritual and religious. It cannot be made out that the latter has bor rowed directly from the former, but a common consciousness is distinctly shown in many notable parallel& A similar remark, perhaps more emphatic, may be made touching the Car thaginian law of Sacrifices (of 5th or 4th cen tury a.c.) in its relation to the Levitical.
It is a far cry from the Pentateuch to the Psalms, and we are prone to think of the Psalter as the most peculiar book of a peculiar literature; yet it is exactly at this point that the Hebrew-Babylonian approach is nearest.
The wedge-writing abounds in Psalms, espe cially the penitential, which often reveal the soul and a sense of sin with great distinctness. In general they are franlcly polytheistic—yet intensely tamest, god after god being asked to intercede with some other,—though sometimes henotheistic, as when Bel or the Moon-god Sin is passionately and exclusively invoked in high wrought imagery and exalted conceptions, or the Akkadian Hymn to Marduk* (c. 3000T4 °Who shall flee from before thy might? will is etemal mystery. Thou makest it plain in heaven and on earth. Bid the sea, and the sea obeys thee. Command the tempest, and the tempest is cahned. Command the curves of the Euphrates, and Mardulc's win shall stay the floods. Lord, thou art holy! Who is like unto thee? Marduk, thou. !last honor among gods that are named.° The reader will note the familiar chords. Finest are the hymns to the sun-god Shamash, extolling his justice and righteousness : °Thou guidest the law of the hosts of men. Forever righteous in heaven art thou. The righteous wisdom of the lands art thou.° Especially splendid, even in its ruins is the great hymn to Shamash, of four columns, 424 lines, lauding his goodness and glory and might. The repetend, with which we are famil iar in certain Hebrew Psalms, as °For his mercy endureth forever,° characterizes also the Baby lonian (and especially the magic-formulz) thus: " My god, who is lord of prayer. may he present my prayer to thee! (Ishtar) " The god of pity, the lord of Edda rnay he present my prayer to thee; " God of heaven and earth, the lord of Eridu, may he present my prayer to thee." In many of these Psalms the note of anguish is loud, but it is the anguish of the individual sufferer ; the grander note of national distress, where the voice of the whole people swells to heaven, remains silent in Babylonia, the privi lege of Israel. However beautiful many of Babylon's Psalms, they scarcely equal the Egyptian, some of which approach monotheism, which was even fully attained under Amenophis IV (Ilch-n-Aton, °Man of Aton,° as he called himself), who reached almost the topmost peak of religious consciousness in his long and won derful hymn to Aton (the sun's disc, symbol of the One God) : °Thou art in my heart; There is none other lcnows thee, Save thy son Atm° (Matt. xi, 27).