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south there was the picture of Ophiuchus trampling on the scorpion and strangling the snake, yet wounded in the heel by the scorpion's sting; looking north, the corresponding picture of the kneeling figure of Hercules treading down the dragon's head. Here there seems an evident reference to the word spoken by God to the serpent in the garden in Eden: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel."
The Midnight Constellations of Spring, B.C. 2700.

THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF SPRING, B.C. 2700.ToList

These two groups of star-figures seem therefore to point to the two great promises made to mankind and recorded in the early chapters of Genesis; the Promise of the Deliverer, Who, "Seed of the woman," should bruise the serpent's head, and the promise of the "Bow set in the cloud," the pledge that the world should not again be destroyed by a flood.

The Midnight Constellations of Winter, B.C. 2700.

THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF WINTER, B.C. 2700.ToList

One or two other constellations appear, less distinctly, to refer to the first of these two promises. The Virgin, the woman of the zodiac, carries in her hand a bright star, the ear of corn, the seed; whilst, immediately under her, the great Water-snake, Hydra, is drawn out at enormous length, "going on its belly;" not writhing upwards like the Serpent, nor twined round the crown of the sky like the Dragon.

Yet again, the narrative in Genesis tells us that God "drove out the man" (i. e. Adam), "and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." No description is given of the form of the cherubim in that passage, but they are fully described by Ezekiel, who saw them in vision when he was by the river Chebar, as "the likeness of four living creatures." The same beings were also seen in vision by St. John, and are described by him in the Apocalypse as "four living creatures" (Zōa). "The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face as of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle." Ezekiel gives a fuller and more complex description, but agreeing in its essential elements with that given by the Apostle, and, at the close of one of these descriptions, he adds, "This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim"—no doubt because as a priest he had been familiar with the cherubic forms as they were embroidered upon the curtains of the Temple, and carved upon its walls and doors.

The same four forms were seen amongst the constellation figures; not placed at random amongst them, but as far as possible in the four most important positions in the sky. For the constellations were originally so designed that the sun at the time of the summer solstice was in the middle of the constellation Leo, the Lion; at the time of the spring equinox in the middle of Taurus, the Bull; and at the time of the winter solstice, in the middle of Aquarius, the Man bearing the waterpot. The fourth point, that held by the sun at the autumnal equinox, would appear to have been already assigned to the foot of the Serpent-holder as he crushes down the Scorpion's head; but a flying eagle, Aquila, is placed as near the equinoctial point as seems to have been consistent with the ample space that it was desired to give to the emblems of the great conflict between the Deliverer and the Serpent. Thus, as in the vision of Ezekiel, so in the constellation figures, the Lion, the Ox, the Man, and the Eagle, stood as the upholders of the firmament, as "the pillars of heaven." They looked down like watchers upon all creation; they seemed to guard the four quarters of the sky.

If we accept an old Jewish tradition, the constellations may likewise give us some hint of an event recorded in the tenth chapter of Genesis. For it has been supposed that the great stellar giant Orion is none other than "Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord," and the founder of the Babylonian kingdom; identified by some Assyriologists with Merodach, the tutelary deity of Babylon: and by others with Gilgamesh, the tyrant of Erech, whose exploits have been preserved to us in the great epic now known by his name. Possibly both identifications may prove to be correct.

More than one third of the constellation figures thus appear to have a close connection with some of the chief incidents recorded in the first ten chapters of Genesis as having taken place in the earliest ages of the world's history. If we include the Hare and the two Dogs as adjuncts of Orion, and the Cup as well as the Raven with Hydra, then no fewer than twenty-two out of the forty-eight are directly or indirectly so connected. But the constellation figures only deal with a very few isolated incidents, and these are necessarily such as lend themselves to graphic representation. The points in common with the Genesis narrative are indeed striking, but the points of independence are no less striking. The majority of the constellation figures do not appear to refer to any incidents in Genesis; the majority of the incidents in the Genesis narrative find no record in the sky. Even in the treatment of incidents common to both there are differences, which make it impossible to suppose that either was directly derived from the other.

But it is clear that when the constellations were devised,—that is to say, roughly speaking, about 2,700 b.c.,—the promise of the Deliverer, the "Seed of the woman" who should bruise the serpent's head, was well known and highly valued; so highly valued that a large part of the sky was devoted to its commemoration and to that of the curse on the serpent. The story of the Flood was also known, and especially the covenant made with those who were saved in the ark, that the world should not again be destroyed by water, the token of which covenant was the "Bow set in the cloud." The fourfold cherubic forms were known, the keepers of the way of the tree of life, the symbols of the presence of God; and they were set in the four parts of the heaven, marking it out as the tabernacle which He spreadeth abroad, for He dwelleth between the cherubim.

CHAPTER III THE STORY OF THE DELUGE

Beside the narrative of the Flood given to us in Genesis, and the pictorial representation of it preserved in the star figures, we have Deluge stories from many parts of the world. But in particular we have a very striking one from Babylonia. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, already alluded to, the eleventh tablet is devoted to an interview between the hero and Pir-napistim, the Babylonian Noah, who recounts to him how he and his family were saved at the time of the great flood.

This Babylonian story of the Deluge stands in quite a different relation from the Babylonian story of Creation in its bearing on the account given in Genesis. As we have already seen, the stories of Creation have practically nothing in common; the stories of the Deluge have many most striking points of resemblance, and may reasonably be supposed to have had a common origin.

Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch, in his celebrated lectures Babel and Bible, refers to this Babylonian Deluge story in the following terms:—

"The Babylonians divided their history into two great periods: the one before, the other after the Flood. Babylon was in quite a peculiar sense the land of deluges. The alluvial lowlands along the course of all great rivers discharging into the sea are, of course, exposed to terrible floods of a special kind—cyclones and tornadoes accompanied by earthquakes and tremendous downpours of rain."

After referring to the great cyclone and tidal wave which wrecked the Sunderbunds at the mouths of the Ganges in 1876, when 215,000 persons met their death by drowning, Prof. Delitzsch goes on—

"It is the merit of the celebrated Viennese geologist, Eduard Suess, to have shown that there is an accurate description of such a cyclone, line for line, in the Babylonian Deluge story. . . . The whole story, precisely as it was written down, travelled to Canaan. But, owing to the new and entirely different local conditions, it was forgotten that the sea was the chief factor, and so we find in the Bible two accounts of the Deluge, which are not only scientifically impossible, but, furthermore, mutually contradictory—the one assigning to it a duration of 365 days, the other of [40 + (3 x 7)] = 61 days. Science is indebted to Jean Astruc, that strictly orthodox Catholic physician of Louis XIV., for recognizing that two fundamentally different accounts of a deluge have been worked up into a single story in the Bible."[171:1]

The importance of the Babylonian Deluge story does not rest in anything intrinsic to itself, for there are many deluge stories preserved by other nations quite as interesting and as well told. It derives its importance from its points of resemblance to the Genesis story, and from the deduction that some have drawn from these that it was the original of that story—or rather of the two stories—that we find imperfectly recombined in Genesis.

The suggestion of Jean Astruc that "two fundamentally different accounts of a deluge have been worked up into a single story in the Bible" has been generally accepted by those who have followed him in the minute analysis of the literary structure of Holy Scripture; and the names of the "Priestly Narrative" and of the "Jehovistic Narrative" have, for the sake of distinctness, been applied to them. The former is so called because the chapters in Exodus and the two following books, which treat with particular minuteness of the various ceremonial institutions of Israel, are considered to be by the same writer. The latter has received its name from the preference shown by the writer for the use, as the Divine name, of the word Jehovah,—so spelt when given in our English versions, but generally translated "the Lord."

There is a very close accord between different authorities as to the way in which Genesis, chapters vi.-ix., should be allotted to these two sources. The following is Dr. Driver's arrangement:—

Priestly Narrative. Jehovistic Narrative.       Chap. Verse.   Chap. Verse. Genesis vi. 9-22. Genesis vii. 1-5.   vii. 6.   7-10.   11.   12.   13-16a.   16b.   17a.   17b.   18-21.   22-23.   24.   viii. 2b-3a.   viii. 1-2a.   6-12.   3b-5.   13b.   13a.   20-22.   14-19.     ix. 1-17.  

The Priestly narrative therefore tells us the cause of the Flood—that is to say, the corruption of mankind; describes the dimensions of the ark, and instructs Noah to bring "of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female." It further supplies the dates of the chief occurrences during the Flood, states that the waters prevailed above the tops of the mountains, that

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