1. Ten generations are given, from Adam to the Flood, and the remarkably long lives of the Patriarchs have suggested to many the probability of error or misunderstanding. Some have supposed that each name represents a tribe, the lives of whose leading members have been added together. Others have understood the years to mean only months, and others that numbers and dates are liable in the course of years to become obscured and exaggerated.19
2. But as to all these opinions it must be remembered, First, that the era from the creation of Adam to the Flood, 1,656 years, is to be divided by the number ten, the number of the Patriarchs, which would require an individual length of life much longer than that enjoyed at the present day; and, Secondly, no scientific reasons can be offered why human life should be limited in duration to its present length. It varies now according to the contingencies of accident and disease, and old age itself may be only a modified form of disease and not essential to a human organism. A clock made to run twenty-four hours is expected to run down in about that time, but the clock-maker may, by adding one wheel, or to the length of the weight-cord, or by some other very simple rearrangement, make the very same clock run a week or a month. It is only a question of life, about which, as to its nature, we know little or nothing. Thirdly, as to the historic probability, it is a fact that traditions other than those of the Hebrew nation represent that in the earliest ages there was an enjoyment of exceedingly long lives. The chronology of Berosus, a Chaldæan priest and historian, B. C. 279 to 255, gives to the ten Babylonian kings who in the earliest traditions of that people reigned before the Babylonian deluge 2,221 years, or only 21 years less than the period given in the Septuagint as having elapsed between the Creation and the Deluge.20 The earliest Aryan tradition states that the first man lived 1,000 years in Paradise.
Other nations have kept the same tradition of long lives in the earliest times, which nations could not have received the tradition from the Scriptures.
3. But there is a probability arising from the fitness of long lives, and that is seen in the necessity of a history which could thus be obtained by tradition when no written language existed. It will be seen that from Adam to the Flood tradition was delivered through only one person, so that Lamech could repeat to Noah what Adam had narrated to him of all the dealings of God in Eden and after the expulsion. Although Lamech lived during the lifetimes of all the Patriarchs down to the Flood, which took place 1,656 years after the creation of Adam, he himself was only 777 years old at death. Thus we see that tradition was more trustworthy then than at any time since.
4. Moreover, Shem lived nearly a century before the death of Lamech, who could have narrated the story of Eden and the trials and experiences of his after-life, as well as the history of the Patriarchal times, to Shem, who was alive in the times of Abraham and his son Isaac. By that time writing was invented, and doubtless much of the history of the times before and after the Flood had been committed to writing, which was invented several centuries before the death of Shem, as we learn from the ancient Chaldæan records.
5. After the Flood long lives continued, but in much shorter terms, Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber each lived about four centuries, and each of the next three patriarchs lived over 200 years, and it was not till after the time of Judah, seven centuries after the Flood, that the length of a human life was reduced to about a century.
1. The Scripture statement of the occasion of the Flood is very brief. It is made plain, however, that the wickedness of men was so great that “the earth was filled with violence and corrupt before God.”
2. Noah was commanded to prepare an ark for his own safety and that of his family; and he was also directed to provide for the preservation of a large number of “fowls, cattle, and creeping things.”
3. Between the time of the announcement of the divine intention to destroy “man whom he had created” and the occurrence of the Flood God gave a warning era of 120 years, at the close of which the Flood began. “The waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days.” After this time they were abated, and gradually retired till the earth was dry, and Noah and his family left the ark in which he had remained twelve months and ten days, or from the six hundred and first year, second month, and seventeenth day to the six hundred and second year, second month, and twenty-seventh day of Noah’s life.
4. An interesting fact may here be stated. A few years ago there were discovered by excavations at the ancient site of Nineveh, on the Tigris, the palace of Assur-bani-pal, in which had been stored some 10,000 tablets of a library gathered by this king B. C. 968. These tablets were shipped to the British Museum, of which George Smith, the Assyriologist, was librarian, and a large number of them translated. Among these tablets was found a record of the Deluge, which was read by Mr. Smith in December, 1872, before the Society of Biblical Archæology in London.
5. The record states that the tradition recorded is copied from a more ancient account which was in existence in the times of a king of the city of Accad (Gen. 10) many years after the time of Nimrod, who founded it. The remains of this city have been recently discovered forty-three miles north-northwest from Babylon.
The name of the king of Accad was Sargon I., whose date appears from the monuments to have been about 3800 B. C. This Chaldæan history of the Deluge is so similar to that of the Scriptures as to leave no doubt that both record the same fact.
6. The simple narration as it occurs in Genesis is so free from the irrelevant and unnecessary additions of the Chaldæan account as to show that the Biblical account is a record of true history. As the Chaldæan account is dated long before Abram left Chaldæa, and hence long before the birth of Moses, it could never have been derived from Scripture, and proves that a tradition of such an event as that of the Flood must have existed very early in the history of the race.
1. Although the tradition of the Flood seems to have reached to almost every nation, it has been referred locally to some part of Western Asia, and particularly to that part known as Armenia. The Scriptures tell us that the ark rested upon “the mountains of Ararat,” Gen. 8:4, not upon any particular mountain called Ararat, as it has been assumed.
2. The word Ararat is found in the Assyrian inscriptions for Armenia.21 A mountain 500 miles north of Babylon is called Mt. Ararat by travellers, and seems first to have been announced as the “Mt. Ararat” in A. D. 1250, as Bochart says.
The other claimant is 50 miles north of Nineveh and is called Mt. Kudur, the meaning being “the great ship.”22 This view is supported by older historians, such as Berosus and others. The Mt. Ararat of present travellers is a solitary double peak, called Mt. Massis by the Armenians, which rises 17,500 feet above the sea.
3. The tenth chapter of Genesis is considered one of the most remarkable chapters because of the aid it affords in tracing the early emigrations and distributions of the race. In this chapter the descendants of the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are given. The descendants of Shem are known among scholars as Shemites or Semites, as those of Ham are known as Hamites. Although Shem is named first in order, Japheth is called the elder (ver. 21), and the genealogy begins with him.
4. (a) Gomer. These were the Cimmerians of antiquity, the Cimbri of Roman times, and the Cymry or Celts still existing. Their ancient country was north of the Black Sea, including the Crimea and the shores of the Sea of Azov.
The name Crimea is a corruption of the ancient name. It is to this north land Ezekiel refers in chap. 38:2, 6. A part of them went southward to Asia Minor when driven out by the Scythians, and some emigrated to the west of Europe and to Britain. The Welsh call themselves Cymry. “The sons of Gomer” were “Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.”
5. Ashkenaz. The name means “THE HORSE MILKERS,” and suggests some race of a wandering tribe of the same general country of the Cimmerians or of that land northeast of them. The names Ascanius, a river and lake in Asia Minor, and Scandia and Scandinavia, suggest that they may have entered Phrygia, as Bochart supposes, but the associations are uncertain. They seem in later times to have in some degree returned to a region near Armenia, since Jeremiah associates them with Ararat, Jer. 51:27.
6. Riphath seems to be suggested by the name of the Rhiphæan Mountains in the distant regions of the north of Scythia. More probably we may find some intimation of their presence near Armenia in the name Riphates, which is that of a mountain range in that vicinity.
7. Togarmah is supposed to be represented by the tribes of the Caucasus, Georgians and Armenians, who call themselves “the House of Torgona,” the latter word being the same as Togarmah.
8. (b) Magog, the name of the second son of Japheth, was also the name of a country. Slavonic tribes in the north and northeast of Europe are supposed to be comprehended under this term as descendants from the grandson of Japheth, and the original country of Magog was the Caucasian Mountains and the country around the northern part of the Caspian Sea.
9. In the time of the prophet Ezekiel they had become a powerful people and had overrun the north of Europe. The Russians are, and the Scythians were, the descendants of Magog, and Gog is the “prince of Rosh,” of Meshech, and of Tubal. They are described by Ezekiel, chaps. 38:15 and 39:3, as a wild race of mounted men armed with the bow. This seems also to describe the Scythians who invaded Palestine B. C. 625, and left the evidence of their presence in the city called Scythopolis, formerly Beth-shean, now Beisan, on the Jordan.23
10. (c) Madai is the name by which the Medes are known on the Assyrian monuments. Their country was south of the Caspian Sea.
11. (d) Javan was the progenitor of the Greeks, and the name occurs on the Assyrian monuments as Javanu; a term also used by Darius, the Mede.24
12. The sons of Javan were: (1.) Elishah, who settled in the northwest of Asia Minor from the Propontis eastward throughout Mysia and Lydia and the adjacent islands. (2.) Tarshish, supposed to be the ancestor of the Etruscans who inhabited the northern part of Italy; but the name as it occurs in Isa. 23:6–10; Ezek. 27:12 and 38:13, seems to refer to a city on the southern coast of Spain whither Jonah attempted to escape. Jonah 1:3. (3.) Kittim. This name is afterwards spelled Chittim, but it is the same word in the Hebrew text. It has the plural ending (im), and therefore refers to a people of that name. In Isa. 23:1, 12, Chittim refers to the island of Cyprus; but when “the isles of Chittim” are mentioned, as in Jer. 2:10 and in Ezek. 27:6, the phrase includes the island of Crete and the islands along the coast of Asia Minor and the Ægean Sea, thus embracing a great sea district, with probably all Greece. In Dan. 11:30 Chittim includes Macedonia, because of its supposed settlement from the former, as Bochart shows.25
(4.) Dodanim is the same as Rodanim, which is also in plural form, and refers to the Greeks of the island of Rhodes, which is particularly one of the islands of Kittim or Chittim.
13. The other sons of Japheth were: (e) Tubal and (f) Meshech and (g) Tiras. Of these Tubal and Meshech appear as tribes neighboring with the Scythians and other northern tribes, and perhaps remained about the southeastern parts of the Black Sea. The Tubal of Isa. 66:19 was, as supposed, in Spain; but a tribe called Tyrrhenians in later times settled the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.26 The name is supposed to be derived from the turreted walls by which the early Tyrrhenians surrounded their fortifications, and not from Tyre, as some have said; this Bochart shows. Tiras is supposed by some to represent ancient Thrace, but this is doubtful, as the people seem to have been associated with the Achæans, Lydians, Sicilians, and Sardinians fourteen centuries B. C., in an invasion of Egypt, as Chabas shows.27 They seem in remote antiquity to have been seafarers and pirates upon the Italian seas and Greek Archipelago.28
1. (a) Cush was the first mentioned son. Dr. Franz Delitzsch has shown that the Assyrian monuments now prove that Cushites settled in the early ages of the world near the northwest of the Persian Gulf. They afterwards migrated southward along the western shore of the Persian Gulf and onward to the south and southwest of Arabia. Some of these crossed the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to Africa, and there established themselves in that part now known as Abyssinia, and called first by the Greek geographers Ethiopia.
2. The Hebrew name Cush is translated Ethiopia twenty of the twenty-one times it occurs in the Scripture. There can be no reasonable doubt that in the first mention of the word Ethiopia in Gen. 2:13 the region northwest of the Persian Gulf is meant. In after ages the Cushites had established themselves in Arabia, and the inhabitants in that region were called Cushites, or as it is in our English translation, “Ethiopians,” as in the case of Moses’ wife, who is called an “Ethiopian woman,” Num. 12:1, but it is “Cushite” in the Hebrew.
The varying meanings of the name Cushite afford an indication that all these passages of Scripture could not have been written in the same period of time.
3. The earliest monuments in Egypt make a strong distinction between the Ethiopians south of Egypt and the negro races, for although the Ethiopians were of a dark or dusky skin, they had straight hair, thin noses, and the form of the head of different shape. It is not apparent that any reference in Scripture is made to the negro race as such; the passage in Jer. 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” may apply to the dark Ethiopian and not to the negro, whose native land was west of Ethiopia.29
4. Five races spring from Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecha. These have generally been referred to large tribes settling in Arabia. From Raamah we have the nations Sheba and Dedan. These have been located in Arabia, and it was the queen of the former who visited Solomon, 1 Kin. 10:1 and 2 Chron. 9:1. Dedan was a district north of Sheba, and its inhabitants seem by caravans to have traded and settled northward until the time of Abraham, Gen. 25:3, when their descendants were numerous enough to be known by the old name of their ancestors.
5. Cush begat Nimrod, whose exceptional prowess and enterprise gave him precedence over all his brethren. He was a mighty hunter upon the plains of Babylon, and from the monuments of Assyria it seems that the lion was the chief object of his hunting expeditions. He was the founder of some of the earliest cities. The first mentioned is Babel, afterwards called Babylon by the Greeks, which was built upon the Euphrates.
6. At that early time this city was about one hundred and seventy-five miles northwest from the head of the Persian Gulf, but it is now three hundred miles, the land having been extended southeastward by the annual deposits brought down by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Erech, the second city of Nimrod, was seventy-five miles northwest (now 200) of the same gulf; Accad, recently discovered by Rassam, was forty-five miles almost due north from Babylon; and Calneh about fifty miles southeast of Babylon; it is now called Niffer.
7. The land of Shinar was the district corresponding with that now known as the land of Chaldæa. “Out of that land went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh” is the statement made, and the monuments recently discovered have remarkably corroborated this text, for the history shows the importance of Asshur, and that Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian kingdom, was a more recent city than Babylon.30 Its ruins are two hundred and seventy-five miles north by west from Babylon and upon the Tigris River.
8. But it will be seen that Asshur was a son of Shem, while Nimrod was a son of Ham, and recent discovery has sustained the distinction, showing that another people preceded the Assyrians and Babylonians which were not descendants of Shem. In connection with Nineveh are mentioned “the city Rehoboth”31 and Calah: the former is not known, and the latter is supposed to be at the ruins nearly twenty miles south of Nineveh, now called Nimrud, and a few miles north of the latter is supposed to be the site of Resen.
Further excavations are needed to attest the accuracy of these identifications.
9. (b) Mizraim is mentioned as the second son of Cush, and is supposed to have colonized Egypt. The word is in the dual form and indicates the double land of Egypt, which from the earliest times was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt.
(1.) Mizraim’s descendants are Ludim, probably simply a name for the Egyptians themselves; they held themselves “the best of all men,”32 and they were the same as Libyans or Lubim, 2 Chron. 12:3; 16:8; Nah. 3:9. The Libyans of the most ancient era inhabited the west of the Nile and parts near the Mediterranean Sea. They appear of bright complexions as represented upon the Egyptian monuments.
(2.) “Anamim and Lehabim and Naphtuhim and Pathrusim” appear to be only names of the people of the different settlements along the Nile and not distinct races. (3.) The Casluhim have been identified with a people settling east of the Delta near the Mediterranean coast towards Palestine, and seemed to have been of Phœnician origin (Ebers). (4.) Caphtorim were the earliest settlers on the coast of the Delta or on its Mediterranean shore, even before the Egyptians occupied that part of Egypt (Ebers). The Philistines of Palestine (southwest coast) were descendants of both Casluhim and Caphtorim. “Kaft” was the Egyptian name of the latter people, who early settled in the island of Crete, but also, as we have stated, on the seacoast of the Nile, and gradually moved through the lands of the Casluhim to their final resting-place in Palestine.33
10. Thus the passage in Amos 9:7 is explained by the discovery that the Philistines came from Caphtor (Crete), but they passed through the land of the Casluhim. This explains Deut. 2:23, wherein the inhabitants of Azzah (or Gaza) are called Caphtorim, but more distinctly in Jer. 47:4, “the Philistines, the remnant of the country of Caphtor.” So that the Philistines, who came originally from Crete (Caphtor), settled on the Delta coast, and thence passing through the land of Casluhim, settled in Philistia, as Ebers has shown.34
11. A migration of the earliest Phœnicians to the coasts of the Delta is generally accepted as leading to the invention of the alphabet, for these settlers soon learned the new form of hieroglyphics (called the hieratic or priestly form), and afterwards improved these signs, as in the Phœnician alphabet. The most ancient manuscript in hieratic is referred to an age in the third millennium B. C., or perhaps about 2500 B. C. In the trading intercourse between Egypt and Phœnicia this new form was introduced into Phœnicia, where the full alphabetic forms were originated. Wise men of that day must have very generally adopted the improved letters, and in the course of the centuries, but certainly before the time of the Exodus, the alphabet on the Phœnician model was well formed. De Rougé has shown that the Phœnicians adopted these hieratic forms long before the Exodus.35
12. This alphabet must have been known to Moses, and perhaps to all the elders of Israel, and became that Hebrew alphabet which furnished the source of the lettering of the law and its accessories.
The similarity between the old Hebrew and the Phœnician letters has been fully shown in the discoveries of tablets near Tyre and in the Moabite stone, so called, which was discovered at some ruins east of the Dead Sea, upon the site of the ancient Dibon. It is probable therefore that the first elements of the alphabetic form of letters were invented about this era of the world’s history, when the Phœnicians began their trading with the races upon the shores of Egypt, which we have last mentioned.
13. The next son of Ham is (c) Phut. The hieroglyphics of Egypt represent the nation east of the Red Sea and along the northern half of the coast as the people of Punt, and this people is supposed to be meant by Phut or Put. They traded in incense and turquoise (a blue mineral not so hard as quartz but as heavy). They were a wandering tribe of a dusky hue, but entirely distinct from the Cushites on whose confines they dwelt.
14. The last mentioned descendant of Ham was (d) Canaan. He begat Sidon, the firstborn of eleven heads of tribes or nations. Sidon became in after centuries the name of the chief city of Phœnicia. The rest of the descendants of Canaan formed the Canaanites.
15. A very important fact should be noticed here. These Canaanites spoke a Shemitic language, but they were, as here seen, descendants of Ham through Canaan. Recent discoveries show that long before their settlement in the land of Canaan they are met with first in Southern Arabia, from whence they made their way northward to certain islands in the Persian Gulf, their next resting-place being on the flat shores of the Persian Gulf at the mouth of the Euphrates. They then emigrated to the shores of Phœnicia, carrying the name Canaan, or, as they pronounced it, Chna, “the low-lying,” to their new inheritance on the shores of Phœnicia. Their associations were Shemitic and their language also, although they were by descent Hamitic.
The temples still standing in the times of the Romans upon the islands in the Persian Gulf were Phœnician, and the inhabitants claimed to be the original stock of the famous race of Palestine.36 “Canaanite” in after times became the term used to signify a merchant or trader, from the habits of the people.37
16. The people of Heth, another son of Canaan, became in later times a very powerful nation, whose history has only recently been brought to light. Their name as Hittites has been found in the Egyptian records, from which it is shown that at one time, so early as that of Moses, they were sufficiently powerful to resist the forces of the king, Rameses II., of Egypt. On one of the Egyptian monuments they are represented as making a treaty with the Egyptian monarch which was as favorable to them as to him, B. C. 1333 (Brugsch).
17. Sidon, the city of that name, was early a fishing station of the Phœnicians on the coast of the Mediterranean west of the Lebanon Mountains, twenty-two miles north of Tyre. This place, now in existence, yet bears the name of the ancient son of Canaan.
18. The Canaanites were “spread abroad” over what is now known as Palestine, from Sidon to Gaza and Gerar, “as thou goest to Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboim, even unto Lasha,” Gen. 10:19. Gaza is well known, being 150 miles southwest of Sidon and about two miles from the shore of the Mediterranean, and is now a town of 15,000 inhabitants. Sodom and Gomorrah are not certainly located, being by some supposed to have been at the south end of the Dead Sea, but by others at the north end. Neither of the remaining names can be identified with any known sites. But it is plain that the Canaanites occupied the whole of Palestine west of the Jordan and as far north as the Lebanon Mountains, the Arvadites and Hamathites extending beyond them more than 130 miles north of Sidon. See the map.
1. The descendants of Shem are next given: (a) Elam was north of the Persian Gulf and east of the Tigris; Shushan was its capital in later times. (b) Asshur was the origin of the name Assyria. The Assyrian monuments show that Nineveh was built after Babylon, and that the Assyrians were a later people than the Babylonians and derived their literature from them, and also that they were a Shemitic nation. (c) Arphaxad was settled north of Assyria on the table-land between Oroomiah and Van. (d) Lud appears to be represented by Lydia in western Asia Minor, though at first it was a wider district. (e) Aram settled in Syria near the Upper Euphrates, and as far west as the Upper Lebanon Mountains north of Palestine, which we learn from the Assyrian inscriptions. The four children of Aram are Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash. Uz is thought to be the district east of the Jordan known as the Hauran, parts of which are very fertile. This was the land of Job, and is reckoned in Arabia by Josephus.38 The remaining three names are associated with the following lands: first, Hul, with el-Huleh, a region in Northern Palestine, at the head-waters of the Jordan; second, Gether, with the district of Ituræa between the waters of the lake el-Huleh and Uz; third Mash, with a site known as Maisel Jebel. But these identifications are only probable.
2. Arphaxad had a son Salah who begat Eber, whose descendants were the ancestors of Abraham through Peleg, in whose days “was the earth divided.” Peleg appears to have settled near the Euphrates, since a city named Phaliga once existed at the place where the river Chaboras falls into the Euphrates from the east.
3. The descendants of Peleg’s brother, Joktan, thirteen in number, seem to have found their early settlements in Southern Arabia and as far south as Isfor on the southeast coast, which is supposed to represent the Sephar of the text, Gen. 10:30.
This closes a table which is generally considered to be the most important as well as the most ancient list of nations in existence.
4. This history is contained in the book of the same name. The author of this book is not known. It may have been written by Job himself. The history is that apparently of a chief who lived in the land of Uz, which was probably in the region we have already described. Many think that the land of Uz was in Northern Arabia or in Idumæa.
5. Job, according to one writer (Wamys) was an Arabian prince, who is represented as living in his family and enjoying a life of unalloyed prosperity, the consequence of his exemplary piety and rectitude. Suddenly the scene changes, and this excellent man is visited by a series of overwhelming calamities, which are the result of a transaction which passed in the council of the Most High, into the secret of which the reader is for the moment admitted, as stated in Job 1:8–13. During his affliction Job is visited by his friends. Instead of comforting him, these friends ascribe his calamities to some great sin, for which he is now punished. Job’s friends affirm that great suffering is a proof of great guilt, and exhort him to repent and confess.39 Job denies this, Job 4:5–31:40. At the close of their dialogue another and younger friend of the patriarch intervenes to modify the view taken by the others.
6. At length the Lord condescends to interpose in the controversy. From the midst of a whirlwind, in words of incomparable grandeur and sublimity he silences the murmurings of his servant, bidding him reflect on the glory of creation and learn the stupendous power and wisdom of Him whose purposes are good, though unexplained, and with whom it is useless for a created being to contend. Thereupon Job acknowledges his error, and the whole party are convinced of forming false estimates of the Lord’s administration. Job is restored to prosperity and prays for his friends, who are accepted in their offering and received back into favor.
7. The book of Job, from internal evidence, is probably one of the earliest productions of Biblical literature. The names of his friends, the Temanite and the Shuhite, and the mention of the Sabæans, indicate the Idumæan parts of Northern Arabia as the scene of the history. The long life of Job, which appears to have been about 200 years, indicates a period in the second or third century following the Flood, or before the time of Abraham. But neither the date of the composition nor the location of Uz can be settled any further than we have already stated.
One of the proofs of the very early origin of this composition is found in its reference to the ancient seal, Job 38:14, which was rolled over the clay, covering it with figures; hence the illustration used in the above passage. The cylindrical seals were used in the early Babylonian era.
1. The next subject which is presented in the sacred text is the confusion of tongues at the building of the tower of Babel, Gen. 11:1–10. In this passage of the Scripture history we have an extremely condensed view of an event which must have been one of greater importance than would appear from the very concise manner in which it is described. All that we know from Scripture is that a certain part of the human race coming from the East settled upon the plains of Shinar, and there began the erection of the highest known tower, with the purpose of making themselves a name before they were “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” They began the tower, using brick from the clay which abounds upon the plain of Babylon and bitumen, called “slime” in the text, for mortar. During the building of this city and tower their language, which up to this period was the same, became confused, so that, being unable to understand each other, they were forced to desist, “and they left off to build the city.” This is the brief history.
2. From the recently discovered Assyrian history, recorded upon the tablets now in the British Museum, it appears that the Babylonians of the earliest ages had a tradition of this tower and of the sudden confusion of tongues. The event seems to indicate that the determination of the early descendants of Noah, probably under Nimrod or his immediate successors, was to settle on the plains and build a vast metropolis and a tower, whose height should serve the double purpose of a means of direction or as a guide to the city, and also of an advertisement of their immense wealth and enterprise amid the surrounding tribes.
3. The divine intention was, however, that the command given to Noah and his descendants, that they should replenish the earth, should be literally executed, and it was the divine intervention which prevented all the people from remaining in that land.
As we have said, the word Babel in the Greek form is Babylon; but the word which originally meant “confusion” in the Hebrew seems to have been changed from that form originally given it into Bab, or “gate,” el, of “God,” for the actual original Hebrew word for “confusion,” as Buxtorf shows from the Rabbinical word for “confusion,” is Bilbal, or Bilbul. Oppert40 has shown that the word is distinctly of Assyrian derivation, from Balal, to “confound.” Similar changes from original forms have frequently occurred. Thus Beth-lehem is now Beit-lahm the former meaning “house of bread,” and the latter “house of meat.” Borsippa, the name of the ruined tower near Babylon, supposed to be the Tower of Babel, is now called Bar-Sab, the former (Borsippa) meaning the “tower of languages,” the latter (Bar Sab) meaning the “shattered altar,” as Geikie has mentioned.
4. In studying the early parts of Biblical history the student should be mindful that history and traditions as recorded by the Assyrians were borrowed, or, more truly speaking, derived, from the early records of the Babylonian and Chaldæan nations, as in some cases is stated upon Assyrian tablets. This fact we have illustrated, page 26. The original records were kept at the old Chaldæan city of Erech, 90 miles southeast of Babylon, at the present ruins of Warka. Assur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, beside being a great warrior, was also one who encouraged literature and had an immense library, for those days, 10,000 tablets from which were removed to the British Museum. In his time, 668–647 B. C., the ancient Chaldæan tongue was translated into Assyrian, and in this library at Nineveh was a lexicon of the Chaldæo-Turanian language with the meaning of the words put in Assyrian cuneiform.41 This showed that so many years had passed that the ancient Chaldæan language was, at that time, nearly lost.
5. Those records, both of the Chaldæan and of the later Assyrian ages, have not only been of great service to the student of ancient history, but they have added much to the explanation and corroboration of Biblical history, as we shall hereafter have occasion to show.
6. The ruins of both Nineveh and Babylon bear some names which are reminiscences of Nimrod, but these seem to have been applied at some comparatively recent date. The chief structure bearing the name of Nimrod is the Birs Nimrud, or Tower of Nimrod, ten miles southwest of the modern town of Hillah, which is near the ruins of Babylon. The large mass of burned brick at this place seems to have been originally erected in the form of a steep pyramid some six hundred feet in height and of the same length at its base. It is extremely ancient, as its Assyrian name proves, which name, Saggatu, “the high temple,” is an old Accadian word.
7. Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 604–562, one of the greatest builders among the Babylonian kings, says of himself that he builded additions to it, although Tiglath-pileser repaired it one hundred years before. It is now a bare hill of yellow sand and bricks a few miles west of the banks of the Euphrates, reaching a height of about 200 feet, a vast mass of brick-work jutting from the mound to a further height of 37 feet. It is very probable that these are the most ancient remains to be found in Babylonia, and in its form seems to have furnished a universal model for all succeeding temples and towers in that region.42