sages in the Bible (Isa. xxvii. 1, li. 9b; Ps. lxxiv.
14, lxxxix. 10, 11; Job iii. 8, ix. 13, xxvi. 12, 13; Rev. xii. 3, 4,
xx. 1-3). One may also be permitted to hold that the mythic figure of
the dragon, if used poetically, is a highly serviceable one, and
consider that "in the beginning God fought with the dragon, and slew
him" would have formed an admirable illustration of the passages just
now referred to, especially to those in the Apocalypse.

The student should, however, notice that the dragon-element is not
entirely unrepresented even in the priestly Hebrew cosmogony. It is said
in Gen. i. 9, 10, 14, 15, that God divided the primeval waters into two
parts by an intervening "firmament" or "platform," on which the sun,
moon and stars (planets) were placed to mark times and to give light.
This division (cp. Ps. lxxiv. 13) is really a pale version of the old
mythic statement respecting the cleaving of the carcase of Ti[=a]mat
(the Dragon) into two parts, one of which kept the upper waters from
coming down.[25] And we must affirm that the technical term _t[)e]
h[=o]m_ (rendered in the English Bible "the deep"), which evidently
signifies the enveloping primeval flood, and which closely resembles
Ti[=a]mat, the name given to the dragon or serpent in the epic (cf.
_tiamtu_ and _tamtu_, Babylonian words for "the ocean"), can only be due
to the influence--probably the very early influence--of Babylonia.

But we are far from having exhausted the evidence of Babylonian
influence on the Hebrew cosmogony. The description of chaos in v. 2 not
only mentions the great water (_t[)e]h[=o]m_), but the earth, i.e. the
earth-matter, out of which the earth and (potentially) its varied
products (vv. 9-11), and (as we know from the Babylonian epic) the
"firmament" or "platform" of the heaven were to appear. This
earth-matter is called "_t[=o]hu_ and _b[=o]hu_"; there is nothing like
this phrase in the epic, but we may infer from Jer. iv. 23, where the
same phrase occurs, that it means "devoid of living things." For a
commentary on this see the opening of the Babylonian account referred to
above, which refers to the period of chaos as one in which there were
neither reeds nor trees, and where "the lands altogether were sea." As
to the creative acts, we may admit that the creation of light does not
form one of them in the epic (cf. Gen. i. 3), but the existence of light
apart from the sun is presupposed; Marduk the creator is in fact a g