George Smith, who brought to light the Assyrian
Creation tablets, brought also to light a Babylonian account of the
Flood, which had a large number of features in common with the narrative
of Gen. vi.-ix. The actual resemblance between the two Deluge narratives
has caused a resemblance to be imagined between the two Creation
narratives. It has been well brought out in some of the later comments
of Assyriologists that, so far from there being any resemblance in the
Babylonian legend to the narrative in Genesis, the two accounts differ
_in toto_. Mr. T. G. Pinches, for example, points out that in the
Babylonian account there is--

"No direct statement of the creation of the heavens and the
earth;

"No systematic division of the things created into groups and
classes, such as is found in Genesis;

"No reference to the Days of Creation;

"No appearance of the Deity as the first and only cause of the
existence of things."[30:1]

Indeed, in the Babylonian account, "the heavens and the earth are
represented as existing, though in a chaotic form, from the first."

Yet on this purely imaginary resemblance between the Biblical and
Babylonian Creation narratives the legend has been founded "that the
introductory chapters of the Book of Genesis present to us the Hebrew
version of a mythology common to many of the Semitic peoples." And the
legend has been yet further developed, until writers of the standing of
Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch have claimed that the Genesis narrative was
_borrowed_ from the Babylonian, though "the priestly scholar who
composed Genesis, chapter i. endeavoured of course to remove all
possible mythological features of this Creation story."[31:1]

If the Hebrew priest did borrow from the Babylonian myth, what was it
that he borrowed? Not the existence of sea and land, of sun and moon, of
plants and animals, of birds and beasts and fishes. For surely the
Hebrew may be credited with knowing this much of himself, without any
need for a transportation to Babylon to learn it. "In writing an account
of the Creation, statements as to what are the things created must of
necessity be inserted,"[31:2] whenever, wherever, and by whomsoever that
account is written.

What else, then, is there common to the two accounts? _Tiamat_ is the
name given to the Babylonian mother of the universe, the dragon of the
deep; and in Genesis it is written that "darkness was upon the face of
the