_deep_ (_teh[=o]m_)."

Here, and here only, is a point of possible connection; but if it be
evidence of a connection, what kind of a connection does it imply? It
implies that the Babylonian based his barbarous myth upon the Hebrew
narrative. There is no other possible way of interpreting the
connection,--if connection there be.

The Hebrew word would seem to mean, etymologically, "_surges_,"
"_storm-tossed waters_,"--"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy
waterspouts." Our word "_deep_" is apt to give us the idea of
stillness--we have the proverb, "Still waters run deep,"--whereas in
some instances _teh[=o]m_ is used in Scripture of waters which were
certainly shallow, as, for instance, those passed through by Israel at
the Red Sea:--

"Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea:
his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The
_depths_ have covered them."

In other passages the words used in our Authorized Version, "_deep_" or
"_depths_," give the correct signification.

But deep waters, or waters in commotion, are in either case natural
objects. We get the word _teh[=o]m_ used continually in Scripture in a
perfectly matter-of-fact way, where there is no possibility of
personification or myth being intended. Tiamat, on the contrary, the
Babylonian dragon of the waters, is a mythological personification. Now
the natural object must come first. It never yet has been the case that
a nation has gained its knowledge of a perfectly common natural object
by de-mythologizing one of the mythological personifications of another
nation. The Israelites did not learn about _teh[=o]m_, the surging water
of the Red Sea, that rolled over the Egyptians in their sight, from any
Babylonian fable of a dragon of the waters, read by their descendants
hundreds of years later.

Yet further, the Babylonian account of Creation is comparatively late;
the Hebrew account, as certainly, comparatively early. It is not merely
that the actual cuneiform tablets are of date about 700 B.C., coming as
they do from the Kouyunjik mound, the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib
and Assurbanipal, built about that date. The poem itself, as Prof. Sayce
has pointed out, indicates, by the peculiar pre-eminence given in it to
Merodach, that it is of late composition. It was late in the history of
Babylon that Merodach was adopted as the supreme deity. The astronomical
references in the poem are more conclusive still,