y of the
Creation and Fall of Man, _such as we have found among the Hebrews_;
they therefore could not have learned it from _them_. The _Chaldeans_,
however, as we saw in our first chapter, had this legend, and it is from
them that the Hebrews borrowed it.

The account which we have given of the Chaldean story of the Creation
and Fall of Man, was taken, as we stated, from the writings of Berosus,
the Chaldean historian, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great
(356-325 B. C.), and as the Jews were acquainted with the story some
centuries earlier than this, his works did not prove that these
traditions were in Babylonia before the Jewish captivity, and could not
afford testimony in favor of the statement that the Jews borrowed this
legend from the Babylonians _at that time_. It was left for Mr. George
Smith, of the British Museum, to establish, without a doubt, the fact
that this legend was known to the Babylonians at least _two thousand
years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus_. The cuneiform
inscriptions discovered by him, while on an expedition to Assyria,
organized by the London "Daily Telegraph," was the means of doing this,
and although by far the greatest number of these tablets belong to the
age of Assurbanipal, who reigned over Assyria B. C. 670, it is
"acknowledged on all hands that these tablets are not the originals,
_but are only copies from earlier texts_." "The Assyrians acknowledge
themselves that this literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources,
and of course it is to Babylonia we have to look to ascertain the
approximate dates of the original documents."[98:2] Mr. Smith then
shows, from "fragments of the Cuneiform account of the Creation and
Fall" which have been discovered, that, "_in the period from B. C. 2000
to 1500, the Babylonians believed in a story similar to that in
Genesis_." It is probable, however, says Mr. Smith, that this legend
existed as _traditions_ in the country _long before it was committed to
writing_, and some of these traditions exhibited great difference in
details, _showing that they had passed through many changes_.[99:1]

Professor James Fergusson, in his celebrated work on "Tree and Serpent
Worship," says:

"The two chapters which refer to this (_i. e._, the Garden,
the Tree, and the Serpent), as indeed the whole of the first
eight of Genesis, are now generally admitted by scholars to be
made up of fragments of earlier books or earl