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, for, as will be shown later on, they point to a development of astronomy that cannot be dated earlier than 700 B.C. On the other hand, the first chapter of Genesis was composed very early. The references to the heavenly bodies in verse 16 bear the marks of the most primitive condition possible of astronomy. The heavenly bodies are simply the greater light, the lesser light, and the stars--the last being introduced quite parenthetically. It is the simplest reference to the heavenly bodies that is made in Scripture, or that, indeed, could be made. There may well have been Babylonians who held higher conceptions of God and nature than those given in the Tiamat myth. It is certain that very many Hebrews fell short of the teaching conveyed in the first chapter of Genesis. But the fact remains that the one nation preserved the Tiamat myth, the other the narrative of Genesis, and each counted its own Creation story sacred. We can only rightly judge the two nations by what they valued. Thus judged, the Hebrew nation stands as high above the Babylonian in intelligence, as well as in faith, as the first chapter of Genesis is above the Tiamat myth. FOOTNOTES: [26:1] _Records of the Past_, vol. i. p. 124. [27:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16. [28:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16. [28:2] _Records of the Past_, vol. i. p. 140. [28:3] _Ibid._ p. 142. [30:1] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 49. [31:1] _Babel and Bible_, Johns' translation, pp. 36 and 37. [31:2] _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, by T. G. Pinches, p. 48. CHAPTER IV THE FIRMAMENT The sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis presents a difficulty as to the precise meaning of the principal word, viz. that translated _firmament_.