allegory of the great eagles (Ezek. xvii. 3-8), the allegory of the caldron (Ezek. xxiv. 3-5), and the allegory of the valley full of dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii. 1-10); but there are a considerable number of others. The examples of “Wisdom” which have so far been given form an important element in the antecedents of the Wisdom literature; but that this element was not exclusively Israelite is implied in the Old Testament itself, for in a passage already quoted (1 Kings iv. 30, [verse 10 in Hebrew]) it is said: “And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt.” As in so many other respects, so, too, in the domain of Wisdom, Babylon and Egypt evidently exercised considerable influence over the Israelites[305]; and if this was so in pre-exilic times, much more will it have been the case—at any rate as far as Babylon was concerned—when a large portion, especially of the cultured classes, of the nation was brought into immediate contact with Babylonian thought during the exile. The following may be given as an example of the way in which the Babylonian conception of Wisdom influenced the Jews. According to the Babylonian cosmology, Wisdom dwelt in the depths of the sea with Ea, the creative deity. Apsu, “the deep,” is called “the house of Wisdom” because out of it came forth the Wisdom of Ea, and the word of Ea; one of the epithets applied to the god Ea is “lord of Wisdom.”[306] This conception of the “deep” being the home of Wisdom is reflected in the Wisdom Literature of the Jews; in Psalms xxxvi. 6 it is said: Thy judgements are a great deep, the original is more forcible, for literally it runs: Thy judgements are Tehom Rabbah, which is the ancient proper name for the ocean. So, too, in Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 5, Wisdom says: Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven, And in the depth of the abyss I walked.[307] Moreover, the fundamental conception of Wisdom in the Wisdom Literature (of which we shall speak presently) is its inseparable connection with God; the deeper insight of the Jewish sages saw some truth in the Babylonian conception of the origin of Wisdom, that it dwelt in the depth of the sea with the “Lord of Wisdom,” i.e. was in close touch with the creative deity, so they adopted the conception and placed it in a truer perspective.[308] What Kohler[309] says in a somewhat different connection is applicable here: “As soon as monotheism was firmly established as a result of the labours of the prophets, the wisdom of the east could be consulted by Israel’s sages, and questions concerning the origin of all things could be answered, in both poetry and prose, far more intelligently than had been possible for the ancient Babylonians.”