The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and BabyloniaPinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Religion
The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia
Pinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
That the sea was the abode of the god of knowledge seems to have been the
belief of the Babylonians from the earliest times. According to Berosus,
whose record has been preserved by Apollodoros, Abydenus, and Alexander
Polyhistor, there appeared more than once, from the Erythræan Sea (the
Persian Gulf), “the Musaros Oannes, the Annedotos,” a creature half man
and half fish, probably conceived in shape of the deity answering to this
description found on certain Babylonian cylinder-seals, in a sculpture
with representations of marine monsters, now preserved in the Louvre, and
in the divine figures in the shape of a man clothed with a fish’s skin,
preserved in the form of clay statuettes and large sculptures
(bas-reliefs) in the British Museum. Abydenus apparently understands
Berosus differently, for he makes Annedotos and Oannes to be different
personages. All those who have quoted Berosus, however, agree in the main
point, that these beings, half man and half fish, came out of the sea to
teach mankind. There is hardly any doubt that in some of these cases the
deity that is intended is the god whose name is now read Ae or Ea, who was
called Aos by Damascius. After the appearance of the fourth Annedotos,
there came another person, also from the Erythræan Sea, named Odakon,
having, like the former, the same complicated form, between a man and a
fish. To these names Abydenus, still quoting Berosus, adds those of four
more “double-shaped personages” named Euedocos, Eneugamos, Eneuboulos, and
Anementos. These last came forth in the reign of Daos (probably Dumuzi
(Duwuzi) or Tammuz) the shepherd, of Pantibiblon (Sippar or Sippara), who
reigned for the space of ten sari (360,000 years)! “After these things was
Anodaphos, in the time of Euedoreschos.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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