Today scholars are agreed that the first twelve chapters of Genesis are largely a _refacimento_ of mythical deposit found among the Semites and genetically closely related to the Babylonian cosmologies and epic stories. The Hebrew writers purged the old myths of their polytheism, breathed into them a new spirit, and made them the bearers of higher religious truth. But Adam and Eve are as genuinely semitic mythical creations as _Adapa_, or _Eabani_ and Ukhat, the spouse of the latter, who, like Adam, was created out of clay. When we read in the 10th chapter of Joshua the account of Joshua's miraculous victory over the combined forces of the five Amoritic kings we can now parallel it with like marvels in Assyria: "And it came to pass as they fled before Israel ... that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: there were more who died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." In the same way, the enemies of Esarhaddon are to be slain by the goddess of war, Ishtar. Owing to the political relations into which the people of Israel and Judah were brought to the empires of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the compilers of the historical books of The O. T., and the prophets have given us incidental, valuable, but not always unprejudiced notices of their kinsmen to the East. The II. Book of Kings touches upon some noteworthy events from the time of Tiglathpileser II. including the fall of Israel and Judah. Characteristic of these notices is the complete omission of Sargon's name except in Isaiah 20:1, where until the discovery of the inscriptions it was thought to be an official title, although he was the one who completed the conquest of the northern kingdom, the "House of Omri," as he calls it, and deported its inhabitants. It is difficult indeed for an Assyriologist to imagine an Assyrian _rabshak_ speaking to the messengers of Hezekiah as that officer is reported to have done in II. Kings 18:25f.: "Am I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it." This Yahwe (Lord) Isaiah declares the Assyrian blasphemed, an act, which, to say the least, was more in accord with his usual temper. Yahwe was no more in the estimation of Sennacherib than the gods of the petty principalities of Hamath and Arpad. The truth seems to be that the writer in the book of Kings makes the _rabshak_ speak as he is alleged to have spoken just as the babylonian priests declared that Cyrus had been called to the conquest of Babylon by the Babylonian god Marduk.