Mythology

genealogical notices, partly from the Yahwist and partly from the Priestly writer. Together they represent ancient Hebrew traditions concerning the nations by whom Israel was surrounded, especially Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. While the details are confused and inaccurate, the broad outlines of the ethnology and geography correspond roughly to the arrangement of the ancient world at the dawn of Hebrew history. The sons of Japheth, the Iapetic races, are located in the Caucasus and to the north and west of Asia Minor; the sons of Ham, the Hamitic group, represented by the Egyptians and Libyans, are located in Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and northern Africa; but, incorrectly included among this group from the modern standpoint, are the Canaanites and the south Arabian peoples, who belong to the Semitic group; the sons of Shem, i.e., what we now designate as the Semitic peoples, include, according to P, the Elamites, a non-Semitic people, and Lud, also non-Semitic, if it is to be identified with Lydia; in the Yahwist’s version of Shem’s descendants (10:24-5) the majority are listed as south Arabian peoples, and Eber’s genealogy is not carried beyond his first son Peleg, whose name has no ethnic associations. This is the setting in which the myth of the Tower of Babel is embedded. It has been thought by some modern scholars that two separate traditions underlie the present form of the myth, one relating to the building of a city, Babel, and the origin of different languages; the other a tradition about the building of a tower and the dispersion of peoples in the earth; the two being subsequently woven together by the Yahwist into a single narrative, or having been already united in the source which he was using, whether oral or written. It is clear that the myth is independent, both of the ethnological setting in which it has been placed, and of the Flood myth. It represents the first human group as settling in the Euphrates delta, discovering the use of clay for bricks, a special feature of early Mesopotamian architecture, and building a city and a tower. In spite of its Mesopotamian colouring, the story cannot be of Babylonian origin. A Babylonian myth would not have represented the sacred ‘ziqqurat’, regarded by the ancient Babylonians as the bond between heaven and earth,” as an impious attempt to scale heaven, nor would the sacred name of Babylon, Bab-ili, which means ‘the gate of God’, have been derived from the a Hebrew root bll, meaning ‘confusion’, with which it has no etymological connexion. The myth rather reflects the attitude of nomads entering the fertile plains of the Delta, beholding with wonder and dread the soaring towers of Babylonian cities, and despising the multitudes speaking all the various tongues of the ancient Near East. In the Priestly writer’s account of the spread of Noah’s descendants, the dispersion of races and the rise of different languages (cf. 10:5) are regarded as the natural result of increasing population and the movements of peoples, not as the result of an act of divine judgement. Thus, while the Priestly writer has accepted the story and preserved it in the final editing of the Old Testament, agreeing, no doubt, with the religious use of it made by the Yahwist, it clearly did not form part of the source which he has used in the compilation of the ethnological notices. Similarly, the story is independent of the Flood tradition, and it may be compared with the brief I fragment inserted in the Priestly genealogy in 5:29. The forward reference in Lamech’s words can only be to the discovery of the vine, described as taking place after the Flood (9:20), a discovery which could hardly have been a comfort to the generation which perished in the Flood. The use which the Yahwist makes of the myth is in keeping with his view of the .nature of man and the divine activity which we have already seen exemplified in his use of the Creation and Flood myths. He recognizes that even after the catastrophe of the Flood human nature

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