(2100-1100 B.C.) MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS "The life of day before yesterday has departed to-day." BABYLONIAN PROVERB. "Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?” THE BABYLONIAN JOB. MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS WITH (INTRODUCTION) TH these texts we touch the true spirit of Babylonian religion. They come from the Assyrian library of Ashur-banipal, but are all of them copies of Babylonian originals. Their spirit is earnestly moral, dignified, thoughtful, but not highly elevated, deeply searching, or spiritually beautiful and ennobling. Right and wrong are quite clearly seen and defined. The god Shamash, who in earlier ages had been simply the sun, has become the god of justice; and man is to do right because Shamash will reward him on this earth. In other words, honesty is the best policy. Higher than that spirit of seeking profit, Babylonian thought hardly reached. From this statement we should, perhaps, except the final text in this section, the "Lament of the Pious Ruler," often called the Babylonian Job. In this the speaker, an ancient king, insists that he has acted rightly all his life, yet he has not been rewarded by the gods. He sees, like Job of the Bible, the breakdown of the too earthbound faith that righteousness brings material prosperity; and even as Job does, he resolutely argues the case with his god. The poem never reaches the height or depth of Job's lament; yet it is the voice of a thinker both keen and brave. In this way, it far outranks anything else Babylonian. An Assyrian commentary on this poem gives the name of the speaker, the ancient king, as Tabi-utul-Enlil, of the Sumerian city of Nippur. The composition itself, however, seems Babylonian in origin. Tabi-utul-Enlil may, therefore, have been a viceroy of Nippur under Babylon, or he may have been a merely traditional or imaginary monarch to whom a later poet thought the lament appropriate. MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS 1 BABYLONIAN PROVERBS 1 A hostile act thou shalt not perform, that fear of vengeance shall not consume thee. Thou shalt not do evil, that life eternal thou mayest obtain. Does a woman conceive when a virgin, or grow great without eating? If I put anything down, it is snatched away; if I do more than is expected, who will repay me? He has dug a well where no water is; he has raised a husk without kernel. Does a marsh receive the price of its reeds, or fields the price of their vegetation? The strong live by their own wages; the weak by the wages of their children. He is altogether good, but he is clothed with darkness. The face of a toiling ox thou shalt not strike with a goad. My knees go, my feet are unwearied; but a fool has cut into my course. His ass I am; I am harnessed to a mule; a wagon I draw; to seek reeds and fodder I go forth. The life of day before yesterday has departed to-day. If the husk is not right, the kernel is not right; it will not produce seed. The tall grain thrives, but what do we understand of it? The meager grain thrives, but what do we understand of it? The city whose weapons are not strongfore its gates shall not be thrust through. the enemy be 1 Reprinted from "Archæology and the Bible," by G. A. Barton, by permission of the publishers, the American Sunday-School Union. 246 |