Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics.
A lecture on the myths of Babylonia may perhaps seem out of
place in a course, the subject of which is Babylonian religion. But
religion has its mythology as well as its theology, and sometimes
the mythology has had a good deal to do with moulding or even
creating its theology. Moreover, the myths of Babylonia were
intimately connected with its worship of the gods. They all
related, so far as we know, to the gods and spirits, or else, to what
Greek theology would have called heroes and demi-gods. They
embody religious beliefs and practices; they contain allusions to
local cults; above all, they not unfrequently reflect the popular
conception of the divine.
Only we must beware of basing theological conclusions on
their unsupported evidence. They have come to us in a literary
form, and students of folk-lore know how little trustworthy, even
for the purposes of the folk-lorist, a tale is which has undergone
literary remodelling. It is difficult to distinguish in it what is
peculiar to the individual author or the literary circle in which
he moves, and what is really the belief of the people or the
traditional heritage of the past. In fact, all mythology, whether
literary or otherwise, suffers from the mixture within it of old
and modern ideas. The old ideas may be preserved in it like the
fossils in a geological formation, or they may have been coloured
[423] and explained away in accordance with the conceptions of a
later age; but in either case they are mingled with the beliefs
and notions of after generations, which our ignorance necessarily
prevents us from separating with the requisite care. In dealing
with the history of religion, therefore, we ought to treat the
language of a literary myth with extreme caution, and refrain
from drawing any far-reaching inferences from the statements
we find in it.
This is more especially true of the literary epics of ancient
Babylonia. They seem to have been numerous; at all events