estion as unproved or improbable,
Ezekiel's reference to Noah surely presupposes that at least some
version of the Flood story was familiar to the Hebrews before the
Captivity. And this conclusion is confirmed by other Babylonian
parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, in which oral tradition
rather than documentary borrowing must have played the leading part.(1)
Thus Babylonian parallels may be cited for many features in the story
of Paradise,(2) though no equivalent of the story itself has been
recovered. In the legend of Adapa, for example, wisdom and immortality
are the prerogative of the gods, and the winning of immortality by man
is bound up with eating the Food of Life and drinking the Water of
Life; here too man is left with the gift of wisdom, but immortality is
withheld. And the association of winged guardians with the Sacred Tree
in Babylonian art is at least suggestive of the Cherubim and the Tree
of Life. The very side of Eden has now been identified in Southern
Babylonia by means of an old boundary-stone acquired by the British
Museum a year or two ago.(3)

(1) See Loisy, _Les mythes babyloniens_, pp. 10 ff., and cf.
S. Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, t. II, pp. 386
ff.

(2) Cf. especially Skinner, _Genesis_, pp. 90 ff. For the
latest discussion of the Serpent and the Tree of Life,
suggested by Dr. Skinner's summary of the evidence, see
Frazer in _Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway_
(1913), pp. 413 ff.

(3) See _Babylonian Boundary Stones in the British Museum_
(1912), pp. 76 ff., and cf. _Geographical Journal_, Vol. XL,
No. 2 (Aug., 1912), p. 147. For the latest review of the
evidence relating to the site of Paradise, see Boissier, "La
situation du paradis terrestre", in _Le Globe_, t. LV,
Memoires (Geneva, 1916).

But I need not now detain you by going over this familiar ground. Such
possible echoes from Babylon seem to suggest pre-exilic influence rather
than late borrowing, and they surely justify us in inquiring to what
periods of direct or indirect contact, earlier than the Captivity, the
resemblances between Hebrew and Babylonian ideas may be traced. One
point, which we may regard as definitely settled by our new material, is
that these stories of the Creation and of the early history of the
world were not of Semitic origin. It is no longer possible to regard
the Hebrew and Babylonian Versions as de