of the Fall are found in the myth of Adapa and the South-wind, discovered amongst the Tel-Amarna Tablets, and therefore known in Palestine in the 15th cent. B.C. (KIB, vi. 1, 92-101). Adapa, the son of the god Ea, is endowed by him with the fulness of divine wisdom, but denied the gift of immortality:
"Wisdom I gave him, immortality I gave him not."
While plying the trade of a fisherman on the Persian Gulf, the south-wind overwhelms his bark, and in revenge Adapa breaks the wings of the south-wind. For this offence he is summoned by Anu to appear before the assembly of the gods in heaven; and Ea instructs him how to appease the anger of Anu. Then the gods, disconcerted by finding a mortal in possession of their secrets, resolve to make the best of it, and to admit him fully into their society, by conferring on him immortality. They offer him food of life that he may eat, and water of life that he may drink. But Adapa had previously been deceived by Ea, who did not wish him to become immortal. Ea had said that what would be offered to him would be food and water of death, and had strictly cautioned him to refuse. He did refuse, and so missed immortal life. Anu laments over his infatuated refusal:
"Why, Adapa! Wherefore hast thou not eaten, not drunken, so that
Thou wilt not live. . .?" "Ea, my lord,
Commanded, 'Eat not and drink not!'"
"Take him and bring him back to his earth!"
This looks almost like a travesty of the leading ideas of Gn. 3; yet the common features are very striking. In both we have the idea that wisdom and immortality combined constitute equality with deity; in both we have a man securing the first and missing the second; and in both the man is counselled in opposite directions by supernatural voices, and acts on that advice which is contrary to his interest. There is, of course, the vital difference that while Yahwe forbids both wisdom and immortality to man, Ea confers the first (and thus far plays the part of the biblical serpent) but withholds the second, and Anu is ready to bestow both. Still, it is not too much to expect that a story like this will throw light on the mythological antecedents of the Genesis narrative, if not directly on that narrative itself (see below, p. 94).
What is true of Babylonian affinities holds good in a lesser degree of the ancient mythologies as a whole: everywhere we find echoes of the Paradise myth, but nowhere a story which forms an exact parallel to Gn. 2. 3. The Græco-Roman traditions told of a 'golden age,' lost through the increasing sinfulness of the race,—an age when the earth freely yielded its fruits, and men lived in a happiness undisturbed by toil or care or sin (Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 90-92, 109-120; Ovid, Met. i. 89-112, etc.); but they knew nothing of a sudden fall. Indian and Persian mythologies told, in addition, of sacred mountains where the gods dwelt, with bright gold and flashing gems, and miraculous trees conferring immortality, and every imaginable blessing; and we have seen that similar representations were current in Babylonia. The nearest approach to definite counterparts of the biblical narrative
