dragon of chaos and darkness is conspicuous by her absence. This may illustrate the fact that the dragon is also unmentioned in the Hebrew cosmogony; to some writers the dragon-element may have seemed grotesque and inappropriate. We must, however, study this element in the most important Babylonian tradition, even if only for its relation to non-Semitic myths and especially to some striking passages in the Bible (Isa. xxvii. 1, li. 9b; Ps. lxxiv. 14, lxxxix. 10, 11; Job iii. 8, ix. 13, xxvi. 12, 13; Rev. xii. 3, 4, xx. 1-3). One may also be permitted to hold that the mythic figure of the dragon, if used poetically, is a highly serviceable one, and consider that “in the beginning God fought with the dragon, and slew him” would have formed an admirable illustration of the passages just now referred to, especially to those in the Apocalypse.
The student should, however, notice that the dragon-element is not entirely unrepresented even in the priestly Hebrew cosmogony. It is said in Gen. i. 9, 10, 14, 15, that God divided the primeval waters into two parts by an intervening “firmament” or “platform,” on which the sun, moon and stars (planets) were placed to mark times and to give light. This division (cp. Ps. lxxiv. 13) is really a pale version of the old mythic statement respecting the cleaving of the carcase of Tiāmat (the Dragon) into two parts, one of which kept the upper waters from coming down.[1] And we must affirm that the technical term tĕ hōm (rendered in the English Bible “the deep”), which evidently signifies the enveloping primeval flood, and which closely resembles Tiāmat, the name given to the dragon or serpent in the epic (cf. tiamtu and tamtu, Babylonian words for “the ocean”), can only be due to the influence—probably the very early influence—of Babylonia.
But we are far from having exhausted the evidence of Babylonian influence on the Hebrew cosmogony. The description of chaos in v. 2 not only mentions the great water (tĕhōm), but the earth, i.e. the earth-matter, out of which the earth and (potentially) its varied products (vv. 9-11), and (as we know from the Babylonian epic) the “firmament” or “platform” of the heaven were to appear. This earth-matter is called “tōhu and bōhu”; there is nothing like this phrase in the epic, but we may infer from Jer. iv. 23, where the same phrase occurs, that it means “devoid of living things.” For a commentary on this see the opening of the Babylonian account referred to above, which refers to the period of chaos as one in which there were neither reeds nor trees, and where “the lands altogether were sea.” As to the creative acts, we may admit that the creation of light does not form one of them in the epic (cf. Gen. i. 3), but the existence of light apart from the sun is presupposed; Marduk the creator is in fact a god of light. Nor ought we to find a discrepancy between the Babylonian and the Hebrew accounts in the creation of the heavenly bodies after the plants, related in Gen. i. 14-18. For the position of this creative act is due to the necessity of bringing all the divine acts into the framework of six working days. On the whole, the Hebrew statement of the successive stages of creation corresponds so nearly to that in the Babylonian epic that we are bound to assume that one has been influenced by the other. And if we are asked, “Which is the more original?” we answer by appealing to the well-established fact of the profound influence of Babylonian culture upon Canaan in remote times (see Canaan). An important element in this culture would be mythic representations of the origin of things, such as the Babylonian Creation and Deluge-stories in various forms. Indeed, not only Canaan but all the neighbouring regions must have been pervaded by Babylonian views of the universe and its origin. Myths of origins there must indeed have been in those countries before Babylonian influence became so overpowering, but, if so, these myths must have become recast when the great Teacher of the Nations half-attracted and half-compelled attention. More than this we need not assert. Zimmern’s somewhat different treatment of the subject in Ency. Biblica, “Creation,” § 4, may be compared.
Popular writers are in some danger of misrepresenting this important result. It is tempting, but incorrect, to suppose that a docile Israelitish writer accepted one of the chief forms of the Babylonian cosmogony, merely omitting its polytheism and substituting “Yahweh” for “Marduk.” As we have seen, various myths of Creation may have been current both in N. Arabia (whence the Israelites may have come) and in Canaan prior to the great extension of Babylonian influence. These myths doubtless had peculiarities of their own. From one of them may have come that remarkable statement in Gen. i. 2b, “and the spirit of God (Elohim) was hovering over the face of the waters,” which, until we find some similar myth nearer home, is best illustrated and explained by a Polynesian myth (see Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, ad loc.). It is also probably to a non-Babylonian source that we owe the prescription of vegetarian or herb diet in Gen. i. 29, 30, which has a Zoroastrian parallel[2] and is evidently based on a myth of the Golden Age, independent of the Babylonian cosmogony. Gen. i., therefore, has not, as it stands, been directly borrowed from Babylonia, and yet the infused Babylonian element is so considerable that the story is, in a purely formal aspect, much more Babylonian than either Israelitish or Canaanitish or N. Arabian. We say “in a purely formal aspect,” because the strictness with which Babylonian mythic elements have been adapted in Gen. i. to the wants of a virtually monotheistic community is in the highest degree remarkable.
On the literary scheme of the Creation-story in Gen. i. see the commentaries (e.g. Dillman’s and Driver’s). On the other Old Testament references to creation, and on the prophetic doctrine of creation, see Ency. Bib., “Creation,” §§ 27-29. On the traces of dragon and serpent myths in the Old Testament and their significance, see Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos (1895)—a pioneering work of the highest merit—and Ency. Bib., “Behemoth,” “Dragon,” “Rahab,” “Serpent.” On the connexion of the Creation and the Deluge-stories, see Deluge. Cf. also the article on Babylonian and Assyrian Religion; and Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel (1907). (T. K. C.)
COSMOPOLITAN (Gr. κόσμος, world, and πολίτης, citizen), of or belonging to a “citizen of the world,” i.e. one whose sympathies, interests, whether commercial, political or social, and culture are not confined to the nation or race to which he may belong, opposed therefore to “national” or “insular.” As an attribute the word may be applied to a cultured man of the world, who has travelled widely and is at home in many forms of civilization, to such races as the Jewish, scattered through the civilized world, yet keeping beneath their cosmopolitanism the racial type pure, and also to mark a profound line of cleavage in economic and political thought.
COSNE, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Nièvre, on the right bank of the Loire at its junction with the Nohain, 37 m. N.N.W. of Nevers by the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) town, 5750; commune, 8437. Two suspension bridges unite it to the left bank of the Loire. The church of St Aignan is a building of the 12th century, restored in the 16th and 18th centuries; the only portions in the Romanesque style are the apse and the north-west portal. It formerly belonged to a Benedictine priory depending on the abbey of La Charité (Nièvre). The manufacture of files, flour-milling and tanning are carried on in the town which has a subprefecture, a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Cosne is mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary under the name of Condate, but it was not till the middle ages that it rose into importance as a military post. In the 12th century the bishop of Auxerre and the count of Nevers agreed to a division of the supremacy over the town and its territory.
COSSA, LUIGI (1831–1896), Italian economist, was born at Milan on the 27th of May 1831. Educated at the universities of Pavia, Vienna and Leipzig, he was appointed professor of political economy at Pavia in 1858. He died at Pavia on the 10th of May 1896. Cossa was the author of several works which established for him a high reputation; including Scienza delle finanze (1875, English translation 1888 under title Taxation, its Principles and Methods); Guida allo studio dell’ economia politica (1876, English translation 1880), an admirable compendium of the theoretical preliminaries of economics, with a
