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Word Gems
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David's "Babylonian" Psalms
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Preview and Summary: Babylonian hymns, chants, and liturgy, discovered in surviving clay tablets, reveal an astounding similarity to David's psalms and even modern church formularies.
Will Durant informs us that ancient Babylonian religion conducted itself in ritual, pageantry, and words, that echo the rites of modern churches. In my biblical-study travels, even as a young man, I was aware of such anomaly. However, I was not prepared for certain detail supplied by Durant.
The prayers, the poetic liturgy, the chanted formularies, so closely resemble the psalms of David; and, by extension, much of the literary ceremony of the modern church.
See this example, which seems to be a quotation from David's psalms in the Bible:
I, thy servant, full of sighs cry unto thee.
Thou acceptest the fervent prayer of him who is burdened with sin.
Thou lookest upon a man, and that man lives...
Look with true favor upon me, and accept my supplication...
or this:
Mankind is perverted and has no judgment;
Of all men who are alive, who knows anything?
They do not know whether they do good or evil.
O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant;
He is cast into the mire; take his hand!
The sin which I have sinned, turn to mercy!
The iniquity which I have committed, let the wind carry away!
My transgressions tear off like a garment!
My God, my sins are seven times seven; forgive my sins!
or this:
Lord, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds! ...
I sink under affliction, I can no longer raise my head;
I turn to my merciful God to call upon him, and I groan! ...
Lord, reject not thy servant!
Is not all this a reminiscent cadence and resonance with much that we find in the Authorized Version's Psalms?
Will Durant comments:
"Such psalms and hymns were sung sometimes by the [Babylonian] priests, sometimes by the congregation... Perhaps the strangest circumstance about them is that - like all the religious literature of Babylon - they were written in the ancient Sumerian language, which served the Babylonian and the Assyrian churches precisely as Latin serves the Roman Catholic Church today. And just as a Catholic hymnal may juxtapose the Latin text to a vernacular translation, so some of the hymns that have come down to us from Mesopotamia have Babylonian or Assyrian translation written between the lines of the "classic" Sumerian original... And as the form of these hymns and rituals led to the Psalms of the Jews and the liturgy of the Roman Church, so their content presaged the pessimistic and sin-struck plaints of the Jews, and the early Christians, and the modern Puritans. The sense of sin ... filled the Babylonian chants, and rang a note that survives in all Semitic liturgies and their anti-Semitic derivatives."
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