Note 726 — Chapter X · THE HEBREW MYTH IN THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.

I must mention a third view on the concurrence of the Hebrew with the Aryan story of the primeval age; it is that which was first declared by Ewald in his History of Israel, I. 224 et seqq., and is adopted by Lassen and Weber among the Germans, and by Burnouf and (with some hesitation) Renan among the French. In this view the coincidences in the respective primitive stories are to be accounted for by common prehistoric traditions which the Aryans and the Semites formed in their original common dwelling-place concerning primeval history. Renan speaks shortly on the subject in his Histoire gén. des Langues sémitiques, pp. 480 et seq.