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Updated: June 16, 2025
In this way he evidently distinguished the god of Nippur from Bel-Marduk, similarly as Hammurabi in one place adds Dagan to Bel, to make it perfectly clear what god he meant.
The so-called Babylonian exile brought Hebrews and Babylonians once more side by side. Under the stimulus of this direct contact, the final shape was given by Hebrew writers to their cosmological speculations. Yahwe is assigned the rôle of Bel-Marduk, the division of the work of creation into six days is definitely made, and some further modifications introduced.
In the case of Hammurabi's immediate successor, as has been pointed out, the equation Bel-Marduk is distinctly set down, but, for all that, the double employment of the name continues even through the period of the Assyrian supremacy over Babylonia. The northern rulers now use Bel to designate the more ancient god, and, again, merely as a designation of Marduk.
From Chemos in Moab, from Rimmon among the Ammonites, no such edict had come. It felled them. Amon-Râ it tore from the celestial Nile, and Bel-Marduk from the Silver Sky. The Refaïm hid them in shadows as surely as they buried there the high and potent lords of Greece and Rome. These interments, completed by others, the prophets began.
It seems to me that the addition which emphasizes this identity of Bel with another god, Dagan, is to indicate that the Bel of the triad, and not Bel-Marduk, is here meant. 'Governor of Bel' for governor of Babylonia, and 'subjects of Bel' for subjects of Babylonia. See p. 89 and chapter vii. Rassam, Cylinder ix. 75. See chapter xii., "The Assyrian Pantheon," p. 208.
As a consequence, Bel and Marduk are blended into one personage, Marduk becoming known as Bel-Marduk, and finally, the first part of the compound sinking to the level of a mere adjective, the god is addressed as 'lord Marduk, or 'Marduk, the lord. The old Bel is entirely forgotten, or survives at best in conventional association with Anu and Ea, as a member of the ancient triad.
Perhaps in one religious center and at a time when Ea was the chief god, still another version existed which assigned the triumph to Ea, for as will be pointed out, traditions waver between assigning to Ea or to Bel-Marduk so fundamental a function as the creation of mankind. In short, the present form of the creation epic is 'eclectic' and embodies what the Germans call a tendenz.
At times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the old Bel and again to Bel-Marduk, under the same designation. While acknowledging Marduk as one of the chief gods, these foreign rulers in Babylonia the Cassites did not feel the same attachment to him as Hammurabi did.
Narbonadius, the second successor of Nebuchadnezzar, had quarrelled with the priesthood of Babylon, and neglected the worship of Bel-Marduk and Nebo, the special patron gods of that city. The captive Jews also, who had been now nearly fifty years in the land, had grown more zealous for their own God and religion, more influential and wealthy, and even had become in some sort a power in the State.
Marduk is not only frequently known as Bel, but what is more, Babylonia is the country of Bel, or simply Bel, and the Babylonians are referred to as 'the subjects of Bel, or the 'humanity of Bel. There can be no doubt that in all these cases Bel-Marduk is meant and not the older Bel.
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