Berossus

Berossus was a Babylonian priest of Bel, the god Marduk, who wrote a history of Babylonia in Greek in the early third century BC. The prophets call Marduk Bel (Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 50:2). His work, the Babyloniaca, is lost. It survives only in quotations by later writers, among them Josephus and Eusebius.

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A priest in a Greek world

The second-century Christian writer Tatian says Berossus was born in the time of Alexander the Great and dedicated his three books to Antiochus, "the third after" Alexander. Antiochus is usually taken to be Antiochus I Soter, who ruled 281 to 261 BC, so the work is generally dated to the 280s or 270s BC; some scholars argue for Antiochus II.

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Creation and Oannes

In his first book, the world began as darkness and water full of monsters, ruled by a woman named Omoroca. Bel cut her in half to make earth and heaven, and the gods formed humans from earth mixed with a god's blood. The account resembles Enuma Elish, in which Marduk splits Tiamat to make heaven and earth. Berossus also told of Oannes, a creature with a fish's body and a man's head and feet who came up from the sea each day to teach people writing, law and farming. Amar Annus derives the name Oannes from U-An, the short form of Uanadapa, the first of the antediluvian sages known as the Apkallu.

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The flood

Berossus listed ten kings before the flood, from Aloros to Xisouthros, who together reigned 120 sars, or 432,000 years. Genesis 5 lists ten generations from Adam to Noah, and the two lists have often been compared. In his account the god Kronos, whom scholars equate with Ea, warns Xisouthros in a dream of a coming flood. Xisouthros builds a ship and takes his family, friends and animals. After the rain he sends out birds three times; the third does not return. The ship comes to rest in the Kordyaean mountains of Armenia, where, Josephus reports, people said part of the ship still remained (Antiquities 1.93; see Mountains of Ararat).

The story resembles Genesis 6 to 9 and Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in its divine warning, great ship, animals saved and birds sent out. Alexander Heidel, writing in 1949, called the explanation that the biblical account is based on Babylonian material the most widely accepted of his day, and quoted S. R. Driver's view that the story was "indigenous in Babylonia, and transplanted to Palestine." Berossus wrote in the third century BC, long after the cuneiform flood stories were written down. Alan Millard wrote that the Genesis and Mesopotamian accounts "undoubtedly describe the same Flood" and added that borrowing "has yet to be shown." Heidel himself wrote that the outline is the same but "the animating spirit" is different, because in Genesis the flood is a moral judgment.

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Nebuchadnezzar and the last kings of Babylon

Josephus quotes Berossus on Nebuchadnezzar II because, he says, the Babylonian records "have a great agreement with our books" (Against Apion 1.128-153). When his father Nabopolassar died, Nebuchadnezzar hurried across the desert to Babylon and had the captives from the Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians and Egyptians settled in colonies in Babylonia.

Berossus says Nebuchadnezzar's son Evil-merodach governed lawlessly and was killed after two years by his sister's husband, Neriglissar (Against Apion 1.147). Evil-merodach is the king of Babylon who freed Jehoiachin of Judah from prison (2 Kings 25:27).

The list, as Josephus gives it, ends with Nabonnedus, the Greek form of Nabonidus, whom conspirators made king. In his seventeenth year Cyrus came out of Persia and took Babylon, and Nabonnedus surrendered and was sent to live in Carmania (Against Apion 1.149-153). The list does not name Belshazzar. The Cylinders of Nabonidus from Ur carry a prayer for Nabonidus and for "Belshazzar, (my) first-born son"; they do not call Belshazzar king. His role is covered in his own entry.

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How his work reached us

Most of what survives came through Alexander Polyhistor, whose summary Eusebius copied into his Chronicle. In 1498 the Dominican Annius of Viterbo published forged "books of Berossus."