The idea of Holy Scripture (1)

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The believe that the gods had a divine tablet, often described as being made of lapis lazuli, upon which in heaven they wrote the destinies for life on earth, was central to Mesopotamian belief. Two myths, the Epic of Anzu and the Epic of Creation, focus on possession of the Tablet of Destinies. He who holds it controls the universe, and he who loses it is powerless. The gods are thrown into utter confusion when it is stolen by a wicked enemy, for they must then defeat him under impossible conditions. An Iron Age tradition refers to Nabû, god of writing and of wisdom, as controller of the Tablet of Destinies, which was guarded by the Seven Sages and sealed with the Seal of Destinies. What the gods wrote upon that tablet was sometimes divulged to mankind through the markings on the liver and lungs of sacrificial animals, so that a liver upon which omens were read referred to as ‘the tablet of the gods’. In this way holy scripture and divination were very closely linked.

This concept is also found in Jewish traditions. Moses received the Torah direct from God in the form of two tablets of stone containing laws and commandments, inscribed with the finger of God on both sides. The books of Enoch and Jubilees refer to ‘heavenly tablets’ which include not only laws and a chronicle of contemporary events, but also predictions or revelations for the future.

In Gnostic writings attributed to Hermes it was the emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistos that contained the secrets of the gods, and was sometimes said to have been sealed with the seal of Hermes. Hermes was called Trismegistos ‘thrice great’ because he was thought to embody the wisdom of three ancient sages: the Greek Hermes, the Mesopotamian-Jewish Enoch, and the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing Thoth, a conflation reflected in Bardesanes’s understanding that Babylonian and Egyptian writings could not be distinguished.

Islam inherited the concept of a holy tablet. It is found in the cosmology of al-Suyūṭi describing the tablet and stylus of God who creates by writing upon it, and will continue to do so until the Day of Judgement. The tablet is made of ‘hyacinth’ on one side and green ‘smaragd’ on the other, and it contains laws and divine judgements. This is the Book of Fate, mentioned in surah 85 of the Qur’ān, which was considered to be a text transmitted by Gabriel direct from heavenly tablets to Muhammad. Arab tradition regarded Babylonian knowledge as transplanted into Egypt, and described Hermes Trismegistos as a Babylonian who lived in Egypt.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Qur’ān, Surah 85:22

Bibliography

Stephanie Dalley

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