Hi Paul
I judge from the tone and content of your letter that you appreciate a
thorough discussion, so if you wish, I can join you in considering the Enuma
elish, Egyptian and other Near-East creation stories and their relationship
to Gen.1. I'm afraid I tend to be lengthy, because this is a concomitant of
thoroughness, so here you are:
Neil McKenzie PhD
In a message dated 5/4/02 2:51:05 am, PHSEELY@aol.com writes:
<< Secondly, Gen 1, particularly 1:6-7 with its division of the primeval
waters,
reflects the Babylonian creation account inasmuch as Enuma Elish is the only
other creation account which has this unique feature. (Two other accounts of
the c. 150 creation accounts readily available have this feature but are
considered for other reasons to have been influenced by the biblical account
via missionaries.) Also, the order of events in Gen 1 is much more similar to
the order of events in Enuma Elish than in any other creation story (See E.A.
Speiser, Genesis or Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis). In addition, all peoples
before the rise of Western science believed the sky was solid, so that is not
unique to Gen and Enuma Elish, but placing the waters above the sky is rarely
found anywhere except in these two accounts. There is, therefore, an
objective basis for recognizing that Gen 1 is reflecting an ancient Near
Eastern view of creation. Hence no "excuse" is necessary for accepting this
fact. I think Calvin's view of accommodation, which I follow in principle,
explains why Gen reflects the Babylonian view of creation; but, it is not
necessary that one believe in accommodation to recognize that Gen 1 is
reflecting such a view. >>
Response
The closest ancient literary parallels to Gen.1 –38 come from Mesopotamia.
Enuma elish, the story of the god Marduk’s rise to supremacy in the
Babylonian pantheon, is similar in some respects to the Gen. 1 creation
account. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh epic is quite similar to the flood
narrative of Gen. 6-8. Several of the main events of Gen.1-8 are narrated in
the same order as similar events in the Atrahasis epic, which features the
same basic motif of creation-rebellion-flood as the biblical account.
J. Krasovec 100 points out that "The heaven and the Earth" is an
all-inclusive phrase denoting the totality of all matter, everything from the
nuclei of the atoms of the (planet) Earth to the stars and galaxies of (the)
heaven(s). The individual Hebrew words used for ‘heaven’ and ‘Earth’ can
mean respectively, ‘sky’ or ‘heaven’ i.e. the abode of God; and ‘Earth’
i.e. world, which is man’s home (as in v 2). However, as Krasovec observes,
it is common usage in many languages to use extremes to denote a total range
which includes everything between, and including, the extremes. Further,
Ottosson 101 and Stadelmann 102 write that in the OT as well as in Egyptian,
Akkadian, and the writings found at Ugarit, "heaven and Earth" may be used to
denote the Universe, as in Gen.14:19, 22; 24:3; Is.66:1; Ps.89:12. Schofield,
a dispensationalist, was responsible for securing much popular support for
the a gap theory of an order-chaos-re-order series of events by supporting
this interpretation in his reference Bible. Indeed, many commentators insist
that the phrase "heaven and Earth" implies an ordered Universe i.e. a Cosmos.
However, it may be observed that, although this is usually true, the main
authorial thrust here is of totality, the immensity of the scope of Yahweh’s
creation, vis-à-vis the regional boundaries of many of the gods of Israel’s
neighbours. Yet the question remains as to whether the text supports an
order-chaos-re-order interpretation over and against a low order-increasing
order, where v 3 onwards elucidates the manner in which God elaborated the
initial low state of order by stages into an harmonious state of perfect
adaptation. The more natural reading is that the Earth in v. 2 was in a
particular state prior to the first divine command. Hence we turn to v. 2 to
establish clues to the nature of this original state.
"Formless and empty" (NIV) is a typical modern rendering of the Hebrew, tohu
va-vohu, or tohu waw bohu, literally "waste (without form) and void". Tohu
occurs twenty times in the OT and is translated in various ways (e.g. ten in
the KJV). It has two main senses: either "nothingness" (e.g. Is.29:21), or,
as here, "chaos, disorder", most frequently of the untracked desert where a
man can lose his way and die (e.g. Dt.32:10; Job 6:18). Jamieson, Fausett and
Brown in their commentary write that "confusion and emptiness," as the words
are rendered in Isaiah 34:11, means that this globe, at some undescribed
period, having been convulsed and broken up, was a dark and watery waste for
ages perhaps, till out of this chaotic state, the present fabric of the world
was made to arise. In this approach they follow Schofield and the gap theory.
However, Bohu does not connotate a desolation (as required by the gap
theory), but rather "emptiness, void". The combination of "waste" and "void"
in a compound phrase, as in Is.34:11 and Jer.4:23, emphasises the dreadful
state of everything before God began to impose order by His word. Matthew
Henry comments, and John Wesley in his notes agrees, that
"chaos was the first matter. It is here called the Earth (though the Earth,
properly taken, was not made till the third day v. 10), because it did most
resemble that which afterwards was called Earth, mere Earth, destitute of its
ornaments, such a heavy unwieldy mass was it; it is also called the deep,
both for its vastness and because the waters which were afterwards separated
from the Earth were now mixed with it. This immense mass of matter was it out
of which all bodies, even the firmament and visible heavens themselves, were
afterwards produced by the power of the Eternal Word".
Jeremiah’s prophetic vision in 4:23-27 of the return of the primal chaos
clarifies the meaning of the phrase. The same thought is developed in the use
of "darkness". If light symbolises, and indeed characterises (in a physical,
moral and spiritual sense), God, then darkness evokes everything which is
anti-God or without God: e.g. the wicked (Prov.2:13), judgement (Ex.10:21),
death (Ps.88:13). The absence of physical light and therefore the total
invisibility of "the deep" is, prima facie, a parallelism emphasising the
utter disorder and lack of direction of the formless Earth. Yet it may also
hint at the brooding presence of God, veiled in the darkness prior to a great
act of self-revelation (see e.g. Deut.4:11; 5:23; Ps.18:12). Matthew Henry
correctly observes that "God did not create this darkness (as he is said to
create the darkness of affliction, Isa. 45:7), for it was only the want of
light, which yet could not be said to be wanted till something was made that
might be seen by it."
"The deep" or alternatively, "deep waters", occurs 36 times in the OT.
Brown’s lexicon 103 translates the Hebrew tehom as "deep, sea,
abyss…primeval ocean, depth", and Holladay 104 provides "primeval ocean,
deep, deeps of sea…subterranean water". The Septuagint translates it as abnsso
s, which Thayer 105 in his lexicon renders as "the immeasurable deep". In a
small number of passages including this one, the Hebrew word is identified
with the primeval ocean that is supposed to surround the single land mass,
and also underlie it (e.g. Gen 7:11). There is no suggestion anywhere in the
Bible that the deep was a power, opposed to God, over which He had to triumph
in order to gain control of creation. This matter needs to be addressed as it
bears on the authorial intent, and hence exegesis, of our text. Beginning
with the discovery of the Enuma elish in the late 1800’s, much attention has
been given to the relationship between Tiamat and the Hebrew word for deep,
tehom. In Babylonian myth, Tiamat is the aggressive monster who is the ocean
goddess who leads the battle against Anu, the supreme god. Tiamat is the
embodiment of evil who seeks to overcome the good, but she is thwarted in
this bid for supremacy by Marduk – another deity – who kills her and then
slits her body lengthwise, like a shellfish. From these two parts of her body
Marduk forms heaven and Earth. Supporting the association of Tiamat with
tehom is the fact that tehom is feminine, and that, in thirty-three of its
thirty-five OT occurrences, it appears without the definite article (the
exceptions being Is.63:13 and Ps. 106:9). This fact suggests that tehom may
well be a proper name; hence the suggestion that tehom may be a Hebraised
form of Tiamat. This hypothesis is further strengthened by:
1. The association of tehom with verbs that can be applied only to humans or
animals; e.g. Gen.49:25, "the deep that lies (couches or crouches) below,"
and Hab.3:10, "the deep gave forth its voice." However, in the latter
reference, the pronominal prefix on "voice" is 3rd masc. sing. ("his voice"
not "her voice"), indicating that tehom was also understood as masculine. In
fact tehom is masculine in form. The feminine is indicated when an adjective (
tehom rabba, Gen.7:11) or a participle (tehom robeset, Gen.49:25) follows,
and in the three plural forms of tehomot).
2. In several uses of tehom, apart from Gen.1:2, that occur in a context
dealing with Yahweh’s destruction of superhuman monsters e.g. Is.51:9-11
where the list of Yahweh’s conquests includes Rahab, the dragon, the sea, and
the waters of the great "deep".
Thus, Gunkel suggested, supported by Otzen 106 , that "the deep" is to be
identified with Tiamat, and hence Gen.1:2 was an allusion to the Mesopotamian
creation myths. However, Heidel 107 showed that a direct borrowing was
impossible. Both Hebrew and Babylonian Tiamat are independently derived from
a common Semitic root. Westermann 108 adds that the OT usage of "the deep"
does "not allow us to speak of a demythologising of a mythical idea or name
as do many commentaries." He adopts a P-source view, and notes that, "When P
inherited the word…it had long been used to describe a flood of waters
without any mythical echo." Whilst not adopting Westermann’s source-critical
view, it should be stressed that the main point to make is not that there is
no connection with Near Eastern creation myths, for ancient cosmogonies
commonly contained primeval flood stories, but rather that "the deep" is not
directly alluding to the conquest of Tiamat as in the Babylonian myth. Two
further examples of other ancient creation stories that contain a concept of
a god of the primeval waters are the Egyptians, with Nu – the source of all
things – and the Greek philosopher Thales 109 . Further, the "deep" of Gen.1
is so far removed functionally from the Tiamat of Enuma elish that any
possible relationship is obscured. The "deep" of Gen.1 is not personified and
there is no hint that it is associated with some deep antagonistic force or
being. R.L.Harris 110 notes that strong linguistic arguments may be adduced
against the philological relationship of tehom and Tiamat . Victor Hamilton
111 concludes that "Much more likely is the correspondence between Heb. tehom
and Ugar. Thm (dual thmtm, plural thmt), "deep, depth(s)," or even earlier
Eblaite ti-‘a-matum, "ocean abyss." This is supported by G. Petinato 112 .
The precise nature of "the deep" and, more particularly, the waters that are
associated with it form our next concern. We shall not address the possible
meanings of weruah elohim (the Spirit of God, the spirit of God, a wind from
God, an awesome gale) as it is not directly pertinent to our study.
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