Dick Fischer wrote:
> Shuan Rose wrote:
>
>
>> I recently had a look at my copy of Bernard Anderson's "
>> Creation & Chaos", a collection of lectures dealing with these
>> topics. His first lecture" Creation and History" gives a very good
>> explanation of the interrelation between history and the various
>> creation accounts in the Bible. He argues that Israel borrowed
>> elements from what was originally the pagan mytholgies of the Middle
>> East , rewrote them, and integrated them into an historical account
>> of the saving acts of God.
>
>
> Sumerologists advocate that since the Sumerians were first to write,
> and they wrote about matters of creation, the flood, etc., that the
> Accadians, later Hebrews, borrowed and eventually Hebrew versions got
> caught up in the Bible. Alternatively, we could believe that the
> Accadians and Sumerians who lived side by side were impacted by
> historical events equally, and recorded their own versions.
>
> The Sumerians invented handwriting, and the Accadians learned from
> them, so if we just look at chronological order, Sumerian versions
> should be older. But to say that the Hebrews copied "pagan
> mythologies" is supposition only, and beyond what can be confirmed.
The biblical writers did not just copy pagan myths in a slavish
fashion. They did, however, use elements of such myths, changing them
as was necessary in order to express aspects of the faith of Israel.
Brevard Childs' term for this is "broken myth." His essay "Myth and
Reality in the Old Testament" (Alec R. Allenson, Naperville IL, 1960) is
well worth reading if you can find a copy.
Gen.6:1-4, which was discussed recently here, is a good example
of such a broken myth. Another is Is.14:12-14 which - in spite of a
long history of Christian misunderstanding - is not about a primeval
fall of Satan. It is based on a Canaanite myth of the young gods
planning to overthrow the elder gods which has been used by the biblical
writer to speak of the impending fall of Babylon - as is obvious from
the context.
It's also worth noting that the recent tendency has been to move
away from the idea that the Chaos Struggle texts & related material are
all related to Babylonian material. Canaanite texts are likely to be
the background of some. See, e.g., John Day, _God's Conflict with the
Dragon and the Sea_ (Cambridge, 1985) as well as Anderson.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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