Re: Reading Genesis literally

In a message dated 5/6/2006 11:01:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
dickfischer@verizon.net writes:
Does Ea = Emanuel?
Dick,

I share some of your ideas about ancient Mesopotamian religion having a root
of truth behind it, in its far distant past, but I think it is going too far
to identify the word "Ea" as a possible origin for the Hebrew compound word
Immanuel, "with us [is] God," which in Hebrew has almost no similarity to "Ea".
In fact, the ending of Immanuel is "El" = Ilu = Anu, not "Ea." The beginning
part "Im" (= with) was transliterated into Greek in the Septuagint as "Em" and
only then do we get an "E" at the beginning of Immanuel. There's really no
case to be made for a similarity in the words.

As far as the similarity in attributes, we agree of course that the major
attributes of Ea (that differentiate him from the other Babylonian gods) are
indeed attributes Jesus -- wisdom, far-sightedness, creation of mankind, salvation
[from the Flood], etc. But for the most part these are attributes shared by
the entire Triune God, not completely specific to the Incarnation of God in
the Second Person. I must admit that Jesus is called the pre-existing Logos of
God, and may be referenced in Proverbs as the personified Wisdom that
pre-existed with God. This idea of calling the 2nd Person the Eternal Wisdom or Logos
does seem to be hinted at in the concept of Ea who is the personification of
wisdom in the Babylonian pantheon. But I don't think I'd personally go so far
as to make specific connections between Babylonian gods and the Trinity. I
think that by the time Mesopotamian myths were being written down, they had
become so re-written and corrupted from any original kernel of truth that at best
we can only see hints of truth, not enough to make specific connections.

If the Akkadians originally worshipped the true God and Abraham was the last
surviving true believer, then it's not inconceivable that Ea could be a
different spelling of the name Abraham used, Yah, since they are pronounced almost
identically. I would thus see Ea as a hint of the true God, not a particular
person of the Trinity.

I was interested to discover a comparison between Ea and the Prometheus of
Greek mythology. Prometheus was the one who saved the Greek Noah from the flood
by warning him, so Prometheus plays the exact same role as Ea and as the God
of the Bible in warning Noah. Interestingly, the Greek word "Prometheus" (=
forethought) is exactly a description of Ea's main attributes of
far-sightedness and wisdom. Interestingly, Prometheus suffers punishment, in public shame
as he is affixed to a cliff, for his role in mankind's salvation from the
Flood. (Zeus was angry and punished him because Zeus had wanted mankind to be
destroyed by the Flood, much like the Anunnaki wanted to destroy mankind and were
angry at Ea.) I'm not sure I'd read any specific comparison to the 2nd Person
or his death on the cross in that, however.

Instead, it interests me that perhaps we see a picture of the corruption of
the true faith, replacing it by a polytheism inspired by the devil. The Greek
sky god Uranus (etymologically Ur-Anu?) was overthrown by Kronos who was
overthrown by Zeus. It seems that many of the early mythologies are similar in
that they have an overthrow of the earlier creator god(s) by the later god(s) who
then become rulers of the Earth, much like the devil claims to have become
ruler of the Earth. Also, there is a deep pessimism in some or many of these
polytheistic mythologies as they await the present order of god(s) to be
overthrown and destroyed in the future, much like the devil awaits his coming
overthrow and destruction. These features are in Mesopotamian, Greek and even
Scandinavian/Germanic mythologies, too. In Mesopotamian mythologies we see this in
the Anunnaki who overthrew the earlier Tiamat and Apsu. Apsu was the domain
of Ea, and so we might see a faint hint that Ea, despite being associated with
the Anunnaki in the recorded mythologies, may have been connected in the
distant past to the overthrown Apsu, just like the his Greek counterpart Prometheus
was one of the overthrown Titans. Hence, we may see a hint that Ea is a
surviving reflection of faith in the original God, whose name we now know as the
similarly-pronounced Yah.

So I'd see a far more vague and very non-specific hint of a creator God seen
in the stories of the earliest generation of god(s) that were overthrown,
including Apsu and the Titans, rather than a specific hint of the Trinity or of
the 2nd Person. Seen this way, the Pagans who worship Zeus = Deus = Jeus =
Ju-pater (Jeus-father) = the Anglo-Saxon Tius (such as in Tues-day) would be
worshipping the one who claims to have overthrown and expelled the creator God.
Hence, we see in paganism the ultimate corruption of the original monotheistic
faith of Adam, in that the devil has co-opted the allegiance of mankind so that
he is worshipped in place of God.

There are other interesting connections between Greek and Babylonian
mythologies, including Hercules = Herakles = the Babylonian Erakal = Nergal. I have
wanted to do a lot more comparative studies of mythologies, but I eventually
became tired and a little discouraged because they are just all so mixed up from
millenia of borrowing and re-writing earlier materials. So I'm not sure you
can really ever unravel them and discern the origin of things. Hence, I think
we can see no more than vague hints. The exception would be Abraham, since
he is the connection between that early polytheistic world and the subsequent
recorded revelation we see in the Bible, so there is probably more connection
to truth in Mesopotamia and specifically Ur than anywhere else in ancient
mythologies.

Phil Metzger
Received on Sat May 6 15:26:33 2006