Re: [asa] Seely's Response to Hill re: Accommodation in PSCF; ANE Motifs

David,

you are right on.? Furthermore, it's important to understand how each subsequent generation re-adapted the prior myths because their meaning was told more in how they changed it than in what they kept the same.? For example, there was an ANE myth about Tiamat unleashing sea monsters to fight on her behalf, and I believe that this the where Leviathan (a Canaanite sea monster) fits into ANE cosmogeny.? But the biblical author comes along and says that the Lord created Leviathan as a plaything.? This is not so much affirming the ANE myth of Leviathan as it is denying it.? It is saying that the sea monsters are not demi-gods that fight against gods.? Rather, they are mere playthings in the hands of the creator who is far above all the elements of the Canaanite myths.?

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
To: ASA list <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 8:46 pm
Subject: [asa] Seely's Response to Hill re: Accommodation in PSCF; ANE Motifs

The ongoing correspondence in PSCF among Hugh Ross, Paul Seely and Carol Hill in PSCF is very interesting.? Seely's most recent communication in the March 2008 issue (sorry I can't link to it because of?our ASA?Neolithic Internet publication policy -- you can only read it if you have the original stone tablets) is well done but I get the sense Paul and Carol are talking about almost the same thing with somewhat different words and emphasis.?

?

Here is something I think Paul is missing in his most recent piece:? he seems to suggest that because the Israelite creation and flood stories adopt motifs from surrounding ANE literature, we should consider them factually accommodated to that ANE background in the sense that they are making some wrong factual assertions about what actually, literally happened in the creation and flood, based on straightforward readings of the surrounding Mesopotamian literature.?

?

But why should we assume that the surrounding Mesopotamian myths always functioned as actual, literal accounts within their own cultural, religious, and literary contexts??

?

I claim no expertise in ancient Mesopotamia, but from the bits I've read, I'd be very surprised if the political and knowledge classes in those societies would have understood the Enuma Elish, Gilgamesh, the King List, etc. as unadorned descriptive accounts of simple history.? These were sophisticated people, the elites of their time, not illiterate farmers.? I've no doubt that they considered this literature "true" -- certainly they didn't have?our modern scientific worldview -- but it seems to me that we're projecting our Western, enlightenment way of telling and reading "historical" stories not only on scripture, but also on the literature that forms the backdrop of scripture.? In fact, if anything, I would think they would have been far more open to writing "cosmic" history that isn't supposed to be "literal" in a simple sense.?

?

So, for example, the Babylonian astrologers may have believed the sky literally was a solid dome -- but did they really believe the earth "literally" was Tiamat's corpse and people were "literally" fashioned from Marduk's blood and bone?? I suspect they were sophisticated enough to be using Tiamat's corpse and Marduk's blood in a non-literal sense -- which to me is even more interesting and compelling when we try to understand the meaning of something like the creation of life from the "dust of the earth" in scripture.

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Received on Tue Feb 26 21:54:36 2008