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

Hi David, you wrote:
 
>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.<
 
Let's face it, creation stories either were told to a prophet by an
angel or by God or else they were fabricated. That goes for all
creation stories. There were no eye witnesses. The flood, however, was
an event that both the Sumerians and Akkadians (Semites) experienced.
For that reason these stories are remarkably alike using some identical
words and phrases. Essentially they appear for all the world to be
different accounts of a singular event. The biggest differences are
that the ANE accounts describe a week long-journey while Genesis
describes a year-long saga, and Genesis is bereft of the polytheism that
adorns ANE literature.
 
That said, tales were worth telling and fictional accounts of events
based upon real kings made for good literature. Like King Arthur was to
the English, for example. A talented Sumerian scribe with a good story
might have been compensated and paid for copies. Naturally, they'd fold
in some well-known gods and goddesses for good measure, or weave a story
about kings and gods working in real elements that would be
recognizable. There are too many off-hand comments about the flood
imbedded in ANE literature for it to have been made up. Whether the
Genesis flood is factual in every detail or embellished to some degree
is up to the reader to decide.
 

Dick Fischer

Richard James Fischer, author

Historical Genesis from Adam to Abraham

 <http://www.historicalgenesis.com/> www.historicalgenesis.com

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 8:47 PM
To: ASA list
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 Wed Feb 27 00:57:39 2008