The Genesis of Genesis

1.

George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis Containing the Description of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Times of the Patriarchs, and Nimrod; Babylonian Fables, and Legends of the Gods; From the Cuneiform Inscriptions (1876; photographic reproduction, Minneapolis: Wizards Book Shelf, 1977).

2.

Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1966).

3.

Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1951).

4.

Scholars have disagreed over the date of the composition. Some, like Thorkild Jacobsen, put it in the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium B.C.E.), when the city of Babylon first gained prominence in Mesopotamia, and others, like Wilfred Lambert, date it to the time of Nebuchadrezzar I (end of the second millennium), when Babylon was again in ascendancy and the statue of Marduk was returned from its captivity in Elam.

5.

Making crucial decisions at parties while under the influence of strong drink is reminiscent of how decisions are made in the court of King Ahaseurus according to the Book of Esther.

6.

Anne Drafkorn-Kilmer in a paper delivered at the 50th Rencontre assyriologique internationale conference, held at the Skukuza Wildlife Preserve, in South Africa, in August 2004, has compared this chariot and its movement with God’s chariot in the Book of Ezekiel.

7.

I associate the term ṣābitarkāti, “pinching the rear” with the Akkadian term ṣibit appi, “a pinch of the nose,” which means “sneeze” and Rabbinic Hebrew “sneeze from below” designating flatus.

8.

An innocent reader of this passage will certainly break out laughing from the comic scene. But there is an additional dimension to this description, which be it primary or secondary is intentional. This dimension is revealed in an ancient Assyrian cultic commentary that reads: “The king who opens the barrel in the race is Marduk who captured Tiamat with his penis” (ša ina ušarı̄šu Tiamat ikmû). It is reasonable to assume that Marduk’s sexual organ is none other than the arrow mentioned in Enūma Eliš as his weapon. The commentator has sensed the obscene nature of the original text and has been drawn to it, and we too should give it proper heed. As is well known, sexual and anal humor go hand in hand, and this applies to Mesopotamian humor as well. It seems, therefore, that the sexual humor of the commentary has been piqued by the anal humor in the text, the specific stimulus being the reference to the evil wind going behind Marduk.

9.

See Victor A. Hurowitz, “Babylon in Bethel: A New Look at Jacob’s Dream,” in Teshurot LaAvishur: Studies in the Bible and Ancient Near East, in Hebrew and Semitic Languages; Festschrift Presented to Prof. Yitzhak Avishur on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. Michael Heltzer and Meir Malul (Tel Aviv-Jaffa: Archaeological Center Publications, 2004), pp. 103-109 [Hebrew]; English version soon to appear in Orientalism, Assyriology, and the Bible, ed. Steven W. Holloway (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, in preparation).

10.

Tablet vii, lines 159-162.

11.

Friedrich Delitzsch, Babel and Bible: A Lecture on the Significance of Assyriological Research for Religion Delivered Before the German Emperor, trans. Thomas J. McCormack (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1902); and Babel and Bible: Two Lectures Delivered before Members of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in the Presence of the Great Emperor, ed. C.H.W. Johns (Oxford, UK: Williams and Norgate; New York: G.P. Putnams’s Sons, 1903).

12.

In truth, Leonard King’s Seven Tablets of Creation, or the Babylonian and Assyrian Legends Concerning the Creation of the World and of Mankind (vols. 1 and 2 [London: Luzac and Co., 1902]; see www.cwru.edu/univlib/preserve/Etana/KING.SEVENv1/KING.SEVENv1.html), published the same year as Delitzsch’s lecture, presented in even more detail what was known at the time, and integrated it into an all inclusive picture of the Bible’s dependence on Babylonian culture.

13.

According to Heidel, even the etymological connection between Tiamat and T^ehôm cannot be taken to indicate dependence of Genesis on Enūma Eliš, because the words are semantically different (one means “sea” while the other means “subterranean waters”). Had the biblical author borrowed from the Babylonian work, he likely would have used a different word. Heidel’s (and also Lambert’s) objections notwithstanding, an echo of Tiamat in the Hebrew T^ehôm is, in my opinion, not to be ruled out. Isaiah 51:9–10, mentions the arm of YHWH which has (in the distant past) smitten Rahab, pierced Tannîn and (during the Exodus) dried up the sea (Yam) and the waters of T^ehôm rabbāh (the great Deep), mixing cosmic past, historical past, and impending redemption. One can maintain that the sea, yam, and the great Deep, T^ehôm rabbāh, in this verse are only natural phenomena, yet reference to the mythological monsters in the immediately preceding verse certainly imbue these “natural” terms with their original mythological connotations. If so, there seems to be a biblical “memory” of mythological Tiamat piqued by authors in various manners, and one should not rule out that the Priestly author also remembered it.

14.

CAT 1.3 III 38-4. Mark S. Smith, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, ed. Simon Parker, Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World Series 9 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), p. 111.

15.

KTU 1.5 I 1. See Smith, “The Baal Cycle,” in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, p. 141.

16.

Lambert, “A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis,” Journal of Theological Studies 16 (1965), pp. 287–300; republished with two postscripts in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, eds. R.S. Hess and D.T. Tsumura, Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 4 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), pp. 96-113. Moshe Weinfeld’s transliteration and Hebrew translation of Enūma Eliš, published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1973, refers in its notes to numerous additional parallels between individual lines and specific biblical verses.

17.

Weinfeld has pointed out that in addition to Enūma Eliš climaxing with divine rest, it actually ends with the building of Babylon and Marduk’s temple Esagila, and this combination of motifs—Creation, divine rest, temple—is completed by the literary connections in the Priestly code between the account of Creation, the Sabbath, and the Tabernacle account contained in Exodus 25–31, 35–40. See Weinfeld, “Sabbath, Temple and Enthronement of the Lord—The Problem of the Sitz in Leben of Genesis 1:2–2:3, ” in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, ed. A. Caquot and M. Delcor (Kevelaer, Germany: Butzon & Bercker, 1981), pp. 501–512.

18.

For a synthetic reading of the composition see Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 165-192; H.L.J. Vanstiphout, “Enuma Elish as a Systematic Creed: An Essay,” Orientalia Lovaninesia Periodica 23 (1992), pp. 37-61. For an attempt at higher literary criticism, see A. Leo Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Mythology I,” Orientalia n.s. 16 (1974), pp. 207–238.

19.

Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, p. 166; Guo Honggeng, “The Mysterious Four-faced Statue (OIM A719),” Journal of Ancient Civilizations 16 (2001), pp. 87-92.

20.

Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 203–227; B. Foster, Before the Muses 1 (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1996), pp. 461–485; A. Annus, The Standard Babylonian Epic of Anzu, State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts III (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001).

21.

Lambert, “Ninurta Mythology in the Babylonian Epic of Creation,” in Keilschriftliche Literaturen, Ausgewählte Vorträge der XXXII. RAI, Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 6 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1986), pp. 55-60.

22.

Ze’ev Yeivin, “A Silver Cup from Tomb 204a at ‘Ain-Samiya,” Israel Exploration Journal 21 (1971), pp. 78-81; Yigael Yadin, “A Note on the Scenes Depicted on the ‘Ain-Samiya Cup,” Israel Exploration Journal 21 (1971), pp. 82-85.

23.

K. Oberhuber, “Eine Hymne an Nippur (UET VI 118),” Archív Orientální 35 (1967), pp. 262-270.

24.

A. Livingstone, Court and Literary Miscellanea, State Archives of Assyria 3 (Helsinki: Helsinki Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 99-102 no. 39.

25.

A. Livingstone, Court and Literary Miscellanea, pp. 95-98 no. 38.

26.

Lambert believes that the Assyrian version did not consist of an entire new edition, and that the switch of names reflects only incomplete reworking. See Lambert, “The Assyrian Recension of Enūma Eliš,” in Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, eds. H. Waetzold and H. Hauptmann, Heidelberger Studien zum alten Orient 6 (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1997), pp. 77-80.

27.

For a variant on the idea of divine rest, see Peter Machinist, “Rest and Violence in the Poem of Erra,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983), pp. 221-226.

28.

“Contrastive” study of ancient Near Eastern sources combined with “comparative” study to form a “contextual approach” has been advocated by William Hallo, editor of Scripture in Context. See for instance Hallo, “The Context of Scripture: Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Their Relevance for Biblical Exegesis,” World Congress of Jewish Studies 11, A (1994), pp. 9-15.