On December 3, 1872, George Smith, a former bank-note engraver turned Assyriologist, stunned the Western world by announcing that he had discovered a Babylonian story of a great Flood resembling the well-known account of the Deluge in the Book of Genesis. Four years later, Smith published a collection of Mesopotamian myths and heroic legends entitled The Chaldean Account of Genesis (“Chaldean” being a synonym for Babylonian used in the Bible).1 The book included Smith’s own English translation and discussion of a Babylonian Creation myth and other mythological compositions that he had pieced together from cuneiform fragments discovered during the preceding quarter of a century by the British excavations at Kyunjik, ancient Nineveh.
038
About the Babylonian Creation myth, Smith wrote:
The story, so far as I can judge from the fragment, agrees generally with the account of the Creation in the Book of Genesis, but shows traces of having originally included very much more matter.
According to Smith, the biblical account of the Seven Days of Creation (Genesis 1:1–2:4a, also known as the Priestly Creation account,a quoted in full in the box) was simply an abbreviated Hebrew version of a more ancient Babylonian tale.
A century and a quarter after Smith made his astounding announcement, the Babylonian Creation myth—now regularly called by its Akkadian name
Enūma Eliš
(after the first two words, meaning “When above”)—is widely recognized for its great importance to the history of ancient Mesopotamian religion. But for most Bible readers, the significance of Enūma Eliš (pronounced eh-NOO-ma eh-LEESH) lies in its perceived connection to the Creation story in Genesis 1:1–2:4a and a few other biblical passages relating to the Creation and to a primordial conflict between the Israelite deity YHWH and some vicious sea monsters.
The notion that the biblical Creation story depends heavily on
Enūma Eliš
is so entrenched that most modern commentaries on Genesis mention the connection. Any compendium of ancient Near Eastern texts related to the Bible will include Enūma Eliš. The curriculum for teaching Bible in secular Israeli high schools has been revised to include the teaching of Enūma Eliš. Nahum Sarna’s classic Understanding Genesis devotes four pages to the myth.2 Alexander Heidel’s widely used collection of Mesopotamian Creation myths, The Babylonian Genesis (written “not for the professional Assyriologist but rather for the Old Testament scholar and the Christian minister”), lends 58 pages to parallels between the Babylonian and biblical texts.3
But was George Smith right? Was the author of the Genesis Creation account heavily influenced by this ancient Babylonian tale? To answer this, we must first ask, What is
Enūma Eliš
?
First and foremost,
Enūma Eliš
is a poem, consisting of 1,059 lines written in the Akkadian language and inscribed in cuneiform on seven tablets.4 The story that this great poem tells is a myth; that is, it explains the world as a reflection of divine activities and relationships between gods.
The poem begins on Tablet 1:
It is the timeless, mythic past when nothing existed apart from two personified masses of water, Tiamat (sea water) and Apsû (spring water). These proto-divine male and female figures engaged in an endless mingling of their waters that we might call the 040“Big Bang.”b Such dalliance led inevitably to pregnancy (of both partners) and the birth of several gods. As time passed the baby gods grew into big gods, who were a rowdy bunch, partying constantly at home, which happened to be the watery realm that was the body of Tiamat. This wild behavior raised the ire of Apsû, who, as typical of haggard fathers throughout time, decided to end it all and kill the kids and the kids’ kids and their kids, too. He plotted the act with his vizier Mummu, but the dastardly design got out, giving the young ones a chance to defend themselves, and, to be sure, one of the younger gods, Ea, ended up killing his great-great grandfather Apsû, stripping him of his divine regalia and building his own house on the body of his slain ancestor. Ea and his spouse, Damkina, immediately moved in, and the two of them set about making love and having a baby: Marduk.
The newborn infant was no regular lad. Four pairs of eyes and four pairs of ears (compare the four-faced creatures of Ezekiel 1:6) made him very attentive and gave him excellent peripheral vision, but he grew up rapidly and became a bit obstreperous. His favorite game was throwing dust into a set of four-winds (a present from grandfather Anum) and muddying up great-great-great granny Tiamat. This childish behavior may not have disturbed recently widowed and long-suffering Tiamat, but it did get on the nerves of the gods living within her; and they, playing on her sense of guilt over having failed to come to the aid of her late husband, cajole and convince her to take up arms and put an end to Marduk’s intolerable behavior and their consequent suffering. In order to do the task, she has a certain Ummu
Ḫubur
(the name means “Mother Noise”) produce for her a swat team of 11 raging, poisonous monsters at whose head she appoints the god Kingu.
Tablet 2. The younger gods, threatened by these scary beasts, fly into a panic and start looking for someone to come to their rescue. Ea, who got word of the war preparations, first approaches his grandfather
Anšar
(the deified horizon) and then daddy, Anum (the sky god), and reports the dire situation, but they do not come to the rescue, so Chicken-Little style the whole bunch of them ends up appealing for help from none other than the ultimate cause of their woes, Marduk. Marduk opportunistically accepts the invitation on the condition that if he defeats Tiamat and saves the gods, they will obey his commands. He will be their supreme, unchallenged ruler.
Tablet 3. In order to conclude an agreement, an envoy named Gaga is dispatched to
Laḫmu
and Laḫāmu (Anšar’s parents), and all the gods gather at a grand banquet with lots of eating and drinking. When they are sufficiently inebriated, they ratify the agreement and enthrone Marduk as number one god.5
Tablet 4. At the enthronement celebration Marduk is asked to prove the power of his word by making a constellation vanish and reappear, which he immediately does. “He spoke with his mouth, and the 041constellation disappeared; he spoke again with his mouth, and the constellation was formed,” the text tells us. After this display of verbal creativity, the gods outfit him with royal regalia, arm him and send him off to meet Tiamat. The myth reaches its climax in a decisive duel to the death between champion Marduk and Tiamat. Marduk arms himself with a bow and arrow, mace, net, four winds (probably the toy that Anum had given him as a child), and seven special winds designed to get inside Tiamat and give her gas. He mounts a chariot drawn by winds that can apparently move in all four directions.6 For armor and headgear, he dons terrifying divine radiance, and, lest he be wounded, he also carries in his mouth an incantation, and holds in his hand a plant for warding off poison. Fully suited and geared up, he goes off to find Tiamat. When he meets her, they engage in a war of words and finally they lock in battle. At this point, Marduk opens his net with the intent of bagging her in it and then “the wicked wind which was sneezing behind him he directed into her face.”7 This is surely a thinly veiled way of saying that he broke wind in her face. As if this were not enough, Tiamat opens her mouth wide to swallow the wind dispatched from his rear but in the end she fills up with wind, developing stomach cramps and constipation. Finally, Marduk shoots his arrow at her and splits her belly.8 With Tiamat defeated and, literally, deflated, the gods supporting her go into hiding and the 11 terrible monsters are captured and led away. Finally, Marduk captures Kingu, the god who was leading the monsters, and takes away the tablets of destiny that Tiamat had given him before the battle. The war over and the enemy rounded up, Marduk returns to his captive, Tiamat, splits open her head with his mace, and has the wind blow away her blood. He next splits open her body “like a drying fish,” creates the heavens in the upper half, and establishes there a divine dwelling place,
Ešarra
, which is the mirror image of Ea’s subterranean dwelling place, Apsû.
Tablet 5. At this point “Creation”—or, rather, the ordering of the known world—starts. Working more or less from top to bottom, Marduk installs in the appropriate parts of Tiamat’s corpse the heavenly bodies in the heavens, meteorological phenomena in the atmosphere, and mountains, subterranean waters, the Euphrates and Tigris, the bond of heaven and earth, the netherworld and the oceans in and on the earth. Marduk then celebrates his triumph by distributing trophies and displaying vanquished enemies. He dons royal garments, and the gods declare him king and accept his authority. He then proposes to build Babylon to serve as a lodging place for gods who go up and down between the subterranean Apsû and heavenly
Ešarra
(compare Genesis 28:10–22, in which Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending a staircase that reaches to the heavens).9 The gods eagerly accept this proposal.
042
Tablets 6 and 7. But before Marduk carries out his plan, he decides to help relieve the gods of their work by creating Man. Actually, creating Man is only his suggestion, for the actual act is carried out by his father, Ea. The creation of Man is described only briefly and elliptically; we learn only that Man was made from the blood of Kingu, who was slaughtered as punishment for having led the rebel gods. Having created Man, the gods proceed to carry out Marduk’s plan to build Babylon, and in particular its main temple, Esagila. The gods mold bricks for a year, and when the temple is finally in its place as a rest stop between subterranean Apsû and heavenly
Ešarra
, all the gods of heaven and the underworld sit down together at a grand dedication banquet. This ceremony is another opportunity for reaffirming allegiance to Marduk and glorifying him by proclaiming his 50 names along with intricate explanations of each one.
The poem concludes:
The [wo]rd of Marduk who created the Igigi-gods,
[His/Its] let them [ ], his name let theme invoke.
How much does this strange and exciting tale really resemble the Creation account of Genesis 1:1–2:4a and other biblical references to Creation? What kind of relationship, if any, is there between these texts?
The concluding couplet of
Enūma Eliš
, quoted above, suggests one of the most significant differences. Here, as in many Mesopotamian works, the author explains to the readers what the text they have just read is really about. In this case, he defines the entire composition as a hymn or song in praise of Marduk, who created the great gods (Igigi), defeated Tiamat and then assumed the throne. Compare this with the concluding line of the biblical Creation account:
Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.
(Genesis 2:4a, New Jewish Publication Society Version)
In short, Genesis 1 is about the Creation, while
Enūma Eliš
is about the creator. That’s why near the end of Enūma Eliš, the gods bless Marduk, hero of the story, while at the end of the Creation account, God, hero of the story, blesses and sanctifies the Sabbath, his final creation. Further, in Genesis 1 God sees several times that what he has created is good, while in Enūma Eliš the gods on several occasion express approval for Marduk and what he has promised to do or has done.
The two stories also vary in tone. Genesis 1:1–2:4a is a tightly structured narrative, simple in language but stately in elevated prose style and marked by use of repetition, formulaic language, and command-fulfillment sequences (“God said, ‘Let there be’ … and there was”), all of which suggest divine planning, control and transcendence.
Enūma Eliš
, in contrast, is a dramatic narrative poem in which tension builds and 044then is relieved again and again. Moreover, it is (in my opinion) a comic-heroic work not lacking in frivolity. Though some refer to Enūma Eliš as the Babylonian Genesis, this is an unfortunate appellation—encouraging readers to approach the text with religiosity and reverence, when they might better bring a sense of humor and a taste for adventure.
Nevertheless, from the Victorian period on, numerous scholars have attempted to draw parallels between Genesis 1 and
Enūma Eliš
—especially Tablet V, on the ordering of Creation. George Smith, in his Chaldean Account of Genesis, listed several, from the watery chaos that precedes Creation (see Genesis 1:1) through Marduk’s and God’s satisfaction with Creation: “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:12, etc.).
In 1902, Bible scholar Friedrich Delitzsch offered one of the most famous discussions of the Bible and
Enūma Eliš
in the first of his Babel und Bibel lectures, delivered before Kaiser Wilhelm II.11 In this lecture Delitzsch solemnly announced that Babylonian sources preserved more ancient and thus more original forms of full cycles of stories found in the Bible. Delitzsch suggested that the biblical authors had transferred directly to YHWH, God of Israel, the heroism of Marduk, god of Babylon, as known from Enūma Eliš. He offered a handful of biblical examples, including Job 9:13, Psalm 89:10–11 and Psalm 74:13–15 (quoted here):
It was You who drove back the sea with Your might,
Who smashed the heads of the monsters in the waters;
It was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan,
Who left him as food for the denizens of the desert,
It was You who released springs and torrents,
Who made the mighty rivers run dry.
Delitzsch showed his audience a cylinder seal bearing a picture of Marduk with one large eye and one large ear, standing on a dragon and holding a weapon in his right hand. This seal, which had been discovered by German excavators, was cited by Delitzsch as the background for Isaiah 51:9–10 and Job 26:12–13, both of which describe the Lord striking down the sea monster Rahab and piercing a snake or dragon.
According to Delitzsch, the Priestly author of the Creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:4a, in contrast to 045the authors of Psalms, Job and Isaiah, tried to remove all mythological traces from his text, yet he was not entirely successful. Trace elements of Babylonian myth could be found throughout Genesis, said Delitzsch. For example, the light splitting the Deep (Hebrew Tehôm) in Genesis 1 recalls Marduk splitting the watery goddess Tiamat.
Delitzsch was not saying anything new,12 but he created a sensation throughout Europe and America by introducing the connection between
Enūma Eliš
and the Bible to the popular consciousness, from the Kaiser on down. Delitzsch also gained attention and support for his subjective, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian insinuations that Mesopotamian religion was on an equal if not higher level than that of the Hebrew Bible, and that the Bible contains no religious truth of its own but is only an accumulation of shallow literature drawn from Babylonian texts.c If the generation preceding Delitzsch used archaeological and Assyriological discoveries to prove the truth of the Bible, from his time on the same evidence would be enlisted in demonstrating the Bible’s inferiority.d
Alexander Heidel, in his well-known book The Babylonian Genesis, offers a clear summary of the parallels (he calls them “points which invite comparison”) that Smith, Delitzsch and other early scholars had detected:
Thus
Enūma
elish and Genesis 1:1–2:3 both refer to a watery chaos, which was separated into heaven and earth; in both we have an etymological equivalence in the names denoting this chaos [Hebrew Tehôm and Akkadian Tiamat]; both refer to the existence of light before creation of the luminous bodies; both agree as to the succession in which the points of contact follow upon one another; and in both cases the number seven figures rather prominently. And turning to the poetic writings of our Old Testament literature, we find quite a number of passages which, like the story of Marduk’s fight with Ti’âmat, treat of a conflict between the creator and various hostile elements.
Heidel adds to this list the divine nature of the participants in Creation; creatio ex nihilo—creation out of nothing; polytheism and monotheism in the respective 046stories; primeval chaos; primeval darkness; creation of the firmament; creation of the earth; creation of the luminaries; creation of plant and animal life; creation of man; the word of the creators; divine rest; the seven tablets and the seven days; and the general outlines of events in
Enūma Eliš
and Genesis 1:1–2:3.
But Heidel concludes:
The similarities are really not so striking as we might expect … In fact, the divergences are much more far-reaching and significant than are the resemblances, most of which are not any closer than what we should expect to find in any two more or less complete creation versions (since both would have to account for the same phenomena and since human minds think along much the same lines) which might come from entirely different parts of the world and which might be utterly unrelated to each other.13
What Heidel does consider striking, however, is “an identical sequence of events as far as the points of contact are concerned.” In other words, of all the points mentioned above, only a few are really highly similar, but these particular points appear in the same order in the respective compositions. This indeed seems to be a strong argument in favor of dependence.
In discussing the possible connection between Marduk and the God of the Hebrew Bible, Heidel noted that the idea of a primeval war between a god and the sea is an idea born in the West and imported into Mesopotamia, so the Bible would more likely have borrowed it from closer neighbors than the Babylonians. Here, Heidel relies on evidence in myths discovered at Ugarit (on the Mediterranean coast of modern Syria) a decade after the First World War (and ipso facto unavailable to Smith and Delitzsch). Proof that this was indeed the case comes from the words the Bible uses for the sea monster. On the fifth day of Creation, in Genesis 1:21, God creates Tannîn, often translated “sea serpents”). This same creature appears as tnn, or Tunnan, in Ugaritic myth:
Assyriologist Wilfred Lambert, who is preparing the eagerly awaited authoritative edition of
Enūma Eliš
, notes that many of the parallels between the Babylonian poem and the Bible are so common throughout Near Eastern literature as to be insignificant.16 The watery beginnings of the universe have parallels not only in other Mesopotamian Creation myths but even in Egyptian and Greek texts and thus cannot be evidence of particularly Babylonian influence. The splitting of the waters (in Genesis, on the second day) is uniquely parallel to the splitting of aqueous Tiamat in Enūma Eliš, although the splitting of other substances is well attested in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian and Greek myths. As for the third day, Lambert finds a Mesopotamian parallel to the separation of the sea from the dry land, but it is not from Enūma Eliš. The most important parallel Lambert finds is with the seventh day, the Sabbath. Man is created in Enūma Eliš to give rest to the gods. If so, both Enūma Eliš and Genesis 1:1–2:4a climax with divine rest.17 All told, Lambert sees the connections between Genesis 1 and Enūma Eliš as relatively few in number.
As recent scholarship is making clear, simplistic comparison between
Enūma Eliš
and the biblical tradition—as if the Bible were directly dependent on Enūma Eliš and it alone—is patently untenable. And yet there is clearly some kind of relationship. Enūma Eliš appears to be one of a range of sources that the biblical authors drew upon.
But although Delitzsch and Smith dismissed this borrowing as naive and mechanical, I believe something far more thoughtful and thought-provoking was taking place. The literary character of
Enūma Eliš
itself offers an example of how and why the Biblical author drew on this source.
Enūma Eliš
is on the surface a unified work with a clear, consistent plot and message.18 Yet it, too, adopted and assimilated numerous ideas and literary themes from earlier sources.
So, for instance, the notion of the creation of the gods and the world by sexual intercourse and birth is already found in Sumerian sources. Young gods who prevent their parents from sleeping, and, indeed, divine unrest and sleep deprivation are central themes in the
Atra-ḫasis
myth dating to the Old Babylonian period (first half of the second millennium B.C.E.), with roots in the Sumerian myth of Enki and Ninmaḫ. Marduk in Enūma Eliš has four eyes and four ears. This reminds us of Ezekiel’s chariot vision, but more important is a bronze statue found near Ishchali (ancient Neribtum, Iraq) dating from the Old Babylonian period representing an identically endowed deity. If this statue is not Marduk himself it is without doubt a god of the same species.19 The sequence of events of giving the Tablets of Destiny to Kingu, danger threatening the gods, the gods’ panic, the appeal to several gods in search of a champion who will defeat the monster holding the tablets, and the eventual transfer of the Tablets of Destiny to the victorious champion has a close parallel in the Akkadian myth about the god Ninurta’s defeat of the Anzû bird.20 The 11 monsters in Tiamat’s retinue are also parallel to 11 monsters who fought alongside the Anzû.21 The war between Marduk, with his army of winds, and Tiamat, who embodies the sea, has parallels in earlier Western myths about a conflict between a storm god and a sea god. A Middle Bronze Age silver goblet from ‘Ain-Samiyah, Israel, is decorated with a similar mythological scene that the late Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin interpreted as the slaying of Tiamat by Marduk.22 This scene is similar to one on a clay plaque from Khafaje, in eastern Iraq, of the Isin-Larsa 052period (late third to early second millennium B.C.E.) showing Marduk slaying Tiamat. Creating the cosmos by splitting the body of defeated Tiamat reflects Sumerian beliefs according to which the world was created by splitting various primeval cosmic elements. Creating man by mixing blood from a slain rebel god into the body of the man is rooted in accounts found in Atra-ḫasis and Enki and Ninmaḫ. In Enūma Eliš, Babylon is built by the gods who mold bricks. A similar description about the building of Nippur is found in a Sumerian hymn in honor of that city.23 Finally, Marduk’s 50 names are somehow related to 50, the symbolic number of Ellil, the chief god in the Mesopotamian pantheon.
The author of
Enūma Eliš
is deliberately attributing to Marduk and Babylon acts ascribed to other gods and cities in other myths. The author is stealing the thunder of these gods, undermining them in favor of Marduk. When Marduk receives Ellil’s fifty names, he in effect becomes Ellil. When the gods build Babylon instead of Nippur, Babylon becomes the new religious capital. Most important, when Marduk defeats the 11 monsters that Ninurta fought in the ancient Anzû myth, Marduk son of Ea, god of Eridu, in effect usurps Ninurta son of Enlil, god of Nippur. Enūma Eliš is a story about Marduk that challenges a story about Ninurta. It reflects a political-theological competition over primacy in the pantheon and supremacy of the capital city.
These tales of Marduk spawned further debate. An ancient Babylonian commentary praises Marduk;24 an Assyrian commentary satirizes him.25 What appears to have been an alternate Assyrian version of at least parts of
Enūma Eliš
—known only from some fragmentary manuscripts found at Aššur—offers a competing version of events by replacing Marduk’s name with Anšar, a name given to Aššur, chief god in the Assyrian pantheon.26 Wall reliefs in the Akı̄tu (New Year’s) House built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib depict Aššur, not Marduk, riding his chariot and vanquishing Tiamat.
The ancient Near East was full of conflicting claims to supremacy of this or that god or city over all others. The Bible is part of this polemic. The biblical authors borrowed from foreign Creation stories in order to make the best case possible for YHWH, God of Israel. They were participating in a contemporary international debate on the basis of data considered basic and agreed upon by all.
For example, the preexistence of water may have been considered a “scientific” fact, common knowledge. In
Enūma Eliš
this water is personified as Tiamat; in “monotheistic,” “nonmythological” Genesis 1, the watery Deep is “just water.” Here, the biblical author is trying to correct the record.
The view of the world as a bubble with water above and below was a commonly held “scientific” truth at the time of the Bible, so it need not have been borrowed from a particular literary source. This water had to be parted somehow in order to form the bubble, and authors throughout the Near East had to decide how within the framework of their own beliefs. Marduk does this by physically splitting Tiamat, the personified waters. Genesis 1 has God ordain a firmament in the demythologized waters by simply speaking.
In
Enūma Eliš
, divine sleep deprivation is a constant problem. Tiamat and Apsû can’t sleep so they try to kill their noisy kids. Man is created to give the gods rest, and Babylon is built to provide a resting place for gods in transit on a cosmic journey. This idea is rooted in the Mesopotamian myths of Enki and Ninmah or Atra-ḫasis.27 In Genesis 1:1–2:4a God “ceases” and sanctifies the Sabbath, but in Exodus 31:17, a Priestly passage connected with the author’s Creation story in Genesis, God “puts his heart at rest/is satisfied” (wayyinnāpaš).
It was common belief in the ancient Near East that a high god in a pantheon had to defeat the sea and create the world. A god, whoever he might be, had to act in a godly manner and do godly things! But the Priestly author of Genesis 1 gave the story a new spin. Rather than having God vanquish rebellious monsters, he had God create them (compare Psalm 104:25 where God creates Leviathan to play with), thus showing God’s superiority from the start.
In light of all this and more, it is impossible to accept today in a simplistic manner the claims of Smith or Delitzsch that the biblical authors took the Babylonian Story of Creation, that is,
Enūma Eliš
, and simply applied it to YHWH, God of Israel. The specific parallels are fewer than originally thought, and even the best ones are not entirely certain. However, both the Bible and Enūma Eliš are products of the ancient Near East, each accepting common beliefs and knowledge, and each developing them in their own unique manner. They should be studied by modern scholars as mutually illuminating not only for what they hold in common but for the unique ways in which each presents their common heritage.28
On December 3, 1872, George Smith, a former bank-note engraver turned Assyriologist, stunned the Western world by announcing that he had discovered a Babylonian story of a great Flood resembling the well-known account of the Deluge in the Book of Genesis. Four years later, Smith published a collection of Mesopotamian myths and heroic legends entitled The Chaldean Account of Genesis (“Chaldean” being a synonym for Babylonian used in the Bible).1 The book included Smith’s own English translation and discussion of a Babylonian Creation myth and other mythological compositions that he had pieced together from cuneiform fragments discovered during the […]
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According to the documentary hypothesis, the Pentateuch consists of at least four discrete textual strands that have been woven together to make one continuous narrative: J or the Yahwist (in German Jahwist), after the personal name of the God of Israel (YHWH, or Yahweh) used primarily in this strand; E, or the Elohist, who uses a more generalized term (Elohim) for God; P, the Priestly Code, which makes up most of Leviticus and much of Exodus and Numbers; and D, which stands for the Deuteronomist and consists of much of the Book of Deuteronomy. The first Creation account (Genesis 1:1–2:4a; see box) is credited to P; the second (Genesis 2:4b–24) to J.
2.
The names of the “proto-divine” figures are not written with the divine determinative, in sharp contrast to all the other gods mentioned in the composition, indicating that although they give birth to gods, they are not divine in their own right.
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 Tehôm 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 Tehôm 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 Tehôm rabbāh (the great Deep), mixing cosmic past, historical past, and impending redemption. One can maintain that the sea, yam, and the great Deep, Tehôm 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.
