In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God
said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 3:1-3)
The Bible study I’ve
joined is using a book that explores the references, prophecies, mentions,
and presentations of Jesus found in Genesis. The journey of discovery begins
with the first few verses. There are so many things that need to be said about Genesis
1:1-3. I have also recently watched about half of a debate between two
enthusiasts (one is a professional scholar) in which the non-scholar claims
that the Eridu Genesis (Sumerian creation account) and the Enuma Elish
(Babylonian creation account) predate the Genesis creation account and claims
that the Genesis account is clearly derived from the previous accounts.
My first difficulty
is with the accusation of derivation. If you, someone down the street, and I
all see the same thing and write down what we saw, if I happen to hand in my report before you and the neighbor do, does that require that they copy my report? Or is it possible that they are describing the same event?
In the Enuma
Elish, according to the World History Encyclopedia [1], we
are told, “In the beginning, there was only undifferentiated water swirling in
chaos. Out of this swirl, the waters divided into sweet, fresh water, known as
the god Apsu, and salty bitter water, the goddess Tiamat. Once differentiated,
the union of these two entities gave birth to the younger gods.” According to the
Britanica online, the Eridu Genesis details the creation of the heavens and the
earth out of the body of Tiamat by the younger god, Marduk, as part of the
story of his rise to power.[2] The
Enuma Elish is apparently a part of the Eridu Genesis.
I’ll state clearly
that I am taking this from secondary, encyclopedic sources, not the original in
the original language, but the summaries given, while brief, include sufficient
information. In the Sumerian and Babylonian texts, two original gods are the
waters, and the world and the universe are created from the corpse of Tiamat.
This isn’t an unusual theme – the world is often made, rather than created, out
of some part of an older god, or from excrement. Neither Marduk nor Tiamat creates
the universe from nothing – Marduk kills Tiamat and uses her to make the world.
In Greco-Roman and Norse stories, some elder god(s) give birth to the victorious younger gods who dethrone them. Mankind is made
from the blood/water of Tiamat’s consort. And -by the way, the kings are
descended from the gods, who behave in a way that reminds one of a bad soap
opera.
The creation stories
in Greco-Roman and Norse mythology are similar. The gods were the children of
older gods or beings who killed their parents. As often as not, if the younger
gods don’t use the older gods to make the world or mankind, the world and
mankind already exist.
Now, against that,
we have the account in Genesis, which does not involve the use of the body or
excrement to make the universe but involves creation by “mere” fiat. God
said…and it was so. It does not include God giving birth to other gods, who then
kill him and use his body to create the world. Water flowing from the eyes of
God’s corpse doesn’t become the Tigris or the Euphrates.
Instead, the
Biblical account is both stripped down and technical. Fiats are made over seven days, and it’s not until God hint of making instead of
creating that God makes man in His image from the dust of the ground—not out of
the body of His mother. I’ll probably bore you further with this later.
But yes, we have two accounts of the creation. Cultures all over the world have accounts of creation. They tell about how the world was created or made because otherwise, they could not be creation stories. And if you read a romance, there will be two individuals – generally a man and a woman, often very different sorts of people, who may dislike/hate each other intensely. Still, either chemistry or events bring them together, and then events threaten to tear them apart and are overcome so they can live happily ever after. Those things have to be there because the story is a romance. A play would not be a play if no part of it was designed to be performed in front of an audience. There are elements of a creation story because otherwise, it would not be a creation story. Vague similarities should not surprise us.
If we are going to
consider the accounts rationally and critically with the idea of figuring out
which (if any) to consider potentially true, it seems that one criterium
for rejection is the “creation” story in which the creator is him/herself
created or born. If the god has a mother or a father, creation begins before the creator is created. Another thing that I would suggest is if the creator uses a
corpse or excrement or some other substance or if the creator(s) and other gods
around at the time of creation are demonstrating very human and rather
negative human traits. Isn’t what Marduk did in killing Tiamat and using her corpse
to create mankind a little too similar to Nazis using the skins of Jews to make
lampshades?[3]
It’s too “humanity at its worst.”
On the other hand, the account we find
in Genesis doesn’t include substances created before the creation, doesn’t use
body parts or excretions, and doesn’t involve gods behaving like bad humans. What
it does have, until day 6 and the making of man, is creation that is both creation
and creative. God takes something from idea to reality. That’s creation. Then
He broods over it, “incubates” it, and considers it – repeatedly through the
process. He creates something else and tinkers with it, separating it from something else, considers it, and declares it as “Good.” If you want to equate it
with a person, it is the story of a person at his best.
So, yep, they’re both creation stories
with the elements that are necessary for them to be creation stories, but
beyond that they are very different. The Sumerian/Babylonian account fits with
what we might expect from Human writers. The Biblical account is different.
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