Genesis 1: Where Babylon and Greece Meet

Abstract

Genesis 1 is the prelude to the entire Old Testament. It was added to the Pentateuch by the Priestly Editors sometime around 400 BCE with other editorial texts. It uses the imagery of the Babylonian Epic, Enuma Elish, a narrative enacted in the Babylonian New Year Akitu Festival, but reacts negatively against the Enuma Elish, for the latter legitimates the divine hegemony of Marduk and the political power of kings and priests. Genesis 1 also draws heavily upon the Greek epic of Hesiod, the Theogony, especially in the early verses. Genesis 1 is not a mere copy of these ancient Mediterranean texts, it is a creative new statement. It is a masterful hymn about monotheism, creation, and human equality.

1. Introduction

Genesis 1 is the great hymn that introduces the entire Pentateuch. Critical scholars have assumed for more than a century that this text was crafted by a Priestly author sometime in the Persian period, perhaps around 400 BCE, and more recently minimalist scholars have suggested its origin in the Hellenistic era shortly after 300 BCE. Its message is a clear affirmation of monotheism in opposition to the polytheistic beliefs of the ancient Near East. To this end the chapter contains subtle critical critique of particular Babylonian deities. Such a rejoinder was necessitated by the large number of Jews who lived in Babylon for many centuries and were surrounded by Babylonians and their religious and political ideas, not only in the Chaldean period (586–539 BCE), but also during the Persian period (539–330 BCE) and Hellenistic era (330–63 BCE).

Already in the 19th century biblical scholars saw the immediate connections between Genesis 1 and the famous Babylonian literary epic, Enuma Elish. Early scholars were prone to naively say that the Babylonian work influenced the biblical text, but more recent critical scholarship recognizes that the biblical text is actually a critical response to the Babylonian account which affirms the lordship of the god, Marduk, and the primacy of Babylonian priests and kings over their subjects. In response Genesis 1 affirms the oneness of God and the equality of all human beings, who are assigned the attributes of kings in Genesis 1.

What this essay seeks to argue is that the brilliant biblical author is not only responding to Babylonian religious and political propaganda in the Enuma Elish, but he is also responding critically to Greek thought found in the writings of Hesiod. Hence, the title, “Where Babylon and Greece Meet,” refers to the attempt by the biblical author to refute beliefs of both Babylonian and Greece worldviews in his affirmation of monotheism and human equality. In this author’s opinion that may imply a Hellenistic origin for this text after 300 BCE, but that is a minority opinion among scholars.

1.1 Enuma Elish

Let us first turn our attention to the Mesopotamian literature. Since this has been critically evaluated by many biblical scholars in the past, only a cursory review need be made. Adequate summary of the extensive literature in this area cannot be undertaken in this short essay. I have addressed the relationship of Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish in greater detail elsewhere ([1], p. 1–31).

The story line of the Enuma Elish is as follows: A Theogony of the gods is presented until we arrive at the generation of the gods that include Apsu, the god of the sweet waters, and Tiamat, the goddess of the salt waters. Their divine descendants or children include Anu, Ea or Enki, Enlil, and their grandson, the beautiful god, Marduk. The noise generated by the younger gods leads Apsu to attempt to kill the younger gods, but Ea casts a spell on him and kills him. Tiamat then gathers other demons around her to attack the gods, and she marries Kingu. The younger gods select Marduk to fight Tiamat, who demands to be made king of the gods. In his battle with Tiamat, he is victorious. The body of Tiamat is sliced like a dried fish to make the Mesopotamian valley, and then again the poetic texts says that her body is divided to make the waters above the firmament and the waters below the firmament. The firmament is created with holes to let the light of the divine realm and rainfall come through. Marduk then creates land between the waters to separate them, which he fills with plants, birds, and animals. He appears to create the world in eight creative actions. Finally, Marduk rests (Pritchard 60–72; [2], p. 390–402).

The Enuma Elish was performed during the ten day Akitu festival in the spring (and perhaps also in the fall) with the king performing the role of Marduk. This enhances the authority of the king, who is supreme on earth as Marduk is king of the gods. Marduk created the earth to be a temple manor with the land belonging to the gods and administered by the priests. Thus, the priests have the authority of the gods, and people who work on the temple manor are slaves to the gods, and hence slaves to the priests. To this, in particular, Genesis 1 responds and seeks to undercut the over weaning authority of the king and the priests.

In brief Genesis 1 portrays the creation of the world not as a battle between two gods but as the calm creation of the world by the one god. References to water indicate clearly that water is a thing, not a goddess to be defeated. God creates the world as did Marduk, but references to other divine beings, as found in the Enuma Elish, are debunked in Genesis 1. The rest experienced by Marduk after his toil in creating the world becomes the rest to be had by all of humanity on the Sabbath. People are made in the “image” and “likeness” of God and said to “rule” over the world, all of which are cognate to Babylonian words used only to describe the king. Thus, people are all kings and queens and therefore not slaves to the king and the priests. As Marduk creates the world in eight divine actions, so also the biblical text has God create the world with eight creative commands, two occurring on day three and two occurring on day six. That the biblical author has crunched two divine actions into day three and day six to obtain eight creative acts makes us especially suspect that the biblical author is using the images of the Enuma Elish.

As we read Genesis 1, particular features indicate the connection between the biblical text and the Enuma Elish. The very first verse in Genesis 1:1 is, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The first two words in the Hebrew are “in the beginning” (bereshith) and “created” (bara). To begin a sentence with the adverb (“in the beginning”) followed by the verb (created”) is not proper Hebrew syntax. The sentence usually should begin with the verb. However, this sequence is syntactically proper in Akkadian, the Mesopotamian language in which the Enuma Elish is written. In fact, the two words Enuma Elish are an adverbial form that means “when on high” and “created.” Here the adverb begins the sentence and the verb follows it. It appears that the biblical author imitated the beginning of the Enuma Elish to indicate to the audience that Genesis 1 is a parody on that Mesopotamian narrative.

The expression “heavens and the earth” or “earth and heavens” was a stereotypic expression used in Mesopotamian texts to begin accounts of creation. A Sumerian text perhaps from the late third millennium BCE entitled, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Underworld states the world was created “when the heaven had been separated from the earth, when the earth had come down from heaven” ([3], p. 74; [4], p. 36). Another text, a hymn in praise of the mattock, a tool used in farming and building construction, refers to creation by saying, “Enlil hastened to divide the heaven from the earth.” In two Sumerian accounts called Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave and Silver and Copper the heavens were separated from the earth ([3], p. 75; [4], p. 37). In all of these instances the sequence is “heaven” and “earth,” as is the wording in Genesis 1. Many other examples could be presented.

The biblical narrative continues by saying, “and the earth was without form and void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” (Genesis 1:2). The expressions “form” (tohu) and “void” (bohu) elicit the memory of Tiamat, especially the former expression which sounds like a cognate to some of the vocalizations of Tiamat’s name. The Hebrew word for “deep” (tehom) is clearly related to another semitic vocalization of Tiamat.

In various Mesopotamian accounts the good creator god, be he Enlil, Marduk, or whomever, defeats the god or goddess of chaos in battle, often with the aid of wind and lightning. Once slain, the evil goddess is used to create the world. The biblical author gives only a casual nod to this by saying, “darkness covered the face of the deep.” The word for “deep” or tehom alludes to Tiamat. The word tehom occurs thirty-five times in the Bible, and in thirty-four instances the word lacks the Hebrew article he prefacing the word. The preface he means “the,” and thus we would translate this as “the ocean” in those texts. But when “the” is missing, the word is a name. If tehom is a name in those thirty-four instances, it strongly implies that “deep” or “waters” should be personified, and thus related to the Mesopotamian Tiamat. Tehom is Mrs. Ocean. In Genesis 1:1 tehom lacks the article and is a name, but our author wishes us to perceive that “Mrs. Ocean” is no longer a goddess; she is just a thing.

The “wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) is a demeaning reference to the great battle between the creator deity and the chaos goddess spoken of by Mesopotamians ([5], p. 104; [6], p. 87; [7], p. 110; [8], p. 36–76). No fantastic battle is described. There is merely wind blowing over the water. In Psalm 104:6–7 the poet declares that the “waters” flee from the “rebuke” of God, which is another poetic way of speaking about this creative process, but the waters are still a thing, not a goddess. The Israelites and the Jews tell us the story and indicate that those Babylonians have the confused the story and that the ocean is not really a goddess.

On the second day in the biblical narrative Mesopotamian mythology again receives a critical response from the biblical author. In the Enuma Elish Marduk fought the seven headed dragon goddess, Tiamat, who was made of water. Marduk split her like a fish into two parts that became the Mesopotamian valley and then again he is said to have divided her to become the waters above and below the firmament. It is this latter image that Genesis 1:6–8 alludes to when it says that God separated the waters. In earlier Mesopotamian myths the hero deity is the Sumerian god Enlil, and in later Assyrian myths the hero is Ninurta. Mesopotamians re–enacted this myth for centuries during the New Year’s celebration, the Akitu festival, to insure stability for the cosmos against Tiamat, the chaos that threatened to destroy the created order each year with the flooding waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. The good god brought order and salvation each year with the defeat of the evil waters. (Israel’s story of salvation also involves water, the waters that drowned pharaoh and his soldiers in the story of Exodus 14–15, the “sea crossing”!) The image of Tiamat, the threatening dragon, emerges in the poetry of the Old Testament, for therein she is sometimes called Tannin, Leviathan, and Rahab (or sometimes just the “sea”). Tiamat also influences the image of the ten–headed beast in Daniel 7 and the various beasts in the New Testament book of Revelation. But here in Genesis 1 Tiamat is no beast; she is just a thing, the waters. The waters are simply divided between those above the firmament and those below the firmament. God did not engage in any combat to create the world; God spoke and things happened. It is a story about creation by dinvely spoken word, not creation by combat.

Like the actions of Marduk in Enuma Elish, God cuts or “separates” the water and places some under the firmament and some above the firmament (Genesis 1:7). The actions are the same as Marduk’s, but the God of the Bible does it with so much ease, because God is the only God. The firmament is described with a Hebrew word that means “hard bowl.” The word comes from the verb “to stamp” or “to spread,” implying that the firmament may be stretched out like a tent or more likely hammered out like a burnished metal bowl ([9], p. 472; [10], p. 44; [11], p. 20; [7], p. 122). The dome holds back waters that can be either gentle rains or fierce storms. Holes in the firmament allow the water to fall as rain or to allow light from the divine realm to pass through. For the Mesopotamians that light comes from the gods; for the biblical author it comes from God. Then on the third day God separates the land from the water beneath the firmament. A similar action is undertaken by Marduk in the Enuma Elish.

On day five God creates the birds that fly and the fish that swim near or in the two great bodies of water separated on day two (Genesis 1:20). But our biblical author adds, almost as if it were an afterthought, a reference to the “great sea monsters” that swim in the ocean (Genesis 1:21). This is another attack on polytheistic Mesopotamian beliefs. The Hebrew word is tannin, which sounds like Tunnan or Tunnanu, a term for the cosmic ocean defeated by the storm god Baal in the 14th century BCE north Canaanite or Syrian version of the battle between the gods ([12], p. 46). In Psalm 74:13–14 the tannin has multiple heads, which hints at the great dragon or seven–headed beast Tiamat. In other biblical texts tannin is portrayed as a threatening cosmic beast, Job 7:12; Isaiah 27:1; 51:9. But in Genesis 1 tannin is simply a benign animal, as in Psalm 148:7 where the creature simply praises God. One could imagine Jews in exile pressured by Babylonians to participate in the New Year Festival, but Genesis 1 bluntly says there is no Tiamat and sea monsters are just created animals. God did not fight rebellious sea monsters; God simply spoke the word and they were created; they are not horrific threats to created order. The mention of such creatures is delayed until day five to further debunk their significance ([4], p. 66–67).

To conclude, once we have discovered that there is a spoof on the persona of Tiamat on fifth day, we turn back to earlier passages in Genesis 1 to see how many allusions to Tiamat occur. With this reference in verse 21, we are more confident in saying that there are references elsewhere to her. In Genesis 1:1 the earth is a “formless void,” tohu and bohu in Hebrew. If tohu refers to watery chaos, then tohu might be allusion to Tiamat, which debunks her as inanimate. In Genesis 1:2, the “face of the deep” and the “face of the waters” are allusions to Tiamat. The Hebrew word for “deep” is tehom, which elsewhere in the Old Testament means the great chaotic waters that could oppose God. Genesis 1:2 indicates that the tehom are a thing, not a goddess of chaos. The Hebrew word for “waters” is mayim, which is not as dramatic a word as tehom, but nonetheless it can also refer to great cosmic powers that oppose God. Finally, the creative activity of the second day, which splits the waters, indicates that they are inanimate, not a powerful goddess. Genesis 1 is a masterly and subtle attack upon polytheistic belief in the Enuma Elish.

In the Enuma Elish Marduk commissions the creation of human beings and assigns this task to Enki and Ninmah. These two deities create seven pairs of human beings, male and female each, from clay and the blood of the defeated god, Kingu. Because people are made from the blood of the evil god, they are inherently meant to be slaves to the gods and work their land, which is the temple manor of the gods. The actual manifestation of their enslavement to these gods of the cosmos is demonstrated in their absolute obedience to the king and the high priests who administer the temple manor for Marduk. The Enuma Elish is thus a myth of social legitimation, a myth designed to justify the existence of an authoritarian society in Mesopotamia.

The biblical text radically counters this ideology. The text says that God created “man” and made “man” into male and female (Genesis 1:26–27). (Notice that “man” or Adam is not simply masculine, as too many today seem to think, but “man” is comprised of both the male and the female, thus implying equality.) Signficantly the text decalres that the male and the female are made in the “image” (selem) and “likeness” (demuth) of God (Genesis 1:26–27). Furthermore, the man and the woman are both commissioned to “rule” (radah) the creation, meaning tht they are to steward it, not abuse and exploit it (as too many people seem to assume today).

All three of these words have Babylonian cognates”: salmu (“image’), demuti (“likeness”), and radati (“rule”). All three of these Babylonian words are used to characterize kings and describe what kings do. The biblical text is deliberately applying the language of royalty to the first couple. Although these words do not appear as frequently in the rest of the Old Testament, nonetheless, they tend to be used of kings in the biblical texts also. Our biblical author is making a powerful statement about human equality in the face of Babylonian declarations about a class hierarchy in society.

Ultimately, the author of Genesis 1 primarily declares several things: 1) There is one God. 2) There was no combat between a good God and a goddess of chaos at the beginning of creation. 3) All people are kings and queens in the eyes of God; all people are equal, and this includes the equality of the sexes. I like to assume that perhaps it is the message of human equality which our biblical author seeks to affirm most loudly.

2. Hesiod

I believe there is more to Genesis 1 than this masterful attack on Babylonian traditions, or the beliefs of the Eastern Antiquitarian tradtion. I believe that our biblical author has also taken on the traditions of the Western Antiquitarian tradition. In particular, I believe our author is also familiar with the Theogony of Hesiod. I have addressed this and other related issues with Hesiod earlier [13].

Hesiod may have lived in Greece in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE. He was the son of a man who had failed as a merchant and had become a small farmer in Ascra in central Greece. This was the era when writing began to emerge, so that Hesiod’s works might have appeared as written texts in the seventh century BCE ([14], p. 2; [15], p. 41). Chronologically these texts could have been used by the biblical authors after 500 BCE.

His famous work, the Theogony, recounts the origin of the cosmos and the generation of the gods, thus making it somewhat similar to Genesis 1. Hesiod utilized the old legends from the early seventh century BCE, including Homeric traditions, contemporary local legends, and perhaps ancient Near Eastern narratives ([16], p. 35–36; [17], p. 63–64). He believed the earth should be seen as the result of growth in the human and divine spheres ([16], p. 15; [18], p. 8–9; [14], p. 10; [19], p. 15).

Hesiod is a truly reflective thinker in contrast to Homer because he characterized the gods and their relationships ([20], p. 7). Scholars suggest that expansion and omission occurred in this epic from the seventh through the fifth centuries BCE ([21], p. 3; [16], p. 7; [17], p. 63). If the Priestly author of Genesis 1 knew this epic, most likely in the fifth century BCE, then most of those additions were already in the narrative.

Genesis 1 and Hesiod describe the origin of the cosmos, speaking of a primordial “void” or “chaos,” creation of light and darkness, and creation of the sky and the earth below it with the ocean. Hesiod may have been familiar with ancient Near Eastern accounts of creation, as is true for the biblical account in Genesis 1 ([16], p. 36; [18], p. 8–9; [22], p. 41–42; [19], p. 15; [1], p. 1–12). Nevertheless, comparison of Hesiod’s Theogony with Genesis 1 indicates that biblical author knew Hesiod’s work in addition to the Near Eastern materials.

Passages in Theogony 116–131 are especially worth comparing with Genesis 1. The text reads as follows:

(116) In truth, first of all Chasm (Chaos) came to be, and then the broad-breasted Earth, the ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’ peak and murky Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth, and Eros, who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods, the limb-melter—he overpowers the mind and the thoughtful counsel of all the gods and of all human beings in their breasts. (123) From Chasm (Chaos), Erebos and black Night came to be; and the Aether and Day came forth from Night, who conceived and bore them after mingling in love with Erebos. (126) Earth first of all bore starry Sky, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, so that she would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods; and she bore the high mountains, the graceful haunts of the goddesses, Nymphs who dwell on the wooded mountains; and she also bore the barren sea seething with its swell, Pontus ([23], p. 12–13).

Both works begin with a reference to the “void.”

Theogony 116 states that Chaos was born first and then came Gaia or earth. In comparison Genesis 1:2 declares, “the earth was a formless void.” In particular, the biblical text states that the earth was “without form” and “void.” Both words may allude to Tiamat, goddess of chaos in the Enuma Elish. Hesiod’s allusion to “chaos” may also reflect his knowledge of this same goddess of chaos. But I believe the biblical author knew Hesiod’s text in addition to the Babylonian epic. Both the biblical text and Hesiod use the term “chaos” while the Enuma Elish is not does not ascribe this term to Tiamat ([2], p. 391–99, gives us the appropriate text of Enuma Elish). This is a significant observation.

Hesiod refers to night and day in Theogony 123–125. First, chaos gives birth to erebos (darkness) and black night, then erebos impregnated black night to produce “Aether” and “Day.” According to Genesis 1:4–5 on the first day of creation God separated the light and the darkness. In contrast to both the biblical text and Hesiod, Enuma Elish does not refer to the creation of light and darkness. This leads us to suspect that the biblical author may referring more directly to Hesiod’s Theogony than the Babylonian account ([2], p. 398–400, again provides the appropriate text of Enuma Elish). This is a very significant observation to make.

Theogony 126–131, in a more detailed section describes the generation of the “starry Sky” (line 126), the “high mountains” (line 129), and “the barren sea seething with its swell, Pontus” (line 131). Genesis 1:6–8 tells how God created the firmament and the waters above it with the land below the firmament and then the waters under the land. Thus, the biblical text recounts the creation of the heavens, mountains, and sea as does Hesiod’s account. In this regard, the accounts in Theogony and Genesis 1 are closer to each other than to the Enuma Elish ([2], p. 399, again provides the appropriate text of Enuma Elish).

Subsequent, Genesis 1 and Theogony in their narrative. Theogony recounts the generation of various gods, a cosmogony, while the biblical text speaks of the creation of plant life, the sun, the moon, stars, birds, fish, land animals, and ultimately, man and woman. The similarity between Hesiod and the biblical description of original chaos and the first 2 days is impressive. In the opinion of some scholars, “the authors of Genesis had made room for Hesiod’s Theogony” ([24], p. 15), in addition to their references to the Enuma Elish.

If the biblical author possessed Hesiod’s narrative, one can observe the difference in the biblical perspective. Theogony recounts cosmogony, the emergence of the gods, but biblical narrative is more concerned with the structure of the world occupied by humanity. The biblical narrative concludes with the creation of people made in the “image” and “likeness” of God. Theogony does not speak the creation of people. Hence, we are led to conclude that the biblical text is more anthropocentric than the Theogony. In the biblical text God is more gracious and has a deep concern for the human beings and their world. Often we have characterized Genesis 1 as cosmological and Genesis 2 as anthropocentric, but now we have to alter these generalizations about Genesis 1.

3. Conclusion

As we observe what the biblical author has crafted, we can make several observations. In response to both the Eastern Antiquitarian tradition of Enuma Elish and the Western Antiquitarian tradition of Hesiod’s Theogony, the author has affirmed monotheism. In accord with both pieces of literature, the biblical author works with the image of a primordial body of water existing at the earliest stage of the creative process, but in opposition in the Eastern Antiquitarian tradition, the biblical author with several allusions indicates that no battle between the good deity and the goddess of chaos was fought. Specific phrases are taken from the Eastern Antiquitarian traditions, such as “in the beginning,” and “heavens and earth.” As in the Eastern Antiquitarian tradition there are allusions to the creation of plants and animals upon the earth. Specific phrases drawn from the Western Antiquitarian tradition include the reference to “chaos” and the distinction between night and day, which the Eastern Antiquitarian tradition does not have. Thus, it seems that our biblical author did have access to the Theogony of Hesiod and not just the Enuma Elish, which most scholars observe.

But what makes the biblical text a most critical response to both the Eastern and the Western Antiquitarian traditions is the anthropocentric perspective. Special attention is paid to the creation of the male and the female, and a heavy emphasis is placed upon their identity as royal beings, implying the ultimate equality of all later human beings. Ultimately the Eastern and the Western Antiquitarian traditions sought to speak about the cosmos and the divine realm. The biblical text wished to speak of humanity and affirm the equality of all human beings and the equality of both the man and the woman. Ironically it has taken the Christian tradition two thousand years to realize and attempt to actualize this powerful message of human equality.