Welcome to what is, I hope, the first of many history articles on Wonderbread. In completing a double major in cinema and history I’ve learned many interesting things and would love to share some of them with you. Some of my fellow history students will also be contributing articles, so keep your eyes on the History category. I’d like to open with an article I wrote earlier this year for a class on Ancient Israel. It explores the similarities between the Ancient Israelite creation and flood stories and those of the Babylonians before them. Ultimately, we can see that there is common mythic tradition in the Ancient Near East.

-Morgan

When we examine the narrative and thematic structure of Genesis 1-2:4a we can see a structural and thematic core which appears to originate from a broad mythic tradition which existed in the Ancient Near East, long before the Israelites codified their scripture in writing. The central parallels exist in the Babylonian texts of the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atrahasis epic. We can find elements of each of these ancient stories present in Genesis, however, it is the differences (rather than the similarities) in these narratives that reveals to us the details of the philosophy of the Iraelites which distinguished them from their contemporaries. It is worthwile, however, to consider the similarities because these provide us with useful information about the collective experience of life in the Ancient Near East.

The central and broadest similarity that exists between Genesis 1-2:4a and Babylonian myth comes in the form of the Creation Myth presented in the Enuma Elish. The notable (and obvious) exception between the two myths is that, while the Enuma Elish presents a polytheistic model, the Genesis creation myth seems to lean towards a monotheistic model (we will address this after we examine the structural composition of the two myths). It is worth noting that, while they arrive at completely different answers, all of the myths which we will discuss attempt to define the relationship between divinity and humans and to why life in the ancient near east was so difficult. Let us begin by examining the narrative structure of the Enuma Elish.

We begin with two Gods, Apsu (male, relating to fresh water) and Tiamut (female, relating to salt water and chaos?) who exist in a formless void (Heidel, 3). From this initial generation comes Ahmu (male),  Lahamu (female) who are both silt deposits as well as Anshar (the rim of the sky) and Kishar (rim of the earth). Anshar and Kishar engender Anu (the sky). Anu gives birth to Ea and his wife is named Damkina.

At this point, we can already see similarities to the Genesis creation story. The basic, fundamental material elements of creation appear first (before they are structured and joined by life) but rather than these elements being made or shaped by a single God, acting as a divine architect, the Gods themselves make up the raw material of creation. This is a trend which continues throughout the Enuma Elish, which we will see as we return to its narrative.

The younger and older Gods are divided into two generations. Apsu and Tiamut form the elder generation, who have stagnated and prefer a lack of activity. The younger generation (comprised of all the Gods spawned by Apsu and Tiamut) have grown noisy and, irritated by this imposition, Apsu plans to kill them. The younger Gods learn of this plan and Ea puts Apsu to sleep and kills him. At this point Ea and Damkina build a house on Apsu’s body and have a son, Marduk. Anshar asks Marduk to kill Tiamut and Marduk agrees, as long as he’s made ruler over all of the Gods. Marduk and Tiamut meet in a titanic battle and, when she opens her mouth to swallow him, he sends the winds to lock her jaws open and shoots an arrow down her throat which pierces her heart.

He then vanquishes her army and captures her son and consort, Kingu. Marduk splits Tiamut in half, dividing the waters above from the waters below. He removes her eyes and the Tigris and Euphrates are formed. He puts the Gods in the heavens, which form the stars and is proclaimed King of the Gods. The Gods begin to work the land which Marduk has created but soon find that the work is too hard. Ea creates human beings out of clay and the blood of the executed Kingu so that the Gods will no longer have to work.

We can see from this summary that the prevailing message from the Enuma Elish is that the Babylonian Gods have, at best, an antipathetic relationship with Human beings and the world that they have created. The structural nature of the world is directly related to the creation and activities of the Gods and the Humans are only created as a subservient means to save the Gods from working the land. It establishes a series of etiological explanations for why life in the ancient Middle East was hard and the resounding explanation is the presence of an uncaring, fickle pantheon.

The Genesis narrative, on the other hand, presents a very similar narrative with two key (and significant) changes. The first is that the creation myth is presented with a single God. The Enuma Elish’s basic structure is kept, but rather than the birth and actions of various Gods being responsible for the stages of creation, each stage results directly from the action of a single deity and is represented by a single day:

Day 1 Created light. Light called day and darkness called night.

Day 2 Expanse between water from above and below. Expanse = Sky

Day 3 Dry ground / Vegetation: Plants and Trees. ” According to their various kinds”

Day 4 Light in sky to separate day and night. Sun / Moon / Stars

Day 5 Life in water and birds in the air. ” According to their various kinds”

Day 6 Land Animals ” Each according to its kind”     Then God created man in his image to rule over: Fish / Birds / Livestock     Every green plant is given for food.

The second significant difference lies in the relationship which is established between human beings and the divine. While in the Enuma Elish man is created to be a slave to the Gods, the prevailing message throughout Genesis is a single, loving and involved God who creates the earth and mankind in his own image. This distinction in divine attitudes persists when we compare the Genesis Flood Story with the other flood narratives of the Ancient Near East.

The accounts are nearly identical in their narrative. Each of them follows the basic formula of :

1. God(s) create humans
2. There is a problem with the humans.
3. God(s) send a flood.
4. A new order is created to fix the problems which existed before the flood

The differences lie in the moral tone of each story and the manner in which God(s) are depicted. Let us begin by examining the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Gilgamesh epic uses the flood story as method of explaining human mortality. The story focuses on Gilgamesh’s quest to become immortal, after the death of his friend Enkidu. Because this issue of mortality is the central narrative thread in the story the flood component is only used in relation explaining human mortality. Gilgamesh encounters Utnapishtim, an immortal man and asks him how he gained his immortality. As Utnapishtim relates his story, we can see clear parallels between him and Noah in the Genesis flood story. However, the reasons for the flood are not stressed, only that Utnapishtim’s reward for being a dutiful servant and saving humanity was immortality. In this sense, the Gilgamesh epic is not concerned with the hows and whys of the Flood, only in its usefulness for explaining the problem of why people die (Frymer-Kensky 154-5).

In the Atrahasis epic, on the other hand, is a more direct parallel with the Genesis flood story (the scope of the Atrahasis epic is much broader than merely describing the flood, but we will focus on the flood component alone for now). In the Atrahasis the flood is used to describe the antagonistic relationship between the Gods and humanity (the flood is sent because the humans have grown to populous and are too noisy). The narrative of the flood itself is almost identical to that of the story in Genesis, but there is a major difference in tone. The Atrahasis epic gives us an interesting window into the psyches of the Babylonian people (Boadt 127).

When we consider the climate and geography of the ancient Middle East, with its droughts, storms and floods it is easy to imagine why their Gods were depicted as angry, fickle beings. It is the obvious explanation for the climatic woes which beset them.

If we turn now to Genesis we can see that while the flood narrative is essentially the same, the moral and depiction of God’s relationship to mankind is completely different. While in the Atrahasis epic presents a relatively flippant reason for the floods (the humans were annoying) the Genesis flood is released by God because the world has become corrupted. To say that it was simply because humans had been wicked undermines the deeper meaning of the shift in moral and tone. If it were merely a case of human beings being wicked, why not simply wipe out the humans rather than killing the humans and everything else on earth? We can gain an understanding of both God’s motivations for the flood and society and belief in ancient Israel if we examine the covenant God presents to Noah and his sons after the flood.

• God’s covenant contains 3 basic rules:
• Be fruitful and multiply
• You may eat animals, but not alive and no drinking blood
• No one, beast or man, may kill a human being

The first covenant seems to be in direct opposition to the Babylonian explanation of overpopulation and the annoying nature of humans as a reason for the flood.

The second covenant contains clues about both Israelite society and culture and the third covenant. First we can infer that before the flood, if vegetarianism wasn’t the norm then eating meat was, at the very least, a taboo. Second, the mention of blood and the prohibition of drinking it hints at the strong significance of blood in Israelite culture.

Frymer-Kensey (152) comments that blood holds a special significance for the ancient Israelites. They believed that the spirit of an animal (and possibly humans?) existed in the blood. It was a great taboo to spill the blood of an animal anywhere outside of the temple. The blood spatter on the altar was considered redemptive.

The commandment against killing human beings is a new one. In other near eastern legal systems it seems that capital punishment is widespread. We need only to look to Hammurabi’s law code, which proscribed capital punishment for many offences. Frymer-Kensey (152) notes that in Israel, capital punishment was reserved only for the most serious offences against God and was ‘never invoked for offences against property’. Conversely, murder could not be rectified by commercial means, only the death of the murder could set things right.

We can infer from the 3^rd commandment that the antediluvian Israel was as enthused with capital punishment as the rest of the world. Frymer-Kensey (153) suggests that it is this which is the reason that God sent the flood in genesis. He suggests that Murder has its consequences for both the murderer and the earth itself. In Gen 4:10-12 God tells Cain that the blood he spilled on the ground has made it infertile for him. In Israelite theology, the blood of innocents, when spilled on the ground, passes a physical taint to the earth itself, corrupting it. By the time of the flood, the sheer scale of the murder of innocents meant that the whole earth was physically corrupted from the blood spilt upon it. We know (from Acts, Leviticus and Ezekiel) that the ancient Israelites believed that physical acts of moral wrongdoing tainted people and places physically.  Frymer-Kensey (153) sums it up beautifully:

“The flood is not primarily an agent of punishment … but a means of getting rid of a thoroughly polluted world and starting again with a clean, washed one”

Bibliography

• Boadt, L. Reading the Old Testament, New York, Paulist Press, 1984
• Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, “The Atrahasis Epic and its Significance for our understanding of Genesis 1-9” Biblical Archaeologist 40 (4), 1977 pp.147-155
• Heidel, A. The Babylonian Genesis, Chicago: University of Chicargo Press, 1963
• King James Bible.

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