lpetrich

I recall from somewhere the seventh-day Sabbath becoming important after the Babylonian Exile, that pre-exilic history makes little mention of it.

But since that Sabbath is mentioned in the first creation story and in the laws of Moses, this suggests that the earlier parts of the Bible went through some post-exilic editing to add Sabbath stuff: the laws mandating it and God observing the first Sabbath in the history of the Universe.


There is also the question of whether there was a historical Moses, whether the Moses of the Old Testament / Tanakh / Hebrew Bible had a historical prototype. Moses had lived before the OT's history starts getting reliable, and he fits Lord Raglan's Mythic Hero profile rather well. He also qualifies as a culture hero, someone who gets credited with numerous inventions. Kings David and Solomon also got the culture-hero treatment, with the Psalms being credited to David and several books being credited to Solomon.

Anat

The way I understand it, pre-exile views regarding the creation were close to the ones found in Ugarit - a battle between the creator deity and sea deities, the defeat of the latter enabling the creation. This view is reflected in some of the Psalms. The first creation story in Genesis was influenced by the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish, so I would guess it was composed in exile. It has a less personified creator and fewer polytheistic elements (except for the part about making man 'in our image'). The remnants of the primordial battle are completely depersonified (the primordial waters, the deep). Towards the end of exilic period Deutero-Isaiah presents an even more distilled monotheistic view of a de-personified deity.

I'm not sure about the second creation story. It has Mesopotamian influences, but the deity is described in very human terms. (OTOH a tablet with a segment of the story of Gilgamesh was found in Megiddo, so maybe some Mesopotamian influence made it to the Levant pre-exile?)

lpetrich

So some of the Psalms feature God vs. some sea monster.

This reminds me a bit of Marduk vs. Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, so that may have been a common mythological motif, but one that was more-or-less edited out for whatever reasons.

In any case, Genesis 1 is remarkably systematic and formal; God creates by commanding, and he creates in a very systematic fashion:

Day 1: celestial environments
Day
Night

Day 2: far-terrestrial environments
Sea
Sky

Day 3: near-terrestrial environments
Land
Plants

Day 4: celestial inhabitants
Day: Sun
Night: Moon, stars

Day 5: far-terrestrial inhabitants
Sea: sea animals
Sky: flying animals

Day 6: near-terrestrial inhabitants
Land: land animals, humanity
Plants: "You may eat these"

And God is happy with what he has done -- so happy that he is very willing to observe the first Sabbath ever in Day 7.

Creating humanity in Its likeness is an oddity, because one almost expects the God of Genesis 1 to be as abstract and non-anthropomorphic as the God(s) of various Greek philosophers -- Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, etc.


As to the second story, I agree that it's rather difficult to find mythological prototypes for it. And it is certainly more primitive than the first one -- God is very anthropomorphic in it and he creates in a very physical and improvised sort of manner. And he has to fix his creation as he goes; he likely got rather exasperated at the end of it.

God creates Adam from some dirt.
Adam is lonely.
God creates animals for him.
Adam is still lonely.
God creates Eve from his rib/side for him.
Adam is less lonely now.
But a mischievous snake convinces Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of a certain tree.
God gets pissed, kicks Adam and Eve out, and orders that snake to crawl on its belly.


All that aside, I wonder if anyone has anything on Babylonian Sabbath observance; they supposedly considered the seventh day an unlucky day.

Loomis

You might want to read what Leolaia has to say about sea monsters:

The skinny on the Leviathan and Rahab monsters

Loomis

Have you ever noticed this?

Genesis 1 uses a literary formula to delineate each of the seven days of creation. At the end of each day's activities, except for the second and seventh days, God reviewed what he did and declared, "It was good."

The phrase "it was good" occurs seven times.

Gen 1:4 - first day
Gen 1:10 - third day (first instance)
Gen 1:12 - third day (second instance)
Gen 1:18 - fourth day
Gen 1:21 - fifth day
Gen 1:25 - sixth day (first instance)
Gen 1:31 - sixth day (second instance)

It looks to me like someone rearranged things. I bet the 'first Sabbath ever' was an afterthought.

rob117

We should expect Mesopotamian influence on the Levant (and vice versa) well into the second and even third millenium; The Akkadian, Old Babylonian, and Mitannian empires had all penetrated into that area by the Amarna period, and Akkadian was the international language of diplomacy in that period. The Ugaritic myths also show Mesopotamian influence, and there had been a steady penetration of Amorites (read:Northwest Semites) into Mesopotamia since the late third millenium. So even Genesis 1 could be pre-exilic, although if it is it can't be much earlier than 600 BC due to its strong abstract monotheising tendencies.

Loomis

The big commonality is the part about Marduk splitting Tiamat’s crotch like a tent canvas, affixing the stars and heavens to it, and dividing the waters above from the waters below. But John Day argues that Genesis 1 is mostly a “rework” of Psalm 104.

Day mentions these similarities:

1. God shining light (Psalm 104:1; Genesis 1:3-5)
2. Creation of heaven and earth (Psalm 104:2-4; Genesis 1:1-5)
3. Waters pushed back (Psalm 104:5-9; Genesis 1:6-10)
4. Creation of vegetation (Psalm 104:14-18; Genesis 1:11-12)
5. Creation of luminaries (Psalm 104:19-23; Genesis 1:14-18)
6. Creation of sea creatures (Psalm 104:24-26; Genesis 1:20-22)
7. Creation of living creatures (Psalm 104:27-30; Genesis 1:24-31)
8. God finds joy/pleasure in what he made (Psalm 104:31; Genesis 1:31)

Psalm 104, in turn, is thought to be dependent on the "Great Hymn to Aten.”

Also note that in Ugaritic mythology Yam’s messengers appear as flaming fire before the assembly of the gods. Here they are in Psalm 104:4

He makes the winds his messengers, and his attendants a flaming fire.

These ‘messengers’ and ‘attendants’ are probably the “us” in Genesis 1:26.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness …”

lpetrich

I agree that Psalm 104 has roughly the same order of creation as Genesis 1, but that does not necessarily mean Psalm 104 > Genesis 1 -- it could mean Genesis 1 > Psalm 104, or that the two have some shared source.

In fact, I suspect that Genesis 1 was the source, because its order of creation is a well-defined narrative, while in Psalm 104, it is not -- it's more of a grab bag, more like "How remarkable You are, Mr. G., for having created all these things."

Genesis 1 has the creation order:

1. Celestial environments
2. Far-terrestrial environments
3. Near-terrestrial environments

4. Celestial inhabitants
5. Far-terrestrial inhabitants
6. Near-terrestrial inhabitants

In summary, all the environments, then all the inhabitants in the same order. This explains such oddities as plants being created before the Sun and flying animals before land animals.

I found it curious that Genesis 1 features creating environments, then creating inhabitants. I wonder why it doesn't have the order

1. Celestial environments
2. Celestial inhabitants

3. Far-terrestrial environments
4. Far-terrestrial inhabitants

5. Near-terrestrial environments
6. Near-terrestrial inhabitants

Or more simply,

1. Celestial realm
2. Far-terrestrial realm
3. Near-terrestrial realm

Perhaps that three-step version was the original version, and it was stretched to six days by repeating it to make the following day the first Sabbath.

In any case, the first Genesis creation story looks like a charter myth for the seven-day Sabbath, while the second one looks more like some folktale.

There are a variety of ways of interpreting myths, as described in Ways of Interpreting Myth:

1. As a belief system.
2. As disguised history.
3. As disguised philosophy or allegory.
4. As fables illustrating moral truths.
5. As allegories of natural events.
6. As pre-scientific explanation.
7. As charters for customs, institutions, or beliefs.
8. As religious power, or metaphors for the unknown.
9. As expressions of religious rituals.
10. As examples of psychological archetypes.
11. As stories.
12. As embodying irreconcilable structural conflicts in social systems.

Also see What is Mythology?

Myths as pre-scientific explanation are often called "Just So Stories", after Rudyard Kipling's book of stories inspired by such myths. The second Genesis creation story contains a rather obvious one: its "explanation" of why snakes crawl on their bellies.

Finally, I checked on where in the first creation story that God said that something was good; only in the second day does God neglect to call anything good. But I think that it is difficult to read very much into that.

Anat

And the third day has twice 'it was good'. Hence the preference for the third day of the week (Monday night to Tuesday at sundown) for weddings among Jews, and tendency to avoid the second day (Sunday night to Monday at sundown). Not being of a superstitious leaning, I actually got married on a Sunday night.

lpetrich

I checked on what is called good in Genesis 1:

Day 1: Light
Day 2: (none)
Day 3: Land, plants
Day 4: (all)
Day 5: (all)
Day 6: Land animals

God does not explicitly say that humanity is good, just that humanity is his lookalikes and his lieutenants in ruling the Universe. And he continues with saying that everything he created was good, and that the next day, the Sabbath, is not just good, it's holy.

And I find it hard to find a pattern in what is not explicitly called "good".