Adamu

Certainly the Hebrews changed the stories to fit their worldview but I don't think "source material" is too strong; it doesn't necessarily imply a "copy."

It seems clear though that the earlier Genesis accounts are simply condensed edited versions of the earlier tales, taken from not just one but several sources.

Chris Johnston

Fourth Tablet

134. Presents and gifts they brought unto him.

135. Then the lord rested, gazing upon her dead body,

136. While he divided the flesh of the ..., and devised a cunning plan.

137. He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;

138. One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven.

139. He fixed a bolt, he stationed a watchman,

140. And bade them not to let her waters come forth.

141. He passed through the heavens, he surveyed the regions (thereof),

142. And over against the Deep he set the dwelling of Nudimmud.

143. And the lord measured the structure of the Deep,

144. And he founded E-shara, a mansion like unto it.

145. The mansion E-shara which he created as heaven,

146. He caused Anu, Bêl, and Ea in their districts to inhabit.
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Chris Johnston

Beginning of the fifth:
1. He.(i.e. Marduk) made the stations for the great gods;

2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the Zodiac, he fixed.

3. He ordained the year and into sections he divided it;

4. For the twelve months he fixed three stars.

5. After he had [...] the days of the year [...] images,

6. He founded the station of Nibir 1to determine their bounds;

7. That none might err or go astray,

8. He set the station of Bêl and Ea along with him.

9. He opened great gates on both sides,

10. He made strong the bolt on the left and on the right.

11. In the midst thereof he fixed the zenith;

12. The Moon-god he caused to shine forth, the night he entrusted to him.

13. He appointed him, a being of the night, to determine the days;

14. Every month without ceasing with the crown he covered(?) him, (saying):


p. 81

15. "At the beginning of the month, when thou shinest upon the land,

16. "Thou commandest the horns to determine six days,

17. "And on the seventh day to [divide] the crown.

18. "On the fourteenth day thou shalt stand opposite, the half [...].

19. "When the Sun-god on the foundation of heaven [...] thee,

20. "The [...] thou shalt cause to ..., and thou shalt make his [...].

21. "[...] ... unto the path of the Sun-god shalt thou cause to draw nigh,

22. "[And on the ... day] thou shalt stand opposite, and the Sun-god shall ... [...]

23. "[...] to traverse her way.

24. "[...] thou shalt cause to draw nigh, and thou shalt judge the right.

25. "[...] to destroy

26. "[...] me.

I think the similarities are striking but not enought to say "source material" in the same way we do for the gospels. The oral tradition was passed into the Hebrew from ancient sources.

It's funny. I am a firm atheist but still love parts of the bible. The creation myth speaks volumes to me, not in a scientific sense, but showing how the ancient society was organized. So many of these myths were created or borrowed to answer important questions that people had (men, actually, women had them but probably didn't voice them, but that's beside the point.) Where do we come from? Where did the earth and animals come from?

The idea of a worldwide flood is the same type of myth that is even better documented with the Gilgamesh Epic among others. Is it possible that this was devised as a way to explain fantastical fossils exposed in an earthquake? "Father, why are there no animals that look like this today?"
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Adamu

Hello Chris.

I suppose that's possible.

Since many scholars have regarded the myths of the ancient near east as "source material" for Genesis and it is, as you say, striking in similarity, I think it appropriate to be termed as such. Certainly oral traditions existed which convey these ancient tales but I think it prudent to work with the earliest written records we have.

There are some interesting lines in the above quote from Enuma Elish: that of the "station of Nibir" or Neberu, and that of determing "six days" demarcated with a "seventh."

Adamu

Being that we've wandered into semantics (pun intended), I couldn't help but define "source" and "material" with intentions to stay focused on topic.
Source, firstly, is "point of origin." Second regards "the beginning of a stream," and Third is "one that supplies information."
I suppose the origin of the earlier mesopotamian records could be in dispute but it seems clear the Enuma Elish supplied information to the redactors of Genesis, if not the point of origin.
Material, of course, is "the substance out of which a thing is or can be made."
Again, it seems clear the Enuma Elish, along with other ANE texts, is the substance out of which the Genesis account is made.

None the less, and back on topic, it appears most accept the Enuma Elish as a text from which the Hebrew authors drew their ideas. And it's no wonder, really, since Abraham too knew these stories.

So how many are needed to draw consensus on an idea?

Adamu

I'd like to take this further and speculate on the Enuma Elish being an astronomical text, one describing not the creation of the universe, but more specifically the creation of our solar system and the formation of Earth.

Consider:

Apsu - Sun
Tiamat - Earth and asteroid belt
Kingu - Moon
Mummu - Mercury
Lahamu - Venus
Lahmu - Mars
Kishar - Jupiter
Anshar - Saturn
Anu - Uranus
EA - Neptune
Gaga - pluto

Marduk - ? (planet? with moons? star? with planets?)


If anyone has explored this idea I'd like to hear about it, if you've not, please read the text linked in the OP with the above nomenclature in mind.

mg01

Not sure how you equate planets past Saturn to the Sumerians who as far as we know were familiar with only seven celestrial bodies. There's a comparison at wikipedia on the days of the week article that lists different ancient cultures and their identifications. I've run across a couple other pages that also discuss but don't have the links.

<begin rambling>

If you look at any ancient mythologies you'll see seven and twelve showing up over and over as related to mystical ideas. Even the "dying/rising" three-days god is not a hellenistic invention, look through the Hebrew Bible and see how many times you see mystical things happening after three days. (Jonah/whale/descent/underworld/fish/monster/deep.) Even 40 is simply an idiom that just means "a lot", and 70 (an amplifcation of 7) is an expression simply for a large group and/or family. These things are not literal. Solomon didn't reign for 40 years. It didn't rain for 40 days. 70 people didn't descend into Egypt with Joseph. There was no seven days of marching with seven blasts from seven trumpts no more than Hercules really performed 12 labors or there were originally 12 titans, the sons/daughters of the sky and earth, or the original 7 deities of the Sumerians. Look at their artwork and you'll see these same themes over and over.

The bronze age Hebrews didn't invent these things, they were surrounded by it, inherited it, and adapted it. What the first 11 chapters repeatedly show is a re-casting of the same age old myths of the Near East and all the same familiar elements, but reshuffled so that YHWH is now front and center and the more naturalistic elements of myths of the populous are shoved to the side or repress altogether. The same process continues through the rest of Genesis where YHWH over and over supplants and takes over roles and etiologies from Canaanite stories. What we look at today is the result of half a melinium or more of this process.

The YHWH priesthood was probably introduced into the Canaanite / "proto-Israelite" hill people in the 13th or 12th century from the south. The hill-people natives were basically Baal/El/Asherah/etc... worshipers, enter the YHWHists claiming they (YHWH/El/Elohim) are one an the same. My bet is they may have actually have been right, that YHWH had developed in the south as a local manifestation out of what was originally an epithat for El in that area. His nature in the south taking on charaistics of a desert deity who the hill-people psudo-adopt (no doubt from a bit of priestly encouragment) as their patron deity. The hill folk thus become a mixed bag.

This is the circumstances E has to contend with and thus tries to merge the Cannanite "epics" concerning their etiological ancestors with their own etiological hero, Moses. The basic framework is used by J later in Judah but amplified. Where E leaves one with the impression that first there was El and the Elohim, then YHWH, J claims it was YHWH all along, just known by a different name. The original peoples "covanent of Elohim" became the "covanent of YHWH".

I say all that because the elements from the Bible usually compared with earlier sources are primarily from J, with the inclusion of P's "cosmic creation" account and some mixing of his flood story with J's. The flood is a universal theme in the ancient world. Stories from Egypt, Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria existed centuries before the first Israelite was born. Flood myths also exist across the Far East and into the Americas. The geneology manufactured by the Torah when it was pieced together post exile even preserves the same 10 pre-deluvian king idea found in Sumerian and later Babylonian sources. The same concept even made it's way into China where in thier version it is also the 10th ruler to put an end to the flood and saves the world.

P's creation also appears to be a "taming down" of an earlier "YHWH vs the Sea" combat creation story we see hints at in psalms and elsewhere. The Leviathon is the embodiment/personification of the pri-mordial, watery, chaotic, "deep". In other ancient accounts, the creator god conquers the chaos to allow the world to exist. Gen 1 says the same thing it's just a polished version, a product of the 5th century but based on ideas centuries older. It's just removed the extra deity references. If you look at the order of creation that follows it's also basically the same as other polytheistic myths such as from Egypt where the first god starts to spit out the other gods that represent the sky, earth, water, etc... Once you translate what they other deities represent, parallels with Gen 1 are again easy to spot.

Gen 2 (J) is more of the same. It addresses the same issue as to the nature of suffering in life as did the Summerian account of man being created serve and labor for the gods. Only again the situation is turned around, this is what J does over an over. Instead of man's plight being the fault of the gods, it becomes his on. Worse still, it's not his fault, it's hers, but even she, was tempted by the serpent. You just have to read they symbols to see what this is all about. First off with the creation of woman out of man we have a justification of the superiority of man over woman. Plus both man from clay, and woman from rib are related so Sumerian ideas as well. Eve/rib/life all connected and played out as a pun by J. The YHWHists struggled for centuries over the naturalistic Baal/Asherah lore of the natives (see Kings) J's cast in the garden sets the stage. The sepent is the earthly symbol of the earths power to produce life. The earth of course was personafied female as such. So here we have the whole mother-earth/serpent consort/female association which is cast in Gen 2 as the source of the whole problem. There's also the world tree and the two guardiens standing between man and the path back to the "eternal". (Which by Christian tradition Jesus provided for us a way back.) These same themes also appear from mesopotamia (check out all those cylinder seals) and even in Asia.

Think about it, "Buddha", litterally "enlightened one" who became so at the same world tree, didn't move for seven days, took seven steps and looked back, spent the next seven days wandering back and forth deciding what to do with his knew knowledge. "Jesus", latinized Greek for Yashoua (Joshua), as in "yh saves" or "yh is salvation". You couldn't have had better names for world saviors if you had just made them up. Personally I find it much more liberating to experience life without having to contend with 3000 (or older) year old beliefs.

<end rambling>

P.S. I believe I've seen Babylonia Marduk associated with Jupiter. There he was begun to be seen as the "god of gods" in a way like YHWH was seen by the Hebrews. There are several lists of the "50 names of Marduk" where he's equated with other deities as in the others just manifestations of one. The road to monotheism was already being paved well before the Hebrews, whom we credit (but really recognized other deites), or the Greeks, who really invented it. (see monad)

JGL53

I am just finishing reading "The Power of Myth" wherein comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell expounds on this general issue.

It seems the original civilizations in the Mesopotamia region were agricultural and worshipped female gods - goddesses - which are associated with the earth - Mother Earth, or the womb from which the planted seed brings forth fruit - or life-sustaining plants. This goddess was Tiamat.

Around 3,500 B.P.E. nomadic herders, who were also fierce warriors, came into the area and conquered the agriculturists, supplanting the goddess with the male god Marduk, In the myth Tiamat was refashioned as Marduk's grandmother - meaning the goddess religion was old and being replaced by the Marduk, who is a precursor to Yahweh. And, yeah, the snake/tree/forbidden fruit/garden of Eden type of motif seems to have originated some six or eight thousand years ago.

Anyone interested in the general subject of the commonalities of religious/mythic motifs should really read Joseph Campbell. Besides the aforementioned “The Power of Myth”, his best books are, IMO:

The Flight of the Wild Gander: Exploration in the Mythological Dimension
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion
The Masks of God (in four volumes)
The Mythic Dimension - Selected Essays
The Mythic Image
Myths, Dreams and Religion (edited by Joseph Campbell)
Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal
Myths to Live By
Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation
Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
Transformation of Myth Through Time

mg01

Campbell is definately enlightening. Recently picked up the 5 volumes of his atlas that were published right before he died. Didn't realize any had been published untill I saw them in a library.

I just checked too from Stephany Daily's "Myths from Mesopotamia" there's a good description of how even the Babylonian creation myth found on the seven tablets of creation are a rehash of the same story from Sumerian that just recasts Marduk as the principle.

mg01

May also find interesting. From a 2001 article in the Economist.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/week.htm