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Defenders 3: Excursus on Creation of Life and Biological Diversity (Part 13): Did Genesis Borrow From Babylonian Myths?
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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig Today the Creation of Life and Biological Diversity, Part 13. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org we saw in our study of Miller and Soden's book in the beginning we misunderstood that they rightly discount the importance and influence of Mesopotamian myths upon the Genesis creation story. They think that Egyptian myths are reflected in Genesis 1, but we've seen that that case, I think, is overstated. I do want to say something today, however, about Mesopotamian myths and why scholars think that these are not a significant influence upon the Genesis creation story. I think this is important not only for the sake of completeness, but also because one does frequently still find, especially on the popular level, people saying that Genesis 1 is borrowing from ancient Babylonian myths of creation, particularly the myth called the Enuma Elish. The words Enuma Elish are simply the first words in Akkadian of this Babylonian epic poem, and this has been referred to in the past as the Babylonian Genesis because of its creation account. The story or the poem tells of the God Marduk, who becomes ascendant over the other gods, the head of the Babylonian pantheon, by defeating and destroying the goddess Tiamat, who is sometimes portrayed in the myth as a goddess or woman, other times apparently as a dragon. Let me just read to you the opening lines of the Enuma Elish. When skies above were not yet named, nor earth below pronounced by name Apsu, the first one, their begetter and maker Tiamat, who bore them all, had mixed their waters together, but had not formed pastures, nor discovered reed beds, when yet no gods were manifest, no names pronounced, nor destinies decreed, then gods were born within them, Lahmu and Lahamu emerged, and their names pronounced. Now here it describes this primordial condition in which the goddess Tiamat and the God Apsu mingled their waters together, which is probably a metaphor for sexual relations, because Tiamat then, as a result of this commingling with Apsu, gives birth to the gods that are named in the epic. And the story then tells of how the God Marduk battles against Tiamat, kills her, and then creates the world out of her carcass. Now, as I say, most scholars today, in contrast to past generations, would say that Genesis 1 does not exhibit the influence of this myth. But you will find on occasion, scholars who assert the contrary. For example, Peter Enns in his book the Evolution of Adam, published as recently as 2012, says that there are quite a number of commonly agreed upon similarities, in his words, between Genesis 1 and the Babylonian epic. A similar position is taken by the biblical scholar Kenton Sparks in the book Genesis History, Fiction or Neither, published in 2015. So even in recent years, there are still some scholars who are claiming that Genesis 1 bears significant similarity to the Enuma Elish. Here is the list of seven similarities that Peter Enns gives. I'd like to go through these with you this morning. Number one. He asserts that in both accounts, matter exists independently of the Divine Spirit. Matter exists independently of the Divine Spirit. Secondly, in both accounts, darkness precedes creation. Darkness precedes creation. Thirdly, in the Genesis narrative, the Hebrew word tehom, which is the Hebrew word for deep, is linguistically related, he says, to the Babylonian word Tiamat. So Tahome and Tiamat are linguistically related, and this is the name of the goddess who symbolizes primordial chaos. Fourth, similarity is that in both, light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Number five. In the Enuma Elish, Marduk fillets the body of the slain Tiamat to form a barrier to hold back the waters above from escaping. He divides her body in two, and with one half of the carcass, he creates a sort of canopy or skin to keep back the waters above. In Genesis 1, the sky is depicted as a solid dome over the earth to keep the waters above where they belong. Number six. The sequence of days of creation is similar in both accounts. The sequence of days of creation is similar in both accounts, including the creation of the firmament, the dry land, the luminaries, and finally, humanity. And finally, number seven. All is followed by divine rest. All is followed by divine rest. Now, I'm sure you would agree at first blush that that's an impressive list of similarities. But the problem is that upon closer examination, these alleged parallels are frequently questionable and in some cases, downright spurious. Let's look at each one of them. The first you remember was that matter exists independently of the Divine Spirit. The claim that matter exists independently of the Divine Spirit is not true in the Enuma Elish, it doesn't even mention the Divine Spirit. It just begins with these two gods associated with the primordial waters. Nor is this statement clearly true of Genesis. And because in Genesis, God has already been said in verse one to have created the heavens and the earth in the beginning ends is evidently thinking that creation begins with verse three. But we've argued that creation begins with verse one. Verse one is an independent clause, and moreover, it is not simply a title of the entire Chapter? Why? Well, for one reason, the first verse is connected to verse two by the conjunction and or in the Hebrew vav. And so it's not simply a title, it is an independent clause followed by and and the second verse. Moreover, if it were a title of the chapter, it would be an inaccurate summary because the ensuing chapter does not in fact describe the creation of the earth. Verse 1 says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but in verse 2 the earth is already there, the earth was without form and void, etc. So if this were a title, it's inaccurate because the chapter doesn't describe the creation of the earth. So creation, I think, in Genesis begins with verse one, and therefore it is simply false to say that matter exists independently of God's spirit. What about number two? That was that darkness precedes creation. Well, here it's exactly the same problem. If creation begins with verse one and not with verse three, then it's false that darkness precedes creation because creation begins when God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. As if this weren't bad enough, even worse, in the Enuma Elish, darkness isn't even mentioned, so that the parallel is completely spurious. The anomalies says nothing about darkness existing in the beginning. Number three is that the Hebrew word t home or the deep is linguistically related to Tiamat. Now, this is very misleadingly stated. Tiamat and tihom are underived from each other. You cannot show that the word t home is derived from the Akkadian word Tiamat. Rather, since Akkadian and Hebrew are both Semitic languages, both of these words independently go back to a Semitic root word. So yes, they're linguistically related, that's true, but they're not linguistically related in the sense of being derived from from one another. They are independent from this earlier Semitic word. Moreover, the deep is completely different in the Genesis account than the waters in the Enuma Elish. We already saw this point in our study of Egyptian myths. What is described in Genesis is, is an earthly ocean. It's an ocean on the face of the earth. Whereas in the Enuma Elish what we have is a sort of primordial divine substance associated with this God and goddess. And this is prior to the Earth's existence and something then that gives birth to the other gods. So it's quite different than what you have in Genesis number four. Light exists before the creation of the sun, moon and stars. Light exists before the creation of the sun, moon and stars. This would be such a novel feature I think of the narrative that that would be impressive as a parallel if that were true. But in fact, in the Enuma Elish, Marduk does not create light before he creates the sun, moon and stars. Now, what is true is that the primordial events in the Enuma Elish don't take place in the dark. That's true, but neither do they take place in the earthly realm. In contrast to Genesis, which describes the earthly realm, the Enuma Elish begins with the description of the divine realm, the realm of the gods. And. And it's true, though they're not walking around in the dark in the realm of the gods. There you have day and night in their realm. But this is not a description of the earthly realm, and therefore it's simply of no relevance to when light comes to exist on Earth. What about number five? That Marduk fillets the body of the slain Tiamat to to form a barrier to keep the waters above from escaping. While Genesis depicts the sky as a solid dome to keep the waters where they belong. This is actually a point of contrast between the two narratives. In the one, you have this dissected corpse which is stretched out over the sky, whereas in Genesis you have a firmament and in which the stars and the sun and the moon are placed. This is completely different. And this is wholly apart from the fact that Genesis does not portray the firmament as a solid dome. That is reading between the lines, it's not in Genesis. What about number six? The sequence of the days of creation is similar. Again, this claim is mistaken because there is no sequence of days of creation in the Enuma Elish. There's no sequence of days of creation at all. As for the order of the events in the Enuma Elish, Maruk first creates the heavens by stretching out Tiamat's skin to keep back the waters. Then he creates the abodes of for the various gods. Then he creates the constellations, and then the moon, which was so important for Babylonian astronomy and timekeeping. And then he creates the clouds and rainstorms. Then he creates the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and then the mountains and the springs. Then he creates what's called the great cosmic bond, whatever that is, and the supports for the heavens. And then he's done the creation of men as slaves for the God is a later incident related after the story of Babylon's creation. So this is scarcely similar to the sequence of events in Genesis 1. I think you'd agree. Finally, what about the last alleged similarity that all is followed by divine rest Is that true? No, it's not true. Marduk does not rest after these works are done. Instead it says he attaches guide ropes and hands these over to the God Ea while he goes to the God Anu. The only time that Marduk rests in is immediately after slaying Tiamat before undertaking the creative works just mentioned. So the time he rests is prior to creation, not after it. He kills Tibat, then he rests and surveys her dead body. And then he begins the work of creating the heavens and the constellations, the mountains and the rivers and so forth. Now when you look at this, you can't help but wonder how could Peter Enns have so seriously misread the Enuma Elish? Now I've warned in this class about the dangers of parallelomania, how difficult it is to show dependence or borrowing of one piece of literature upon another. But since men rush in where angels fear to tread, let me hazard a guess about where Peter Enns got this idea. Of these similarities between Enuma Elish and Genesis. It seems that Enns has simply followed the book by Alexander Haydler called the Babylonian Genesis. The Babylonian Genesis. This has been one of the most influential books traditionally on the Enuma Elish and the interpretation of Genesis, published in 1961. The Babylonian Genesis by Alexander Heidel. And if you look on page 129 Alex, that book, you will find a chart in which these same similarities are listed by Alexander Heidel. Now I thought to myself, well now wait a minute. If these really were commonly accepted similarities, maybe it's just a coincidence that Enns would notice the same similarities that Alexander Heidel did. But here's the thing ends reproduces the errors in Heidel's list like darkness being prior to creation or divine rest after creation. In the Enuma Elish there is no primordial darkness. And Heidel admits it on page 101. That is not part of the creation myth. So the fact that the very errors in Heidel's chart are reproduced by ends makes me think or suspect that he has simply borrowed the chart from Heidel and reproduced these alleged similarities. And I noticed just very recently in reading Richard Clifton's book on Genesis that he makes exactly the same allegation with respect to the well known commentator on the book of Genesis, E.A. spizer. This is what Clifton says and I quote, here it is. He says that Speiser quote simply adopted a Heidel's chart of the sequence of acts in Enuma elish and Genesis 1. Assuming it proved Borrowing, end quote. But in fact, says Clifton, and I quote, the sequence of events in the two works of are not truly parallel, end quote. So the same critique that I'm exercising of ends and sparks has already been enunciated with regard to Speiser by Clifton. Now Haidel in his book admits, and I quote, the divergences are much more far reaching and significant than are the resemblances, most of which are not any closer than what we should expect to find in any two more or less complete creation versions, which might come from entirely different parts of the world and which might be utterly unrelated to each other. And this is because, as he says, both would have to account for the same phenomena. And since human minds think along much the same lines, Haydl himself recognizes that the alleged similarities between the Enuma elish in Genesis 1 are not any more than what you might find between a creation story in South America and one in the islands of the South Pacific. Now, Enz acknowledges that the Babylonian and biblical stories have many significant differences, suggesting that something other than simple borrowing has taken place. But nevertheless, he still remains guilty of alleging parallels on the basis of listing isolated elements of the narratives without consideration of context. And they're simply listed without any consideration of the context in which they occur. And therefore these are little more than cherry picking. When the two accounts are read as wholes, they are far from parallel. The Enuma Elish, in fact, is only improperly characterized as a Babylonian creation epic. It really isn't. What it is is a panegyric of the God Marduk. It's the story of the exaltation of Marduk over the other Babylonian gods and how he became the supreme God. It is not a Babylonian Genesis at all, and therefore most scholars today no longer consider the Enuma Elish to be relevant in any direct way to Genesis 1. W.G. lambert is a very highly respected assyriologist. That is to say, he studies the literature of ancient Mesopotamia. And Lambert says, and I quote, that the Enuma Elish is not a norm of Babylonian or Sumerian cosmology. It is a sectarian and aberrant combination of mythological threads woven into an unparalleled compositum. In my opinion, he said, it is not earlier than 1100 BC. The various traditions it draws upon are often perverted to such an extent that conclusions based on this text alone are suspect. It can only be used safely in the whole context of ancient Mesopotamian mythology. End quote. Any discussion of the relevance of the Enuma Elish to the creation story? Jim, you said that it's not the Babylonian Genesis, but rather it is what regarding the. I said it's a panegyric for Marduk. It is a sort of praise
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for
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Marduk about his supremacy and how he attained the supremacy. That's what it really is, Cindy.
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Kind of picking up on what Heidel said. If you accept that Homo sapiens came into being in a relatively small number and geographically close at the very beginning, that is Adam and Eve, and they were aware of, through divine revelation, the origins of their being. I'm just speculating here. Now, it seems to me it would be more likely that there would be similar stories as mankind dispersed around different parts of the world. Not necessarily that the Hebrew borrowed from others, but would not then if it were knowledge of the actual creation of the world, the story of creation. It seems to me these other stories are actually. It's the other way around. They are remembering variations of what maybe forefathers have said verbally. Why is it always that the Bible or Hebrews is the one borrowing instead of the other way around? Is that valid?
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Well, we ran into the same question when we talked about the Epic of Gifts, Gilgamesh and the Flood story, if you'll recall, and speculated whether or not the Flood story in Gilgamesh and the Flood story in Genesis might not both stem independently from some earlier event. While that's certainly possible in a case like the creation account, I have to say they're just not that similar, Cindy. These similarities are spurious. So I don't see any reason to think that these are dim memories of the same original story or account. They're just so different in any of them.
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You know any other accounts?
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Well, I've looked at the ones that are causally most relevant to Genesis that are usually discussed in the literature, and that would be Mesopotamian and Egyptian. I don't think we need to look at, say, Greek mythology or Norse mythology, though you may remember when we broadened our survey to take in other myths around the world, we found common motifs in North American and South American Indian myths of creation that involved darkness and primordial water, exactly as Haidel said, that these are elements that might be found in the greatly unrelated stories. So, yeah, you're just really into the realm of speculation here. And I would say that at least with regard to these stories, the alleged parallels are the skewed vision of parallelomania from which some of these scholars are suffering, rather than genuine indications of either borrowing or stemming from a common source. Close with a word of prayer, shall we? Our Father in Heaven, thank you for the time that we've spent together in Defenders. And we would pray that as this podcast is disseminated all around the world, that you would use it to encourage people who study the creation stories of Genesis and wonder about their derivation. And so now, Lord, we commit our lives to you as we go out into the workweek and pray that what we do and think and say would be glorifying to Jesus Christ, and that you would fill us with the Holy Spirit and enable us to to live lives that are pleasing and blameless in your sight. In his name we ask this. Amen. The copyright for the preceding material is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.