here is the introductory material, there is more info about specific verses, but that'll have to wait till tomorrow or another day:
Enuma Elish
One of the most famous myths coming out of the Ancient World is the Babylonian epic known as the Enuma Elish (from its opening words: “When on high”
. The cosmogony found there is extremely important for our study of Genesis, for it has been preserved almost in its entirety and belongs to the same ancient Near East of which Israel was a part.
This Babylonian creation epic tells how, before the formation of heaven and earth, nothing existed except water. This primal element was identified with Apsu, the male personification of the primeval sweetwater ocean, and with his female associate Tiamat, the primordial saltwater ocean, represented as a ferocious monster. From the commingling of the two waters were born divine offspring, who, in turn, gave birth to a second generation of gods; the process was repeated successively. There came a time, however, when the young gods, through their constant, noisy behavior, disturbed the peace of Tiamat and Apsu, who decided to destroy the gods. Their evil design, however, was thwarted by the quick action of Ea, the earth-water god.
Tiamat now plotted revenge and organized her forces for the attack on the gods who, in response, asked Marduk to lead them in battle. He agreed, provided that he be granted sovereignty over the universe. This was readily agreed to, whereupon Marduk took up warfare against Tiamat and her helpers. After a fierce battle in which he defeated the enemy forces and slew Tiamat, Marduk sliced the carcass of the monster in two and created from one half the firmament of the heaven and from the other the foundation of the earth.
This work of creation having begun Marduk then established the heavenly luminaries, each in his own place. The gods then complained to Marduk that, each having now been assigned his or her fixed place and function in the cosmos, there would be no relief from the unending toil. Accordingly, Marduk decided to create man to fee the gods from menial labor. Thus a human being was fashioned out of the blood of Kingu, Tiamat’s second husband and captain of her army. The gods showed their gratitude to Marduk by building for him a great shrine in the city of Babylon, “the gate of the god.” The Enuma Elish ends with a description of a testimonial banquet given by the gods at which they recite a hymn of praise to Marduk that confirms his kingship for all eternity.
Images of this can be found in the Old Testament and the writings of the Fathers, In Isaiah, for example, we find, “Was it not Thou that didst cut Rahab [Tiamat] in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon?” (Is. 51:9) or Psalms, “Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan” (Ps. 74:14), “Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass” (Ps. 89:10), and “By His power He stilled the sea; by His understanding He smote Rahab” (Job 26:12). Later, this sea creature (called variously Rahab, Leviathan or dragon) became a symbol for the forces of evil; Cyril of Jerusalem, for example, spoke of Christ crushing the head of the sea monster while standing in the Jordan at His baptism, and this is often portrayed on icons of the Theophany.
The Meaning of Myth
In the popular mind the word myth has come to be identified with fairy tale and associated with the imaginary and the fantastic. But to the Greeks, Mythos meant originally nothing more than a tale. More specifically, it came to be used in describing the deeds of the gods in their relations with one another, their associations with man, and their roles in the cosmos. Myth, in the ancient view, was intimately connected with ritual. In the ancient world, in general, myths were believed to have actually happened in primeval times and continued to influence the world and human destinies. Thus, myth was mimetically re-enacted in public festivals to the accompaniment of ritual. The whole complex constituted initiative magic, the effect of which was believed to be beneficial to the entire community. Through ritual drama, the primordial events recorded in the myth were reactivated. The enactment at the appropriate season of the creative deeds of the gods and the recitation of the proper verbal formulas, so it was believed, would effect the periodic revitalization of nature and so assure the prosperity of the community.
Function of Enuma Elish
The Enuma Elish was one of many versions of cosmogony current in the ancient Near East, but its importance transcended all others, for it became the great national epic of Babylon. It was solemnly recited and dramatically presented in the course of the festivities marking the Spring New Year , the focal point of the Babylonian religious calendar. The epic performed several functions. First, it was a theogony, for it described how the generations of gods came into being. Second, it was cosmological, for it provided an explanation of cosmic phenomena and gave answers to human speculations about the origins of things. Both themes were naturally appropriate to the New Year festival. But still important, the conception of the universe in the Enuma Elish as a kind of cosmic state corresponded to the structural forms of Babylonian society. The position and function of man in the scheme of creation paralleled precisely the status of the slave in Mesopotamia, while the reception of authority by Marduk and his consolidation of power by the show of overwhelming force were symbolic of the Babylonian conception of human rulership of the state.
At the same time, the Enuma Elish served to validate Marduk’s assumption of the divine government of the universe by explaining his ascendancy from relative obscurity as the city-god of Babylon to a supreme position in the Babylonian pantheon, “king of all gods.” It also reflected Babylonian imperialism and supported Babylon’s claims to political pre-eminence in ancient world.
Finally, in its cultic re-enactment, the Enuma Elish recalled the conflict between Tiamat and Marduk as an expression of the war between the forces of cosmic order and the forces of chaos. The struggle was believed to be repeated constantly in the annual life-cycle of the earth. The mimetic New Year re-enactment of the story was in reality a ritual drama. At the critical time of the Vernal Equinox, when nature seemed to be suspended between inanimation and animation, between inertia and creativity, the ritual recitation of the epic served as an analogical repetition of the primordial victory of cosmic order. The participation of society in the struggle between the forces of death and those of revival, to the Babylonian mind, actually brought into effect the renewal of communal life and its re-invigoration.
Function of Genesis Narrative
The ideas presented in the Enuma Elish, as well as its role in Babylonian society are important for a proper understanding of the Genesis account. We must remember that the Mesopotamian and Hebrew cosmogonies, each in its own way, express through their symbolism the worldviews and values that animated the civilization each represents. However, an important distinction must be made here between Israel and Mesopotamia, for the theme of creation, important as it is in the Bible, is only introductory (a prologue, so to speak) to what is to come, namely, the Exodus from Egypt, when God breaks into history. God’s acts in history, rather than His role as Creator are predominant in Biblical thought.
The Bible opens with the account of Creation, not so much because its primary purpose is to describe the process of cosmogony, nor because its chief concern is with the nature of the physical world or the origin and constitution of matter. Genesis will be a prologue to the historical drama that unfolds in the following pages of the Bible. It proclaims, loudly and without ambiguity, the absolute subordination of all creation to Supreme Creator Who makes use of the forces of nature to fulfill His mighty deeds in history – what will be, for us, “Salvation History.” Unlike the Enuma Elish in Babylon, the Genesis Creation account is primarily the record of the event that inaugurates this historical process, and which ensures that there is divine purpose behind creation that works itself out on the human stage.
There are other basic distinctions between Genesis and the Enuma Elish, for Genesis has no political role. It contains no allusions to the people of Israel, Jerusalem or the Temple. It does not seek to validate national ideals or institutions. In addition, it fulfills no cultic function. The tie between myth and ritual, the mimetic enactment of the cosmogony in the form of ritual drama, finds no counterpart in the Israelite epic. Here, too, Genesis represents a complete break with Near Eastern tradition.
The reason for this is not hard to find. The supreme characteristic of the Mesopotamian cosmogony is that it is embedded in a mythological matrix, whereas the outstanding peculiarity of the biblical account is the complete absence of mythology in the classical pagan sense of the term. The religion of Israel is essentially non-mythological, for there is no sense of any “biography of the gods.” And nowhere is this non-mythological outlook better illustrated than in the Genesis narrative. It has no notion of the birth of God and no biography of God. It does not even begin with a statement about the existence of God. To the Bible, God’s existence is self-evident as is life itself, and Genesis begins immediately with an account of the creative activity of the pre-existent God.
In the Mesopotamian accounts, theogony is closely tied up with cosmogony. The gods themselves had to be created. Even Marduk, the head of the Babylonian pantheon, is not pre-existent. The first beings are demons and monsters, while the god of creation is born only at a fairly late stage in the theogonic process. Moreover, his activity is introduced almost casually and incidentally.
The birth of the gods implies the existence of some primordial, self-contained, realm from which the gods themselves derive. The cosmos too, is fashioned from the same element, personified in the Enuma Elish as the carcass of Tiamat. This is to say, both the divine and the cosmic are animated by a common source. In addition, the concept of the immanence of the gods in nature was one of the basic convictions of the religious of the pagan world. It meant the existence of divine powers, operating in nature, upon whom the well-being of man and society depended. The periodic changes in nature were conceived as episodes in the lives of the gods. Nature and man belonged to the same realm. Hence, the goal of man on earth was to integrate himself harmoniously into the cosmic rhythm.
This dependence upon the material explains the prominence in the polytheistic religion of the tales of the personal lives of the gods, their subjection to birth, growth, sex, hunger, disease, impotence and even death. Now, if there are many gods and these gods are dependent upon physical existence, then they can have neither freedom nor omnipotence. Their immanence in nature limits their scope. Their sovereign powers are circumscribed by the superior forces inherent in the primordial substance of existence. Since, according to pagan concepts, man’s destiny is controlled by two separate forces, the gods and the power beyond the gods, it was inevitable that magic became an integral part of pagan religion. Man had to be able to devise the means of activating those forces superior even to the gods. Religion, as a consequence, became increasingly concerned with the elaboration of ritual designed to propitiate the numerous unpredictable powers that be.
Anyone who reads the Bible, especially the Psalter, is aware that the ancient Israelite was as struck by the majesty of natural phenomena as was any of his pagan neighbors. But unlike them, he did not profess to see God within those phenomena. The clear line of distinction between God and His creation was never violated. Nowhere is this brought out more forcefully than in the Genesis account. Here we find no physical link between the world of humanity and the world of the divine. There is no natural connection between the Creator and His handiwork. Hence, there is not room for magic in the religion of the Bible. The God of Creation is eternally existent, removed from all corporeality, and independent of time and space.
Anyone reading the 1st Chapter of Genesis is immediately struck by the complete de-mythologization found there. The planets, stars and other heavenly bodies are “stars” unnamed and simply “lamps” hung in the sky by the Creator to give light to man. Only the Sun and Moon are mentioned by name, calling to mind that the Sun, Re was a great Egyptian god and the moon, Astarte was a Canaanite goddess. To the Greeks there was Helios the Sun god and Hecate, the Moon goddess of the shades; it was she who ruled over the dead. The Earth and Sea are no longer powerful deities – Mother Earth and Oceanus – but simply, “God called the dry land ‘earth’ and the assembled waters ‘sea.’” And together with them all the secondary gods – the gods of the rivers, mountains, springs, trees, and so forth – have been swept away. The great sea monsters are no longer relics of the mythical chaos and a primeval battle of the gods, but are simply animals directly created by God.
