Hebrew Bible: Creation

Comparing/Contrasting the accounts of the Creation story of the Hebrew Bible 

and Enuma Elish, the Babylonian myth

Class Discussion

Enuma Elish - this story was recited at the temple by the Babylonian priests on the fourteenth day of the New Year's festival.  At the end of the recitation, the king was beaten by the priests in the sight of all the people to the point of tears, at which point he had to rise up again.  The purpose of all this was to tell a story of new beginnings while honoring the Babylonian god Marduk through the humiliation and then triumph of the king.

Characters

• Tiamat - the female eternal creator, fierce with her creation
• Apsu - the male eternal creator, preserving the creation
• Marduk - the lesser god who challenges Tiamat and becomes king of the gods
• Igigi - the council of gods on Marduk's side
• other gods who live inside Tiamat

Story Highlights

1. Tiamat wants to take revenge for Apsu's murder by killing the lesser gods
2. Marduk is her challenger
1. Marduk has four eyes and four ears; he's huge
2. He is equipped with a powerful bow and arrows
3. Marduk casts a spell to open Tiamat's mouth, and then he blows winds inside her.  While trapped, he kills her with an arrow to the heart.
4. Marduk essentially uses half her body to form the air/heavens, and the other have to form the earth.  Tiamat thus represents the cruelty of nature.
5. Marduk decides to create humans (from Tiamat's lover Qingu) to do the gods' work

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Creation Story - Genesis 1-2

Ex Nihilo - as in, creating "out of nothing"

Key Contextual Points

• The Hebrew word for "deep," Tahom, is translated into the Akkadin (Babylonian) as Tiamat, suggesting that the Creation story is an extension/adaptation of Enuma Elish.
• Materials before Creation
• Elohim
• waters
• heavens
• earth
• wind
• darkness (if anything)
• "Wind":  like Marduk's feat with the wind
• The framework of the Creation story all depends on the way one reads the first verse in Hebrew, which is quite ambiguous.  The difference is whether Creation was Ex Nihilo or already had form.
• "Our image":  the Hebrews had no concept of what Christians call the Trinity, so this verse could arguably imply that the author is referring to multiple gods.
• Elohim could possibly be translated to be plural; however, the verb tenses used throughout the chapter are all singular.