… the fountains of the great abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of the sky were opened… .’ Genesis 7: 11 Also compare the creation of days and the special significance conferred upon the seventh:’ Thou shalt shine with horns to make six known days, on the seventh with… a tiara.’ 12 From Genesis (1: 31-2-1):’ Evening came and morning followed- the sixth day… .’s o God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work he had done in creation.’ We can summarize the similarities like so: each created the firmament, dry land, the celestial bodies, and light.
Each makes man the crowning achievement. On the seventh day, God rests and sanctifies the day. In the seventh tablet of the Enuma Elish, the gods rest and celebrate. These similarities strongly suggest a common knowledge of the Enuma Elish among writers of the Book of Genesis (each section of Genesis is composed of four different sets of writers).
In addition to Babylonian influence, look at the following taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which can be traced back to 3000 B. C. :’ I am Re… I am the great god who came into being by himself… .’ 13 Compare that to the familiar ‘I am who am.’ These similarities are of secondary importance, however; we now begin to see the departures. For one, if Marduk is all-powerful, why does he do battle with Tiamat, when a word would suffice? For example:’ Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.’ Then God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other.’ And so it happened…
.’ Genesis 1: 3, 1: 6 God’s word alone is sufficient to render unto the world any change He wishes. This is a radical innovation in a world where pantheistic religion more closely resembles a super-powered family that doesn’t get along very well. The Egyptian god Re may have been self-created, but he is by no means all-powerful, and not at all the only of his kind. Marduk is a warrior who can defeat primordial serpents, but the has but to speak:’ … and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast.’ Psalms, 33: 9 The word of God is all-powerful… And here we begin to see our greatest departures.
We have a monotheistic religion, the first of its kind, created amidst a culture that, in the case of the Babylonians, has up to fifty gods! 14 Not only is there but one god, but he is all-powerful, so much so that he does not find it necessary to wrestle with nature or defeat mighty primordial gods. He simply speaks and it is done. It is our first occurrence of divine will impose upon the world. Furthermore, it is a god without a precursor, without creation. He is something apart from this world. Tiamat and A psu lived in a world already created (and by whom? ); the Egyptian gods have a multitude of births of gods in their texts 15.
In fact, there was once a debate on the translation of a single verb in the Bible, ‘bar a’, meaning ‘to create’. Later translations modify this to ‘be ro’, meaning ‘to create from nothing’. When written in Hebrew, only careful scrutiny would distinguish the two. The distinction is important, however, because it changes the implications involved in creating. Does God create the world from something or nothing? In the following passage, ‘When God began to create heaven and earth- the earth being a desolate waste, with darkness upon the abyss and the spirit of God hovering over the waters- God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light.’ it is inferred that God is creating with something.
The next translation, ‘When God began to create the heaven and earth, the earth was a desolate waste and darkness was upon the abyss and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light… .’ implies that God began by creating a desolate waste, then creating light, then shaping the waste, and so forth. All this as a function of one verb 16. As another departure, examination of creation stories by Summering and Babylonians show that they begin with subordinate clauses such as ‘when’ or ‘On the day of.’ 17 Genesis clearly diverges from this: ‘In the beginning’ clearly sets apart the text from any other, making it the actual start of all time and space as we know it.
It also puts the Hebrew god outside of time and space. There would be no point in arguing that the Old Testament was influenced by the contemporary cultures of its writers; the facts clearly point to innumerable external sources of inspiration. But while we can acknowledge these similarities, we must also acknowledge that the writers of the Book of Genesis are making a radical departure from the norm: they have created a monotheistic religion, and their god is all-powerful, beyond the scope of human comprehension. Typically, gods are represented as something akin to humans on a grander scale; the Hebrew god is simply not measured or scaled; He is an unknown quantity, set apart from the bounds of human knowledge. These similarities serve a function as a contrast to the differences between these religions. It would seem that the writers acknowledged these other religions, and addressed each one by creating a god that surpasses all others.
The god that creates himself is one of many; the Hebrew god stands alone in his might. The god that created the world defeated another god, and formed the earth from the corpse; in Genesis, God speaks and his words transform into actions. God exists before the matter He shapes to His will. The writers have then, in fact, minimized the actions of all other gods in comparison to one all-powerful deity such as this.
By drawing comparisons to other texts, the message can be lost in attempting to find the roots of certain ideas. But the origins of the stories are not nearly as important as the overall message being stated, and while the ideas they resemble may be old, the message is clear and unique: there is but one, and He is beyond all that is. His will alone suffices, and He predates even time itself. And that message has changed the world.