The military and political achievements of Babylon and its kings was celebrated in the famous Enuma Elish Stories, compiled from different Sumerian and Amorite stories around 1100 BCE. This is a classic case of the divine being made in man’s image in contrast to the biblical portrayal of people created in God’s image. For example, the divine assembly parallels the human village or city assembly. Just as the latter was made up of “old men”, the elders, and “young men”, the warriors, so the divine assembly is comprised of the annunaki, the divine elders, and the iggigi, the divine warriors.
Before the heavens, earth and the annunaki came into being, there was but the divine chaos waters: Apsu (fresh water) and Tiamat (salt water). The union of these two deities brings other deities into being from whom in turn other deities are generated. Clearly, neither Apsu or Tiamat were viewed as being omnipotent since it is possible for the wisdom of descended deities to be greater than that of their ancestor deities (as in the Hymn to Atum). So Ea (earth) is greater than Anshar and even succeeds in killing Apsu. Following Apsu’s death a new generation of divine beings is produced of whom the greatest is the incomparably massive and powerful Marduk.
Meanwhile Tiamat, the chaos waters, has given birth to seemingly invincible, deadly monsters – vicious snakes and terrifying dragons. This fills the divine assembly with alarm. Marduk steps forward, demanding that he be acknowledged as ruler of the divine assembly upon defeating Tiamat. He insists that the authority he then will receive be irrevocable. We next read of the divine assembly joyfully shouting, “Marduk is Lord!” and swearing allegiance to him, imploring him to destroy Tiamat.
Marduk goes into battle armed with a bow, a war club, lightning as his shield, and a blazing aura of fire as his armour. He also carries an immense net he has woven in which he plans to trap Tiamat. Tiamat disguises herself as a sea serpent and taunts Marduk. Enraged that he should dare to defy her she rushes upon him. As she opens her mouth to roar Marduk inflates her with storm winds and then pierced her with an arrow of lightning. Having defeated Tiamat Marduk is proclaimed ruler of the divine assembly and follows this up by transforming Tiamat’s monsters into statues. Marduk then smashes Tiamat’s skull with his war club and scatters her blood to the winds. He then cuts her body in half, making the heavens from one half and the earth from the other half.
In Genesis 1:2 the word translated “the deep”, tehom, may allude to Tiamat. There are certainly strong grounds for taking Genesis 1 to be polemical. When God created the heavens and the earth (1:1), he deliberately began with chaos waters to demonstrate that he is completely in control of chaos forces.
In Psalm 74 the reference to God slaying the sea-monster, Leviathan (vv13-14) clearly recalls Genesis 1:2 with the subsequent verses alluding in turn to the creation of springs and streams, of day and night, of sun and moon. Verse 17 describes how God “set all the boundaries of the earth” and “made both summer and winter.” Indeed, it is at Psalm 74:13-14 that we encounter language that clearly alludes to the Marduk-Tiamat myth:
It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert.
It is because of God’s conquest of chaos that he is acknowledged as the supreme ruler (v12), paralleling the same pattern of thought identified in Exodus 15 where the Red Sea miracle also involves Yahweh as “the man of war” conquering the chaos waters.
Psalm 74 was written during the exile when Jerusalem and Temple had been destroyed, that is, at a time of chaos . For this reason it was necessary to go back to the foundations of creation and recall how then Yahweh triumphed over the forces of chaos. It is this Creator who is still the God of the people he purchased and redeemed (v2), who is still their Shepherd-King (v1), who is still the one able to effect new creation, that is, “salvation” (v12). He is the one whom the psalmist calls upon to remember his people amidst the chaos they are now experiencing (vv18-23)
Biblical creation is altogether different from that portrayed in the Enuma Elish Stories. To begin with, it is strictly monotheistic. Secondly, the Creator is omnipotent, omipresent and omniscient. It is not possible for any later being to compete with him in any respect. Even the chaos waters are totally subservient to God and incapable of resisting his will. Thirdly, God does not produce other deities and is utterly divorced from the sexual unions projected upon Mesopotamian deities by those who make “god” in the image of people. Fourthly, although the religious language and imagery of the ancient world is employed at times, as in Psalm 74, to depict God’s work of creation or new creation (Psalm 74), often with polemical force, the fact remains that at creation itself the chaos waters and other natural phenomena such as the sun and moon, are not deified.
Whereas the Enuma Elish Stories aim to glorify Babylon and its rulers, the Bible presents the true and living God, the Creator. In his classic work The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, Hendrik Kraemer urges that while urgently seeking to show people that the Gospel addresses their actual needs, aspirations and frustrations, we must never forget “the most-needed approach is always a vivid presentation of God’s dealings with man and the world as depicted in the Bible” (345). He goes on to point out how wide missionary experience has shown that the creation story has the recruiting power of that which is the really new, in keeping with the “unerring instinct in man that the most important thing in a new religion is not that it is a further development or a more distinct affirmation of what he knew already, but that it is really something new” (345). It is not consciousness of sin or of the personality of Jesus that usually serves as the first avenue for understanding the relevancy of Christianity, but the realisation of the unity of mankind through the One Creator. It is via a longer contact with the world of the Bible that consciousness of sin develops: “Not the consciousness of sin brings men to Christ, but the continued contact with Christ brings them to consciousness of sin” (345).
Posted December 2, 2008
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