The "Third" Story of Creation

Parshat Bereishit

The opening of the Torah begins with the creation of the world, and then follows with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. Academic scholars have long thought that both of these stories come from different sources, and pointed to things like the usage of different names for God, and various apparent contradictions as evidence. Rabbis and Christian theologians saw the first chapter as a broad view of creation, and the Garden of Eden story as a detailed view. They also had various exegetical means for resolving the contradictions. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I will not focus on these arguments.  Instead I will talk about a "third" creation story that appears elsewhere in Tanach, and in other cultures in the Ancient near east. At the end, I will argue that the creation account in Genesis 1 is partly meant to refute this "third" creation myth, or at very least, to repurpose it into an idea which was more appropriate for monotheistic Judaism.

Enuma Elish and the Baal Cycle

Before we dig into the content in the Tanach itself, it's necessary to spend a few minutes discussing two creation myths that we have recovered from the ancient city of Ugarit (The Baal Cycle) and from various cities in Babylon and Assyria (Enuma Elish). Enuma Elish was probably written at some time before the 12th century BCE. It describes the creation of the world as the result of the chief god Marduk over the chaos-serpant Tiamat. After the battle, the foundational creation of the world is described as following.

While he divided the flesh of the ... , and devised a cunning plan.
He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;
One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven.
He fixed a bolt, he stationed a watchman,
And bade them not to let her waters come forth.
He passed through the heavens, he surveyed the regions thereof,
And over against the Deep he set the dwelling of Nudimmud[1].

The Baal cycle has a somewhat similar story, but the names have changed. It was found in the city of Ugarit and dated roughly to the 16th century BCE. I was unable to find an online translation, unfortunately, so a brief summary will half to suffice. In the story, Baal defeats the chaos god of the sea, Yam, after which he is raised to the top of the pantheon.  In the process, Baal also defeats the servant of Yam, Lotan, a wriggling serpent with seven heads. The story continues with Baal battling against the god of death Mot, being defeated by Mot, and then appearing suddenly again after Mot is dispatched by his allies. The Baal Cycle predates Enuma Elish in all likelihood, and it's not known how well the Israelites knew it by the time the Jewish Monarchy was in full swing.

Leviathan and Rahav

In the Yom Kippur post, I mentioned the book of Iyov (Job), and how it describes God's answer to Iyov.  I mentioned that God justifies his behavior by claiming that Iyov, a mere human, has no way of understanding God's power.  But I didn't go into details. The specific manner in which God describes his power is important here. God describes himself pitched in battle with a giant beast Behemoth, and the great sea serpant, Leviathan. Leviathan is cognate with Ugaritic Lotan from the Baal cycle. A few verses will suffice (Job 40:25, 31-32) [2].

Canst thou draw out leviathan with a fish-hook? or press down his tongue with a cord? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears?
Lay thy hand upon him; think upon the battle, thou wilt do so no more.

If you didn't read Job 38-41 after the Yom Kippur post, I entreat you to read them in full now. If you are too lazy, I'll give you the tl;dr. God tells Iyov that only he is strong enough to conquer Leviathan, and this is the heart of the "might makes right" aspect of the argument.   

Iyov isn't the only place where these ideas of pitched battle between God and other beings come into discussion. The other place where they appear is in Psalms. Psalm 74:13-14 are interesting.

13 Thou didst break Sea[3] in pieces by Thy strength; Thou didst shatter the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters.
14 Thou didst crush the heads of leviathan, Thou gavest him to be food to the folk inhabiting the wilderness.

We see here some ideas of battle not only between God and Leviathan, but also between God and Yam.[4] It should be noted that the descriptions in the Tanach are very different from the ones in Enuma Elish and the Baal Cycle. Baal and Marduk are depicted as equal adversaries to Yam and Tiamat. Not so in the Tanach where God is depicted as being a cut above everything else. There are no setbacks here, like Baal suffered at the hands of Mot. Indeed, in another appearance in Psalms 104:26, Leviathan is beneath consideration as a rival.

There go the ships; there is Leviathan, whom Thou hast formed to sport therein.

Psalm 104 can be read as a creation myth very similar to that of Genesis 1. It's worth reading it with Genesis in mind for comparison's sake.

Genesis 1 - Refutation of the Chaos Combat Myth

The argument I will make is that the author of Genesis 1 (and Psalm 104) was familiar with these creation myths from pitched combat between two or more deities, and wished to refute them explicitly. In Genesis 1:2 we see Tiamat appear in the cognate word Tehom. But Tiamat is not a fearsome chaos-god sea serpent. Tehom is understood to be inert, it is just the chaotic deep waters.

The idea of making a fixed boundary to hold back the waters of heaven, appears in both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish, but in Genesis, God fashions the rakiah (firmament) himself. There is no carcass of the chaos god to deal with. Leviathan, does show up briefly in Day Five. But here, as in Psalm 104, it is just another aspect of creation. God makes the great sea serpents, taninim gedolim.

In Genesis 1, God is depicted as the sole actor. There is no rival on his plane. The old rivals of the creation myths of Enuma Elish and the Baal cycle, Tiamat and Leviathan (and perhaps even Yam) appear, but they are not deities equivalent in power. They are either inert or just another aspect of creation. The author of Genesis 1 makes this completely clear. 

Furthermore in comparing Genesis 1 to Psalm 104, we see that the words used to describe creation seem to relate to different myths altogether.  In Genesis 1, tehom = Tiamat shows up as a reference to a Babylonian god, but none of the Canaanite Gods appear, even in normal words.  Not only is the Leviathan = lotan not mentioned, but the text goes seemingly out of its way to avoid using names of the Babylonian gods shemesh (sun) and yerach (moon), instead using the words meor hagadol (big light) and meor hakaton (small light).  Similarly, it's always yamim and never Yam.  Not so in Psalm 104, where shemesh, yerach, yam and levyatan all show up.  We've seen the last two, the first two appear in verse 19

Who appointedst the moon (yareach) for seasons; the sun (shemesh) knoweth his going down

I've argued in several places that the traditional order in which the Tanach was written, the five books of the Torah first and everything else after, should not be assumed correct a priori.  Here we see a good reason for stating that Psalm 104 was written before Genesis 1.   Psalm 104 is directly refuting Canaanite creation myths which were alive and well at Ugarit, and represent an earlier cultural threat.  Genesis 1 is refuting Babylonian myths, which Israelites would not have encountered until much later, and would not have needed an explicit refutation until the exile.  Next week we'll see some more evidence that sections of Genesis were not written until much later than the traditional timeline suggests.

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1. Enuma Elish, 4th tablet, tablets of creation.^

2. The verse numbering here follows the Hebrew tradition. Christian bibles have these verses at the start of Chapter 41^

3. The English translation in the JPS translation is incorrect. The Hebrew leaves out the definite article for "the." The proper reading is: Thou didst break Sea (Yam)into pieces by Thy strength, not "the sea." This makes a big difference if you consider Yam as a proper noun for an anthropomorphism of the sea. ^

4. cf. Mark Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism p 36-40.^