Below is an excellent post by Michael L Waddell at BSA on May 5.
Intro: The creation story of Genesis 2 is widely held by scholars to be older than the separate creation story in Genesis 1. The Genesis 1 story, attributed to the “Priestly” author P, presents God in a way we’ve come to expect: transcendent, dwelling outside the earthly realm, and powerful enough to command the universe with his voice. The Genesis 2 story, by contrast, has a God that seems very human: he walks around in a garden, he makes humans with his hands, people can hide from him, etc. It much more resembles ancient Mesopotamian myths such as the Atrahasis Epic, and it flows naturally into the flood story. I wanted to dig into some of the parallels to see what they can tell us about Genesis.
Background: The earliest extant version of the Atrahasis Epic was written in Akkadian on clay tablets in the 1700s BCE, although it’s probably older. We also have copies in Assyrian and Babylonian; it seems to have been a popular and influential tale treasured by many cultures for over a thousand years. The Genesis stories, by contrast, came from the region of Canaan and were probably composed in stages between 800-500 BCE. During that period the Assyrian and Babylonian empires were the most powerful in the world, their cultures dominating the Near East. It was inevitable that the most important Mesopotamian myths would have an impact on Genesis.
Atrahasis: The Atrahasis Epic describes a primordial world where the high gods ruled and the lower gods toiled in agricultural tasks to serve the high gods. The agricultural work is described a form of irrigation that clearly matches the steppe setting of Mesopotamia, in contrast to the Palestinian highlands or Egyptian Nile Valley… which makes sense, since the story comes from Mesopotamia. The lower gods decide to create mankind as servants to do their work for them, and they use divine blood mixed with clay to form the first humans. These humans are initially immortal, and immediately create the institution of marriage. By creating mankind, the lower gods participate in an act of rebellion. After cursing humanity with plagues and famines, the high gods send a flood to wipe out humanity, but the lower gods allow one man (Atrahasis) and his family to survive by building an ark, into which he brings animals two-by-two. The higher gods (evidently as short-sighted as they are selfish) eventually become hungry because no one is providing them sacrifices anymore, so they end the flood. Atrahasis lands the ark on a mountian and immediately makes a sacrifice, which the gods smell and devour. They bless the survivors, promising to never send a similar flood, though limiting their lifespans to a natural length.
Adam and Noah: The Genesis 2 story, in contrast, is set in Eden, a distorted version of Mesopotamia (“The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”) This world seems to have been watered by a form of divine irrigation very similar to Mesopotamian practices (“there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground”). The one God YHWH creates mankind to perform agricultural labor for him (“YHWH God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”) Mankind is created by mixing clay with divine breath, not blood. These humans are initially immortal, and immediately create the institution of marriage. After their act of rebellion, God curses the humans and banished them. Later he sends a flood to wipe out humanity, but he allows one man (Noah) and his family to survive by building an ark, into which he brings animals two-by-two. After the flood, Noah lands on dry ground on a mountain. Noah immediately makes a sacrifice, which God smells and loves. God then blesses the survivors, promising to never send a similar flood, though limiting their lifespans to a natural length.
Conclusion: The parallels are striking, and since the Atrahasis Epic is at least a thousand years older, it’s obvious which influenced which. But the Genesis story does not simply retell the Atrahasis myth; it transforms it. Instead of a dozen warring and squabbling gods dominating humanity, there is one God whose will is sovereign. Instead of a bunch of people oppressed by the gods, with no clear moral to any of it, the Genesis story is a tale of punishment for sin and rewards for righteousness. The authors of Genesis combined indigenous Canaanite stories with (for them) famous and renown Babylonian myths, but made them into a story really worth telling, not just because it’s “what our people believe”, but because it resonates with universal themes of loss of innocence, the irretrievable past, and salvation from chaos. Some people feel threatened by these parallels, as if they lessen the importance of the Genesis account, but for me it’s quite the opposite.
Further reading:
- Slaying the Dragon by Bernard Batto (out of print, but available used for about $10)
- The Mesopotamian Origin of the Biblical Flood Story by John Day (free from the Torah.com)
