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Loading...In my previous post I began to explain why scholars have thought that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), were not written by Moses, but later, and that they represent not a single work by a single author, but a compilation of sources, each of them written at different times. The evidence for this view is quite overwhelming, but in the context of my textbook on the Bible, as in the context here, I didn’t really think it appropriate or useful to dig deeply into all the nuances and ins and outs. Instead, I gave some of the prominent data. Here is how I started to do that.
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The internal tensions in the Pentateuch came to be seen as particularly significant. Nowhere were these tensions more evident than in the opening accounts of the very first book, in the creation stories of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Scholars came to recognize that what is said in Genesis 1 cannot be easily (or at all) reconciled with what is said in Genesis 2. These do not appear to be two complementary accounts of how the creation took place; they appear to be two accounts that are at odds with each other in fundamental and striking ways. Read them carefully yourself. Make a list of what happens in chapter 1, then a list of what happens in chapter 2, and compare your lists. Among other things you will notice the following:
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Do the creation myths in Genesis have anything in common with other creation myths of the same time period? How are the Genesis accounts different from other creation myths? I have a feeling that answering these questions would require an entire post so if you want to consider it for a future post that will work.
Thanks. Yes, the Enuma Elish is the most famous one. Do a word search for it on the blog and you’ll see a post on it.
Hi Dr Ehrman. I read that earliest evidence of seven days “week” or period is from Sumerians. Also Abraham – the first patriarch of Jews “is” from Sumerian city Ur ( or he could be fictional character :-).
Is it possible that authors of the Old Testament are basically using some Sumerian/Babylonian stories to create their own version of the religion?
I can see similarities in some stories of the Old Testament and Epic of Gilgamesh.
Do we have enough evidence supporting the idea?
Thanks.
Yes, in terms of similar Ancient Near East stories of creatoin, see the Enuma Elish. If you search for it on the blog you’ll see a post that explains it’s similarities to the account of Genesis.
Regarding Yahweh, I know I asked you this before but I was wondering if you could clarify one more time:
Is Joseph a theophoric name of Yahweh? If so , doesn’t that contradict Exodus 6:3 where Moses first learned of the name?
And if Joseph is not a theophoric name of Yahweh, do theophoric names of Yahweh exist in the old testament?
Yes, lots of theophoric names. But there are all sorts of contradictions with Exod. 6:3. YHWH explicitly tells Abraham his name. (Sorry, I’m not around any of my books so I can’t give the references in Genesis; but they’re in teh Abraham covenantal tradition.)
There is a book by Matthews and Benjamin called Old Testament Paralells that goes into this.
By the way, Erich von Daniken and the ancient astronaut lobby have a field day with Genesis 3, because the ‘god’ it describes does come across more like an intelligent alien than the omniscient creator of the universe.
Re: “Yahweh Elohim… is here on earth; he works with the dirt; he performs an operation on Adam; he walks through the garden of Eden in the cool of the evening (3:8).”
In light of yesterday’s study of the understanding of the spirit of God in the OT, I find it striking that when God “walks” through the garden of Eden, it happens in something to the effect of “the ruah (breath/breeze) of the day” (3:8).
That seems to nicely fit your statement: “In the Old Testament, then, the Spirit of God was not understood to be a different ‘person’ or ‘being’ or ‘divine entity’ from God. It was simply God’s breath that he blew upon the earth and upon certainly people, both so they could enjoy his presence among them, they could live under his favor, and they could do things that otherwise they would not be able to do.”
Mr Ehrman, in my highschool years (a long, long time ago), I remember reading a blatantly conspiracy theory book (I think it had a subtitle that went like “A novel of unbridled reality”!), whose author claimed that the word “Elohim” was intentionally mistranslated by the 70/72 rabbis in many alternative words (‘God’, ‘Sons of God’, ‘Gods’ etc.), in order to conceal the existance of the “real” Elohim(s), which, according always to the conspiracy theorist author, were certain divine entities who strayed away from God, came down to earth (I believe he claimed they descended to Greece in particular) to unite with the “daughters of men”. And out of this abominable sexual union came the “Nephilims”, which were all these half-animal half-man mythic figures, that plagued mankind as despots (in both society and food-chain terms!). Back then I was quite fascinated by this story, but back then I was a tad more impressionable I guess! I wonder, though, if there’s even a lint of truth somewhere in this crazy theory!
wow. Never heard that one. And no, no truth in that. (Nephilim is itself a *plural* word by the way)
I have always wondered why the two,seemingly, contradictory accounts. I agree, they do not reconcile with one another. But Prof., I am also shocked, in a sense, that the authors of these O.T. writings, went on to write both accounts without seeing the inerrancy of their writings and being published this way,considering they were very good writers/thinkers. Do you think this was intentional to have both accounts written this way and for what reason ?
The author of each of the two accounts did not about the other and so didn’t know he was creating a contracition; it was only when they were combined by a third person, and editor, that the contradiction appeared. WHy didn’t the editor see the differences? Good question. Why haven’t literally billions of people since then? They weren’t doing a careful analysis of them.
I suspect the redactor put both accounts in because each had acquired a certain sanctity by then. Same thing with the two Noah stories. Each may also have had their partisans and putting them both in may have been a way to keep harmony.
It could be that the ancients back then did not care if there were contradictions since they did not take inerrancy seriously or maybe because these stories were not meant to be infallible information from an infallible God?
Concept of inerrancy and infallibility are completely modern; ancient authors simply weren’t thinking that way.
Two parallel accounts is what I’ve learning about creation in Genesis.
One account provides details the other doesn’t like testimony in a court room
That would be fine, if the details didn’t contradict the “big” picture of the other account.
In the Babylonian Epic of Creation VI, the gods complain of having to spend all their time working the soil, so Ea, the chief god, agrees to let Marduk create man out of the blood of another god (Qingu) to do the work for them.
I’ve read a number of scholars who argue that this is most likely the inspiration for Gen. 2, where God creates man and puts him in the garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it.”
Did early christians consider any of these creation stories to be literal?
Nearly all of them did probably, just as nearly all have since.
Once I learned to recognize the words my NASB uses for Elohim and YHWH it made such a difference in how I read and understand Genesis. Do any translations use the actual words instead of mistranslating them with generic terms like “God?” If not, why not?
Of the two creation accounts,which one is thought to be earlier?
Do you subscribe to the JDEP theory?
The account in Gen 2-3 is J and is much earlier than Gen 1 from P. Yes, I pretty much to subscribe to it, as almost all critical scholars do, at least in principle. The reality is probably far more complicated than just the four sources spliced together.
Thank you Dr. Ehrman for an interesting post. Before I pose my question, I just want to say that I am a big fan of your work. So far I have read a few of your books, but I intend to read all of them! Now I am a graduate student in history, and your books have been a great inspiration for me.
My question:
Some scholars of Babylon and Assyria in the late 19th century, such as the Assyriologist George Smith (‘The Chaldean Account of Genesis’, 1876), postulated that because of their similarities, the creation stories in Genesis were inspired by the Babylonian creation myths. There would be even greater proof of this if the Pentateuch was compiled and written following (or during) the Babylonian captivity, when its writers would have been exposed to the Babylonian myths. Do you know what is the current consensus among scholars on these theories about the connection of the Genesis creation stories with Babylonian mythology?
It is generally conceded that this view is correct. The closest ancient parallel (well before Genesis) is the Enuma Elish; if you do a word search here on the blog you’ll see my discussion of it.
Thank you. I will take a look.
What always fascinated me about the Genesis stories is that they seem to instinctively “know” that our bigger brains are really the root of all our suffering, or at least our awareness of it. From the difficulties of childbirth to the invention of agriculture and “civilization”, our big brains are the problem when it comes to our pain of living in this world. In this creation myth, I believe, is a deep racial memory of a time when we were blissfully unaware of our nakedness, and when all we needed to do was to reach out and pluck the fruit from the trees.
IMO the first account is the authentic one.
It is written with the observer in mind, situation on earth, and written with symbolic overtones and with some repetition.
First God created the heavens
… and the earth.
(Now we are on the earth – a dark, sterile, ocean world.)
first the skies cleared
then the continents rose
then life appeared on land (fresh water)
then life appeared in the oceans
then man.
Over the past twenty years this narrative has become the scientific one. In 2021 the first evidence of an earth as a dark cloud planet like Venus. 2020 a consensus that life began on land. 2005 discovery of ocean world earth. Continental evolution ca 1960’s. 1871 Darwin’s ‘warm pond’ theory.
Not too many scientists would imagine there was light before there were sun, moon, and stars! But yes, the basic sequence is impressive in some ways.
Maimonides, in the Guide of the Perplexed, had this comment of the creation story: “Those passages in the Bible, which in their literal sense contain statements that can be refuted by proof, must and can be interpreted otherwise.”
(Comments like this might be why he is not all that popular in certain Orthodox Jewish circles….)
The sun, FROM THE OBSERVER’S POINT OF VIEW, was not visible till the earth ceased being a cloud planet (Venus, Titan, Jupiter etc are cloud planets.)
The observer was in space, looking down on a pure white planet.
And to emphasize my point, I think Genesis 1 mentions the sun three times – and God didn’t create three suns (at least, not for our solar system.) It’s just the way some Bronze Age scribe wrote down something passed down for generations.
All physicists would agree that light, that is, electromagnetic radiation, existed long before stars existed. Light existed almost from the very beginning. The cosmic background radiation dates from about 400,000 years after things got started, when the universe had cooled enough to be transparent to light, and light existed before then (it just didn’t get very far before being absorbed by free electrons). The first stars did not form until about 200,000,000 years later. Which is not to say that Genesis is correct.
I don’t think too many think there was light *on earth* before there were stars….
I was raised in the 60’s attending catholic schools. We were all taught to take everything in the Bible as literal/factual. I continued to believe in this way well into adulthood. I attended a Jesuit college and soon was corrected on many of my “naive” interpretations. This prompted me to re-read Scripture in a different light taking genre into account. I also explored other unorthodox interpretations.
When I hear dankoh in his blog mentioning “the god” and “chief god”, I can not help but to recall my readings on god as a cosmic source, the sky people, etc. This put a whole new (to me) meaning on the understanding and interpretation of Genesis and creation. It simply gives one pause regarding different views.
Hmmm. Well, I was talking about the “chief god” of the Sumerians, not quite the same thing. But there are passages in Scripture calling Yahweh the head of the council of gods and “high above the other gods.”
Genesis II would provide great material for a Monty Python sketch. Adam, John Cleese, sits and reviews the various potential mates that God, played by Michael Palin, creates for him: an earthworm? Well, no, not quite. A wooly mammoth? Oh, please, not that! How about a nice beetle, then? Beetles will be quite popular someday, you know… and so on. Funny stuff. Do fundamentalists have a sense of humor?
Some do. But, well, maybe not that way…. (Or when they do they tend not to publicize it…)
Thanks Bart; but perhaps a rather trickier question:
– which writers in the rest of the Hebrew Bible (outside the Penteuch) can be inferred as being familiar with one or another of the Genesis creation accounts?
So, what about the narrative of the Garden of Eden in Ezekiel 28:13? It is surely very different from, but related to, Genesis chapter 2. But doesn’t Ezekiel look to provide the earlier version?
Then there is the creation narrative of Proverbs 8:23; that does seem to relate to Genesis chapter 1, but, on the face of it, surely not so rigourously expressed?
On the other hand the narrative of the ‘unmaking of creation’ in Jeremiah 4:23. Does that not suggest a familiarity with the narrative of Genesis chapter 1 in something like its familiar form?
I would very much like to know your opinions; myself I am inclined to think that both the Genesis 1 and 2 narratives originate around the period of the Exile – hence perhaps chapter 2 as later than Ezekiel; but chapter 1 as earlier than Jeremiah?
Which might imply that the ‘naive style’ of chapter 2 might well actually be the later narrative.
My sense is that broad similarities to the creation stories in other texts may just as well simply be common views about what happened in the beginning; literary dependence requires a bit of a higher standard of proof (since there was one Genesis but thousands of people sharing their views, whether they had read Genesis or not).
Thanks Bart; I don’t have the linguistic capability to sort out literary dependence in Hebrew from common dependency; but I have read commentators who regard Jeremiah 4:23 – in the use of ‘tohu wabohu’ (formless and void) in designating ‘uncreated chaos’ – as a straight quote.
As you have pointed out, in the common Middle Eastern creation myth, that of ‘Enuma Elish’, cosmic chaos is represented as the dragon-monster of the Sea – Rahab or Tiamat – but Genesis 1 and Jeremiah 4 formulate chaos entirely without monsters.
What may be skewing your perspective is looking primarily to Genesis for creation myth material. Whereas the many creation references in Psalms and Isaiah explicitly link the cleaving of Rahab/Leviathan/Tiamat in Enuma Elish with the Exodus creation myth; that is to the creation of God’s people Israel through the divine cleaving of the Red Sea. Right up to the Exile, this seems to be the primary understanding of ‘the creation’ in Hebrew texts.
The Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 narratives are very different from each other; but are united in rejection of the Enuma Elish myth; no chaos monsters in either chapter.
I”ve always thought tohu wabohu was such a lovely catchy phrase that lots of people would use it. I do. 🙂
Me too Bart.
And it does seem to have caught on; a couple of generations later both ‘toho’ and ‘bohu’ make their appearance together as Isaiah 34:11, where they are used (as in the Jeremiah passage, and presumably derived from it) to characterise ‘uncreation’. Tohu (rendered as ‘vanity’ and ’emptiness’), I gather, is a not uncommon Hbrew word, but bohu ‘chaos’ only in these three places in the Hebrew bible.
And indeed the Ugaritic and Babylonian creation material seems also to have been catchy; nevertheless, those passages in the Hebrew Bible that apply those themes don’t use the ‘tohu wabohu’ terminolgy. So, in Isaiah 27:1, and Psalm 74:13, there are clear echoes of the Ugaritic texts of a thousand years before. But the creation context in both cases is that of the restoration of Israel amongst the nations – not the formation of order from chaos.
Still more puzzling is Job chapter 7. Sure enough, the chaos serpent of the Sea makes another appearance at verse 12; but, although Job uses ‘tohu’ in other places for ’emptiness’, it is not found here. And ‘bohu’ is not found in Job at all.
Yes, the “creation” of Israel is often compared to the “creation” of the world; the Exodus traditions show numers connections to the creation traditions (on the macro level: creation through water and then commandments given; but numerous more detailed parallels,such as the conquest of the Monster of the Sea – an Ancient Near Eastern image for “creation” — found in both Exodus and Genesis 1, e.g.,)
Dankoh, with all due respect I know who you are speaking of. What I’m saying is Sumerian roots go back to teachings of the sky people or “the powerful ones”. Roots of Yahweh can be traced back to the meaning of the powerful one’s. All I’m saying is that there may be another narrative of Genesis that sheds a different light on the “gods”. I understand this can become a blog in and of itself. I would love to hear what Dr. Ehrman thinks of the powerful one’s or sky people as it relates to Scripture and specifically, Genesis. I’m not sure why this isn’t talked about more. Thank you.
Great post Prof. Ehrman, thanks.
Question: Given the evidence for different authors -perhaps living in different regions in the area-, can an expert in ancient Hebrew tell differences in writing styles and/or Hebrew dialects in those two creation stories?
There are differences in writing style, and some vocabulary differences from source to source, but it’s hard to speak about varying “dialects” among the sources.
Prof Ehrman,
As you indicate in this post, the latter source seems to be primarily concerned with explaining world phenomenon like difficulty in providing food, pains at child birth etc. All of which are very literal in their explaining and understanding thereof. However, one that has been quite baffling is the curse of ‘dust-eating snakes’ in Gen 3:14.
I personally don’t have knowledge of snakes eating dust or eating dust for food.
Q. Please how is this curse to be understood as it doesn’t appear to be the case literally, but then again, why would we think of it in a metaphorical sense if the earlier curses prior can all be understood literally?
Thank you.
The author had lots of mistaken views about snakes: for example, that they could talk and that they originally had legs; another is that they ate dirt. The reason for that one is pretty obvious: if you crawl through the dirt with your mouth open, you must be eating it!
The account in Genesis 1:29-30 specifically notes that God provided plants as food for both the humans and the animals; “everything that has the breath of life”. Genesis 2:16 and 3:17-18 also seems to presume humans eating plants for food.
There is no mention in either creation story of eating meat, either among the humans or among the animals.
First, why is that? Was Eden originally supposed to be like “The Peaceful Kingdom” in described in Isaiah 11:6-9 and 65:25? Is there a cultural or religious source for this herbivorous lifestyle?
Second, it seems odd then that in Genesis 4, God clearly prefers (and for non-obvious reasons) Abel’s sacrifice of the fat portions of the firstlings of his flock (which presumes that Abel killed them) over Cain’s offering of the fruit of the ground (a more non-violent, herbivorous offering).
What’s going on here?
Yes, it’s only after the flood that meat is on the menu. But you’re right, the Cain thing doesn’t fit in the picture. Part of the problem is that Genesis is construcgted out of various sources with different views of things. Another issue is that there is generally a sense through these narratives that God alters his relation to humans as things develop (in the Garden; after the Garden; after the flood; after Abraham; etc.)