Transcript: video on Enuma Elis creation myth of Babylon

Transcript


heterodoxism — January 18, 2010 — 3-2 = part 13 of series
The Enûma Eliš is the Babylonian creation myth (named after its opening words).

List of uploads within playlist: http://berties-teapot.blogspot.com/20...

The Enûma Eliš has about a thousand lines and is recorded in Old Babylonian on seven clay tablets, each holding between 115 and 170 lines of text. Most of Tablet V has never been recovered, but aside from this lacuna the text is almost complete. A duplicate copy of Tablet V has been found in Sultantepe, ancient Huzirina, located near the modern town of Sanliurfa in Turkey.

This epic is one of the most important sources for understanding the Babylonian worldview, centered on the supremacy of Marduk and the creation of humankind for the service of the gods. Its primary original purpose, however, is not an exposition of theology or theogony, but the elevation of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, above other Mesopotamian gods.

The Enûma Eliš exists in various copies from Babylonia and Assyria. The version from Ashurbanipal's library dates to the 7th century BC. The story itself probably dates to the 18th century BC, the time when the god Marduk seems to have achieved a prominent status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BB...
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma...
http://www.meta-religion.com/World_Re...

Genesis is the creation myth in the Hebrew Bible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_...
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et01...
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et01...

The term Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile, typically refers to the deportation and exile of the Judeans of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezza II in 586 BC. The first deportation actually took place in 597 BC. The captivity and subsequent return to Israel and rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple are pivotal events in the history of the Jews and Judaism, and had far-reaching impacts on the development of modern Jewish culture and practice.

According to biblical dating the Kingdom of Judah (also known as the "Southern Kingdom") came into existence in c. 930 BC on the breakup of the United Monarchy. David was made king over the tribe of Judah as early as 1007 BC, and the Davidic line ruled over Judah for over 420 years, until the kingdom fell in 586 BC to the Babylonian Empire under Nebuzar-adan, captain of Nebuchadnezzar's body-guard.
Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list...

This is part of a series illustrating a Yale University course on the Hebrew Bible. The full course can be found here:
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies...
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies...

Christine Hayes is Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, she was Assistant Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University for three years. A specialist in talmudic-midrashic studies, Hayes offers undergraduate courses on the literature and history of the biblical and talmudic periods (including Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Introduction to Judaism).

http://www.yale.edu/religiousstudies/...
http://academicearth.org/speakers/chr...

Diagrams illustrating the timeline and books of the HB/OT:
http://www.threetwoone.org/diagrams/h...
http://www.threetwoone.org/diagrams/H...
http://hodos.org/pentateuch/hebrew-bi...
http://hodos.org/pentateuch/four-pent...
http://hodos.org/pentateuch/genesis-1...
http://hodos.org/pentateuch/pentateuc...

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/i...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/j...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/j...

http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Study-Bi...

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Category: Education
Tags:
Hebrew Bible Old Testament Enuma Elish Babylonian creation myth Marduk Bab-el Babylon mythology Genesis Nahum Sarna Yehezkel Kaufmann atheism
..
0:04
It [Enuma Elish] was the great national epic of the city of Babel or Babylon. It was recited
0:10
during the New Year festival, which was the most important festival on the cultic calendar,
0:15
and Nahum Sarna points out that it had four main functions. The first of those functions
0:19
is theogonic. It tells us the story of the birth of the gods, where they came from. Its
0:24
second function is cosmological. It's explaining cosmic phenomena: the land, the sky, the heavenly
0:32
bodies and so on, and their origins. It also serves a social and political function, because
0:39
the portrait or picture of the universe or the world and its structure corresponds to
0:44
and legitimates the structure of Babylonian society. The position and the function of
0:49
the humans in the scheme of creation corresponds [to] or parallels precisely the position of
0:54
slaves in Mesopotamian society. The position and function of Marduk at the top of the hierarchy
1:00
of authority parallels and legitimates the Babylonian King , with others arranged within
1:06
the pyramid that falls below. The epic also explains and mirrors the rise of Babel as
1:12
one of the great cities in the Ancient Near East. It explains its rise to power, and Marduk's
1:18
rise from being a city god to being at the head of the pantheon of a large empire. This
1:24
also had a cultic function as well. According to Sarna and some other scholars, the conflict,
1:32
that battle scene between Tiamat and Marduk which is described at some length, symbolizes
1:37
the conflict or the battle between the forces of chaos and the forces of cosmos or cosmic
1:43
order. And that's a perpetual conflict. Each year it's dramatized by the cycle of the seasons,
1:50
and at a certain time of the year it seems that the forces of darkness and chaos are
1:53
prevailing but each spring, once again, cosmic order and life return. So the epic served
1:59
as a kind of script for the re-enactment of the primeval battle in a cultic or temple
2:05
setting, and that re-enactment helped to ensure the victory of the forces of cosmos and life
2:10
each year over the forces of chaos and death. So if we recall now, some of the things we
2:17
were talking about last time and the theories of Kaufman, we might describe the worldview
2:23
that's expressed by Enuma Elish in the following way, and this is certainly what Sarna does.
2:28
We're going to consider first of all the view of the gods, the view of humans, and the view
2:33
of the world: three distinct categories. First of all the gods. The gods are clearly limited.
2:39
A god can make a plan and they're thwarted by another god who then murders that god.
2:44
They are amoral, some of them are nicer and better than others but they're not necessarily
2:50
morally good or righteous. They emerge from this indifferent primal realm, this mixture
2:56
of salt and sea waters, that is the source of all being and the source of ultimate power,
3:01
but they age and they mature and they fight and they die. They're not wholly good, not
3:06
wholly evil, and no one god's will is absolute. The portrait of humans that emerges is that
3:14
humans are unimportant menials. They are the slaves of the gods, the gods have little reciprocal
3:20
interest in or concern for them, and they create human beings to do the work of running
3:25
the world. To some degree, they look upon them as slaves or pawns. The picture of the
3:30
world that would seem to emerge from this story is that it is a morally neutral place.
3:36
That means that for humans it can be a difficult and hostile place. The best bet perhaps is
3:41
to serve the god of the day--whatever god might be ascendant--to earn his favor and
3:46
perhaps his protection, but even that god will have limited powers and abilities and
3:51
may in fact be defeated or may turn on his devotees. Now, if we turn to the creation
3:57
story, the first of the two creation stories that are in the Bible, because in fact there
4:00
are two creation stories with quite a few contradictions between them, but if we turn
4:04
to the first creation story in Genesis 1 which concludes in Genesis 2:4. If we look now,
4:10
we'll see a different picture emerging. The biblical god in this story, is presented as
4:15
being supreme and unlimited. That's connected with the lack of mythology in Genesis 1 or
4:21
rather the suppression of mythology. Mythology is used to describe stories that deal with
4:27
the birth, the life events of gods and demi-gods, sometimes legendary heroes, but narrating
4:32
a sequence of events. The biblical creation account is non-mythological because there
4:37
is no biography of God in here. God simply is. There's no theogony, no account of his
4:43
birth. There's no story by means of which he emerges from some other realm. In the Mesopotamian
4:51
account, the gods themselves are created and they're not even created first, actually;
4:54
the first generation of beings creates these odd demons and monsters, and gods only are
4:59
created after several generations and the god of creation, Marduk, is actually kind
5:03
of a latecomer in the picture. And this is also a good time for us to draw a distinction
5:09
between mythology and myth. Kaufman and others have claimed that mythology is not in, certainly,
5:17
this biblical story or if it's not there it's at least suppressed. But in contrast, myth
5:23
is not mythology. Myth is a term we use to refer to a traditional story. It's often fanciful,
5:30
it relates imaginatively events which it claims happened in historical time, not in a primordial
5:38
realm before time, and a myth is designed to explain some kind of practice or ritual
5:44
or custom or natural phenomenon. " But myths are fanciful, imaginative tales that are trying
5:49
to explain the existence of either a thing or a practice or even a belief…sometimes
5:54
it's a story that's a veiled explanation of a truth, we think of parables, perhaps, or
5:59
allegories. And so the claim that's often made is that the Bible doesn't have full-blown
6:04
mythology. It doesn't focus on stories about the lives and deaths and interactions of gods,
6:08
but it does certainly contain myths. It has traditional stories and legends, some quite
6:14
fanciful, whose goal it is to explain how and why something is what it is. So returning
6:21
to Genesis 1, we have an absence of theogony and mythology in the sense of a biography
6:26
of God in this opening chapter and that means the absence of a metadivine realm. There is
6:31
an absence of what Kaufman would call this metadivine realm, this primordial realm from
6:35
which the gods emerge. We also, therefore, have no sense that God is immanent in nature
6:42
or tied to natural substances or phenomena. So, the biblical god's powers and knowledge
6:49
do not appear to be limited by the prior existence of any other substance or power. Nature also
6:55
is not divine. It's demythologized, de-divinized, if that's a word; the created world is not
7:02
divine, it is not the physical manifestation of various deities, an earth god, a water
7:06
god and so on. The line of demarcation therefore between the divine and the natural and human
7:13
worlds would appear to be clear. So, to summarize, in Genesis 1, the view of god is that there
7:20
is one supreme god, who is creator and sovereign of the world, who simply exists, who appears
7:25
to be incorporeal, and for whom the realm of nature is separate and subservient. He
7:34
has no life story, no mythology, and his will is absolute. Indeed, creation takes place
7:39
through the simple expression of his will. "When God began to create heaven and earth,"
7:44
and there's a parenthetical clause: "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light."
7:49
He expressed his will that there be light, and there was light and that's very different
7:53
from many Ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies in which there's always a sexual principal
7:58
at work in creation. Creation is always the result of procreation in some way, male and
8:02
female principles combining. There's a very similar Egyptian creation story actually in
8:07
which the god Ptah just wills "let this be." It reads very much like Genesis 1 and yet
8:12
even so there's still a sexual act that follows the expression of those wills, so it is still
8:17
different.