The Bible TI251 Fall 2020

The chapter’s first four pericopes indicate to us that mankind establishes itself as a unified race which has migrated and constructed huge buildings in the land along the Tigris and Euphrates. The Tower of Babel is mankind’s attempt to strive beyond our reach and ability granted to us by God, “as if striving to fortify themselves against God,” according to St. Augustine. Man has a natural tendency to beat the curve, to constantly excel at harnessing creation for our benefit, God then acknowledges our great ability by causing us to develop different languages. This comes at our expense however, we are unable to unify ourselves, and thus unable to sin/rise against God as a people. This individualizes our sin, causing us to be completely alone according to our sins, repentance happens on a collective level.

Nimrod is the founder of Babylon, he fashions it to be one of the most prosperous nations in the history of man until that point. As a culture, they develop a deep sense of pride for their creations and this pride manifests into sin. Man starts to dominate nature to such an extent that they have no other force to rebel against other than God. This transpires into the formation of the Tower, man takes the kingdom of heaven by force. “Let Us go down” an allusion to the Trinity according to St. Augustine implies to us that God now descends upon man to keep us confined within the Universe. God causes us to speak in different tongues, he adds complexity and structure to our lives, this leaves humanity to be permanently separated.

The book of Genesis is one of my favorite books in the entire bible, it shows us the place God has dominion over, our roll in it, and the natural laws which we rely on to traverse the universe. It isn’t a history or a science textbook, it is a religious text and should be read with spiritual intent. It outlines how God has formulated the soul of man, how men and women ought to interact with each other, and to work together amongst creation. Genesis also articulates to us what laws and concepts God transcends, also trinitarian theology is expressed.

One thing I find to be exceedingly interesting is the fact that biblical Creation is not a procreative act as with the Babylonian stories. This I believe to be a prophetic nuance which runs parallel to the virgin birth of Christ. In Genesis, God is solo in the act of creation (Unlike having both Apsu and Tiamat), He is what some would call “Ontologically independent” that is, to be responsible for giving meaning and importance to the Universe. Without Him the Universe holds no inherent value and we are entirely reliant on His existence. It may seem that we are naked/alone but out of true love for us, God provides us the gift of freedom of will and the ability to understand that when on our own, values are superficial and will slowly decay without God’s intervention. This decay is the constant erosion of mankind’s purity through temptation from Satan, an umbrella term used to anthropomorphize the manifestation of evil.

There were many things that stuck out to me during our discussion of creation stories, including Genesis, Enuma Elish, and the Epic of Gilgamesh as discussed by Christine Hays in Lecture 4: Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources. Specifically, the stories of Genesis and Enuma Elish have very contrasting ways that the world came about. In Enuma Elish, many different gods clashed with each other in battle and combat. In Genesis, there is only one character, one god, in the beginning, which points to the monotheistic way of Christianity and Judaism.

Talking about the “genre” of the Genesis creation stories also made me think quite a bit. There are a few different repetitions used which give the stories almost a poetic structure—for example, “And God said”, “And God saw that it was good”, and “—the (blank) day.” Personally, this poetic and lyrical expression of the story causes me to think that it’s not meant to be taken literally, which is something that has been up for debate among many people. What is a “day” in this story? Is it a literal 24 hour day, or rather a representation of something else? This is a topic that I’ve thought about personally for a long time, ever since my visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky a few years ago, which I remember was mentioned in class.

From the lecture by Dr. Hays, I was able to learn a lot about the story of the Fall by comparing it to the Epic of Gilgamesh. There are many parallels between the two stories. In both stories, as referenced by Dr. Hays, knowledge and wisdom seem to come at a high price. For Adam and Eve, this high price is being removed from the Garden of Eden, losing their immortality, and enduring pain in their lives. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s loss of innocence turns him into a god, but it causes him to lose things like the ability to run with animals and to live an innocent, peaceful life (much like the one Adam and Eve were living in the Garden). A difference between these two stories is the nature of the act that leads to the loss of innocence.  In the creation story in the Bible, Eve was tricked by the serpent and she and Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did this despite God’s direct orders to not eat of this tree and endured vast punishments for this behavior. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s loss of innocence comes from a seven-day sexual experience with a woman. These two stories are very different and yet they offer many interesting parallels.

From the class lecture today I thought that comparing Adam and Eve’s Fall to maturing from childhood was very interesting. When in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were naked and they were unashamed. Toddlers are most commonly naked and they are very unfazed by their nakedness. So, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and disobeyed God’s orders they became aware of their nakedness, very similar to the process of aging when people become aware of their nakedness and begin to mature. I have learned about the Fall in Genesis 3 for a very long time and have not heard of it being compared to maturing from childhood and I thought this comparison was very interesting.

This is the first time I heard that there were two different flood stories. I have always had this idea that in the story, when I thought of it to be a singular story, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and Noah 2 of every animal on the earth came aboard the ark with Noah and his family. I just learned, not only that there are two different stories of the flood within each other in a few chapters of Genesis, but also that these two ideas I previously had of the flood were actually from different stories and not the same one. There are also many other differences between the two stories, but it was so fascinating to me how the two stories have been tied together in my own mind for most of my life into one, where that is surely not the case.

It is also very interesting how the two stories coincide with each other within Genesis 6-9. It’s amazing how there are obvious differences that seem to be in one story, even though it is really two. I am not sure how this happened, where two stories got woven together, but I would assume that there were two authors within these chapters that disagreed on some details, so they decided to put both interpretations in.

Not only are these two stories with similarities and differences, but there is another flood story that is in the Epic of Gilgamesh that shows many similarities compared to the two stories in Genesis 6-9. Although the characters and other details may be different, the idea of a flood that kills every aspect of life besides the living things on the boat is the same as the flood stories in the Bible stories of the flood. This is astounding, as this is a completely different viewpoint, from a Mesopotamian view, compared to the viewpoint in the Bible. Again, I don’t how they are so similar in structure, but I would assume that there was this general idea in this period of time where there was a flood that wiped out all life, and the viewpoints of the stories are just from different people and areas.

the reading “BABYLONIAN EPIC OF CREATION” differs from the christian creation story in many ways. First of which is there being multiple Gods. Within the Babylonian faith in the creation there are multiple gods, Mummu, and Tiamat, Anshar and Kishar. We also talked about in class one of the biggest critiques of the Christian faith with creation is Where did god come from? this is different within the Babylonian faith as the creators came from the water. which also leads us into possibly one of the biggest differences that being the creation of the world. In Genesis 1 you are able to see how God crafted not only our world but our entire universe. You see how God spent time forming the world the first 3 days, and the last 3 days God filled what he had formed. However in the Babylonian text we are just to realize that the world existed. From the readings we are bale to see drastic differences as the ones I have pointed out however they all come back to a divine being or beings meaning that the religious aspect and belief remains the same. This world is too perfect to be pure luck. This was all done by a divine being.

There was a lot of repetitive wording and interesting wording within the creations stories.  A lot has already been said on it, however I would like to reiterate how interesting I found the repetition in phrases such as “and God said”, “God saw that and it was good”, and even the use of “evening” and “morning” when those are typically not the only words we would use to describe the times of day.

There is also a lot of parallelism used throughout the creation – the first three days and the second three days have some glaring parallels.  In the first three days, I think that God is sort of creating an outline or a mold for the world.  On day 1, light and darkness are created, on day 2, the firmaments and the sky/sea are created, and on day 3 vegetation and dry land are created.  Then on the next three days, I believe gods is filling in the outlines he’s made and adding to the mold he created.  On day 4, the sun, moon, and stars are created.  On day 5, the fish and the birds are created, the first inhabitants!  And then finally, on day 6, more animals and people are created.  And the first three days even align with each other.  Day 1 and Day 4 both have to do with light, as the sun/moon/stars emit light.  Day 2 and Day 5 both have to do with the land and sky – one creates the habitat, and the other fills in the habitats with inhabitants.  Then finally, Day 3 and Day 6 put ground and vegetation and inhabitants for that ground/vegetation.  The days are parallel, God goes from creating the outline to filling it in.

I found Christine Hayes’ lecture on Doublets and Contradictions to be intriguing. I understood and saw the similarities to Adam and Eve. It’s interesting to see how sex makes him godlike and how it was always apart of the plan or seems to be so. This makes me take a step back and look at ourselves as human beings. It’s also interesting that Adam and Eve were only ashamed of their nakedness after defiance. I wonder why this is so? It seems odd to embrace nakedness, and then do a 180 only after getting in trouble. Lastly, an interesting point Hayes made was how god was in control of the flood and not threatened by it. I had never stopped and thought about this part of the story.

Reading Subversive Sequels was also interesting. I learned about the connections between the Tower of Babel and the midwives of Isreal. In a short summary, they are both oppressive stories surrounding the building of a city and how it is done. It is interesting to see that it is necessary for characters to break rhythm in order to allow new stories.

The class discussion brought me new insights. I had already noticed the repetitions of Genesis, but never the connections between the days. It was cool to see how the first 3 days were God forming, and the last 3 days were God filling what God had previously formed. This made it make much more sense, and honestly cooler.

Lastly, a couple cool, random things that were pointed in the discussion are how evil is a byproduct in Babylonian, how genesis truly reflects an ancient view of things, and that the idea of Sabbath was unknown to ancient people. These are all new things to me.

Something that stuck with me from our class meeting today was that the story of Enuma Elish and Genesis in the Bible. Both stories have a similar pattern to how Earth was created but have a different explanation to how the universe was created. In Genesis, God solely creates the universe as we know it, but in the Enuma Elish story the world is created by the battling gods.

In the video with Christine Hayes (Lecture 4, Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources) she talked about the ideological similarities between the Genesis stories and the tale of Gilgamesh. What was interesting to me was that Christine’s interpretation of the Genesis stories; she proposed the idea that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge granted Adam and Eve (and the rest of the human race) self-awareness and death. Her interpretation was that God did not want a human who was self-aware and immortal, causing God to close off the Tree of Life from the world. In the story of Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s death causes Gilgamesh to fear his own mortality, and thus he journeys to find immortality. Christine explains in the video that Gilgamesh does find the fruit of immortality, but a snake steals the fruit from him. She elaborates on the importance of snakes in the culture of ancient Arabic cultures that snakes were a symbol of beauty because they shed their skin (seeming to be eternally young). The two stories are connected in that humans are mortal and that our mortality is inescapable.

What helped me the most from the reading was comparing the Enuma Elish to the creation story in Genesis and finding similarities and differences and then getting to talk about these in class. There are a ton of characters in the Enuma Elish who all play a role in the creation story. The main two characters are Marduk, the greatest god and avenger, and Tiamat. Tiamat is an evil, seven-headed dragon who is meant to represent water in the Enuma Elish. Marduk defeats Tiamat and splits her body in half to form the sky and the sea. This relates to the Genesis creation story as God also creates the sky and sea from the water on the second day. However,  the story in Genesis is far less exciting and contains less battle.