Comparisons of Genesis and the Epic of Creation

Genesis and The Epic of Creation have many common aspects. The two texts describe the creation of the universe as seen by the two cultures. When comparing Ancient Near Eastern creation stories, the ancient stories demonstrate that there was a commonly shared worldview, cosmology, and cosmogony in the Ancient Near East as reflected in the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Israelite creation stories. I will use a simple "comparative literature" method to argue in defense of this thesis.

Contrary to popular belief, the first lines of these stories are actually the titles. Placing the title in the very beginning of a text was customary for authors of the Ancient Near East. The original meaning of the story is modified when reading the first line as part of the text. In Genesis, the first line should not be read as a specific act of the God but rather a general overview of what the God created. It is not simply stating that God made the heavens and the earth-it is stating that the God created the things within the sky and on the land. Consequently, even if the first line of the text was not the original title, the line still had a different connotation than it does now. For instance, the term heaven meant the sky and not necessarily a place where people go after death. The same concept should be applied to The Epic of Creation when it begins with, "When skies above were not yet named" (p. 233 line 1).

Another similarity is both stories begin with chaos from which appear the Gods. Water is among the primordial substances representing chaos. Water takes no concrete form and the waves make a continuous, chaotic movement. Thus, it was a mysterious, unknown region that inspired much wonder in ancient cultures. The Babylonians personify this chaos in the Gods Apsu, fresh water, and Tiamat, salt water. When Apsu and Tiamat mix their waters, they create the Gods. The God in Genesis also creates with water as "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). He emerges from the friction of the wind over the water.

After the Gods appear from the chaos, they begin to create the universe. Their words become the life force and the power behind the formation of the universe. Simply by pronouncing the names of things, they come into being. "God said, 'let there be light'; and there was light" (Gen 1:3). Similarly, in The Epic of Creation, Lahmu and Lahamu emerged when their names were pronounced. The Gods' words essentially have energy and take on form. Thus, the words pronounced by the gods are of the vital essence of creation in these stories.

The people of the ANE believed the sky to be a dome. Therefore, they incorporated this belief in their cultural myths. It was believed that water existed in the sky and was separated from the water on the ground by the dome. In this pre-scientific world, this belief of a heavenly water probably explained where dew came from and why it rained. In The Epic of Creation, Marduk sliced Tiamat and "half of her he put up to roof the sky" (p. 255 line 4). Thus, he created the dome that separates the waters from the body of Tiamat. This concept of a dome that separates the heavenly water from the earthly water is also seen in Genesis 1:6-7 when the God calls for a dome to separate the waters from the waters.

In both stories, the Gods proclaim that there should be lights in the dome of the sky. These lights are the foundation for the concept of time. The lights are to be affixed to the dome to designate the year and mark out its divisions (p. 255 line 4). The God in Genesis also created the lights in the dome of the sky to use as a calendar to mark the seasons and the year. Then, the sun is created to rule over the day and the moon to rule the night and the stars. These greater lights separate light from darkness and mark the time span of a day.

Another important aspect of the creation stories is that of the separation of land and water. In both cultures' accounts of the creation of land, the Gods gather the water together under the dome to expose the dry land underneath. "God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas" (Gen 1:10). This gathering of the water to expose the land suggests that land, along with the water, was part of the primordial substance. Since the earth did not have to be created or pronounced, it must have already existed. This was probably the view of both cultures at this time considering the concept of creation out of nothing did not officially appear until much later.