Understanding the Evidence: Interpreting Genesis

in Ancient Near Eastern Context

© 2016 Richard E. Averbeck

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

I sincerely believe in the truth, authority, and reliability (inerrancy) of the Bible,

including the early chapters of Genesis. But how does God himself intend that we read these first

chapters of His Word? Some would argue, for example, that Genesis 1 clearly teaches that God

created the whole universe in six literal days, one right after the other, followed by a seventh day

of rest. After all, there is the evening and morning formula throughout the chapter, day by day,

and the fourth commandment reinforces this when it bases the seventh day Sabbath on the

creation week (Exod 20:11).

Others say this is an overly “literalistic” way for us to read the text – that is, it is a

misreading that does not properly allow for the genre and intent of the text, the figurative use of

language, or the ancient Near Eastern context of its writing. For example, the six/seven pattern is

common literary pattern in biblical and ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literature. Could it be that

God intended from the beginning that the ancient Israelites read the 6/7 pattern in Genesis 1 as a

literary motif well known to them, and that we need to take that into consideration when we read

it today? This and many other features of the chapter may suggest that perhaps the account has

been schematized. The story has been given this literary shape for the effective telling of it in

ancient Israel. I will return this particular point later in this paper.

The goal of this essay is to clearly set forth the ANE literary and iconographic evidence

that may inform our reading of these early chapters of the Bible.1 My own primary text expertise

is in the cuneiform world, not Egyptian, but I will do what I can to take the latter into serious

consideration as well. As will be noted below, methodological issues abound in the “reading” of

these source materials themselves, and in their application to the Bible. But they have self-

evident importance for helping us read the biblical text in its ancient real world context, and from

the point of view of their concerns, rather from our own modern point of view. The ancient

Israelites were ancient Near Eastern people, and it was to them that God addressed the Book of

Genesis in its original setting. Yes, it was written for us today too – this current generation of

believers – but in our reading of the Bible today we must not ignore the fact that God initially

revealed himself to them in the first instance, not us. No one among us questions this. The real

question is how much and in what ways should our current knowledge of the ancient context

influence how we read the text today?

My colleague and friend, Lawson Younger, has written well on this methodological

question. In the present essay the plan is to walk through specifically how all this might come

into play in reading the early chapters of Genesis. The intention here is to be relatively thorough,

as well as judicious and fair, in the treatment of both the Bible and the ANE material and the

various scholarly views regarding the relationship between them. Of course, from time to time

my own opinions will become self-evident on certain points, but the goal here is not to set forth a

particular position, other than the fact of the importance of the data and its inclusion in the

1For a recent helpful summary of the ANE literary materials for creation see John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as

Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2011), and most recently for a collection of iconographic

evidence as well as discussion of the literature see now Othmar Keel and Silvia Schroer, Creation: Biblical

Theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East, trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns,

2015).

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interpretation of the Genesis creation narratives. We will walk through Genesis 1 and 2 step by

step, and from there into some important connections to Genesis 3-4. The structure of the text

tells us that Genesis 2 is the beginning of the unit that runs from Gen 2:4 through chapter 4. The

purpose here, however, is to focus our attention on the interpretive issues that arise from

consideration of ANE comparative materials, not deal every issue that one could raise in the

interpretation of these chapters. I will leave that in the capable hands of Jack Collins.

Genesis 1:1-3 1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the

Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (NIV)

There is much discussion over the first three verses of the Bible these days. Traditionally,

v. 1 is taken to be an independent temporal sentence stating the original creation of the “formless

and empty” universe of v. 2 at the beginning out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. Many have

moved away from this interpretation, suggesting that v. 1 is indeed an independent temporal

sentence, but it serves as a summary title announcing what is to follow in the chapter. The latter

interpretation is accepted in the notes of first edition of the NIV Study Bible. Both are given as

legitimate options in the second edition, where the note includes this remark: “Although creation

out of nothing is implicit in Gen 1, for more complete statements see Isa 45:7-18; Rom 11:36;

Col 1:16-17.” One might add Heb 11:3. The translation itself remains the same in either case, but

if v. 1 is treated as a title of the chapter it stands parallel to the other unit titles in Genesis – the

“generations” formulas throughout the book (Gen 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; etc.). Such a

formula could not work in Gen 1:1 because these generations formulas always link what is

before to what follows, and there is nothing written before Gen 1:1.

Some other English versions read v. 1 as a temporal clause introducing a sentence that

runs through v. 2. There are various forms of this but, for example, the NRSV reads, “In the

beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and

darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

This rendering makes it clear that Gen 1:1 does not refer to creation ex nihilo. All of vv. 1-2

provides temporal and circumstantial background for the creative words of God that begin in v.

3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ so there was light.” There are a total of nine of these

throughout the chapter. Issues of Hebrew grammar could also be raised here, but this is not the

place to enter into that discussion.2

The ANE context enters the discussion at this point. One of the well-known features of

creation stories in the ANE world is the fact that many of them begin with a deep, dark, watery

abyss, much like what is described in v. 2. Perhaps the most well-known of these creation

accounts is the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, the oldest extant tablets of which date to

the Middle Assyrian period (1300-1100 BC). It begins this way:

(1) When the heavens above did not exist,

2For a relatively simple discussion of the Hebrew grammar involved here see Richard E. Averbeck, “A

Literary Day, Inter-Textual, and Contextual Reading of Genesis 1 and 2,” in Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical

Conversation, ed. Daryl Charles (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013), 9-11.

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And earth beneath had not come into being –

There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,

And demiurge Tiāmat, who gave birth to them all;

(5) They had mingled their waters together

Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to be found –

When not one of the gods had been formed

Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,

The gods were created within them: . . .3

Tiāmat is the goddess of the depths of the sea (cf. tĕhôm in Gen 1:2b, “and darkness was

over the face of the deep”). She had serpentine while Apsû is the god of the underground waters.

The name Enuma Elish comes from the first words of the composition, “When (the heavens)

above.” The similarity to the beginning of Genesis 1 bĕrēšît “In the beginning” is obvious. Both

compositions begin with a temporal clause, and at the beginning there was water – only water.

The deep dark watery abyss is also one of the standard starting points for creation in the

Egyptian world. For example, in one Coffin Text we read: “. . . on the day that Atum evolved –

out of the Flood, out of the Waters, out of darkness, out of lostness.”4

Of course, in Enuma Elish there follows a theogony (i.e., creation of the various other

gods). In this way Genesis 1 is completely distinct. There are no other gods at all. In fact, there

appears to be certain amount of polemic against the common belief in multiple deities.

Moreover, in Genesis 1 the creation of the cosmos follows immediately after the introduction of

the deep dark watery abyss at the beginning of the account. The material creation of the cosmos

in Enuma Elish comes much later in the composition, starting at the end of Tablet IV and ending

with the creation of humanity in Tablet VI, each tablet consisting of about 150 lines of text. This

is after a long account of disputes among the gods and the consummate and victorious battle of

Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, against Tiamat, the serpentine mother of the gods. We shall

return to this battle later in this essay.5

After defeating her, Marduk split her body in two and set up one half as the cover,

heaven, and the other as earth below which, in turn, is over the Apsû, the underground source of

waters. Heaven became the realm of Anu, the god of heaven, Ea was already the god of the

Apsû, and Enlil became the chief deity over the world of air and land that stands between them.

After the whole cosmos was properly created, arranged, and assigned to the appropriate deities,

Marduk also determined to make humanity to relieve the work of the gods by feeding and

otherwise caring for them. He employed Ea, the god of wisdom and crafts, to kill Qingu,

3This is the very beginning of the composition (lines 1-9), cited from the lamented W. G. Lambert,

Babylonian Creation Myths (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 51 with commentary on p. 469. This

volume also treats other Babylonian creation myths and the sources that stand behind them. See also W. G. Lambert,

“Mesopotamian Creation Stories,” in Imagining Creation (ed. Markham J. Geller and Mineke Schipper; Leiden:

Brill, 2008), 15-60; Benjamin Foster, “Epic of Creation (1.111),” in The Context of Scripture, 3 vols. ed., William

W. Hallo and K Lawson Younger (Leiden: Brill, 1997, 2000, 2002), 1.390-402, abbreviated here COS (vol. 4 is

forthcoming). See also the helpful discussion of this text in Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography

(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 107-129.

4See the Egyptian “Cosmologies” (COS 1.5-31) and specifically for the text cited here, “From Coffin Texts

Spell 76,” translated by James P. Allen (COS 1.10 CT II 3d—4d).

5COS 1.396-98, Tablets III and IV.

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Tiamat’s previous partner in crime, and used his blood and bones to create humanity.6 The point

is that this composition gives a great deal of attention to the material creation and functions of

the cosmos as we know it even today.

So, we have evidence from Mesopotamia to Egypt that a deep dark watery abyss was a

most natural and understandable starting point for a creation story in the ancient Israelite world.

Thus, in Genesis 1 we watch God paint his literary picture of creation and the cosmos step by

step, and he paints it against the same standard backdrop as would be normal in the ANE. The

actual picture itself is really quite different in many important respects. Nevertheless, one of the

ways in which it is similar is that God speaks his first creative word in v. 3 into the deep dark

watery abyss of v. 2. As we follow this through the chapter, God progressively eliminates the

conditions of v. 2. On day one he eliminates the total darkness. Each following day progressively

eliminates some element(s) of the conditions in v. 2. If we take Gen 1:1 to be a title verse and

initial temporal clause leading into v. 2 rather than original creation of matter ex nihilo, this

should not surprise us for a creation story written in the ANE. It certainly would not have

surprised the ancient Israelites, since they were ANE people. They would not necessarily have

expected a statement of creation ex nihilo. Perhaps that is why God did not bother including it in

the account of creation as it is given in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:6-8 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault (Hb. rāqîa῾) between the waters to separate water

from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from

the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” (Hb. šāmayim ‘heavens’) And there was evening,

and there was morning—the second day. (NIV)

On day two God separated between the waters above and below so that there was not just

one big watery abyss as in v. 2. The whole question of what the rāqîa῾ is has been a subject of

scholarly debate and variation in the translations. NASB, ESV, NET, and Tanakh render it

“expanse” (= “space” in the NLT); the NIV has recently changed its translation from “expanse”

to “vault” (= “dome” in the NRSV and “firmament” in the KJV, NKJV, RSV, ASV). We shall

enter into all the details of this debate here.7

Another well-known ANE creation tradition comes into play here wherein creation does

not begin with a deep dark watery abyss, but with the separation of heaven from earth to create a

three level universe: heaven above, earth below, and the region in between where man does the

work and the gods have their temples. Actually, this has some basis in the texts cited above when

you consider that, for example, the Akkadian tradition in Enuma Elish where the watery

beginning leads immediately to a theogony, not a cosmogony, but the battle against the evil

serpentine sea monster, Tiamat, comes later in the composition. Her defeat leads to splitting her

body in two so that one half was raised up to create the heavens above the earth, with the world

of humanity and the temples of the gods in between. Sumerian texts, however, tend to begin

immediately with the separation of heaven from earth and do not include the battle with the sea

6COS 1.398-401

7For the details see Averbeck, “A Literary Day, Inter-Textual, and Contextual Reading of Genesis 1 and 2,”

19-20.

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monster. Before dealing with this tradition in more detail, however, it is important to set aside

what I and some other scholars believe is a common misunderstanding of how the Israelites and

other ANE peoples saw their world.

A Common Misunderstanding

For a long time now it has been common for scholars to represent the ANE and Israelite

view of the cosmos in terms of a picture in which there was a body of water above the stars held

up by a dome (see NIV “vault”; Heb. rāqîa῾ mentioned above), the dome had sluices for the rain

water to flow through, the sun, moon, and stars were either imbedded in that dome or suspended

below it, and so on. Many artistic representations of this supposed ancient world view have been

produced and affirmed by scholars.8 Consider, for instance, the picture of the cosmos as it is

presented by T. H. Gaster in his article on cosmogony in the first volume of the Interpreter’s

Dictionary of the Bible:

From Egypt we have their native ancient representation of something similar. There the goddess

Nut is stretched like a dome over the earth, the stars are embedded in her body, the earth god

8See, e.g., Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 54; Alan P. Dickin, On a Faraway Day . . .: A New View of Genesis in Ancient

Mesopotamia (Columbus, GA: Brentwood Christian Press, 2002), 122; and T. H. Gaster, “Cosmogony,” in The

Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (4 volumes; ed. G. A. Buttrick; Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 1.703. For an

extensive argument in favor of this point of view see Paul H. Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above,” WTJ 54

(1992): 31-46; idem, “The Geographical Meaning of ‘Earth’ and ‘Seas’ in Genesis 1:10,” WTJ 59 (1997): 231-55.

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Geb lies on the ground, exhausted from union with Nut, and the air god Shu holds up the sun and

sky, among other things:9

Wayne Horowitz, for example, questions whether the ancient Mesopotamians would have

really believed that such pictures represented physical reality. Perhaps they thought of them “in

metaphysical or mystical terms.”10 The doyen of ANE iconography as it relates to the Bible,

Othmar Keel (along with his co-author Silvia Schroer), writes as follows:

The thought, pictorial representations, and language of people of that time were generally

symbolic – that is, neither entirely concrete nor purely abstract. . . . People in the ancient

Near East did not conceive of the earth as a disk floating on water with the firmament

inverted over it like a bell jar, with the stars hanging from it. . . . The textbook images

that keep being reprinted of the “ancient Near Eastern world picture” are based on typical

modern misunderstandings that fail to take into account the religious components of

ancient Near Eastern conceptions and representations. All ancient Near Eastern world

images imply the involvement of divine powers that, especially at the beginning, make

possible the cohesion and functioning of the parts of the cosmos . . . Ancient Near

Eastern Images are conceptual, not photographic. They combine aspects of (empirical)

experience of the world and worldly outlook, . . .11

Increasingly, therefore, scholars are beginning to doubt that the ANE peoples believed in

such pictures. These representations do not take into account the fact that, for example, the

ancients knew that it did not rain unless there were clouds in the sky. And they knew what clouds

were because they knew what fog was. Moreover, the clouds sometimes obscured the sun, moon,

9I have scanned this picture from the front cover of Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (see also his

remarks on pp. 35-37), who took it from E. A. W. Budge, The Gods of Egypt, vol. 2 (1904), color plate facing p. 96.

For simple line drawings and explanations of a similar scenes on sarcophaguses from various periods see Keel and

Schroer, Creation: Biblical Theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East, 79-81, 91. 10Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), xiii-xiv.

11Keel and Schroer, Creation: Biblical Theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East, 78-79.

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and stars, so the water that fell from the sky were not above these heavenly lights. Much more

could and should be said about the problems with this longstanding scholarly reconstruction.

The point here is that this picture has been built from misunderstandings of the analogical

expressions that are found in the texts, and a lack of recognition that the ANE peoples from

Egypt to Mesopotamia, by and large, considered the cosmos to be populated by gods who

managed the various elements of nature and culture. They knew they were doing analogies when,

for example, they made the waters of the deep into two deities who cohabited in order to birth

the other gods (see the citation from Enuma Elish above). It is based on the human experience of

marriage, family, house, and household – an analogy that everyone could identify with from their

own experience and could extend to the gods and the cosmos in the form of familial relationships

on the divine level as it relates to the temple household and estate in their community.12 Egypt is

somewhat different but likewise analogical, with the union of Nut and Geb, heaven and earth, in

the Egyptian depiction of the cosmos. Their religious cult gave them a means of engaging with

it; again in analogical ways such as the feeding of the gods and festival rituals enacting their

human concerns on the divine level. In general, mythology is analogical thinking and ritual is

analogical action. Sometimes they are directly related; sometimes not.

The Baal myth from Ugarit, for instance, tells us that they knew these kinds of

expressions were analogical. We will discuss this myth in more detail below, but for now we are

interested in one particular point. When Baal, the god of rain and fertility, finally gains the

courage to allow a window in his palace in the sky, he pronounces:

I am going to charge [the craft god] . . .

with opening up a window in (my) house,

a latticed window in (my) palace,

with opening up a rift in the clouds.13

The analogical metaphorical nature of the referents is clear in the parallelism here: window = rift

in the clouds. To open the “window” in Baal’s celestial palace was to open up the clouds to give

rain on the earth. There are no literal windows or flood gates up there for the rain to fall through

to water the earth. The waters above are the clouds. The Bible knows the same metaphors too as

in the Baal myth and other ANE sources (see, e.g., Gen 7:11, “the floodgates of the heavens were

opened”; cf. also 2 Kgs 7:2). This is all analogical in the view of the ancient Israelites in their

ANE world. To argue that they actually thought there were windows or sluices or flood gates in

the sky is to over-read the text mythologically. It is to misunderstand both the text and the

ancients. God was depending on the fact that the Israelites knew some things about reality from

12For discussions of myth as an analogical way of speculating about life and the cosmos see Mary Douglas,

Leviticus as Literature (Oxford, 1999), 13-65; Richard E. Averbeck, “Ancient Near Eastern Mythography as it

relates to Historiography in the Hebrew Bible: Genesis 3 and the Cosmic Battle,” in The Future of Biblical

Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions (ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan R. Millard (Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 328-356; idem, “Temple Building among the Sumerians and Akkadians (Third

Millennium),” in From the Foundations to the Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the Ancient Near East

and Hebrew Bible (ed. Mark J. Boda and Jamie R. Novotny; AOAT 366; Muenster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2010), 6-8.

13CTA 4.vii 15-19 (COS 1.262). The translator Dennis Pardee notes here that “. . . the Ugaritians were well

aware of the metaphors with which they were dealing” (COS 1.262 n. 184).

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an observational point of view and that they were bringing that to their reading of the account.

The text, therefore, requires that we today read it with this in mind too.

One of the main differences between such ANE analogical accounts of creation and that

which we find in Genesis 1, of course, is in the Bible there are no other gods running things. The

cosmos is not populated with multitudes of other deities. In fact, many have argued that the

Genesis accounts contain a good deal of polemic against the religious context of the ancient

Israelites especially on this count.14 For example, in Gen 1:14-16 the choice not to give proper

names to the lights on day four (i.e., “lights,” not “sun” and “moon,” and perhaps also the proper

names for particular stars) is probably a polemic against the supposed deity of the sun, the moon,

and the stars common in the ANE world to which the ancient Israelites belonged (e.g., Re, the

sun, as the chief god of Egypt; Sin, the moon, as one of the chief gods in Mesopotamia; Venus

[really a planet] as the star of the great goddess Inanna/Ishtar in Babylonia, etc.). They have been

demoted to the physical phenomena they are and their celestial cosmic purposes (i.e., to divide

between day and night, and designate regular cycles of nature and weather) and, as many

scholars have noted, probably also liturgically. That is, “seasons” here is probably also

associated with the annual cycle of festivals in the various parts of the ANE, and specifically

Israel (see, e.g., the same term in Lev 23:2 and many other passages). The corresponding unit of

Psalm 104:19-23 uses the same term.

In my view, we must not ignore these polemics as we look at the ANE comparative

background of the biblical creation accounts. Good comparative method will take both

comparisons and contrasts seriously, along with the transformation of certain elements of this

contextual material for making points in the Bible that are very different from what we find in

the surrounding ANE world. For latter point on transformation as part of the method, see the

remarks on Genesis 3 below.

The Three Level Universe

Let’s return now to the ANE pattern of the three level universe. Whatever the status of

our speculations about their speculations might be, we have certain texts in which someone or

some group of them did in fact speculate about the origin and nature of the cosmos. At least three

major elements of Sumerian creation and cosmology continue down through the centuries into

Akkadian traditions: (1) the pre-existence of the Apsû, the subterranean waters of Enki, the

creator God of Eridu in southern Sumer,15 (2) the separation between heaven and earth,

commonly associated with Enlil of Nippur, the primary creation god of northern Sumer,16 and (3)

14See most recently, for example, the focus on such polemics in John D. Currid, Against the Gods: The

Polemical Theology of the Old Testament (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2013), esp. 33-46 on Genesis 1.

15Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 335.

16See the sources and remarks on this in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 112-114, 134-142.

Ellen J. van Wolde, “Why the Verb brʼ Does Not Mean ‘to Create’ in Genesis 1:1-2:4a,” JSOT 34 (2009): 8-13

studies these texts in relation to Genesis 1:1 and argues that this provides background for the rendering, “In the

beginning God separated (or ‘differentiated’) the heaven and the earth.” The major problem with her argument is

that she does not account for the differences between the expressions. The Sumerian texts consistently use the

preposition “from” meaning “separated heaven from earth” and/or “earth from heaven.” In Hebrew this would

require the preposition min “from” between “heaven” and “earth” or, more likely, the use of bēn “between” before

both “heaven” and “earth” similar to Genesis 1:4b.

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thus, the three level universe of the heavens, the landed earth, and the Apsû (subterranean

waters), or in some Sumerian texts heaven, earth, and underworld (sometimes with multiple

levels of the heavens and the underworld).17 The separation of heaven from earth, in particular,

yields space for the landed regions of plants, animals, and humanity.

For example, from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1760-1595 BC), after two introductory

lines, the Sumerian Song of the Hoe begins this way in lines 3-7:

(3) Enlil who will make the seed of mankind rise from the earth –

not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth,

(5) and hasten to separate earth from heaven,

but, in order to make it possible for humans to grow “where the flesh sprouts,”

he first affixed the axis of the world in Duranki (= the middle of Enlil’s temple).18

Similarly, the Middle Assyrian (ca. 1400-900 BC) Sumerian and Akkadian bilingual known as

KAR 4 begins in Sumerian with lines 1-11 as follows:

(1) After heaven was separated from earth, its firm companion,

so the mother goddesses could live there;

after building up the earth to make the ground firm;

when the designs were made firm in heaven and earth

(5) to establish levee and irrigation ditch in good order,

the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates being firmly fixed;

(7-8) An, Enlil, Utu (and/or Ninmaḫ), and Enki, the great gods,

the Anunna, the great gods,

(10-11) sat down in a lofty dais grown high in awesomeness, (and) Enlil himself

deliberated (before them):19

The divine name Enlil means “Lord (en) Wind (líl)” (or “Breathe”). The fact that Enlil is the

deity who separated heaven from earth corresponds well to heaven and earth with the space in

between them being a place of wind, air, clouds, etc.

This, in turn, corresponds well to the waters above and below on the second day (Gen

1:6-8) and the dry ground/earth in the first part of the third day (Gen 1:9-10), yielding a three

level cosmos: heaven (and waters) above, earth (and waters) below, with the surface of the earth

(and the sky) of animals and humanity in between.20 All three points noted above and all three

17See the sources and remarks in Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 113-114, 125-126, 134-

142.

18COS 1.511.6-7 and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) 5.5.4.

19Richard E. Averbeck, “KAR 4: The Creation of Humanity” (COS vol. 4, forthcoming).

20

Ellen J. van Wolde, “Why the Verb brʼ Does not Mean ‘to Create’ in Genesis 1:1-2:4a,” JSOT 34 (2009):

8-13 and idem, Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition,

and Context (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 184-200 proposes that bārāʼ “created” in Gen 1:1 means

“to separate” or “differentiate,” and that v. 1 should be translated “In the beginning God separated (or

‘differentiated’) the heaven and the earth” and, therefore, compares to the separation of heaven from earth in

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levels of the cosmos have parallels in the creation account in Genesis 1. The “firmament” or

“expanse” of day 2 seems to correspond somehow to the separation of heaven and earth, making

room for the landed earth, which arose out of the waters on the third day as they receded. This

yields the three level cosmos. Thus, there is a certain fundamental ANE pattern underlying how

the creation story is told in Genesis 1. God told the story in a way that would have made sense to

the ancient Israelites as ANE people. And if we think about it, even today we experience the

observable world on three levels: what is above us, what is below us, and where we stand, live,

and breathe along with the land and sky animals.

In my view, a similar three level pattern appears also in a different way in a major Ugarit

text from the Levant, to the west from Mesopotamia, and north from Palestine in the Late Bronze

Age (ca. 1550-1200 BC), during the period of the Israelite exodus from Egypt. The Ugaritic Baal

myth is not a cosmogony, but it does reflect upon the cosmology of Ugarit as it relates to

kingship in the heavens among the gods.21 Baal is the god of rain and, therefore, fertility. He has

three daughters that seem to correspond roughly to the three levels of the cosmos outlined above

for Mesopotamian texts, but even more closely to the first three days in Genesis 1; specifically,

light (the first day) followed by the sky and the waters above and below (the second day), and

then earth and vegetation in the most immediate world of land animals and humanity (the third

day). Again, this would be an instance of both the Bible and the Baal myth reflecting the same

underlying cosmological pattern common to both the observable world and the cultural world in

which both of them were written.

In brief, the Baal myth falls into three major episodes. First, there is a battle for

supremacy between Baal, the celestial fertility god, and Yamm, the god of the sea. Keep in mind

that in this account, Baal is considered to be the good god and Yamm the evil god. The first two

tablets of the myth are devoted to this part of the story. Second, since Baal is victorious over

Yamm he earns a place of supremacy among the gods. So he petitions El, the head of the

pantheon, to commission the building of a suitable palace from which to exercise his dominion.

Eventually, El grants the petition and the celestial palace of Baal is built. Tablets three and four

tell this second part of the story, and this is the focus of our concern here. Third, and finally, in

tablets five and six Baal and Mot, the god of death, do battle over the issue of who is more

powerful. Baal loses this battle and ends up in the netherworld, but then comes to life again

through the urgent intervention of other deities.

At a certain point in the myth, Baal has defeated Yamm to gain dominion over the

disputed territory, the earth of humanity, although Yamm maintains his dominion over his home

territory, the waters of the abyss. So he is still a threat, which shows up in the text in the form of

Baal’s refusal to allow the craft god to install a window in his palace. At this point in the story

Sumerian texts. One problem, among many others, with this reading of Gen 1:1 is that the Sumerian texts

consistently use the preposition “from” meaning “separated heaven from earth” and/or “earth from heaven.” In

Hebrew this would require the preposition min “from” between “heaven” and “earth” or, more likely, the use of bēn

“between” before both “heaven” and “earth” similar to Genesis 1:7, “and He (God) divided between the waters

which were from under to the expanse (rāqîa῾) and between waters which were from upon to the firmament” (literal

translation from Hebrew). See also the remarks in B. Becking, and M. C. A. Korpel, “To Create, To Separate or to

Construct: An Alternative for a Recent Proposal as to the Interpretation of ברא in Gen 1:1-2:4a,” JHS 10 (2010): 1-

21 and J. J. W. Lisman, Cosmogony, Theolgony, and Anthropogeny in Sumerian Texts (AOAT 409; Münster:

Ugarit-Verlag, 2013), 206-7 n. 928 and the lit. cited there.

21For very helpful treatments of the Baal myth see especially “The Baʽlu Myth,” translated by Dennis

Pardee (COS 1.241-274); and Mark S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (vol. 2; Leiden: Brill,

2009).

11

the three daughters of Baal appear: Pidray, daughter of light (ʼar = Heb. ʼôr ‘light’); Ṭallay (=

Heb. ṭal ‘dew’), daughter of rains (rbb = Heb. rĕbîbîm ‘rain showers’); and Arṣay (‘Earthy’ =

Heb. ʼereṣ ‘earth’), daughter of the wide world(?). The rendering of the last epithet is in dispute,

but there is no question of the meaning of her name. Although the text is broken, it is clear that

Baal fears that Yamm might rise up again, invade Baal’s palace through the window, and

perhaps kidnap (?, the text is unclear here) his first two daughters; Pidray and Ṭallay, light and

rain.22 These are both celestial and, thus, in Baal’s realm.

The myth speculates analogically on the larger ecological framework of the world, which

is based on three elements and their spheres; namely, light, rain, and earth or ground,

respectively. All three are necessary for vegetation, animals, and people. For Baal (and therefore

the natural world) to function effectively, all three features of the ecological framework to which

the daughters are analogous must work together in concert. Thus, all the consternation over

having a window in Baal’s palace relates to the maintenance and stability of that basic

underlying ecological system without which there would be catastrophe. It would threaten the

entire ecological system of the observable human world.

The first set of three days in Genesis 1 corresponds to the names of Baal’s three

daughters who, in turn, correspond to the three fundamental structures or elements of the

ecological system: light, sky/rain, earth. The second set of three days (days 4 through 6)

elaborate on the first three days, taking the creation story behind the basic underlying framework.

The point is that the Genesis 1 six-day sequence is intentionally built off this widely distributed

ANE three level structure of the cosmos to begin with. Of course, many have noticed the

parallels between the two sets of three days.

The Sex/Seven Pattern

Earlier in this essay we made the point that the six/seven or seven pattern is well-

established in the Bible and in the ANE. There is a good deal of evidence for this. Proverbs 6:16-

19, for example, reads: “There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him . .

.” (see also Job 5:19; cf. the three/four pattern elsewhere, Prov. 30:15, 18, 21, 29).23 Consider

also, “six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses

from within the cloud” (Exod 24:16). The seven pattern is pervasive. The temple dedication by

Solomon was celebrated at the feast of Succoth (i.e., “tabernacles”), which is a seven day feast in

the seventh month (1 Kgs 8:2, 65; 2 Chr 7:8-10; cf. also the pervasive pattern of sevens for the

dedication of Ezekiel’s temple, Ezek 45:21-25).

Solomon makes seven petitions in prayer to the Lord at the dedication of the temple (1

Kgs 8:31-53). It took seven years to build the temple (1 Kgs 6:38). The instructions for

fabricating the tabernacle come in seven units, each marked by a narrative introduction (Exod

22The major passages involved here are CTA 1.4.vi.7-13; 1.4.vii.13-20; and 1.4.vii.25-29 (see COS 1.261-

262). For the technical details and full discussion see the forthcoming publication of Richard E. Averbeck, “Pidray,

Tallay, ’Arsay, and the Window in Baal’s Palace” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the SBL, Atlanta,

Georgia, 20 November 2010).

23This is all part of a regular pattern of x/x+1 pattern in scripture. See W. M. W. Roth, “The Numerical

Sequence x/x+1 in the Old Testament,” VT 12 (1962): 301-311.

12

25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12), and the last one is about the Sabbath (Exod 31:12-17).24 See

also the seven day period for the consecration and ordination of the priests in Leviticus 8:33-35,

and so on.

Seven and six patterns are common elsewhere in the ANE as well. For example, in

Sumerian literature we have the seven day temple dedication feast of the gods in Gudea Cylinder

B xvii 12-xxiv 8 after the patron god and goddess take up occupation of the temple.25 The same

seven day motif is used in a different context in the flood story as it is recounted in tablet 11 of

the Gilgamesh: “Six days and seven nights the wind continued, the deluge and windstorm

levelled the land. When the seventh day arrived, the windstorm and deluge left off their assault.”

And then a few lines later we read, “The boat rested on Mount Nimush, Mount Nimush held the

boat fast, not allowing it to move. One day, a second day Mount Nimush held the boat fast, not

allowing it to move. A third day, a fourth day Mount Nimush . . . A fifth day, a sixth day Mount

Nimush . . . When the seventh day arrived, I released a dove to go free . . .”26 Similarly, it took

seven days to build Baal’s celestial palace according to the Baal myth.27 In the Ugaritic Kirta

epic the king loses his seven wives, travels seven days to another city to obtain another wife –

the first part of the journey was three days and he arrived on the seventh day – and then besieged

the city for seven days.28 Examples could easily be multiplied.

All this suggests that the six/seven pattern of days in Gen 1:1-2:3 is a well-known literary

device found repeated elsewhere in the Bible and in the ANE world, and the ancient Israelites

would have been fully aware of that. It draws on the three level universe background discussed

above. Furthermore, two analogies converged here, yielding substantial explanatory and life

shaping force in ancient Israel. First, God working for six days and resting/stopping on the

seventh is an analogical pattern to exemplify and reinforce obedience to the Sabbath in ancient

Israel.29 The analogy (or anthropomorphism) is expressed in an especially forceful way in

Exodus 31:17, where God declares the Sabbath to be “a sign between me and the Israelites

forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he

stopped (šābat) and breathed freely (wayyinnāƒaš).” 30 The other two places the latter verb

24For a very helpful treatment of the Sabbath frame around the golden calf incident in Exodus 32-34 (i.e.,

32:12-17 and 35:1-3), see Daniel C. Timmer, Creation, Tabernacle, and Sabbath: The Sabbath Frame of Exodus

31:12-17; 35:1-3 in Exegetical and Theological Perspective (FRLANT 227; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,

2009).

25See COS 2.432 n. 74; Averbeck, “Temple Building among the Sumerians and Akkadians,” 32-33. See

also the remarks in Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, 118, 182, and the literature cited there.

26COS 1.459-60. 27See CAT 1.4 vi 16-40 in COS 1.261 and n. 175. See the full discussion in Samuel E. Loewenstamm, “The

Seven Day-Unit in Ugaritic Epic Literature,” Israel Exploration Journal 15, no. 3 (1965): 121–133 and idem, “The

Seven Day-Unit in Ugaritic Epic Literature,” in Comparative Studies in Biblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures

(Verlag Butzon and Bercker Kevelaer, 1980), 192–209.

28See CAT 1.14 i 7-25; ii 103- iii 123; iv 194- v 229 in COS 1.333-36.

29See the helpful discussion in C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological

Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006), 77-78.

30For the latter verb see HALOT 711 “to breathe freely, recover.”

13

occurs in the Hebrew Bible it refers to people being exhausted to the point where they need to

stop and rest (2 Sam 16:14 and Exod 23:12). For God it is an analogy; for humans it is a reality.

A second analogy is at work here too. In the ANE temples were places of divine

residence and rest.31 The same is true in Israel. The tabernacle and later the temple were places

where God took up residence in the midst of his people. In the wilderness, they had their tents,

and God had his tent too (Exod 40:34-Lev 1:1; Lev 9:23; 16:2; Num 9:15-23). Similarly, later as

part of the dedication of the temple, the glory cloud of God’s presence took up residence there (1

Kgs 8:10-11; 2 Chr 5:13-14; 7:1-2). Several passages in the OT pick up on this pattern and apply

it analogically to God’s creation of the cosmos and his sovereignty over all. Isaiah 66:1-2 is

especially helpful here: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house

you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things,

and so they came into being?” (cf. 1 Chr 28:2; Pss 99:5-6; 132:7-9, and in the NT Matt 5:34-35;

Acts 7:46-50).

Day seven, therefore, draws from the ANE and Israelite pattern of completion of a

temple, and the rest of the deity in the completed temple when the god and/or goddess took up

residence in it. The analogy seems to go both ways; the temple and the cosmos are reflective of

each other. But the temple is not a cosmos, and the cosmos is not a temple. This is an analogy,

and it is anthropomorphic. People rest in houses (or tents), and so does God (or gods and

goddesses). But as Solomon once put it, “will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the

highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kgs 8:27). The

cumulative effect of these explanatory and potentially life transforming analogies comes to its

full expression in Genesis 1. God shaped this account of creation in this way to take advantage of

all this potential in ancient Israel for revealing his person, plans, and purposes in ways that would

or could have life shaping influence on the ancient Israelites in their day, and eventually on us

today as well.

Genesis 1:26-28 26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image (ṣelem) as our likeness

(dĕmût), that they may rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the

livestock, all the (wild animals of the) earth, and all the crawling animals that crawl

on the earth.”

27 So God created humankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill

the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all

the living creatures that creep on the ground.”

Another element of the creation accounts in early Genesis where we gain some help from

ANE creation accounts is in the creation of humanity. For instance, there has been a good deal of

discussion in the scholarly literature about ancient Near Eastern texts, images, and monuments

that bear upon the meaning of Genesis 1:26-28. One particular inscription stands out. It is the

bilingual (Aramaic and Akkadian) ninth century BC Tell Fekheriye inscription from northern

31See the helpful discussion in Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, 178-92 and the literature cited

there.

14

Mesopotamia/Upper Syria. The inscription is on the lower part of the skirt of the statue of king,

Hadad-yith`i (see the pictures below).

The reason this text is so important is that the Aramaic version uses the same two words for

image and likeness as Genesis 1:26-27, and it uses them interchangeably to refer to the “statue”

of the king on which the inscription is inscribed:

“(1) The image (dmwt’) of Hadad-yith`i which he has set up before Hadad of Sikan, . . .

(12) The statue (şlm) of Hadad-yith`i, king of Guzan and of Sikan and of Azran, for

exalting and continuing his throne, . . .

(15-16) this image (dmwt’) he made better than before. In the presence of Hadad who

dwells in Sikan, the lord of Habur, he has set up his statue (şlmh). . . .”32

32Aramaic is a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. “Image” s̟lm = Hebrew s̟elem; and “likeness”

dmwt = Hebrew demut (the vowels were left out in those early days). See Ali Abou-Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil, and

Alan R. Millard, Le Statue de Tell Fehkerye (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilizations, 1982), p. 23 and plates

XIII-XIV. The translation is from Alan Millard in COS 2.153-54.

15

The statue itself functioned to represent the king before his god in the place where the statue was

set up. The implications are obvious. True, we are not just an inanimate statue. The biblical text

is using figurative language. Like the statue of a king, we are the “statue” of a king too, the

divine king. And we have been set up in the midst of God’s creation to represent him and his

interests.

It is not that we look like God physically, but that we are physical beings who stand

within his physical material creation as God’s stewards, assigned to manage it physically. It is

important to emphasize the physical nature of the image. Historically, the discussion has often

turned in the direction of our metaphysical characteristics rather than the physical bodily nature

of the image and likeness. There has been a tendency to “fight” the basic lexicography and

imagery of the passage. The term “image” recurs twice in v. 27, as if “image” can stand alone for

image and likeness combined. In addition to the five times it refers to human beings in the image

of God (Gen 1:26, 27 twice; 5:3; 9:6), the term “image” occurs only eleven more times in the

Hebrew Old Testament and seventeen times in the Aramaic part of Daniel (all in Dan 2:31-35 for

the great dream image of Nebuchadnezzar, and Dan 3:1-19 for the giant image of gold that

Nebuchadnezzar set up). Most often “image” refers to statues or other three dimensional replicas;

mostly statues of gods or men (e.g., Num 33:52; 2 Kings 11:18/2 Chron 23:17; Ezek 7:20; 16:17;

Amos 5:26), but also replicas of tumors and mice (1 Sam 6:5, 11). It can also refer to images of

men painted and/or inscribed on a wall (Ezek 23:14).33

The term “likeness” appears 21 times in the Old Testament in addition to the three times

it refers to our “likeness” to God (Gen 1:26; 5:1, 3). Like “image,” it can refer to a physical three

dimensional replica or perhaps a two dimensional drawing (e.g., 2 Kings 16:10; 2 Chron 4:3).

However, it is more often used for likenesses seen in a vision (e.g., Ezek 1:5, 10; 10:22; Dan

10:16; and many others). A few times it is used for some other kind of likeness: “like the venom

of a snake” (Ps 58:4), and (noise) “like that of a great multitude” (Isa 13:4). Isa 40:18 is

especially interesting: “To whom, then, will you compare God? What image (demut) will you

compare him to?” The next verses contrast God with the idols that people worshipped in those

days. The point is that idols are nothing and the true God is everything.

It is certainly true that God created us with all the metaphysical capacities needed for us

to fulfill our function within his design. But the passage itself keeps the focus on our function as

God’s physical statue set up in the midst of creation to serve as his authoritative representatives

on this earth “in his image as his likeness”; that is, in a way that manifests the qualities of God

and his will as the creator of all things. We have been put in charge and made responsible for

how things go here. This is stated clearly in the passage (v. 26): “Let us make humankind in our

image as our likeness, that they may rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, . . .” Our

understanding of our image and likeness needs to be seen in direct connection with our purpose,

which is to rule over all the earth on God’s behalf (i.e., as God’s “image”) in a way that is

somehow similar to the way God rules over all of everything (i.e., we do it as God’s “likeness”).

This understanding of v. 26 is confirmed and reinforced by its repetition and expansion in God’s

blessing that makes up the conclusion of the passage, “And God blessed them and God said to

33The other two passages are more obscure: a man’s life in this world is only a mere “phantom” or

“shadow” (i.e., just a breathe; Ps 39:6), and the wicked are like a dream “fantasy” or “phantom,” as when you wake

up from a bad dream and, thankfully, can just put it behind you (Psalm 73:20). Again, the term “image” in these

verses refers to something that is physically visible in one state or another. In neither case, however, is there any real

substance to the image, unlike the substantial nature of man created in the image and likeness of God.

16

them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea,

the birds of the sky, and all the living creatures that creep on the ground.’”

Another major feature of the passage that requires our attention here is the alternation

between the plural and the singular. God pronounces an edict in v. 26, “Let us make humankind

in our image, as our likeness, that they may rule . . .” The most likely explanation for the plural

“us” and “our” here is that God is calling out this creative proclamation within his heavenly

council (for other references to God’s heavenly council see, e.g., Psalm 89:6-7; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-

6; Isaiah 6; 1 Kings 22:19-23).34 This also has a great deal of background in the ANE world.35

For example, in KAR 4 (cited above), the separation of heaven from earth is followed by the

introduction of deliberation by Enlil, the head of the pantheon, in the heavenly council, which

eventually led to the creation of humanity:

(7-8) An, Enlil, Utu (and/or Ninmaḫ), and Enki, the great gods,

the Anunna, the great gods,

(10-11) sat down in a lofty dais grown high in awesomeness, (and) Enlil himself

deliberated (before them):36

The same thing can be seen in Enuma Elish and many other ANE mythical compositions. In

Genesis 1 it is not that the heavenly council did the creating. As v. 27 puts it, “God created

humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created

them,” referring to God with singular pronouns.

There has been a good deal of discussion in the theological literature about whether or

not the Trinity is being referred to in the plural pronouns in v. 26. In my view, this would include

the Trinity, but does not actually teach it, and does not specifically refer to God as a Trinity. That

comes later in the biblical canon. Caution is required here, however, in light of the fact that in

Gen 1:1-3 we have first “God” (v. 1), then “the Spirit of God” (v. 2), and then the sequence of

“And God said . . .” throughout the chapter. In Targum Neophiti, for example, the latter is

rendered “The Word (mēmraʼ) of God said . . .,” which may provide the background for the

34See the helpful summary of views and discussion in Wenham, Genesis 1-15, 27-28 and Bruce K. Waltke,

Genesis: A Commentary, with Cathi J. Fredricks (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 64-65 (reference courtesy of

Andrew Schmutzer). This plurality also occurs elsewhere in the primeval narratives in Genesis 3:22 and 11:7, as

well as Isaiah 6:8. The fact that “God” speaks from within the heavenly council does not imply that there are other

“gods” in the counsel (contra, e.g., Garr, In His Own Image, 87-92 and the literature cited there), although there are

other passages that refer to the others as “the sons of God” (e.g., Job 1:6; 2:1; cf. also “council of the holy ones” in

Ps 89:6-7). On the contrary, there is only one God who has ultimate authority in the council no matter what the other

supernatural beings there might be called.

Waltke suggests that the “heavenly council” interpretation of this plurality is mostly likely to be correct

because in the other places where “us” is used in reference to God, “human beings are impinging on the heavenly

realm and he is deciding their fate” (see Waltke, Genesis, 64-65; see Gen 3:22; 11:7; Isa 6:8). The same would apply

here in Genesis 1:26 in that we are being made in his “image” and “likeness,” and thus related to the heavenly realm

(cf. Ps 8:5a, “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings”).

35For the ANE divine council among the gods see E. Theodore Mullin, Jr., The Divine Council in

Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature HSM 24 (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1980) and now the very

thorough but also more popular treatment of this topic in Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches

about the Unseen World – and why it Matters (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2015).

36Averbeck, “KAR 4: The Creation of Humanity,” (forthcoming).

17

introduction of Jesus as the “Word (logos) of God,” who created all things according to the

prologue to the Gospel of John. Much more could be said about this.

Perhaps the most important point to draw from the plural pronouns in God’s

pronouncement in v. 26 is that it shows that God is relational and, at the same time, so is his

image and likeness: “. . . that they may rule . . .” The term rendered “humankind” (Hb. ’ādām),

therefore, should be understood as a collective noun (i.e., singular in form, but plural in

meaning), referring to humankind as a whole. The shift from the first person plural pronouns

“us” and “our” in v. 26a to the third person singular “his” and “he” in v. 27, referring to God,

corresponds to the shift from the third person plural pronoun “they” in v. 26b to the third person

singular “him” in v. 27, referring to man (’ādām) as singular rather than plural, although again

here probably a collective singular. Then comes the very striking shift back to the third person

plural pronoun “them” in v. 27c, referring to the male and female together: “male and female he

created them.” In sum, v. 26 has God in the singular (“Then God said”), but making a

pronouncement from within a collective (“us” and “our”) to make collective humanity in his

image as his likeness; v. 27 begins with God and humankind in the singular and concludes with

dual humanity, male and female; finally, v. 28 once again has God speaking in the singular, but

humankind is plural as a direct result of the divine pronouncement of blessing on our capacity to

reproduce. Thus, by the time we get through v. 28 we know how the collective humanity referred

to in v. 26 actually comes into being.

The point here is that in Genesis 1:26-28 we were created as relational beings by a

relational God. Not only individually, but also collectively we are the statue-like image and

likeness of God that functions as the managerial team within God’s creation. Functioning in this

position requires our multiple presence, which in turn requires the male and female functioning

together – “be fruitful and multiply.” In other words, the image and likeness is about us

functioning together with God and one another to fulfill our mandate to rule.37

Genesis 2:7

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV)

The foundation for the whole extended discussion of the various facets of our

creation in the image and likeness of God is the fact that we are God’s “statue” in the world, so

to speak.38 This is metaphorical, of course. It is not that we look like God physically. Neither are

we just a dead rock or piece of wood carved into a certain shape. But we are God’s statue placed

here to represent him and his purposes in the world. The same conceptual background extends

37This is the same basic conclusion reached in Schmutzer, Be Fruitful and Multiply, 154-158, 166, 173,

177-178, etc. as I understand him, although we might state it in different ways. The relational focus received a great

deal of attention and affirmation in Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, Church Dogmatics vol. III, 1; ed. G. W.

Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; transl., J. W. Edwards, et al (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 176-206 and 288-292.

Many have followed his lead in this. See, e.g., the extensive discussion in Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 147-161, esp.

his conclusion pp. 155-158.

38For a good review of the recent discussion of the various dimensions of the image of God in people see

now John F. Kilner, Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015). See also

the very helpful earlier treatment in Richard J. Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis (Grand

Rapids: Brazos, 2005).

18

into the creation of the man in Gen 2. Recent work has shown that there are a number of

important motifs from the Mesopotamian and Egyptian rituals of “washing the mouth” and

“opening the mouth” of statues of the gods in Gen 2:7ff.39 After making an image it was

enlivened through such rituals so that it could breathe, eat, and function properly.

The Lord God’s creation of the first man by shaping him out of the dust from the ground

and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life also has other parallels in ANE literature. Some

are more closely comparable to the biblical account than others. For example, in Enuma Elish,

the Babylonian creation story cited above, after the defeat of Tiamat and creation of the cosmos

out of her body, Ea killed Qingu, Tiamat’s former divine assistant, and created humanity out of

his blood.40 According to the earlier Old Babylonian creation and flood story known as

Atrahasis, man was created out of a mixture of the flesh and blood of a slaughtered god mixed

with clay.41 In both of these Mesopotamian accounts mankind’s function is to serve the gods by

relieving them of their labor in producing food from the ground for the senior deities. There is

some similarity to Gen 2:7. The deities formed man out of clay mixed with the divine elements,

somewhat like God formed the man out of dust and breathed his divine breath into his nostrils.

Also, the Lord God put man to work in the garden in Gen 2:15. But the contrasts are many. Most

importantly, God does not eat. Man cultivates the garden so he himself can eat.

In Gen 2:7 the material out of which the Lord made the first man is referred to as “dust”

and later, after the fall, it is said that he will return to the ground from which he was made, “for

you are dust, and unto dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19; cf. Gen 18:27; Ps 103:14, etc.). The

Hebrew word for “dust” here (ʽāfār) often refers to dry dust, but may refer to a clay-like mixture

such as that used to plaster the walls of a house, as in Leviticus 14:41, 45, where the same term

(ʽāfār) is used. In Leviticus 14:42 the NIV even translates “clay” because it refers to the plaster

as it is smeared on the walls of a house, “Then they are to take other stones to replace these and

take new clay (ʽāfār) and plaster the house.” There are also places where “dust” (ʽāfār) and

“clay” (ḥōmer) are used in poetic parallelism for the constitution of people: “Remember that you

molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?” (Job 10:9; cf. also Job 4:19; 27:16;

30:19).

Later in the chapter the Lord “built” (bānāh) the woman from the “rib” or “side” (ṣēlāʽ)

of the man. It is likely that the verb changes here because the material is different, being the kind

of material one builds with (v. 22) rather than molds or forms (v. 7). This suggests that “rib” is

probably the better translation here since the same term is used for the “beams,” for example,

that held up the roof when Solomon built his palace (1 Kgs 7:3). A “beam” or “rib” is something

you “build” with. You do not mold or form it. So the LORD God himself shaped and built the

first two humans, male and female, respectively. Here in Genesis 2 the Lord gets his hands dirty,

so to speak, and he loves it!

39See esp. Catherine L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden, Siphrut 15 (Winona Lake,

Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2015).

40COS 1.400-401 tablet VI lines 25-44.

41COS 1.451.

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Genesis 3:1, 15

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God

had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree

in the garden’? . . . 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel.” (NIV)

Genesis 1, of course, does not include a theogony and this is part of the underlying

polemic against the ancient Near Eastern environment of the Israelites.42 This polemic, it seems

to me, also includes a reaction against the notion that God created the world by defeating the evil

forces of chaos (i.e., German “Chaoskampf”). But the lack of Chaoskampf in Genesis 1 is not the

end of the story. The fact of the matter is that there is a cosmic battle in the early chapters of

Genesis, and it runs through the whole Bible to the end days (Rev 12-20). But it has been

transformed in accordance with the nature and concerns of Yahweh. The battle really begins in

Genesis 3. It is here where the correspondences to Chaoskampf in the early chapters of Genesis

appear, but in a thoroughly transformed way.

In plain terms, then, Genesis 3 is where conflict first appears in the Bible. Genesis 3:1 is

the first appearance of a serpent in the Bible. This serpent issues a direct and carefully crafted

sinister challenge to Yahweh's rule by attacking what in Genesis 1 is referred to as his image and

likeness – people. As Gen 1:26-28 puts it, we are his statue, his “image and likeness” so to speak,

created and placed within creation to represent him, his authority, and his character. In Genesis 2

there is something similar (see above). In Genesis 3 the serpent’s actions are an attack upon the

Lord himself, and his creation design. Yahweh responds with curses upon the serpent (Gen.

3:14-15; and the ground, v. 17) that involve, among other things, the woman’s seed crushing,

striking at, or bruising (or whatever43) the “head” of the serpent’s seed in Genesis 3:15. There is

a battle engaged here – a theomachy between God and the serpent – and we stand right in the

middle of it all. In fact, we are the territory under dispute.

There are a good number of ANE accounts of battles with serpentine chaos monsters. In

Egypt, for example, they had “The Repulsing of the Dragon.”44 We have already referred to the

serpentine Tiamat and Marduk’s defeat of her and his creation of the cosmos out of her corpse.

Perhaps the most likely myth that would have come to the minds of ancient Israelites would have

been the story we find in the Baal myth from Ugarit, which we have referred to briefly in the

remarks on Gen 1:6-8 above.

In general, the Baal myth falls into three major episodes. First, there is a battle for

supremacy between Baal, the fertility god, and Yamm, the god of the sea, also known as the

chaos serpent Leviathan. The first two tablets of the myth are devoted to this part of the story.

Second, since Baal is victorious over Yamm, he earns a place of supremacy among the gods. So

he petitions El, the head of the pantheon, to commission the building of a suitable palace from

42This is contrary to the view presented Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical

Tradition (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 73-84, among others.

43For the lexical difficulty here see HALOT 1146-47.

44COS 1.32.

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which to exercise his dominion.45 Eventually, El grants the petition and the celestial palace of

Baal is built. Tablets three and four tell this second part of the story. Third, and finally, in tablets

five and six Baal and Mot, the god of death, do battle over the issue of who is more powerful.

Baal loses this battle and ends up captive in the netherworld, but then comes to life again through

the urgent intervention of certain other deities.

At the turning point from the second to the third part of this myth, Mot challenges Baal’s

supremacy when he refers back to the time when Baal defeated Yamm/Leviathan:

ktmhṣ.ltn.bṯn.brḥ When you smote Litan (=Leviathan) the fleeing serpent,

tkly. bṯn.ʽqltn.[ ] made an end of the twisted serpent,

šlyt.d.šbʽt.rʼašm the tyrant with seven heads.46

Mot’s point in the context is that Baal may have been able to Yamm/Leviathan, but he would not

be able to defeat Mot, the god of death. We have iconographic evidence of the battle against such

a chaos monster (see the example just below):

This particular image comes from much earlier than the Baal myth and, therefore, shows that the

long enduring tradition about such a monster in the ANE. The allusion directly to the Baal myth

seems undeniable in Isaiah 27:1:

In that day the LORD will punish Leviathan (Hb. lwytn = Ug. ltn) the fleeing (Hb. brḥ =

Ug. brḥ) serpent with his harsh and great and mighty sword,

even Leviathan the twisted (Hb. ʽqltwn = Ug. ʽqltn) serpent;

and he will kill the dragon (Hb. tnnyn) who is in the sea (Hb. ym; cf. the Ug. god

Yamm).

The close parallels are highlighted in the citations as given above. “Leviathan” is obvious even in

the English translations, but consider also the adjectives “fleeing” and “twisted.” The adjective

brḥ rendered “fleeing” occurs only two or perhaps three other times in the Hebrew Bible. Other

45It seems that El, the chief god of the pantheon, had previously granted supremacy over the other gods to

Yamm and commissioned the building of a temple for him. Baal objected and rebelled, which led to the battle

between Baal and Yamm. See Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. 1 (VTSup 55; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 218-

219 and 224-238.

46For the iconography of the seven headed serpent see, e.g., Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical

World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (transl. Timothy J. Hallet; New York: Seabury,

1978; repr., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 54; and John W. Hilber, “Psalms,” in Zondervan Illustrated Bible

Backgrounds Commentary (ed. John H. Walton; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 5:382.

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possible meanings are “flashing” as in “fast,” or “hairless, slippery” as serpents are. Whatever

the correct meaning might be, it is obviously the same in Ugaritic and in Hebrew. The term

ʽqltwn “twisted” occurs only here in the Hebrew scripture, which makes it difficult to avoid the

conclusion that this is some kind of free quotation or perhaps close allusion to the Baal myth,

depending on how you want to put it. The term for “serpent” here is Hebrew nāḥāš, not the same

as Ugaritic bṯn in the parallel passage, but it is the same word used in Genesis 3:15, for example.

The significance of tnnyn in this verse is apparent from its use in Psalm 74:13-14:

13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons (Hb.

tnnynym; cf. sing. tnnyn in Isa 27:1) in the waters. 14 You crushed the heads (Hb. ra’šîm) of Leviathan (lwytn); you gave him as

food for the creatures of the wilderness.

The association of Leviathan with “the dragon” (Hb. tnnyn) who is in the “sea” (Hb. ym;

cf. the Ug. god Yamm) in Isaiah 27:1 makes perfectly good sense against the backdrop of world

of the Ugaritic Baal myth. Psalm 74 takes it back to the time of creation. Both are true according

to the Bible – the past and the future are times of such battle – and, in fact, in the midst of it even

today (Ephesians 2 and 6). The point of all this is that, in the biblical text we have clear allusions

to an ancient Near Eastern myth about an evil serpent with whom Yahweh does battle, whether

in the distant past, the distant future, or sometime in between.

The Chaos of the Chaoskampf in Genesis 3 is the corruption of the world, beginning with

human beings. The battle is a battle of redemption – recreation not creation – but it began during

the time of creation. The writer of Genesis 3 and ancient Israelites overall would have seen this

in the account and viewed it as the core of the cosmic battle, although in a way that transforms it

into the form in which we have it here from the cosmic battle imagery readily available to them

in that day. The ancient Israelites were living in an ancient Near Eastern world and were, in fact,

ancient Near Easterners themselves. And like the ancient Ugaritians, they were fully aware of the

figures and metaphors from their world that underlie their particular account of the Chaoskampf.

According to Genesis 3 and certain other biblical passages, the battlefield in the

Chaoskampf cosmic battle is us; people. We are the “territory” under dispute. And an attack

upon us is by its very nature an attack upon Yahweh himself. According to the Bible, we were

the crowning act of God’s creative activity when he made us in his image and likeness and put us

in charge in Genesis 1-2. We are also the focal point of his redemptive activity. Thus, for the

time being we stand right in the middle of a great big vicious cosmic fray. This concept and its

imagery continues to be transformed to one degree or another, in one way or another, through the

remainder of the Old Testament and on into the New. Revelation 12 transforms it back into an

actual battle again with battlefield imagery. This chapter in John’s Apocalypse is virtually a

Christian midrash on Genesis 3. Here again is the Chaoskampf of the ages, beginning to end, and

all through history.

Conclusion

The way of telling this creation story was determined and shaped by God’s concern that

they know him as the only true God, that they know the kind of good God he is, and that they

live well for him within his good creation. This would include, for example, living in God’s

image and likeness by being good stewards of his good creation (Gen 1:26-28; cf. also 2:15-17),

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and by imaging God even through keeping the Sabbath (Exod 20:11 with Gen 2:1-3). God did

actually create the cosmos. This chapter surely teaches that. But the scheme of the creation

account was set up to correspond to what was observable to them and required of them. In fact, it

corresponds quite well to the world as we experience it even today. The “days” here are

snapshots of the world as they observed it in that ancient day. God was revealing to them what

they needed to know about himself, about themselves, and about living in their world. He

expects us to get the same from it today.

The Genesis 2 account extends all the way through the end of chapter 4 (Gen 2:4-4:26;

see “generations” tôledôt in 2:4 and 5:1). In light of this, it is especially important to note that

there is only one real answer ever given to the catastrophe of Genesis 3 and 4. It is offered in the

last line of the Genesis 2-4 account and runs through scripture from there: “At that time men

began to call on the name of the LORD” (Genesis 4:26b; see also, e.g., Gen 12:8; Ps 116:2, 4, 13,

17; Joel 2:32a; Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13, and many other passages). There is no other answer.

There never has been and there never will be.