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Monday, July 10, 2006

Comparative cosmogony

“For an Evangelical scholar who agrees that what the ancients believed about the days of creation and the shape of the cosmos was indeed based on pre-scientific modes of thought, see Genesis by Dr. John H. Walton (NIV Application Commentary, 2002).”

—John Loftus

“As we have seen above, there is no piece of literature extant from Mesopotamia that presents itself as an account of creation. Therefore, there is nothing comparable to the creation account of Genesis in terms of literary genre. The similarities between the Enuma Elish are too few to think that the author of Genesis was in any way addressing the piece of literature we know as Enuma Elish.”

—John Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels Between Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Zondervan 1990), 34.

“We are terribly ill-informed regarding the history of either Mesopotamian or biblical creation accounts. This makes the argument based on chronological sequence null and void. We cannot say for certain that the traditions preserved by the Israelites are any less ancient than the traditions preserved by the Babylonians,” ibid. 36.

“The only evidence that can be produced to support the case for Israelite borrowing is the similarities we have already identified. These are hardly convincing, in that most of the similarities occur in situations where cosmological choices are limited. For example, the belief in a primeval watery mass is perfectly logical and one of only a few possibilities. The fact that the Babylonians and Israelites use similar names, Tiamat and tehom, is no surprise, since their respective languages are cognates of one another,” ibid. 37.

3 comments:

  1. While this might be off of the main topic of this post, I was struck by the Walton quote:

    "As we have seen above, there is no piece of literature extant from Mesopotamia that presents itself as an account of creation. Therefore, there is nothing comparable to the creation account of Genesis in terms of literary genre."

    While I don't have the entire context of the quote, this seems simply wrong. Merideth Kline (sp?) in his "Treaty of the Great King" and much of his life's research went to show how the Pentetuch is an ancient Suzerain covenant and its accompanying literature (of which Genesis is part). Therefore the literary genre is certainly not unique.

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  2. Walton discusses the treaty format in chapter 4, but chapter 1, from which I took my quotes, is concerned with cosmology, and that's what Loftus was talking about as well.

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  3. Thanks Steve. I figured it was simply that I didn't have the context of the original quote.

    Some of the other threads of discussion here might benefit from remembering Kline's work and its implications for liberal scholarship.

    Thanks again.

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