While preparing this blog post today I was reminded that I am writing a blog (not a book) and sharing my THOUGHTS (not writing a dissertation). I say this because I was searching desperately the other night trying to cite my sources for various things I remember studying twenty years ago and having trouble locating the source material. Then I remembered that this is just a blog of my thoughts and opinions on the subject matter. It is also a review and commentary of another writer’s book on the subject of the Watchers. In reality I do not expect anyone to look to my BLOG for proof of anything or even to change their opinion on the matter. Thus, perhaps I can cut myself a little slack if I can’t find the source material every time I remember something and just allow myself to move on with my thoughts on the book I’m reviewing. Having said that, I want to point out that if something I said would significantly change your viewpoint if it were true, and if you want to verify it yourself, I’d be happy to try and find the source material for you to do your own research.
Now, according to most historians, the first major civilization on earth was the Sumerian civilization that sprung up in the Mesopotamian valley around 3,500 BCE and 3,000 BCE . They were the first to develop the written language and the first to write down the history, or “myths” of the creation (as some like to call them). In addition, they were the first to write down their version of a great flood in a work titled “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. Both of these Sumerian tales, which bear striking resemblance to the ones recorded in our modern Bibles, were written many thousands of years before the ones recorded in the Bible and thus one might consider that the Hebrew version is merely a retelling of the older Sumerian creation and flood stories. As an aside it still bugs me that the older (and perhaps “original”) story is often called a “myth” while the more recent (and logically “borrowed” re-telling of the original story) is labeled “history” and treated as fact by many Christians.
What is important to understand for this discussion is that the Sumerian civilization predated the Hebrew nation by thousands of years and that the Hebrew nation spent considerable time in captivity to both the Assyrians and the Babylonians (two Sumerian sub-cultures) long before they wrote their books of the Bible. This means to me that a logical person must pay attention when the Hebrews write about subjects that Sumerians had been writing about for thousands of years prior. It seems logical to me that the older version of the story is more likely to be the “original” source and the later versions of the story are copies or re-tellings of the original stories. At a MINIMUM, the Hebrews were certainly aware of the older Sumerian stories.
Similarities between Sumerian Creation “Myths” and the Book of Genesis
Both creation stories (the Sumerian Enuma Elish and the Hebrew Book of Genesis) start with the depiction of earth being formless and void. In both stories, creation took place in exactly six days. In both stories the seventh day is a day of “rest”. While the names of the deities and figures involved in the story are considerably different, both the Enuma Elish and the Book of Genesis record that the “gods” had created a great garden located specifically at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates river where they created man. In other words, both agree that the “gods” created the garden and that the garden was located in the same place the Bible says the Garden of Eden was located and that God (or the gods) created man and place him in the garden.
Differences between the Sumerian Creation “Myths” and the Book of Genesis
Don’t get me wrong, there a dozens of significant differences between the Sumerian creation stories and that of the Bible but the one I want to focus on today is the creation and original purpose of man. As I understand it, the Sumerian tales viewed primitive man as little more than the most advanced “beast of the field” (i.e. just a more evolved animal) when the “gods” created them. One of the “Sumerian” gods, a figure known in both Sumerian and the Hebrew Bible as Marduk, helped genetically modify man to become a better and smarter animal for the purpose of being a slave or servant for the gods. In fact, the word “worship” apparently originally carried the meaning in Sumerian to “cease to work”. In other words, man was created to “worship” the gods by letting the new “man” do the work for for the gods so they could rest. This new worker was created on the sixth day of creation and the gods were finally able to rest on the seventh day. Therefore the purpose of man was merely to work the gardens and in some way this would reduce the work that the gods needed to do.
As I understand it, the Sumerian view of man is quite different than how most of Christianity views man in my opinion. I believe most of Christendom views man as God’s special creation, intended from the beginning to have dominion over all other forms of life on earth and to have a special relationship with God, one day destined to live with God himself in heaven. It was only by disobedience (i.e. eating from the one tree God forbid them to eat from) that man lost his special and personal relationship with God. Salvation therefore, is about restoring the original right relationship we had with God at the beginning. In the Sumerian tales however, man was created as a servant for the gods, a primitive worker at best and not intended to be “like the gods”.
I remember being shocked when I found that in the Sumerian tales, the good and bad guy in the story is almost reversed. Here is how the story goes, as I understand it, in the Sumerian stories. Man was created to be a slave for the gods. One day one of the gods felt bad for the enslaved man and came to man to reveal to him a secret, that he is actually like the gods themselves having some of their same DNA so to speak and that they do not have to be servants. They can be like the gods. This enraged the other gods because now man had become rebellious and refused to serve (aka worship) the gods. In that sort of story you might be inclined to see the gods as “evil” (wanting dumb slave labor) and the one who “enlightened” man that he is like the gods is a good guy. The Biblical tale, however, reverses the roles and the one who informs man he can “be like god” is evil while God himself remains “good” and benevolent.
It seems to me the remnants of the older Sumerian tale are still captured in the Hebrew Bible when you consider the God first is depicted as parading the animals of earth before Adam to find a mate from and only after not finding a made did he make a woman. Also it appears God did not intend for man to know the difference between good and evil according to the Bible and was angry to find that they had become enlightened and realized they were naked. In other words, It seems even in the Bible as if God originally did not intended for man to be different than the other beasts of the field.
For the sake of this blog post it will suffice to end on this thought. The more I read and think about the ancient Sumerian and Hebrew (i.e. biblical) tales of creation, the more I am convinced that the real “sin” according to the ancients was that a dumb animal (i.e. humans) became enlightened and believing that they were “like” god. Prior to this, the stories seem to suggest, man was intended to be little more than an animal with no judgement over morality such as “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “evil”. However, once man was enlightened to these concepts he was now subject to judgement by these new rules of morality. This is important to the story of the watchers as I believe THAT story is all about the story of other worldly (or spiritual) beings intermingling with low level “beasts of the field” (or physical beings) which enraged the other gods (or spiritual beings).
Hi Lee,
I think it is a problem that some Christians interpret Genesis, especially the creation story, as a history book. I have always learned that the Bible is about WHO not necessarily a how exactly book. I think of the creation story as, not necessarily a myth fully, maybe somewhat a legend based upon truths with points or events highlighted for the listeners. Now I would not be surprised if the story was literal BUT I suspect not literally as stated in English (hope that makes sense). I also think there might be some problems with the traditional historical dating of the creation story from Genesis. That does not affect or effect my beliefs. I do think there was a great flood thousands of years ago that many cultures experienced and told their oral history over time (and some wrote it down sooner than others). A person also wonders how ancient cultures counted time, and I suspect it was not necessarily similarly until the Romans(?) or Greeks (?).
I think the WHO (one God) in the Hebrews accounting is what matters versus the WHO (gods) in the Sumerian account of the garden, flood, et cetera, is what matters. That the good guys and the bad guys are reversed in the Hebrew and Sumerian versions does not surprise me when you explain things. Often I think of God as trying to teach us of an “opposite” world – one which humans don’t necessarily understand because we are stuck in time whereas God sees the big picture overall all time. What we might think is good for the short run is not always so for the long run. It would great to have conversation live like a Zoom meeting of interested persons to discuss this. My comments are getting pretty disjointed. Thanks for writing the Blogs though. I find learning about your study and thoughts interesting.
So, in the spirit of disjointedness, I still would argue that the second to the last paragraph is filled with assumptions based upon the translation into English and one’s personal experiences and influences, including that God is an angry being, trying to play with humans.
I think the original sin may have been that humans now had the choice to love or hate, to do good or do evil. (Beasts are purer in their motives – food, procreation, protection from threats…) And the original sin was that we ALL SOMETIMES chose the hate, the evil, the murder, the theft, the bad, the lie… I believe Jesus was the only one who always chose the good, the love, et cetera. He modeled for us unconditional love, the opposite of sin which i would define as hate or not loving.
Ending tonight. Thanks again for posting.
Beth
Beth, thanks again for your detailed and thoughtful response!!! Love it! Kind of like you said, I tend to believe a lot of stories in the Bible are not literal history but more collected legends. Maybe I’m not wording that EXACTLY like you meant it but for me, for example, I believe many cultures wrote about certain things like the flood such that it is likely something really happened that is the basis for all those stories.. Cultures from all over the world have legends about it so chances are there is something that really happened. As I Christian, I was taught always believe the Bible was the only “accurate” version of the story and all others were just inaccurate copies. When I went to college and first found for example that the Epic of Gilgamesh talks about the flood, building an ark, animals going into the ark, the same periods of rain and such, etc etc and yet predates the Biblical flood story by a LONG shot, I was freaked out. Logic would dictate that the older story might be the original and the one that came later is a copy or twisting of the original. I struggled with that at first as a Christian but then I was taught by those in the church that that the devil was so clever that he had other cultures like the Sumerians write their version of the story BEFORE the Hebrews because the devil is a great counterfeiter and so clever that he laid down the lie BEFORE the truth was even told. This led me to a bit of a crisis of faith. How does God expect us to know what is truth and what is the lie if the devil is allowed to tell the lie BEFORE you even hear the truth? History is repeatedly contradicting the traditional understanding in the Bible and the church’s response often is “well the devil is really clever and has a counterfeit for everything. Anyway….long story there….
The issue of WHO God is is difficult. As I would argue the word “elohim” for God is a plural word and we know the many times god says “let us” do this or that. Christianity has fixed the issue of the multiple gods issue by saying it’s a “ROYAL” we or us and that one God is referring to himself in plural. OR, the modern church asserts, God being a trinity is three beings and thus plural even though three is one and one is three. Again, LONG story there as well. But as I started to look more closely I realized that the Bible would have three ways of typing the word lord in English. For example there is “lord,” “Lord” and LORD. All three mean different things. When I found that out I realized there was the LORD (which is YHWH) and there is the Lord and yet again the lord which all three can be very different things. A famous verse in the Bible that tripped me for the longest time went something like “The LORD said to my lord…” The difference in capitization is a key that this verse isn’t using the same Hebrew word for LORD. In other words, it does not say God said to God as many thing. My point to all that is that I would argue that even in the Hebrew Bible, YHWH was seen as a local god who replaced or overthrew Marduk of the Sumerians. He was not necessarily the one the Hebrews knew as El (or elohim). Again, REALLY long story.
Trust me, I totally understand your thoughts getting disjointed. I feel like the older I get the harder it is to explain myself or articulate what I believe and know. I have so much information I’ve accumulated over the years that I just start stranding together random crap thinking it makes sense and then realize I probably lost everyone including myself in my own logic. lol
Thank you again SOOO much for writing and being cordial about it. Open and frank dialogue is amazing. I’d love to continue discussing things with you.