I'm familiar with Enuma Elish but not with Westermann's comment. Apparently his book came out right about the time I wrote my paper in college!! I do not read Akkadian and was dependent on Heidel's Babylonian Genesis. As I previously wrote and as you state, the parallels between Gen 1 and Enuma Elish are often overdrawn. I do / did feel the tehom and Tiamat were related, not only phonologically, but also in motif. (Other scholars, before and after disagree with Westermann, but I'm willing to look at his arguments). Both tehom and Tiamat represent primordial waters that are split into oceans and vapors. That similarity, in and of itself shows some that the two creation traditions are at least distantly related. However EE is theogenic (story of the creation of the gods) while Gen 1 is cosmogenic (story of the creation of the physical world). Peace, Ted In a message dated 9/5/2012 4:13:22 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Dear Ted, You are right when you say that metaphorical and mythical elements do occur in narratives, and by and large I agree with your words below. There is one exception, though, that THWM most likely is a derivative of Tiamat. I do not have the book at hand, but I remember that Claus Westermann in his "Genesis A Commentary" (1982) in detail shows that Hebrew and Akkadian Phonetics and orthography makes it impossible that there is a relationship between the two words. When I, in a previous post mentioned that I have a list of 23 parallels between Atrahasis/Gilgamesh and Genesis, all of these, except one, related to the flood in the days of Noah and not to the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2. I do not know your background, but it is my experience that most people who who think there are parallels between the Babylonian creation accounts and Genesis 1 and 2, have not made a detailed study themselves. But they build on other persons whose assumption is that any ancient cosmological account is mythical. I therefore invite the listmembers who are interested to make a careful comparison between Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 and 2, and then inform us which real parallels they have found. Best regards, Rolf Furuli Stavern _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
