Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kdlitwak <kdlitwak AT concentric.net>]

Walter Mattfeld wrote:

snip

My own research suggests that the ancient Hebrews creatively drew from the

> creation myths of the ANE world, and reinterpreting them with a "new twist,"
> invented a loving, caring, God in contrdiction to the fickle, quarreling,
> and un-caring gods of the source-myths.

Two points:

1.  How do you determine which is the chicken and which is the egg?  That is, 
how do
you know that the borrowing went from the Babylonians to the Hebrews (or their
ancestor people groups)?
2.  I'd suggest that Genesis 1 is not a reinterpretation with a new twist, 
but a
deliberate anti-myth tractate that uses the form deliberately to counteract a
defective view of origins. The Genesis account, while similar in some ways in 
form to
other accounts, is RADICALLY different in content:
a.  There's no mating between gods
b.  The earth is made from nothing, not divine seed or part of a god or 
anything else
like that.
c.  chaos is not a monster to overcome, but just a spatial anomaly.
d.  There's no conflict among gods.
e.  There isn't even more than one god.
There are others, as a close reading will show.

Ken Litwak