Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/23/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Uri:
>
> This is a good reason that history is off limits for this group.
>
> Let it suffice to say that there is no documentation that
> says that Genesis was influenced from the Akkadian
> creation myth.

Karl,

Uri suggested a comparison between one ancient creation
depiction (Enuma Elish) and another (Gen 1).  The comparison
is entirely linguistic and helps us understand how people 3000
years ago structured their creation depictions grammatically.
Indeed, a reading of "br)$yt" as "in the head"/"in the top" would
probably otherwise seem forced, but in view of this evidence that
Uri brought, seems attractive.  This directly helps us understand
the language of Biblical times, which has been one of the main
and even primary focuses of the list recently.  But it also seems
to fit well into the broad categories defined at the start of the
following page:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bhebrew/

Specifically, I can understand Uri's point even without assuming
that Moses did or did not write Genesis, or that whoever wrote
Genesis 1 used or did not use ancient sources, be they
Akkadian or otherwise.  Very simply, it can be understood as the
way various ANE cultures, especially Semitic ANE cultures used
grammatical forms to create a creation depiction.  The linguistic
similarity does not have to assume dependence on any actual story
text or even knowledge of foreign creation depictions -- just that
they knew other languages -- specifically Akkadian.  As Akkadian
was the lingua franca in the ANE during the 2nd millennium BCE
and afterwards, being replaced by Aramaic only towards the mid
of the 1st millennium BCE, this is very reasonable.  Traditionally
Joseph is said to have known all languages of the world so there's
no reason Moses couldn't either (if you assume that Moses wrote
Genesis 1).

Yitzhak Sapir