Yitzhak wrote:
It is therefore significant that
the word tehom is used as a proper name in the right place (before
division of the seas).
END QUOTE
JCR: I think this is an overstatement that may well be
quite a lot less significant than to imply a direct
relation with the tiamat myth. There is nothing in
the context whatsoever which personifies tehom and the
sense is very much of a thing rather than a being.
The very phrase ' The earth was formless and void, and
darkness was over the surface of the deep' seems, in
my mind, to recall only thoughts of lifeless matter
that are yet to be prepared for the arrival of life.
Could it be that Tiamat was merely named after the
physical entity represented and the hebrew makes use
of the normal word tehom with no regard for whether
other cultures use a cognate of this word to refer
to their mythical Tiamat? I am certainly aware of
clear examples in the tanak where ba'al is used in a
sense clearly distinct from any association with the
foreign god ba'al and used only as a normal word to
express a relation husband/master.
Insightful post Yitzhak. One other point that you did not delve into
is that in Enuma Elish Tiamat is defeated and divided in two with one
half of her becoming the sky and the other half the sea, just as the
waters of Genesis. Even if you believe a general Semitic root is
responsible for the similarity of the two words rather than a direct
allusion, you still have to account for these other similarities in
the story.
When you also look at comparisons of the six days of creation vs the
six generations of gods and the seventh cycle of rest, the order
things were created in, etc. It seems too similar to think there is
not a direct connection between them.
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