55 pages • 1 hour read
Leonard William King, ed.The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish
Fiction | Scripture | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
Why were Leonard King, George Smith, and other researchers so interested in the similarities between the Enuma Elish and the Hebrew Bible? What sort of impact on early-20th-century British society might it have had to discover that much of the Genesis creation story closely resembles the Babylonian creation myth and that references to the Creation Series appear not only in the Hebrew Bible but also in the Christian Holy Bible?
Anshar, who is recorded as the father of all gods in the Enuma Elish, seems to lose power over the gods he has created. Is there any lesson for humanity in this? What might be some examples of human-created devices, ideas, or principles that have gotten out of the control of those who invented them? As creative creatures, how can human beings prevent this? Is that possible?
In his afterword, King expresses the belief that all human beings have a faintly lingering remembrance of “the fall” and therefore an awareness of a need for redemption. Do you believe religion is about meeting our deeply recognized but unmet need for redemption, do you believe it’s a superstitious holdover from a pre-scientific age, or do you believe it’s something else entirely?
Based on the 50 names assigned to the god Marduk on Tablet Seven, what did the followers of Marduk most want from their chief god? What do the qualities they praise in Marduk reveal about what they are like as people?
Disharmony in the Babylonian pantheon caused the original conflict between the gods. Disharmony caused Marduk to bring order and to create human beings. Are human life, creativity, and human progress possible without disharmony?
Cosmogony is a religious, theological description of the creation of the world, the universe, and humankind. In light of the scientific understanding of the cosmos that we possess in the 21st century, do you think cosmogony has outlived its purpose, or do you think it’s more needed today than ever?
The pantheon of Babylonian gods, as depicted in the Creation Series, is generally not noble, wise, and beneficent but rather childish, fearful, self-indulgent, and helpless. Why does the Enuma Elish create gods in the image of human beings?
Marduk ends up with 50 honorific titles, but the other gods in the poem have multiples names as well, both figurative names and cultic names. They often give their names and titles to one another. Why do the gods in the Enuma Elish end up with so many different names? Is this naming unique to Babylonian mythology or is it a characteristic of other religions?
By the time the Enuma Elish was being recorded on clay tablets, the first monotheistic religion, Judaism, was already being practiced in Palestine. Within 600 years, Christianity appeared in the area, and about 600 years after that, Islam appeared. These are considered the three greatest monotheistic religions. What shared perceptions, concerns, and beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be traced back to the primitive, polytheistic Enuma Elish?
