The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish

This is an afterword in which King seeks to explain the influence Near Eastern ancient religious belief and practices had on the Jewish faith and, through the Hebrew Bible, upon modern-day religious believers. He writes, “Not known to many, the religions of the Ancient Near East had left big influences on our world” (217). King asserts:

The discovery and publication of ancient Near Eastern literature has shed much light upon the religious beliefs and practices of earliest civilizations. It has also generated much discussion about the relationship of Mesopotamian and Egyptian religion to that of the Old Testament. Indeed many scholars view the similarities […] as proof that the Old Testament writers borrowed from or adapted the literary corpus of Israel’s Near Eastern neighbors. As a result, Old Testament religion is treated as essentially one more primitive religion among many, although slightly more advanced in the evolutionary stage of development (217).

King disputes this idea, saying, “This article will summarize the primary features of ancient Near Eastern religion, contrast them with the Old Testament, and offer another explanation for the similarities between the biblical and non-biblical religions” (219).

To demonstrate the distinctions between Judaism and ancient Near East faiths, King first points out that the Jews alone were monotheistic. Other ancient religions had preeminent gods—often the most important god was the chosen deity of a “city-state or a region” (219), but there were always many of them. Moreover, the ancient pantheons did not control the future: “[…] though they were immanent in the world, they remained aloof from their mortal devotees” (219). King remarks that ancient creation myths tended to focus on the gods, their motives, and their actions, whereas the Genesis account of creation focuses on humanity, its origin, and its purpose (219). To document his assertion, King gives a summary account of the Tablets of Creation’s story of the Marduk slaying Tiamat and Kingu, then using their carcasses to create the world. He points out: “It is worthy to note that in this story of creation, as well as Egyptian cosmogonies, the creation of mankind is almost treated as an after-thought” (221).

King points out that ancient Near Eastern religions also all had “their own stories of the worldwide flood” (221):

Perhaps the most well-known is contained in the Gilgamesh epic. Enlil, one of the chief deities, becomes irritated with the ‘noise’ of humanity. He holds counsel with his fellow gods, and a decision is made to destroy mankind with a flood. But one of the gods, Ea, warns King Utnapishtim and advises him to build a boat. He and his family survive the flood and are granted immortality (221).

Just as Near Eastern religious observers called to the gods for favor in every important endeavor and concern, so the Israelites sought divine favor, King says, but only from Yahweh (221). According to Mesopotamian and Egyptian religious beliefs, the purpose of humanity was to serve the gods, and at every level of human life, humans served the gods: Kings administered on their behalf, and priests ran their temples, each with a resident local god and a totem meant to represent that god. Religious rituals were the way in which the pantheon became present to human beings. King points out that these pagan practices were ridiculed by the Israeli prophets, who asked why divine beings needed human help to express themselves.

The Near Eastern priests often used very mechanical means to curry favor with the gods, such as trying to transfer a human illness to an animal substitute. They also engaged the services of priestesses who worked as prostitutes embodying the fertility goddess to insure a good harvest. King makes a note here: “Needless to say, this immoral practice was without sanction in Israel’s religion and was repeatedly condemned by the Old Testament prophets” (221-22).

King argues that the Jewish religion was similar to other Near Eastern religions in that it contained

ethical standards and the hope of immortality. These similarities may be accounted for by means of a common Sitz im Leben, a common moral conscience, a common religious-ethical tradition, and a faint yet lingering remembrance of the original state of affairs before and after the fall. Therefore, it is unnecessary and unwarranted to accuse the biblical writers of literary dependence upon their ancient Near Eastern neighbors. […] the differences between Israel’s religion and that of her ancient Near Eastern neighbors are far more substantial than the similarities (222).

King points out that the Jewish supreme being, Yahweh, is perfect, holy, and absolute, “in contrast with sinfully human-like” pagan gods (222). Yahweh demands a very different kind of worship as well. According to King,

[Yahweh] provided this people with a clear revelation of gospel truth and moral law, so that the redeemed Israelite might know how to receive forgiveness and live a godly life in this present age. Finally, the Old Testament provided the Israelite with a sure hope in a complete reversal of the curse, a resurrected body, a renewed earth, and joy in the presence of God for all eternity (222).

King lists the various Near Eastern civilizations that encountered and were influenced by the Babylonian religious beliefs. He argues that traces, “direct adaptation,” and “indirect influences” of Near Eastern religious beliefs are found in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Psalms and Wisdom literature (224). King writes, “Even when we reach the New Testament period, we have not passed entirely beyond the sphere of Babylonian-Assyrian influences” (225). He posits the presence of Near Eastern religions in Christian Gnosticism, Assyrio-Babylonian elements accrued from “the astral theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian Priests” (225). King states that Assyrians adopted “a distinct Eastern Rite Christianity complete with Syriac literature that survived into the Third Century CE” (225). Native Assyrian religion, he says, survived in pockets until the 17th century but is now dead, with the Near Eastern populations that supported it now “wholly Christian” (225).