Yesterday, I Heard a Man from the Orthodox Church Repeat a Heterodox and Unmanly View

It goes like this.

We now know how Babylonians (both Sumerian and Akkadian speakers) thought the world was created, and Phoenicians weren't totally different. The story in Genesis 1 is very similar, but there are key differences. So, Genesis uses mythology (understood as never meant by anyone to be taken literally) and then tweaks it to make theological points. Only one creator God. Creation is effortless, not a ruthless brawl. Man is created in God's image. This in context of Ancient Near East cultures means, man is God's representative on Earth, and probably, though he didn't say it, this is also a theological point embroidered onto a mythology taken from elsewhere.

I have no quarrel with the differences spelling out theological points, and each is pretty sound as far as it goes. I especially love the one about the dignity of each individual human person, and how this is different from Babylon. B U T ... why would one place the originals of the stories in the realm of wild speculation by heathen "who knew not their maker" and why would only the theological points be left to God's own Israel (of which the Church is the continuation)?

Orthodox, like us Catholics, and unlike Protestants, have a "Formalprinzip" (to use a Lutheran term, I once upon a time was Lutheran) of Scripture with Church Fathers. This view is obviously not the one of any Church Father. No one says "Ezra loved the Babylonian creation account as a story, but hated its ideology" and the rest. No one denies that Genesis from 1:1 to 50:25 is history. And you'd be very hard put to present the story of Joseph in Egypt as taken over from the Babylonians. That's also in Genesis. So, the problem one is, this Orthodox man contradicted the Church Fathers.

However, he could argue (as people have about millions of years or about heliocentrism, both of which are chemically absent in the Church Fathers) that no one knew of the Babylonian account. After all, Cuneiform was only recently discovered, long after the Patristic era, and Leonard William King only translated Enuma Elish in 1902. Who could blame the Church Fathers for not knowing? Well, part of the argument is style, and part of the style is such as is also found in the mythology that the Church Fathers did know, like Greco-Roman, sometimes Egyptian, myth. But they never made the connection, so, are we more savvy than they?

But there is more. Cuneiform, Sumerian, Akkadian, that didn't just die when Cyrus overthrew the heir of Nebuchadnezzar. In fact, the early authors of the Mishna had access to both Sumerian and Akkadian texts (at least if they bothered to learn the languages and look) and when the New Testament was written, Akkadian was still being studied. In fact, one could argue that St. John was in some numbers referring to Babylonian numerals.

Babylonian Math : Four Corners and a Fish

From this, one could argue that he was also conscious how the Babylonian shape for 666 would look like the needle point of a syringe or the top capsule of a rocket:

Babylonian Numerals for a certain number have a certain shape

In fact, as in the New Testament 11 verses mention Babylon, and 6 of them are in the Apocalypse, it would be hard to argue that St. John neither had prophetic acquaintance with Babylonian culture, nor had a preparation as due diligence for speaking up on the matter. Very hard. How, given this, are the NT authors supposed to have missed this connection, if it is so obvious?

And here we come to a third thing. The connection may indeed be obvious, but it's not obviously only in one direction, one cannot obviously tie Genesis 1 to a copy of Enuma Elish. Indeed, if all the peoples who were divided from each other and lost contact (or most of it) around Babel were descended from Noah, they would all have known something of how God created. What if it were instead Enuma Elish that was tweaking and making polemic points? For Atrahasis, it's pretty obvious, the differences from the Biblical account would boil down to three:

• sloppy description of the Ark (though the "shape of a die" could refer to an astragal and be somewhat accurate about the real shape);
• vain shortcut of dynastic connections between pre-Flood Shuruppak and post-Flood royalty;
• but above all a different theology. (By the way, Atrahasis, unlike Enuma Elish, does have an Adam and Eve, but they were created to be slaves to the gods, as in Enuma Elish). Enlil decides the Flood for petty jealosy, deciding in favour of Adad and Nisaba, who had acted destructively, and Enki by slyness saves mankind, as before.

So, rather than Genesis making theological polemics on the basis of what was otherwise mythology, Genesis can as well be history, and Babylonians have forged the history and prehistory they inherited into the pagan myth we see. The historical untruthfulness of the texts having the above three explanations, rather than the genre. I think this is pretty much what the Church Fathers said in relation to Deucalion and Pyrrha. "The Greeks confused the Flood of Noah with a later Flood in Thessaly" and that one featuring Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows
27.II.2025

Insulae, in Aprutio, sancti Gabrielis a Virgine Perdolente, Clerici Congregationis a Cruce et Passione Domini nuncupatae, et Confessoris; qui, magnis intra breve vitae spatium meritis et post mortem miraculis clarus, a Benedicto Papa Decimo quinto in Sanctorum canonem relatus est.