8. Iranian.—The Iranian account of creation[22] is specially interesting because its religious spirit is akin to that of Genesis i. From a literary point of view, indeed, it cannot compare with the dignified Hebrew narrative, but considering the misfortunes which have befallen the collection of Zoroastrian traditions now represented by the Bundahish (the Parsee Genesis) we cannot reasonably be surprised. The work referred to begins by describing the state of things in the beginning; the good spirit in endless light and omniscient, and the evil spirit in endless darkness and with limited knowledge. Both produced their own creatures, which remained apart, in a spiritual or ideal state, for 3000 years, after which the evil spirit began his opposition to the good creation under an agreement that his power was not to last more than 9000 years, of which only the middle 3000 were to see him successful. By uttering a sacred formula the good spirit throws the evil one into a state of confusion for a second 3000 years, while he produces the archangels and the material creation, including the sun, moon and stars. At the end of that period the evil spirit, encouraged by the demons he had produced, once more rushes upon the good creation to destroy it. The demons carry on conflicts with each of the six classes of creation, namely, the sky, water, earth, plants, animals represented by the primeval ox, and mankind represented by Gāyōmard or Kayumarth (the “first man” of the Avesta).[23] Four points to be noticed here: (1) the belief in the four periods of the world, each of 3000 years (cf. § 3); (2) the comparative success for a time of Angra Mainyu (the evil principle personified); (3) the absence of any recognition of pre-existent matter; (4) the mention of six classes of good creatures. Each of these deserves a comment which we cannot, however, here give, and the third may seem to suggest direct influence of the Iranian upon the Jewish cosmogony. But though there are in Gen. i. six days of creative activity, and the creative works are not six, but eight, if not ten in number, and indirect Babylonian influence is more strongly indicated. Jewish thinkers would have been attracted by the emphatic assertion of the creatorship of the One God in the royal Persian inscriptions more than by the traditional cosmogony. See further Ency. Bib., “Creation,” § 9.
9. Phoenician and Greek.—Phoenician cosmogonies would appear, from the notices which have come down to us,[24] to have been composite. The traditions are pale and obscure. It is clear, however, that the primeval flood and the world-egg (out of which came heaven and earth) are referred to. See Ency. Bib., “Creation” § 7; “Phoenicia” § 15; Lagrange, Religions sémitiques, pp. 351 ff. Greek cosmogonies (the orientalism of which is clear) will be found in Hesiod, Theog. 116 ff.; Aristophanes, Birds, 692 ff.; cf. Clem. Rom., Homil. vi. 4. See Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, chap. xii, “Orphic Cosmogony.”
10. Babylonian and Israelitish.—Of the Babylonian and Israelitish cosmogonies we have several more or less complete records. For details as to the former, see [Babylonian and Assyrian Religion]. With regard to the latter, we may notice that in Gen. ii. 4b-25 we have an account of creation which, though in its present form very incomplete, is highly attractive, because it is pervaded by a breath from primitive times. It has, however, been interwoven with an account of the Garden of Eden from some other source (see [Eden]; [Paradise]), and perhaps in order to concentrate the attention of the reader, the description of the origin of “earth and heaven” as well as of the plants and of the rain, appears to have been omitted. In fact, both the creation-stories at the opening of Genesis must have undergone much editorial manipulation. Originally, for instance, Gen. i. 26 must have said that man was made out of earth; this point of contact between the two cosmogonic traditions has, however, been effaced.
The other narrative, Gen. i. 1-ii. 4a, is a much more complete cosmogony, and since the theory of P. A. Lagarde (1887), which ascribes it to Iranian influence (see § 8), has no very solid ground, whereas the theory which explains it as largely Babylonian is in a high degree plausible, we must now consider the relations between the Israelitish and Babylonian cosmogonies. The short account of creation first translated in 1890 by T. G. Pinches is distinguished by its non-mythical character; in particular, the dragon of chaos and darkness is conspicuous by her absence. This may illustrate the fact that the dragon is also unmentioned in the Hebrew cosmogony; to some writers the dragon-element may have seemed grotesque and inappropriate. We must, however, study this element in the most important Babylonian tradition, even if only for its relation to non-Semitic myths and especially to some striking passages in the Bible (Isa. xxvii. 1, li. 9b; Ps. lxxiv. 14, lxxxix. 10, 11; Job iii. 8, ix. 13, xxvi. 12, 13; Rev. xii. 3, 4, xx. 1-3). One may also be permitted to hold that the mythic figure of the dragon, if used poetically, is a highly serviceable one, and consider that “in the beginning God fought with the dragon, and slew him” would have formed an admirable illustration of the passages just now referred to, especially to those in the Apocalypse.
The student should, however, notice that the dragon-element is not entirely unrepresented even in the priestly Hebrew cosmogony. It is said in Gen. i. 9, 10, 14, 15, that God divided the primeval waters into two parts by an intervening “firmament” or “platform,” on which the sun, moon and stars (planets) were placed to mark times and to give light. This division (cp. Ps. lxxiv. 13) is really a pale version of the old mythic statement respecting the cleaving of the carcase of Tiāmat (the Dragon) into two parts, one of which kept the upper waters from coming down.[25] And we must affirm that the technical term tĕ hōm (rendered in the English Bible “the deep”), which evidently signifies the enveloping primeval flood, and which closely resembles Tiāmat, the name given to the dragon or serpent in the epic (cf. tiamtu and tamtu, Babylonian words for “the ocean”), can only be due to the influence—probably the very early influence—of Babylonia.
But we are far from having exhausted the evidence of Babylonian influence on the Hebrew cosmogony. The description of chaos in v. 2 not only mentions the great water (tĕhōm), but the earth, i.e. the earth-matter, out of which the earth and (potentially) its varied products (vv. 9-11), and (as we know from the Babylonian epic) the “firmament” or “platform” of the heaven were to appear. This earth-matter is called “tōhu and bōhu”; there is nothing like this phrase in the epic, but we may infer from Jer. iv. 23, where the same phrase occurs, that it means “devoid of living things.” For a commentary on this see the opening of the Babylonian account referred to above, which refers to the period of chaos as one in which there were neither reeds nor trees, and where “the lands altogether were sea.” As to the creative acts, we may admit that the creation of light does not form one of them in the epic (cf. Gen. i. 3), but the existence of light apart from the sun is presupposed; Marduk the creator is in fact a god of light. Nor ought we to find a discrepancy between the Babylonian and the Hebrew accounts in the creation of the heavenly bodies after the plants, related in Gen. i. 14-18. For the position of this creative act is due to the necessity of bringing all the divine acts into the framework of six working days. On the whole, the Hebrew statement of the successive stages of creation corresponds so nearly to that in the Babylonian epic that we are bound to assume that one has been influenced by the other. And if we are asked, “Which is the more original?” we answer by appealing to the well-established fact of the profound influence of Babylonian culture upon Canaan in remote times (see [Canaan]). An important element in this culture would be mythic representations of the origin of things, such as the Babylonian Creation and Deluge-stories in various forms. Indeed, not only Canaan but all the neighbouring regions must have been pervaded by Babylonian views of the universe and its origin. Myths of origins there must indeed have been in those countries before Babylonian influence became so overpowering, but, if so, these myths must have become recast when the great Teacher of the Nations half-attracted and half-compelled attention. More than this we need not assert. Zimmern’s somewhat different treatment of the subject in Ency. Biblica, “Creation,” § 4, may be compared.
Popular writers are in some danger of misrepresenting this important result. It is tempting, but incorrect, to suppose that a docile Israelitish writer accepted one of the chief forms of the Babylonian cosmogony, merely omitting its polytheism and substituting “Yahweh” for “Marduk.” As we have seen, various myths of Creation may have been current both in N. Arabia (whence the Israelites may have come) and in Canaan prior to the great extension of Babylonian influence. These myths doubtless had peculiarities of their own. From one of them may have come that remarkable statement in Gen. i. 2b, “and the spirit of God (Elohim) was hovering over the face of the waters,” which, until we find some similar myth nearer home, is best illustrated and explained by a Polynesian myth (see Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, ad loc.). It is also probably to a non-Babylonian source that we owe the prescription of vegetarian or herb diet in Gen. i. 29, 30, which has a Zoroastrian parallel[26] and is evidently based on a myth of the Golden Age, independent of the Babylonian cosmogony. Gen. i., therefore, has not, as it stands, been directly borrowed from Babylonia, and yet the infused Babylonian element is so considerable that the story is, in a purely formal aspect, much more Babylonian than either Israelitish or Canaanitish or N. Arabian. We say “in a purely formal aspect,” because the strictness with which Babylonian mythic elements have been adapted in Gen. i. to the wants of a virtually monotheistic community is in the highest degree remarkable.
On the literary scheme of the Creation-story in Gen. i. see the commentaries (e.g. Dillman’s and Driver’s). On the other Old Testament references to creation, and on the prophetic doctrine of creation, see Ency. Bib., “Creation,” §§ 27-29. On the traces of dragon and serpent myths in the Old Testament and their significance, see Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos (1895)—a pioneering work of the highest merit—and Ency. Bib., “Behemoth,” “Dragon,” “Rahab,” “Serpent.” On the connexion of the Creation and the Deluge-stories, see [Deluge]. Cf. also the article on [Babylonian and Assyrian Religion]; and Cheyne, Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel (1907).
(T. K. C.)