By Neil Earle
A key point we have been making in this series on The New Atheism (which sees belief in God as not only foolish but outright evil), is that strong attacks force believers to search out what God sometimes conceals (Proverbs 25:2).
For about 100 years now careful students of the Old Testament have been arguing that the Creation Account is not (1) “borrowed myth” or a (2) necessarily literal rendering but something else. That “something else” was the Bible writer’s design to show the superiority of the God of Israel to the rather gory and outlandish stories that were circling around the Ancient Near East. The Babylonian Account was the most well-known” because it came from the center of the known world.
“In Babylonian lore, Tiamat is the belligerent and monstrous ocean goddess. As one who leads battle against the supreme god Anu, she is the personification of evil [and chaos]. Before she is able to win this battle, however, another deity – Marduk – defeats and kills her, then slits her corpse lengthwise like a shellfish. From these two parts of her body Marduk forms heaven and earth” (Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17, page 110). Marduk was chief god of Babylon and Tiamat (code for Egypt) may be referenced in Isaiah 27:1 as “the reptile that is in the sea.” In Revelation there is no more sea – that’s where the Beasts come from. Later Marduk decides to create man from the mud and the blood of a rebel god. Man is made to be a serf.
How very different is Genesis 1. Israel’s God is supremely and serenely in control – he gives ten decrees and cosmic order reigns, water recedes, earth rises majestically. God presides over the Deep. God takes delight in creating. It is “very good” and humankind is made in his likeness – in Egypt only the Pharoah was in God’s image. As Norman Habel writes, the six-day pattern emphasizes the order brought out of tohu and bohu. There is no battle of the gods. Instead, the seventh day (the word “Sabbath” is not used) is the rest of God, “the final proof of the sovereignty of God,” says Donald Gowan in From Eden to Babel. “He has finished his creative work…all is stable, functioning properly, dependable and at peace.” This symbolism is signaled by the fact that the “evening and morning” formula is not used of Day Seven – there is no end to God’s peace.
The Worldwide Church of God intimated in Tomorrow’s World magazine in the early 1970s that the target of Genesis 1 is ancient myth, not the theory of evolution. Genesis 2 and 3 have parallels in Babylonian stories as well but the Biblical account gives the best theological explanation as to why things will never go as well in this grand creation as people expect.
The Flood Story also can be read as a “cleaned up” version of a Babylonian tale of a man named Ut-Naphistim. Interestingly, the ages of the patriarch are much shorter in Genesis (and shorter still in the Greek Septuagint which the early church used). The word “Eretz” for the Flood waters “covering the earth” is elsewhere translated “land” as in “Eretz Israel.” The most important thing in all this is that 1 Peter 3:20 reminds us that Salvation History not Science is the grand Biblical theme. Peter’s emphasis is that eight people were saved. Keeping this focus as to the Genesis writer’s real purpose prevents Christians from being drawn into false and unnecessary conflicts with Science.