Facts, Fiction, and the Bible: The Truth Behind the Stories in the Old Testament

By Gijsbert J.B. Sulman

Facts, Fiction, and the Bible: The Truth behind the Stories in the Old Testament serves as a readers guide to conducting a thorough investigation of the stories contained in the books of the Bibles Old Testament. Its historical exploration helps to distinguish the storiesverifiable facts from their narrative fictions. The author, Gijsbert J.G. Sulman, builds upon a long history of Bible study and research to bolster his sifting of those facts from the Bibles fictions.

The serious student of the Bible will find a wealth of resources at hand in the pages of Facts, Fiction, and the Bible. Twenty-two chapters treat the Old Testaments major themes, events, and figures. Plentiful illustrations, an extensive bibliography, and copious endnotes provide exhaustive visual and textual documentation to support the books presentation.

By taking stock of a wealth of research and integrating it with a careful reading of the biblical text, Facts, Fiction, and the Bible: The Truth behind the Stories in the Old Testament presents to the reader a careful and reasoned assessment of the truth lying behind and beneath the Old Testaments stories. With this in-depth survey in hand, the reader will come to know and to appreciate the Bibles stories and to discern what really happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504301121

Gijsbert J.B. Sulman

Gijsbert J.B. Sulman, born in the Netherlands, grew up in a strict, Calvinist family. Immersed in Bible study as a child, he spent more than a decade as an adult researching the historicity of the biblical narratives. He is now retired and lives near Perth in Western Australia.

Book preview

PART 1

ABOUT CREATION, THE FLOOD,

AND THE PATRIARCHS

The Truth behind Some of the Stories in Genesis

CHAPTER 1

CREATION AND THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD

1.1   More than One Creation Story

Most people know that the Bible begins with the story of Creation, but not that there are three different creation stories in the Bible. In the first one, everything takes place in six days, culminating in the creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve, and followed by a day of rest.

In the second creation story, it takes a while longer before Eve is created. First Adam had to name all the animals, and that would have taken quite some time. It was only after Adam had finished that job that he felt lonely. God removed one of his ribs (under anaesthesia) and used it to make Eve. In the second creation story, we also learn about the forbidden fruit and the Tree of Life. The two stories also differ in the order of creation. This becomes clear if one sees them next to each other.

The biblical creation stories are not unique. Similar myths were in circulation all over the ancient Near East. All nations had their own versions, often with their national god as the main actor. For the Assyrians, that was Ashur, for the Babylonians Marduk, and for the Jews Yahweh. But as far as we know, they all go back to the Sumerians, the people who lived in Sumer, the delta region of the Tigris and Euphrates near the Persian Gulf. It was later called Babylonia. The best known Babylonian epic poems are the Enuma Elish, the Gilgamesh Epic, and the Stories of Atrahasis. They are all adaptations of much older Sumerian poems. The Enuma Elish, written on seven cuneiform tablets, is named after its opening words, which translate When up high. It deals with cosmic battles and subsequent creation. The Gilgamesh Epic, named after the main character of the story, is about the quest for immortality and contains the Babylonian version of the Flood story. The Stories of Atrahasis deal with the creation of humankind and the Flood. These poems were well known throughout the ancient world.

1.2   The Second Creation Myth

Of interest in the second creation story are these words:

And there was not a man to till the ground. (Gen. 2:5 KJV)

This reveals that man was created with a purpose, and that was to work. In the Babylonian version, the gods were so fed up with all the work they had to do that they went on strike; it is the first recorded strike in history. It was then decided that man would be created to do the work of the gods. In this world view, it is man who feeds the gods by bringing food and sacrifices to the temple. If man had to do the work of the gods, he had to have something of the divine in him. This was achieved by mixing the clay from which man was formed with the blood of a goddess. ¹ In Genesis, God himself breathes the divine element (life) into man’s nostrils. ²

The ancient Greek had a similar myth about the creation of man. Prometheus made men in the likeness of the gods, using clay and water, and then the goddess Athene breathed life into them. ³

1.3   The Third Creation Myth

There are also a few scattered references to a third creation myth in the Bible. In Psalm 74:13, we read that creation did not come about without a struggle:

It was you who split open the sea by your power;

you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.

Other texts in the Bible also mention this primeval battle. In Psalm 89:9–10, we read:

You rule over the surging sea;

when its waves mount up, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like one of the slain;

with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

And we find in Job 26:12–13,

By his power he churned up the sea;

by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.

By his breath the skies became fair;

his hand pierced the gliding serpent.

Isaiah 51:9 says,

O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days gone by,

as in generations of old.

Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces,

who pierced that monster through?

Rahab, the chaos monster of the sea, defeated before the days of creation, is part of a Babylonian creation myth in which Marduk destroys the chaos monster Tiamat (Figure 1) and splits its carcass like an oyster. From the top half, Marduk then creates the sky and, from the other half, the earth.

When he cut the monster into pieces,

he wondered what he could do with it.

He split it like an oyster into two halves.

He put one half up and made the sky as a cover.

He locked it and appointed watchmen. ⁴

The texts quoted from Psalms, Job, and Isaiah all refer to this creation story. In the Babylonian creation myth, the blue sky is the underside of a huge reservoir in which God stores rainwater. That same picture is also found in the Bible:

So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky. (Gen. 1:7–8)

01.jpg

Figure 1. Marduk and Tiamat

1.4   God or Gods

In the Bible, God is often called Elohim. Elohim is the plural of El, meaning god. In Genesis 1:26, God says, Let us make man in our image and in our likeness. This is a polytheistic leftover of Babylonian creation myths and not a royal plural as used in the preamble of a royal proclamation. Anywhere else in the Bible, God announces himself as I and not as "we." See, for example, the preamble of the Ten Commandments:

I am the LORD thy God … (Ex. 20:2, Deut. 5:6 KJV)

In the Enuma Elish, the creation story is far more comprehensive than the sober and shorter biblical versions, which are in fact so short that it seems the scribe who compiled them must have assumed the reader to be familiar with the Babylonian versions. This is not only the case with the references to the defeat of the sea monster Rahab (the Tiamat of Babylonian mythology) in the books of Psalms, Job, and Isaiah, but also with the creation story as told in Genesis 1. The author of Genesis was not out to write a detailed account of how creation took place. It is far too short for that. His object was to show how his view of creation differed from that of the Babylonians. That becomes clear in the first verse:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (KJV)

In the Hebrew, this verse begins with the words: bereshit bara elohim. The first word, bereshit, means in the beginning. The third word, elohim, means gods. The second word, bara, is a verb in the third masculine singular (he created) instead of the third masculine plural (they created), as one would expect when the subject (gods) is plural. The use of the verb bara in the singular turns the word Elohim from a plural noun into a proper name for God. In the Babylonian myths, creation is a combined effort of the gods. In Genesis, the gods have become the One: Elohim. The same can also be observed in Genesis 1:26, 27 when God creates man.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. (KJV)

Note that verse 26 begins in the singular (God said) and then continues in the plural (let us … in our). The next verse goes back to the singular.

So God created man in his own image.

The parts written in the plural (let us, etc.) remind the reader that we are dealing with Babylonian creation myths, which display a polytheistic point of view. By changing the word elohim (gods) into the name of God, the Genesis creation story becomes a declaration of monotheism. In the second creation story (Gen. 2:4–23), God is called the LORD God, Yahweh Elohim, thereby identifying the only God Elohim as Yahweh, the God of Israel (Gen. 2:4). From then on, the names Elohim and Yahweh become interchangeable.

Some gods mentioned in the Enuma Elish also appear in Genesis. The astral gods of the Babylonian pantheon (the sun, moon, and five planets) are mentioned, not as gods, but as objects created by God (on day 4). The use of six days in Genesis 1 does not necessarily mean that creation took place in six times twenty-four hours. Instead, it refers to the order of the astral gods in the Babylonian week. ⁵ The Roman and Germanic gods, after whom our days of the week are named, can be traced back to these Babylonian gods. There are other Babylonian deities mentioned in Genesis, although they are hardly recognisable as such.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Gen. 1:2)

Formless and empty are tohu and bohu in Hebrew. Tohu is the same as Tehomot or Tiamat, the monster of the sea. Bohu is Behemoth, the land-based monster Leviathan. Tehom, translated as the deep, is the plural form of tohu. In the Babylonian creation myth, the earth before creation consisted of a water-based monster and a land-based monster. The words tohu and bohu, originally gods of Babylonian mythology, are used in Gen. 1 to describe the state of emptiness before creation. ⁶ The words Behomoth and Leviathan also appear in Job 40:15 and 41:1, not as the names of a deity, but of two fearful creatures. Most likely the hippopotamus and the crocodile are meant here.

1.5   The Mother of All Living

According to Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first humans, and we are all their descendants. But is this story meant to be taken literally? Adam represents man or humankind. That is what the word Adam means. It is related to Adamah, the Hebrew word for ground or earth, the material from which Adam was created.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2:7 KJV)

The meaning of the name Eve is explained in Gen. 3:20.

And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all the living. (KJV)

"Mother of All the Living is also the title of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, or Astarte, as she was known in Palestine. She was a fertility goddess, the personification of Mother Earth. People living in the time Genesis was written would have understood that by using the words Mother of All the Living," the author was referring to Astarte. It was the union of Baal and Astarte that brought life to the earth. Baal, the weather-god, would fertilise the earth by sending rain, and that would bring things to life. But not in Genesis. The Mother of All the Living has become the first woman to live on earth, and it is Yahweh Elohim, the LORD God who gives life.

1.6   Creation versus Evolution?

Fundamentalists who take the biblical creation story literally focus on the Genesis 1 version, the creation in seven days, ignoring the differences with the other creation stories in the Bible. But the scribe who compiled the book of Genesis never meant to give a scientific account of how creation took place, otherwise he would not have left us with conflicting stories. He was not interested in the details. Nobody knew how it happened anyhow, as there were no eyewitnesses. At the moment of creation, there was nobody to record it.

Where whast thou [were you] when I laid the foundations of the earth? (Job 38:4 KJV)

The message of Genesis 1 and 2, as we saw before, is that there is only one Creator-God and that he is the same as Yahweh, the God of Israel.

But even fundamentalists don’t take everything in the Bible literally. To give a few examples. In the Bible, the earth is flat.

and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (Isa. 11:12 KJV. Emphasis added) ⁷

And floating upon the ocean.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Ex. 20:4 and Deut. 5:8 KJV. Emphasis added)

In the Bible, the earth is the centre of the universe, with the sun and the moon revolving around it.

Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon. So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped. (Josh. 10:12–13. Emphasis added)

Scientifically, the statements above are incorrect, and not even fundamentalists take them literally. So why are other passages, which are also scientifically incorrect, such as a six-day creation, Adam being the first man, and the eating of the forbidden fruit, still taken literally? The answer is that otherwise, fundamental Christian dogmas lose their historical foundation, like for example the words of the apostle Paul:

The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam [Jesus Christ] a life-giving spirit. (1 Cor. 15:45)

If there is no first Adam, then how can there be a second? Paul’s gospel is based upon a literal interpretation of Genesis 1–3. If that foundation falls away, then the whole Christian faith needs a complete overhaul, something fundamentalists by their nature are not able to do. So the old time story stays as it is, and the newly emerged facts that contradict it are either reinterpreted or ignored.

Fundamentalism is a reaction to a rapidly changing world. It is an unwillingness to adjust an outdated world-view when it conflicts with newly emerged facts. Rather than accepting the facts and changing cherished but outdated views, the opposite happens: The beliefs are not changed, but the facts are. Fundamentalism is not a specific Christian phenomenon. It can also emerge in other religions. Not even atheism is free of it. Many old communists found it hard to accept that as a philosophy, communism was finished.

Of course, theories about the origins of the universe are pure speculation. The Big Bang theory is popular today, but may be abandoned tomorrow. Science is like that. It is not a once valid world-view, frozen in time, never to be challenged, let alone changed. Science is not static, but moves forward, absorbing new finds, formulating new ideas, and discarding was has proved to be incorrect. Science can make mistakes, but it also corrects itself over time.

Science has given us some insight in how all living things are related. Some people are put off by the idea that man and apes could have a common ancestor. But observations of our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, show remarkable similarities, not only in physiology, but also in behaviour. Like us, chimpanzees can reason, solve problems, make tools (be it simple ones), and they have emotions and self-awareness, as Jane Goodall’s observations have shown. ⁸ Genetics confirms this close relationship; chimps share 98.4 percent of our genes.

From this and other observations, evolution can be deducted. With simple life forms, evolution takes place over a very short period of time. Take for example the flu virus, which mutates about every year. Variations within a species can appear quite suddenly, but can also be produced in a laboratory. But a single variation only produces a new race, not a new species. It is not known whether the emergence of a new species depends on the number of variations or on a particular genetic change. Velikovsky wrote in his book Earth in Upheaval, ⁹ Rare plants, unknown to modern British botany, were discovered in the bomb craters and ruins of London in 1943. It appeared that the thermal action of bomb explosions was the cause of multiple metamorphoses in the genes of seeds and pollens.

The theory of evolution should not be seen as an alternative to creation. Evolution is not the opposite of creation, but part of it. It is an ongoing process. In Genesis, creation reached its zenith with man. We know now that man is only a carrier of genes, as are all living things. Over time, these genes can mutate and thereby adapt to changing circumstances, creating new species in the process. It is a long-term survival mechanism for life on earth. This concept of creation certainly makes more sense than those based upon ancient myths.

1.7   Paradise

Adam and Eve, representing mankind in the Bible, spent their early years in the Garden of Eden, also known as Paradise, a Persian word for a fenced-in garden. This idea of an original state of bliss is also found in other religions. The Greeks knew it as the Elysian Fields, and it is called Dilmun in the Sumerian myths. It was a place where there was no sickness and no old age. A place where

The lion kills not.

The wolf snatches not the lamb

Unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog. ¹⁰

The Prophet Isaiah paints the same picture in eschatological sense to illustrate the restoration of life to paradisiacal conditions.

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lay down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them. (Isa. 11:6)

Adam and Eve were given the fruit of all the trees in the garden as food, but with one exemption. There was one tree in the garden, called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which they were not permitted to eat.

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen. 2:16–17 KJV)

With this prohibition, sin was introduced in Paradise, or at least made possible, because as the Apostle Paul says:

For where no law is, there is no transgression. (Rom. 4:15 KJV)

and

Through the law we become conscious of sin. (Rom. 3:20)

Adam and Eve enjoyed the good times, but they did not last. There is always a hair in the soup or, as in this case, a snake in paradise. A snake persuaded Eve to try out that forbidden fruit of knowledge. And so mankind did eat, and that was the end of life in the Garden of Eden. There is little point in trying to find out which particular tree is meant here. It was curiosity that killed the cat. Curiosity, the human search for knowledge, was the motivation that led mankind to what in theology later became known as the original sin, seen as something of a genetic condition, passed on to the whole human race from one generation to the other. This shows us two things. Firstly, that the search for knowledge and religion don’t mix easily. And secondly, that at the root of Judaism (and its offshoot Christianity), there is a strong feeling of guilt. One could say it is the foundation of it.

In the biblical myth of the Fall, it is the woman who is the first to take the forbidden fruit. The thought behind that is similar to the Greek myth of Pandora. It was a woman who opened the box out of which came all the sources of human suffering.

1.8   The Forbidden Fruit

The immediate result of the eating of the forbidden fruit was a sexual awakening.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. (Gen. 3:7 KJV)

This seems to convey the message that the forbidden fruit is a euphemism for sexual intercourse and thus, in principle, evil. This is surprising, as it was already accepted as natural in the previous chapter.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Gen. 2:24–25 KJV)

In the first creation story, sexual intercourse is not linked to sin or shame, but part of God’s blessing:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply. (Gen. 1:28 KJV)

As an explanation for the cause of evil, the story of the forbidden fruit makes little sense. However one may interpret the story of the Fall in a theological sense, it also portrays a stage in our lives wherein we lose our childlike innocence and, knowing good and evil, become aware of the possible consequences of our deeds and have to accept responsibility for our actions, not the least in the area of human reproduction. Not so long ago, when sexual mores were stricter than they are now, illicit sexual relations were referred to as the forbidden fruit.

After the Fall, man was expelled from the garden to prevent access to the Tree of Life so that mankind would not live forever in the fallen state. A restoration to pre-Fall conditions is required before eternal life can be granted, which is the essence of the Christian faith. ¹¹

02.jpg

Figure 2. The Banqueting Scene.

That tree in the Garden of Eden is an old Babylonian motif. There is a Babylonian cylinder-seal that shows a tree with two fruit on it. On the right is a man with horns, the symbol of strength, and on the left a woman. Both are reaching out to the fruit, and behind the woman lurks a serpent. Friedrich Delitzsch recognised the symbols, and so in his Babel and Bible, he called it Babylonian representation of the Fall. ¹² Nowadays, scholars prefer to call it The Banqueting Scene (figure 2). But what kind of banquet is this? It is outdoors, under a seven-branched tree. There are only two participants, a man and a woman, and only one course: one fruit for each. And what is that snake doing there?

1.9   Where Was the Garden of Eden?

Over time, the Garden of Eden or Paradise became a mythological concept, but from the precise way Genesis 2:10–14 describes its location, it seems that the author had a specific place in mind.

The eviction from the Garden of Eden could be the faint memory of a historical event, that of the Sumerians driven from their home in the Iranian highlands and migrating to Mesopotamia. David Rohl, who locates the Garden of Eden north of the Zagros Mountains and east of Lake Urumiya, ¹³ identifies the cherubim as the Kheru-people or Kheruba, who lived in what is now a small town called Helabad, formerly known as Heruabad or Kheruabad. Armed with fiery flashing swords, they expelled the Adamites from their homeland. ¹⁴ This could very well be the historical background of cherubim. Armed with shining bronze swords, which was then the latest in military technology, they put terror into the hearts of stone-age people.

To survive in Mesopotamia required a change of lifestyle. From hunter-gatherers, who were free to eat from any tree in the garden, they now had to eat their food by the sweat of their brow; in other words, they became farmers. ¹⁵

In ancient Babylonia, the Garden of Eden was called Dilmun, now identified as Bahrain. This was once a lush island. And in the burial mounds there, the remains of mummified snakes have been found. They had been ritually embalmed more than four thousand years ago.

In the mythology of the ancient Near East, the cherubim at the gate of the Garden of Eden were winged angelic beings, guardians of holy places. A cherub was usually depicted as a winged animal, like a bull or a lion with a human head. The Garden of Eden became a holy place, out of bounds for humans.

The introduction of Satan (disguised as a snake) as God’s opponent and instigator of evil reflects the dualism of the Persian (Zoroastrian) religion and is an indication that in its present form, this passage from Genesis dates from the days of the Persian Empire or later.

1.10   Cain and Abel

The story of Cain and Abel ¹⁶ is very ancient. Once evicted from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel (a third son, Seth, was born later). One day, both sons sacrificed some of the fruits of their labour. Abel, a shepherd, offered an animal of his flock, and Cain, a farmer, some of his produce. Yahweh accepted Abel’s offering, but rejected Cain’s, and the latter said to his brother, Let’s go out in the field. And there in the field, he killed his brother Abel, and the ground opened its mouth to receive his brother’s blood. When Yahweh asked Cain where his brother was, he answered with the famous words Am I my brother’s keeper? Yahweh then punished Cain for killing his brother. He would not be able to work the land, because it would not yield a crop for him, and so he would become a wanderer on the earth forever. Cain was afraid that one day he would be killed in revenge, but Yahweh promised to protect him. Because of that, Cain was given a mark. Cain left and founded a new city, which he called Enoch, after his son. This is the Sumerian city of Uruk, called Erech in Gen. 10:10.

The tale of Cain and Abel is a puzzling one, and the standard explanations are not of much help. It has been said that Abel’s offering was acceptable because it was a blood sacrifice. Heb. 9:22, Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, is then quoted in this context. The problem with this explanation is that it was not a sin offering. Abel and Cain brought their offerings in the course of time, when Abel’s sheep (or goats) had grown fat and Cain’s crop had been harvested. As an offering of thanksgiving, both are valid.

S.H. Hooke in his book Middle Eastern Mythology ¹⁷ explains that the first part of this story (verses 1–15) was probably a myth depicting a ritual slaying to secure a good harvest. That’s why the slaying had to take place in the field and the ground had to receive the sacrificial blood. The slaying was followed by the ritual flight of the slayer, who was now under the protection of the deity and therefore could not be slain in revenge.

Another explanation, of Graves and Patai in Hebrew Myths, ¹⁸ is that this story is about a forced migration. For the Adam tribe, the changeover from hunter-gatherers to a more settled lifestyle did not go very smoothly. One group, that of Abel, became herdsmen, building up large flocks of sheep and goats. The other group, that of Cain, became farmers. It has always been difficult for semi-nomadic herdsmen and sedentary farmers to live together in peace. Fights broke out, and in the end, the tribe of Cain was forced to leave.

Cain means "smith," and he is seen as the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites, a semi-nomadic tribe of metal workers that later became part of the tribe of Judah. Moses’ father-in-law was a Kenite. ¹⁹ Kamal Salibi writes in his book Secrets of the Bible People ²⁰ that the name Cain survived into early Islamic times as that of the Arabian tribe of the Qayn, who were regarded as the remnants of a vanished Arabian people. In Arabian tradition it was a grave offense and disgrace to attack or kill a member of this humble tribe. Today the Sulubah, a tribe of tinkers and entertainers in the Syro-Arabian desert, take their place. The mark of Cain must have been a tribal tattoo. It is still used by the Sulubah to distinguish themselves from other desert people.

What we have here could be the story of how long ago a certain tribe migrated to Sumer, where they founded the city of Uruk. That migration had begun with the expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden. In Genesis, Adam is the father of Cain, so he was his ancestor. Cain’s tribe is an offshoot of the tribe of Adam and the ancestor of the Kenites or Qayn. Thus, at a later stage, the tribe must have left Sumer to go to Arabia and from there to Palestine.

Adam was a member of the ruling class and king-priest of one of the city-states. Eve was a high priestess in the local temple. She has the title Mother of All the Living, because in the annual sacred marriage, she takes the place of the great Mother Goddess. This is what David M. Rohl writes in his book The Lost Testament. ²¹ And he could be right. Why otherwise are we told in Gen. 4:1 that Adam had sex with Eve? For a married couple, that would have been obvious. We are also told that of Cain when he was building a city, called Erech or Uruk. Obviously, Cain was its first king-priest.

In the Bible, the tale of Cain and Abel is just the story of the first fratricide. As such, it has its parallels in other myths. In an ancient Egyptian myth, Osiris was killed by his brother Seth, and in Roman mythology, Remus was killed by his brother Romulus, who then became the sole ruler of Rome. Stories of brother killing brother represent the good and bad side present in every human being. But the biblical story of Cain and Abel is different. Instead of good and bad in human nature, it is the beginning of two family lines, a good one and a bad one.

1.11   The World before the Flood

Adam’s family tree branched out into two: one of Cain and one of Seth, the third son born to Adam and Eve as a replacement for Abel. The line of Cain only produced wicked people, that of Seth God-fearing. Cain’s line began with a murderer and then produced another murderer in Lamech, who also introduced polygamy. Lamech was a violent man. He composed a song in which he boasted to his two wives:

I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times. (Gen. 4:23–24)

Which means: I would kill a man for wounding me and a child for hitting me. When Cain was killed, seven men had to die. I will make sure that if someone kills me his whole tribe will be wiped out.

Lamech’s three sons were technologically more advanced than the rest of mankind. They invented tent-making, cattle breeding, musical instruments, and metallurgy.

The line of Seth produced rather different characters. There was Enosh, in whose days man began to worship God. And of Enoch, we are told that he walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. ²² He is mentioned in the New Testament as the author of the book of Enoch.

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these [things]. (Jude 14 KJV)

And finally, there was the righteous Noah, who built the Ark.

What Hyam Maccoby writes in his book The Sacred Executioner about Enoch is worth mentioning here. ²³ Enoch was Cain’s son, and he died young. Cain built a city and called it Enoch, after him. As Maccoby writes, It is hard to resist the conclusion that Enoch was sacrificed by his father Cain when he built the city, named after his sacrificed son. To sacrifice a child when laying the foundations was an ancient custom. ²⁴ Maybe we should read Enoch’s age as 365 days instead of years.

A closer look at the genealogies of Cain and of Seth shows that the names are very similar.

What we have here are two different versions of the same genealogy. It is also, by the way, a good example of the liberal way the author(s) of Genesis used the available material to prove a point.

The division into two different genealogies is artificial. The reason to have two, one good and one evil, is to justify God’s seemingly barbarous act of wiping out most of humankind with the Flood. The family line of Seth, which ends with Noah, produced righteous and God-fearing people. Violence and technological innovations, on the other hand, characterise the line of Cain. Today, we don’t regard technological progress as inherently bad, but apparently for the author of Genesis, it was. Maybe he was right. Improved technology can also mean improved weaponry. Ploughshares can be forged into swords and pruning hooks into spears. ²⁵

In the Bible, there are ten generations from Adam to Noah. No doubt this is based upon a Sumerian tradition that lists eight kings who lived before the Flood. These eight kings reigned over an incredibly long period of 241,200 years. ²⁶ Of course, that doesn’t make sense. Most likely it is a scribal error. In the Bible, this period is reduced to a more realistic 1,656 years. ²⁷ However, the lifetimes given are still impossibly high, ranging from 365 years for Enoch to 969 years for Methuselah. These figures cannot be taken literally.

CHAPTER 2

TALES ABOUT THE FLOOD

2.1   The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men

In the biblical narrative that leads up to Noah’s Flood are a few verses that deal with the Nephilim or giants. Gen. 5:32 ends with the words:

And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (KJV)

The story then continues in Gen. 6:5, telling us that when the LORD realised how wicked humans had become, he was sorry that he ever made them and therefore decided to remove them from the face of the earth. Only Noah and his family were to be spared. In this story, the following four verses have been inserted.

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, My Spirit will not contend with man for ever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterwards – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (Gen. 6:1–4)

From the way this episode interrupts the story of Noah, we can see that it was added later. There are other indications that this part about the Nephilim is not part of the original story line. In Genesis it is the increasing violence, so forcefully expressed in Lamech’s song, that necessitated the elimination of humankind. With the story of the Nephilim, a new element has been introduced. Evil is now explained as the result of interbreeding between the sons of God and the daughters of men. This contradicts the story of the Fall as described in Gen. 3, where it was the eating from the forbidden fruit. Of course, the breakdown of society before the Flood was not caused by demonic activity. We know from Babylonian sources that prolonged droughts and subsequent famines brought this about.

The Nephilim episode ends with the note that they were the heroes of old, men of renown. We are not told the names of these heroes nor about their exploits that made them famous. Apparently, the reader is supposed to know who the author is referring to.

Who were these sons of God and who were these daughters of men? Some say that the sons of God are the believers, the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of men the unbelievers, the descendants of Cain. This makes little sense because:

(a) Marriages between believers and unbelievers do not necessarily produce giants.

(b) Intermarriage between two groups of people involves both genders from each side, not the males from one group and the females from the other, and

(c) the women are called daughters of men, literally daughters of Adam. If the men were descendants of Seth and the women descendants of Cain, then both the men and the women were descendants of Adam and sons and daughters of men. That the men are called sons of God means that they were of a different race than the women.

The sons of god were not humans, but low-ranking gods. Later, with the emergence of monotheism, these low-ranking gods became angels, and so the term sons of God became to mean angels, as in Gen. 6. In this case, they are fallen angels or demons.

2.2   The Nephilim

And who were the Nephilim? Nephilim is the plural of Nephil, the Hebrew word for giant. It can also mean the fallen one (from naphal: he fell). To understand who these giants were, we have to go back to the origin of this story. What we have in Gen. 6:1–4 is an abridged version of a passage from the Book of the Watchers that tells the story of these fallen angels. The Book of the Watchers is found in 1 Enoch 1–36. The book of Enoch is one of the so-called pseudepigrapha that dates from about 200 BCE. It is an apocalyptic fantasy, rejected by both church and synagogue, but up to the first centuries CE still regarded as canonical and even quoted in the New Testament. The relevant passage that deals with the fallen angels, or watchers, as they are called, is 1 Enoch 7:1–5.

And they [the watchers] took wives unto themselves, and everyone (respectively) chose one woman for himself, and they began to go unto them. And they taught them magical medicine, incantations, the cutting of roots, and taught them (about) plants. And the women became pregnant and gave birth to great giants whose heights were three hundred cubits. These (giants) consumed the produce of all the people until the people detested feeding them. So the giants turned against (the people) in order to eat them. And they began to sin against birds, wild beasts, reptiles and fish. ²⁸

When the fallen angels began to teach people how to make weapons, incantations (magic spells), astrology, and psychedelic drugs, the archangels Michael, Sufarel, and Gabriel became concerned and complained to God. God then told them about the coming deluge in which the children of the watchers were all going to die. The watchers with their leader Azazel were to be kept imprisoned underground till the day of judgement, when they would be locked up forever in the fire of torment.

In those days they will lead them into the bottom of the fire – and in torment – in the prison (where) they will be locked up forever. (1 Enoch 10:13) ²⁹

The Lake of Fire, or Torment, is the same as Tartarus, mentioned in the New Testament in 2 Peter 2:4 (in the NIV translated as hell).

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell [Tartarus], putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment.

In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the place where Zeus locked up the Titans after they had rebelled against him.

Jude 6 also refers to the book of Enoch.

And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home – these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.

They "did not keep their position of authority." As spiritual beings, angels are not supposed to cohabit with earthly women. (It is therefore rather odd that according to the New Testament, God himself seemed to have flouted this rule by having a child with Mary. ³⁰)

The Nephilim, the heroes of old, the men of renown, as they are described in Gen. 6, are the demigods of Sumerian and Greek mythology. A demigod is the offspring of a union between a god and a human female.

In 1 Enoch the Flood is seen as God’s response to demonic interference with the human race. A genetically modified human race, part human part demonic, threatened to take over the world, and this necessitated their total extermination. Why the animals also had to suffer is nowhere explained. The senseless wanton destruction caused by the Flood, because that is how it was perceived, must have baffled people, as disasters still do today. How could the gods (or God) ever do such a thing? Although we no longer see natural disasters as divine punishment, at times we still call them acts of God.

Fallen angels who are forever locked into combat with faithful angels is an idea that comes from the Persian religion. The Jews adopted this dualistic concept, because it gave a satisfactory explanation of their traumatic history and the existence of evil.

The nonsensical belief that demons could have sexual intercourse with humans lingered on for a long time. As Peter Stanford writes in his book The Devil: A Biography, ³¹ "The theory of incubi (copulating male demons) and succubi (rarer cases of demons dressed up as women to trick men) came direct from Genesis and the wanton daughters of men, but the Inquisitors took it over as their own." Those accused of such a pact with the devil were burned as witches.

The Nephilim who lived afterwards on the earth, mentioned in verse 4, were the remnants of a race of unusually tall people that once lived in Canaan. Goliath and his brothers, who lived in the days of David, were the last survivors of that race. These post-diluvial giants were also called Nephilim because of their tall stature and corresponding strength. But there the similarity ends. They were not demigods and did not work miracles. The effect they had on the battlefield was more psychological than military, and a courageous soldier of average height could defeat them. In the days of the patriarchs, they were living in Hebron (then called Kiriath-Arba), but they never seemed to have bothered them.

2.3   Noah’s Flood

In the story of Noah’s Flood, or the Deluge, ³² Noah is instructed to build an ark, really a huge, seagoing vessel of 140 metres long, 23 metres wide, and 13.5 metres high. It had to be large enough to house not only his family, that is, Noah with his wife plus their three sons with their wives, but also a pair of every kind of animal. When the ark was finished, the animals entered it by themselves. Then when everybody was on board, God closed the door, and it began to rain for forty days and forty nights and

all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened (Gen. 7:11).

In the ancient world-view, the earth was like a huge island floating on the waters of the deep. It seems that not only the sky, but also the earth had sprung a leak. The water kept rising until it stood about seven metres above the top of the mountains.

After a hundred and fifty days, the waters receded, and the ark came to rest on the Ararat Mountains. Noah let out a raven. For a while, the raven kept coming back. Then one day it did not return, so Noah released a dove, which came back. A week later, Noah released the dove again, and this time it returned with a fresh olive leaf in its beak (now an internationally recognised symbol of peace). He sent it out again, and when the dove did not come back after a week, Noah knew that it was time to leave the ark. He built an altar on which he sacrificed some of the clean animals he had on board. Clean animals are those the Jews are allowed to eat and which were also suitable as sacrifice, like cattle, sheep, goats, and seed-eating birds. When God smelt the sweet aroma of Noah’s sacrifice, he promised that he would never do such a thing again, and as a sign of that promise, he put the rainbow in the sky.

Just before the story went to press, the author realised that with this sacrifice, all the clean animals would have died out, so he quickly inserted two additional verses that stated that from all the clean animals (and birds), seven pairs had entered the ark. ³³

The biblical Flood story is derived from Babylonian sources. The Babylonians in turn got it from the Sumerians. There were many flood stories in circulation in the ancient Near East. The best known is the one found in the Gilgamesh Epic, which predates the biblical version by at least two thousand years.

2.4   Gilgamesh

The Gilgamesh Epic, written on twelve clay tablets, was found in Ashurbanipal’s palace library in Nineveh. Gilgamesh (Figure 3) was king of Uruk (or Erech). He was a tyrant, and when his people complained, the gods created Enkidu to keep him occupied. Enkidu was a wild man. He lived on the steppe with the gazelles, who trusted him. He ate grass like an animal and did not wear any clothing. Instead, his whole body was covered with hair. A hunter found out about his existence when his pits and traps were destroyed. Gilgamesh was told about it, and he decided to catch Enkidu with the help of a temple prostitute. In Matthews and Benjamin’s Old Testament Parallels, she is called a wise woman. ³⁴ Whatever the right translation might be, she certainly knew how to tame the wild man. She hid near the waterhole where Enkidu and the animals would come to drink. When she saw Enkidu, she took off her garment and stood before him in all her charms.

What happened next prompted one translator to switch over from English to Latin. ³⁵ But for us, this is of little interest. Suffice it to say that Enkidu fell in love with her, and that they stayed together for a week. When he returned to the wild animals, they shunned him and ran away, so Enkidu was now willing to go with the woman to the city. There he learned to wear clothes, eat bread, drink beer, and comb his hair. Enkidu became human. He met Gilgamesh, and the two became close friends, seeking adventure together, and in that way giving the citizens of Uruk a break.

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Figure 3. Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh and Enkidu became inseparable, and when Enkidu died, Gilgamesh was inconsolable. For a week, he sat beside the body of his dead friend, until the maggots crawled out of his nose. The death of Enkidu made Gilgamesh aware of his own mortality, and he set out to find the secret of eternal life. On his quest for immortality, he visited his ancestor Utnapishtim, who had survived the Flood, and because of that, Enlil, the chief god, had granted him and his wife immortality. But although both of them enjoyed eternal life, they did not reside in the land of the living. To get to him, Gilgamesh had to cross the Sea of Death. Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh the story of the Flood, which is the most interesting part of the whole epic.

2.5   Utnapishtim and the Flood

The gods, under pressure from Enlil, had decided to destroy Utnapishtim’s city of Shuruppak (about sixty kilometres northwest of Uruk) with a flood. Ea, or Enki, was Utnapishtim’s personal god (guardian angel, we would say now), and he was keen to warn his protégé. Ea was not allowed to reveal openly what had been decided in the council of the gods, so he went to Utnapishtim’s house and spoke to the reed wall (Utnapishtim’s house was made from reed like the houses of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq still are today):

Reed wall listen carefully! Reed wall pay close attention!

Ruler of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu.

Demolish this house and turn it into a boat!

Forget about riches. Save your life!

Money is not important; it’s survival that matters.

So make a boat and fill it with food, seeds and livestock. ³⁶

Utnapishtim understood the message. But if he was going to demolish his palace and build a boat, that would not go unnoticed. How was he going to explain this to the people of the city and the elders? Ea advised him to tell the people of Shuruppak that Enlil hated him, and because of that, he could no longer live with them in their city and was going to the ocean below (the abyss or the waters below of Ex. 20:4 and Deut. 5:8) to stay with Ea and put in a good word for them. In other words, he was going to sacrifice himself for the good of the people. Then when he was gone, Ea would bless them with plenty of fish and a rich harvest.

In the morning he will send you bread from heaven,

And showers of wheat in the evening!

He did not promise them riches or rewards, but just food and plenty of it. We know from another Babylonian flood story, the Atrahasis Epic, that these were hard times with severe droughts and famines. But the word translated as wheat can also mean great misfortune, which makes this promise rather ambiguous. ³⁷

The boat Utnapishtim built had seven decks, and each deck was divided into nine compartments. It was made of wood and reed, salvaged from Utnapishtim’s house to save time, and made watertight with bitumen or asphalt. Its length was nearly sixty metres, as were its width and height; in other words, it was a perfect cube. H.W.F. Saggs in The Babylonians ³⁸ suggests that we should think about a floating ziggurat, but this can’t be right, because then the top deck would be too small to be divided into nine compartments. But it was huge.

Utnapishtim was in a hurry. He knew that there was not much time left, and he managed to get the vessel completed in seven days (which shows that the unrealistic dimensions of Utnapishtim’s boat is a later addition to the story). How did he do it? Well, he knew how to motivate his workforce. He butchered oxen for his workmen and every day he killed a few lambs. Beer, oil, and wine flowed like water. It was like a New Year’s party. They never had it so good!

As soon as the boat was finished it was loaded with provisions, silver, gold and livestock. Then Utnapishtim and his relatives went aboard, together with a selected group of craftsmen. He pointed to the big black clouds on the horizon. It’s all going to happen now. he said to those he was going to leave behind.

"In the morning he will send you bread from heaven,

And showers of wheat in the evening!

That moment has now arrived!"

And while closing the hatch he said, I have to go now.

More huge black clouds appeared on the horizon. The sky was filled with bright flashes of lightning, and then it became pitch-dark. First came a gale-force wind and then the water. It was so bad that even the gods were afraid. For six days and seven nights the wind, the rain, and the water ravaged the land. Then on the seventh day, it suddenly stopped. All around him, Utnapishtim could see nothing else but water, like a huge lake. In the distance, he counted fourteen islands. In fact, they were the peaks of the Zagros Mountains. Finally, the vessel ran aground on the mountain of Nimush. Utnapishtim waited seven days and then released a dove, but it came back. So did a swallow. Then he let out a raven. When the raven did not return, Utnapishtim and his companions disembarked. They offered a sacrifice, and the gods were attracted by the smell like flies. No wonder: They were starving, for nobody had offered them any sacrifices. Gods are spiritual beings, so they don’t eat solid food. Instead, they feed on the smell of sacrifices.

After the gods had a good feed, they felt sorry for what had happened. Ishtar placed her multicoloured necklace in the sky as a memorial for those who had perished in the Flood. Then they turned on Enlil, whose idea it had been in the first place. But Enlil was angry that there were still a few survivors left, and he blamed Ea. No, I did not do it, Ea said. Utnapishtim acted on what he saw in a dream.

Ea then told Enlil that he could have sent wild animals, a famine, or a plague to punish the evildoers instead of drowning the whole human race. Enlil calmed down and blessed Utnapishtim and his wife. First you were only human, but from now on you are one of us, he said, and so they became immortal like the gods. But they had to live far away, beyond the mouths of the rivers, and that is where Gilgamesh had found them: in the Persian Gulf, in the legendary land of Dilmun (Bahrain).

And that was the story of the Flood as Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh.

2.6   The End of Gilgamesh

And what happened to Gilgamesh? Did he ever find the secret of eternal life? Utnapishtim showed him that he would never be able to cope with eternal life. When he asked Gilgamesh to stay awake for just one week, he could not and fell asleep. If he could not even stay awake for one week (sleep was seen as a temporary form of death), how then would he manage to resist the eternal sleep of death? At this point, Gilgamesh left. But then Utnapishtim called him back, which is an indication that what follows is a later addition and has nothing to do with the original story. Utnapishtim revealed a secret to him: On the bottom of the sea grew a thorn-bush that had the power to rejuvenate him. Gilgamesh went searching and found it. By tying stones to his legs, he managed to dive deep enough to grab it. But then on his journey home, he came across a pond with nice, cool water. He left the thorn-bush unguarded on the bank and went for a swim. A snake smelled the bush, and while he ate it, he sloughed his skin, and that’s how the snake obtained the power to renew his youth by shedding his old skin. One might wonder why Gilgamesh did not eat the thorn-bush the moment he had it in his hands. Well, Gilgamesh was not quite sure. He first wanted to take it home and try it out on another old man before taking the medicine himself.

It took him a long time, but finally Gilgamesh understood that man couldn’t live forever. What was the use of the kind of immortality Utnapishtim had obtained? He had made a name for himself by surviving the Flood, but it did not allow him to stay in the land of the living. And what about that thorn-bush that contains the elixir of life? They are still looking for it. Today, about five thousand years later, there is a thriving industry aimed at pensioners to sell them the secrets of how to rejuvenate their ageing bodies.

For Gilgamesh, there was nothing else to do but to go home and look back at what he had achieved, and he came to the conclusion that at least he would leave behind a strong and prosperous city for his people to live in.

2.7   Other Babylonian Flood Stories

The flood story in the Atrahasis Epic (Atrahasis is another name for Utnapishtim) is similar to the one in the Gilgamesh Epic. But this epic also reveals something about the situation in Mesopotamia before the Flood.

Enlil, the god in charge of the earth, had become annoyed with humankind. There were too many people, and they were too noisy, so much so that he could not sleep at night. This of course is nonsense. Sleep, as we saw before, was seen as a form of death. Immortal gods therefore don’t sleep. This seems to me an impious remark written by a scribe who did not take these ancient stories about squabbling gods too seriously. Already in the days of Hammurabi (ca. 1800–1750 BCE), the belief in the many gods had ceased, and Marduk, the god of Babylon, was well on his way to become the supreme deity. ³⁹ The same gag about a sleeping god is also used in 1 Kings 18:27, where Elijah taunts the priests of Baal with the words:

Shout louder … Maybe he [Baal] is sleeping and must be awakened.

Anyhow, mad about the noise, Enlil decided to take some action. He sent a plague followed by a drought, which caused a famine, and then another drought and famine. This time it was so bad that in the fifth year, mothers locked their daughters out of the house or sold them as slaves (if they were not sold as slaves themselves). In the sixth and last year, people ate their own children to stay alive. With each disaster, it was Ea-Enki who helped humankind by advising which of the minor gods carrying out Enlil’s evil plans they had to placate with flattery. That god would then soften the impact of whatever disaster Enlil had told him to bring upon humankind. After the second famine, Enlil realised that his plans were being frustrated, and he therefore persuaded the council of the gods to send a flood to wipe out humankind altogether. But Ea-Enki warned Atrahasis and told him to make a boat.

Enlil was annoyed because the people were too noisy. But what do the words too noisy mean? From the rest of the story, we can deduce that it means two things:

(a) In the aftermath of the Flood, Ea-Enki and Nintu, the goddess of childbirth, decided to prevent future overpopulation by introducing three new kinds of women: those who were to be infertile, those who would produce only stillborn babies, and those who were to be taboo (celibate). So one meaning of the words too noisy is humankind’s incapacity to control its own fertility.

(b) That too noisy can also refer to violence and the breakdown of society is clear from the Gilgamesh Epic when Ea-Enki tells Enlil that he should only have punished the evildoers instead of destroying the whole human race.

There are a few more extant fragments that tell about a flood, and although they may differ in minor details, they all tell the same story: Someone is warned by one of the gods of a coming flood. He builds a boat and takes his family plus animals and food on board. It rains for about a week, and