Genesis 1-11, Part 2: Culture, Cosmologies, and Sea Monsters

Thursday, 12 June 2008

Okay...let's begin our study of Genesis 1-11. Imagine that we're at a group Bible study, someone hands you a Bible, you open it, and these are the first words you see:

‏בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃‎ ‏וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃‎ ‏וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר

You notice that all of your pages look like this...and not knowing Hebrew you motion to your neighbor that you don't understand. Recognizing that you can't read, he knowingly smiles and decides to help by reading the passage to you:

bᵉre’shıyt bara’ ’ᵉlohım ’et hashamayim vᵉ’et ha’arets:
vᵉha’arets hayᵉta tohu vabohu wᵉḥoshekh ‘al-pᵉney tᵉhom vᵉruach ’ᵉlohım mᵉrachephet ‘al-pᵉney hamayim: vayyo’mer ’ᵉlohım yᵉhı ’or vayᵉhı-’or:

To hear what this sounds like, click play below:

(or if you can't see the player click here.)

Obviously, this doesn't give much assistance to someone who doesn't read Hebrew, and such a person's understanding of the text would seem just as limited after hearing it as it was before when trying to read it. Some linquistic gaps need to be bridged before any of this makes sense. But language isn't the only gap in our understanding, there is also the gap of culture and context. Individual words have meaning, but so do phrases and idioms unique to a culture

In the West we sometimes assume that the Bible is "our book," after all when we read it in English translation it sure sounds like it belongs to us. The reality is that it doesn't--or at least it didn't. The Hebrew scriptures are works composed entirely in the Ancient Near East (ANE). The example above is to serve as a reminder that we are reading an ancient and foreign text...not a 21st Century Western text. In some ways it may be helpful to see the text as exotic (although this can get in the way, too). At that least remember that many of the concerns, hopes, fears, basic understandings of reality held by the writers and audience of the texts were not the same as ours today. We have to translate not only language in order to have understanding, but cultural meaning must be translated as well.

Basic Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology

For our study in Genesis, it may be helpful to understand the ancient view of reality, or their cosmology. For people in the ANE the "earth" merely referred to the land, and it was upheld by pillars in the deep. In the deep there were caverns and large bodies of water. At the "ends of the earth", the land, stood the seas, which were chaotic and threatened the borders of the land. The "heavens" (plural) were multi-level. In the sky was a great dome, in Hebrew raqia, which held the waters above it at bay. Gentle and helpful rain was due to the condensation which gathered on the underside of this dome. Chaotic and destructive rain was due to the "windows" of the dome being opened and the water pouring through the "floodgates". "Heavenly beings" or "lights" like the sun, moon, and stars travelled across the surface of the dome, often depicted as propelled by chariots or winged divine beings having animalistic qualities.

The Theology of Sea Monsters

In these Ancient Near Eastern understandings of the world, seas and large bodies of water often represented chaos. A day at the beach for them may not have been a "day at the beach," so to speak. Large bodies of water were mysterious and not far from the coastline they were dangerous without modern sailing ships and guidance systems. Floods were an annual threat to agriculture and life. The churning of the sea (and sometimes rivers) was seen as due to the great sea dragons/monsters in their depths. In many of the ancient creation myths, a god or gods are depicted as overcoming or even slaying these creatures that churned the primordial seas thus bringing order to the world:

The Hymn of Ba'al:

20 What enemies rises up against Ba'al,
What adversary against him who rides the clouds?
Have I not slain the beloved of El?
Have I not annihilated River, the great god?
Have I not muzzled the Dragon [tnn--same root as Tanniyn], hold her in a muzzle?
I have slain the Crooked Serpent,
The foul fanged with seven heads . . . [by the way, the dragon and beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads]

In various sections of the Hebrew Scriptures we see Yahweh depcited as also slaying the great sea creatures, sometimes with striking parallel to ancient pagan sources. For example compare the following additional lines from The Hymn of Ba'al with Isaiah 27:1:

Ba'al Hymn: You [Ba'al] did slay Lotan the fleeing Serpent,
Did make an end to the twisted Serpent,
The Foul Fanged with seven heads

Isa 27:1 ¶ On that day Yahweh,
with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
Leviathan the twisting serpent,
and he will kill the dragon [tanniyn] that is in the sea.

Additional references to Yahweh defeating the sea monsters can be seen in other passages:

Isa 51:9     ¶ Awake, awake, put on strength,
        O arm of the LORD!
    Awake, as in days of old,
        the generations of long ago!
    Was it not you who cut Rahab [Rahab was a great sea creature] in pieces,
        who pierced the dragon [tanniyn]?

Ezek 32:2 Mortal, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him:
    You consider yourself a lion among the nations,
        but you are like a dragon [tanniyn] in the seas;
    you thrash about in your streams,
        trouble the water with your feet,
        and foul your streams.

Ps 74:13 You [Yahweh] divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the dragons [tanninim] in the waters.

Ps 91:13 You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Job 7:12 Am I the Sea, or the Dragon [tanniyn],
that you set a guard over me?

We see references to Elohim doing this same thing in Genesis 1, but the waters are not personified. Rather than fighting and defeating the great sea monsters, the tanninim, Elohim creates the them in Gen 1:21. This was powerful imagery for the audience in the ANE. As their creator Elohim was depicted as having complete power over the primordial sea dragons. This is a bold theological concept in the ANE. Without a cultural/historical understanding of seas and sea monsters such insight could easily be overlooked.

However, the issue still remains for us how do we take and translate ancient world-views represented in our scriptures that we no longer consider "real" or literal and translate them into meaning today? We certainly don't still believe in a solid dome in the sky holding waters at bay or sea dragons with seven heads churching the seas. Our typical response is to see such references as metaphor, or to try to read into them some modern scientific explanation (like dinosaurs). However, it is important to remember that for the ancients, who had a mythic world-view, they could be interpreted as both metaphor and literal reality.

Side Note

As a side note, these great sea dragons/monsters/serpents, the tanninim, were connected with Rachab and Leviathan. The Book of Enoch (2nd century BC-1st century AD) says this about Leviathan:

And that day will two monsters be parted, one monster, a female named Leviathan in order to dwell in the abyss of the ocean over the fountains of water; and (the other), a male called Behemoth, which holds his chest in an invisible desert whose name is Dundayin, east of the garden of Eden. - 1 Enoch 60:7-8

According to Rashi, a Jewish teacher of the first millinium, "According to legend this [Genesis 1:21] refers to the Leviathan and its mate. God created a male and female Leviathan, then killed the female and salted it for the righteous, for if the Leviathans were to procreate [and multiply in number] the world could not stand before them." The Talmud in Baba Bathra 74a says that the flesh of the slain Leviathan will be served to the righteous to feast at the Messianic banquet. Revelation also has multiple references to God's overcoming the great seven headed serpent/dragon, who is identified as Satan:

Rev 12:3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.

Rev 13:1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names.

Rev 17:3 So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.

Rev 17:7 But the angel said to me, “Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.

Comments

Add New

RSS