lpetrich
Contributor
God Created the Universe From Nothing—Or Did He? | Bob Seidensticker and Combat Myth: The Curious Story of Yahweh and the Gods Who Preceded Him | Bob Seidensticker
Genesis 1.1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." could also be "In the beginning of when God was creating the heavens and the earth," continuing into the next verses: "The Earth was formless and empty, darkness was on the surface of the depths, and the Spirit of God hovered above the water." (my version from several translations)
BS notes that the word for "create" used in it appears in several contexts that clearly indicate forming from pre-existing material, so that word alone does not indicate creation from nothing. He also proposed that an earlier version may have been "In the beginning God separated the heavens and the earth," like the separations later in Genesis 1: light from darkness, upper water from lower water, and land from water. Elsewhere in Genesis 1, he commands the land to produce plants and land animals, the sea to produce aquatic animals, and the air to produce flying animals.
He then gets into a common sort of Middle Eastern creation myth, the "combat myth", German Chaoskampf, "chaos struggle". In it, the gods get together in a council to decide on what to do about a chaos monster that threatens them. The older ones are not willing to fight it, but one of the younger ones is. When he defeats the monster, he becomes the top god and the familiar world is created from the monster's remains.
This mytheme is must like some Proto-Indo-European ones (
Proto-Indo-European mythology).
A reconstructed PIE creation story goes like this: there were once two brothers, Mannus and Yemos, Man and Twin. Mannus sacrified Yemos, dismembered him, and built the familiar Universe out of his body parts. The story of Norse Ymir is derived from it, as is the story of Romulus and Remus, Roman and R-win.
Another PIE mytheme is a god of war and storms fighting and killing a reptilian monster who likes water. That got turned into stories of heroes killing dragons and other reptilian monsters. Stories like Hercules killing the Hydra, and Indra killing Vritra, for instance.
These mythemes may have been brought to the Middle East by speakers of Indo-European dialects as they spread outward from their Ukraine-to-Kazakhstan homeland. Kikkuli, who lived around 1400 BCE in what is now northern Iraq, wrote a treatise on horse training that includes several technical terms that closely resemble counterparts in Sanskrit. Also, in Canaan at the time, there were kings with names like Indaruta and Suwarduta -- Indic names. Once there, these two mythemes may have been combined to form the sort of story that we see there, a warrior-god who kills a reptilian monster and builds the familiar Universe from its body parts. Marduk vs. Tiamat, for instance.
Genesis 1.1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." could also be "In the beginning of when God was creating the heavens and the earth," continuing into the next verses: "The Earth was formless and empty, darkness was on the surface of the depths, and the Spirit of God hovered above the water." (my version from several translations)
BS notes that the word for "create" used in it appears in several contexts that clearly indicate forming from pre-existing material, so that word alone does not indicate creation from nothing. He also proposed that an earlier version may have been "In the beginning God separated the heavens and the earth," like the separations later in Genesis 1: light from darkness, upper water from lower water, and land from water. Elsewhere in Genesis 1, he commands the land to produce plants and land animals, the sea to produce aquatic animals, and the air to produce flying animals.
He then gets into a common sort of Middle Eastern creation myth, the "combat myth", German Chaoskampf, "chaos struggle". In it, the gods get together in a council to decide on what to do about a chaos monster that threatens them. The older ones are not willing to fight it, but one of the younger ones is. When he defeats the monster, he becomes the top god and the familiar world is created from the monster's remains.
This mytheme is must like some Proto-Indo-European ones (
Proto-Indo-European mythology).A reconstructed PIE creation story goes like this: there were once two brothers, Mannus and Yemos, Man and Twin. Mannus sacrified Yemos, dismembered him, and built the familiar Universe out of his body parts. The story of Norse Ymir is derived from it, as is the story of Romulus and Remus, Roman and R-win.
Another PIE mytheme is a god of war and storms fighting and killing a reptilian monster who likes water. That got turned into stories of heroes killing dragons and other reptilian monsters. Stories like Hercules killing the Hydra, and Indra killing Vritra, for instance.
These mythemes may have been brought to the Middle East by speakers of Indo-European dialects as they spread outward from their Ukraine-to-Kazakhstan homeland.
Kikkuli, who lived around 1400 BCE in what is now northern Iraq, wrote a treatise on horse training that includes several technical terms that closely resemble counterparts in Sanskrit. Also, in Canaan at the time, there were kings with names like Indaruta and Suwarduta -- Indic names. Once there, these two mythemes may have been combined to form the sort of story that we see there, a warrior-god who kills a reptilian monster and builds the familiar Universe from its body parts. Marduk vs. Tiamat, for instance.
