The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden
(The Ancient Near Eastern Motifs behind)
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07 July 2001;
Revisions through 06 May 2006
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I understand that Genesis is _denying or refuting_ the Mesopotamian myths' explanation of how and why man came to made, what his purpose on earth is, and why his demise was sought in a flood. This "_denial_" is for me accomplished by taking motifs from a variety of contradicting myths and giving them "new twists" by changing the names of the characters, the locations, and sequences of events. It is my perception that the Hebrews are _not_ "copying" the Mesopotamian myths, they are RECASTING them inorder to REFUTE and DENY THEM, hence the "reason why" there are _no_ individuals called Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Yahweh, Noah, Shem, Japheth and Ham appearing in _any_ of the Mesopotamian pre-biblical myths.
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Genesis opens with the story of God's having planted a garden in the East in a place called Eden. He evidently places two trees within this garden, one is "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil", the other is "the Tree of Life". God then stations the Cherubim to deny access to the latter tree by man. This brief article, employing a Secular Humanist and Anthropological point of view, will explore the Ancient Near Eastern motifs and concepts possibly lying behind Genesis' portrayal of the events.
After _eating_ of the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, Adam and Eve's eyes are opened and they realize THEY ARE NAKED, in SHAME they cover themselves. Many have wondered, WHY did God keep "grown" adults as his "servants" in a STATE OF NAKEDNESS AND NOT CLOTHE THEM ? No explanation makes sense for Yahweh's behavior, especially in light of the condemnation of nakedness as being "shameful" throughout the Bible.
The Mesopotamians had several CONTRADICTING accounts of man's creation and where this event took place. One account has him made and "left" a wanderer with wild animals in a desert-like plain or steppe called in Sumerian the edin (edinnu, edin-na). Another account has him made at Nippur to be an agricultural servant, working in a god's city-garden (Enlil); yet another account has man being made at Eridu to work in a god's city-garden (Enki).
According to one ancient Mesopotamian myth when the gods made man, they left him to wander NAKED a desert-like plain or steppe called in Sumerian edin (edin-na, edinnu) with only wild animals for companions. Later man is brought to the cities the gods have made for themselves in the edin (the arid desert-like plain of Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers called Sumer) to be their servant. Man will tend their city gardens raising food for them to consume in the temples. The Sumerian art forms of the 3rd millennium BCE show NAKED MEN serving beverages to seated, clothed gods and goddesses. I understand that the gods at first DENIED MAN THE KNOWLEDGE IT WAS WRONG TO BE NAKED: (1) he wanders NAKED in the edin with animals and (2) later is made a "servant of the gods" and SERVES THEM IN A STATE OF NAKEDNESS.
I suspect the Hebrew author possessed traditions of man being naked with animal companions and serving a clothed god in a state of nakedness (who, for him, is Yahweh). The Mesoptamian myths explain that man is eventually taught by the gods how to make and wear clothing, how to spin wool and weave it, how to process plant fibers and make them into fine cloth.
For the Mesopotamians MAN'S NAKEDNESS was _symbolic of_ man's ORIGINAL STATE OF ANIMAL BEASTIALITY AND IGNORANCE. He was a savage brute who's only intelligence or knowledge was that of an animal, like an animal he ate grass and lapped water with NAKED animals at watering-holes in the wilderness;
AND LIKE A "LAWLESS" ANIMAL OR BEAST HE HAD _NO_ CONCEPT OF GOOD AND EVIL OR RIGHT AND WRONG. Primitive savage naked man would acquire knowledge of good and evil (right and wrong) "_later_" from the gods when he became their servant and was taught the "Arts of Civilization" including the LAW codes the gods used to regulate godly behavior among themselves.
The Book of Ecclesiastes makes a remarkable observation of man being wicked and like a beast, which recalls for me the Mesopotamian creation myths portraying man in the beginning as being like a beast:
Eccles. 3:16-21 RSV
"Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness...I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them TO SHOW THEM THAT THEY ARE BUT BEASTS..."
Today Darwinist or Evolutionist Scientists (Anthropologists) understand man in the beginning was a naked beast somewhat affirming the Mesopotamian myths portraying man as a beast or animal.
For the Mesopotamians their gods were _distinguished from_ NAKED SAVAGE MAN by their possessing _TWO TRAITS_ DENIED MAN BY THE GODS:
(1) KNOWLEDGE (The gods KNOW it is "wrong to be naked", for ONLY they wear clothes; they also have
KNOWLEDGE of GOOD AND EVIL, for they have created LAWS (Sumerian me) governing appropriate
and inappropriate conduct; for example Enlil is "banished" by his fellow gods from Nippur for raping Ninlil
BEFORE man's creation).
(2) IMMORTALITY (Only the gods possess it).
I understand that Genesis is recasting THE ABOVE _TWO TRAITS_ by ASSOCIATING THEM WITH TWO TREES, a TREE OF KNOWLEDGE and a TREE OF LIFE (IMMORTALITY).
The _TREE OF KNOWLEDGE_ becomes the "vehicle" or "mechanism" for the Hebrews whereby man comes to realize HE IS NAKED, and faced with SHAME, DESIRES TO BE CLOTHED _LIKE A GOD_. BY WEARING CLOTHING HE TAKES ON THEN A GODLY ASPECT, he has also acquired the GODLY KNOWLEDGE IT IS WRONG TO BE NAKED initially DENIED MAN BY YAHWEH AND THE MESOPOTAMIAN GODS.
From a Mesopotamian point of view man's acquistion of clothing "symbolizes" his existence as a beast _ending_ and his _BECOMING LIKE A GOD_. For the gods not only wear clothes, they have built for themselves BEFORE man's creation cities to dwell in with city-gardens full of fruits, vegetables and wheat for bread to nourish themselves, all these crops are fed by irrigation canals. The gods _ONLY_LATER_pass on to man their GODLY KNOWLEDGE: "the Arts of Civilization": LAW (codified statements of what constitutes good and evil, right and wrong), metallurgy, weaving of cloth, animal husbandry (shepherding), music, art, literature, writing, etc. ALL THIS GODLY KNOWLEDGE "IN THE BEGINNING" _WAS DENIED MAN_ BY THE GODS, _ONLY_LATER_ DOES MAN OBTAIN ALL THIS. For further in-depth details along with pictures of Mesopotamian NAKED MEN AND WOMEN SERVING GODS AND GODDESSES PLEASE CLICK HERE.
Because I understand Genesis is a _challenge, refutal and denial_ of Mesopotamian beliefs regarding man's origins and his relationship with the gods, it is my proposal that various Mesopotamian motifs have been "recast", transformed and reinterpreted for a "NEW STORY" of why God made man and what man's relationship is with the deity. That is to say I DO NOT EXPECT the details to be identical or even "close" between Genesis and the Mesopotamian myths, the Hebrews are CHANGING the myths, refuting and denying them. For me the Hebrews are being very creative, and innovative in their transformation of the Mesopotamian myths their ancestors Terah and Abraham once embraced while dwelling in Ur of the Chaldees (Tell Muqqayar in Lower Mesopotamia).
In REFUTING or DENYING the Mesopotamian myths Genesis presents man ILLEGALLY obtaining KNOWLEDGE from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, WHEREAS in the Mesopotamian myths although man IS INITIALLY DENIED KNOWLEDGE by the gods and kept in a state of nakedness as the gods' servant, _EVENTUALLY_ THE GODS _DO GRANT MAN_ THE KNOWLEDGE IT IS WRONG TO BE NAKED. That is to say, MAN IN THE MESOPOTAMIAN MYTHS DOES _NOT_ ACQUIRE THE KNOWLEDGE IT IS WRONG TO BE NAKED _ILLEGALLY_.
The Mesopotamian myths do NOT trace mankind's SINFULNESS to an act of rebellion against the gods by disobeying them. For the Mesopotamians man's SINFULNESS comes from the fact that HE IS MADE IN THE IMAGE OF THE GODS, HE CAN BE NO BETTER THAN HIS CREATOR, for the gods are portrayed as jealous, petty, arrogant, deceitful, and egotistical as well as merciful, loving, kind, and compassionate. The Mesopotamian myths also state that IN THE BEGINNING THE ANUNNAKI GODS (the senior gods) who dwelt on the earth at first WERE LIKE BEASTS, they roamed NAKED, ate grass, and lapped water at watering holes with the NAKED ANIMALS. Only "later" do the gods learn "the Arts of Civilization", HOW TO MAKE CLOTHING, how to domesticate animals how to plant crops, create cities, and engineer irrigation systems.That is to say the Hebrews in _recasting_ the Mesopotomian beliefs or motifs DENY THIS PORTRAYAL OF GOD AND MAN.
According to one Mesopotamian myth man is created by the god Enki to replace the junior Igigi gods who toil in the garden of a god at Nippur. The Igigi revolt because they have been given NO REST from agricultural toil. To stop the revolt, Enlil, the god of Nippur, summons his brother-god Enki from Eridu asking what can be done to appease the Igigi ? Enki suggests the making of man to replace the Igigi. Enlil gives his assent. Man is made from clay mixed with the FLESH AND BLOOD of Aw-ilu the leader of the Igigi revolt. It is this god's life-force (flesh and blood) which gives life to man. Man's "rebelliousness against god" is accounted for in Mesopotamian myths as man possessing the "rebellious spirit" of the slain rebel leader of Igigi revolt against Enlil (Note: In myths it is Enlil who is the "principal instigator" who decides to send a flood to destroy mankind for violating his rest). Man's sinfulness and rebellious is NOT traced to a man willfully disobediant of his god in eating of a forbidden tree fruit to acquire knowledge and become like a god. Man's DECEITFULNESS or LYING was another GODLY QUALITY passed on to man, the god Enki is famed for his decitfulness, cunning, knavery and trickery on fellow gods as well as man (Note: In myths its is Enki who warns one man of the Flood to be sent to destroy man, telling him to build a boat and save self, family and animals).
Foster noted that the Mesopotamians understood man's "lies and falsehood" were implanted in man at his creation by the gods Enlil and Ea and the birth goddess Mami:
"Enlil, king of the gods, who created teeming mankind,
Majestic Ea, who pinched off their clay,
The queen who fashioned them, mistress Mami,
Gave twisted words to the human race,
They endowed them in perpetuity with lies and falsehood."
(p. 323. "The Babylonian Theodicy." Benjamin Read Foster. From Distant Days, Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Bethesda, Maryland. CDL Press. 1995. ISBN 1-883053-09-9)
So, in the Mesopotamian myths man was created to work in a city-garden of a god, Enlil, at Nippur, by Enki, and he was to work in the god's city-garden FOREVERMORE, giving the Igigi gods an eternal rest from agricultural toil as was already enjoyed by the senior gods, the Anunnaki (Enlil and Enki). The Mesopotamians had NO CONCEPT of a wrathful god EXPELLING MAN FROM HIS EARTHLY GARDEN, man had been created to toil for all eternity in the god's gardens. Genesis' notion that Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden in Eden is then a REFUTAL OR DENIAL of the Mesopotamian's understanding of the gods' purpose in creating man. The gods NEEDED MAN TO WORK IN THEIR GARDENS, if there was no man to work the gardens of the gods they would have to work the gardens themselves, an onerous task they did not relish. Because the gods could die at the hands of fellow gods, I draw the assumption that they could also starve to death if not fed, for the purpose in eating and drinking is to sustain life; that is to say, if the gods are truly immortal there should be no need for them to eat and drink. I thus understand that the gods' "immortality" was dependant upon (1) Their not being slain by their fellow gods and (2) their being able to eat daily the food raised in their earthly city-gardens in the edin (the desert-like steppe or plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and presented them for their nourishment by man (priests) in the temples and shrines.
The "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" does _not_ exist as a motif _to my knowledge_ in any Ancient Near Eastern myths other than the Hebrews' Genesis account. Nor does the "Tree of Life" appear _to my knowledge_ in any Ancient Near Eastern myths, it is "bread of life" and "water of life" that bestows "immortality" on man in Mesopotamian belief, which interestingly resurrects itself later with Christ tearing apart _bread_ and telling his apostles to eat his bread/body and drink his blood/wine to obtain immortality.
I realize for some readers or viewers that the foregoing assertion must "come as a shock" as some of the scholarly literature in the past speaks of a "tree of life", as for example E. O. James, The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. (E. J. Brill Publishers. Leiden,The Netherlands. 1966, 1997). Because _no_ ancient inscriptions mention specifically "a tree conferring _knowledge of good and evil_" or "conferring _immortal life_", some scholars in the past have chosen to speak of trees flanked by beasts, gods or genies as "sacred trees", deliberately refusing to call these iconographic representations "tree of life or tree of knowledge". In earlier articles at this website, I confess I followed the school calling the iconic representations "tree of life" (please click here for said articles).
NOW, I understand that these two trees are the Hebrews "unique" contribution to Ancient Near Eastern religious belief as they transform and challenge the earlier Mesopotamian myths regarding man's creation which understood man was made to be a servant/slave in the gods' city-gardens lying in edin-the-floodplain of ancient Sumer.
The question arises, why did of all things the Sumerians settle on bread being the magical food bestowing immortality ? I suspect the reason is that bread is NOT a food found "growing in Nature." It is a "processed" food, the grains must be separated from the husks via crushing and then there is a winnowing of the empty hulls, then the seed must be ground or "milled" into flour, and the flour must be made into dough with the addition of water and yeast for leaven, then baked. In the myths these processes were discovered by the gods who dwelt on the earth who had created irrigated grain fields. So bread was "uniquely" a product _not available_ to naked wild animals and naked primitive man their companion. In fact Enkidu when presented bread by shepherds in the steppe after his animals companions have fled from him, DOES NOT KNOW the eating of bread, he gapes at the food, neither does he know the drinking of alcoholic beverages set before him, as a beast he knew only the eating of grass and the drinking of water and milk sucked from female animals. One would have expected that an alcoholic beverage would have been "uniquely" the choice for the drink conferring immortality as it too is a "processed" beverage, but the reality is that water is more important as plants, animals and man all need water to live not alcoholic drinks.
In agreement with other scholars I understand that the Mesopotamian myth about Adapa's lost chance at obtaining immortality for himself and mankind has been reworked by the Hebrews in the Adam and Eve myth. Adapa 'the man' serves in Eridu the god Ea (Sumerian: Enki), who has given him forbidden wisdom or powerful curses to overpower the lesser gods, in this case, he breaks the wing of the southwind-god, preventing breezes from occurring. The supreme god Anu summons "the man" to his heavenly abode to find out how he was able to overpower a lesser-god. Before going to heaven Ea warns "the man" not to eat or drink anything while at Anu's residence or he will die for it is the food of death. In another myth Ea created "man" to serve him on the earth in Eridu, to work in his fruit tree-garden replacing the Igigi gods who protested the onerous toil and who threatened rebellion. Ea does not want man to become like a god and possess immortality for who will then work in his city-garden and present him its fruits and vegetables to eat in his temple at Eridu ? By obeying his god, Adapa 'the man' is "tricked" out of a chance to BECOME LIKE A GOD and obtain immortality for himself and mankind. All he has obtained in this myth is great wisdom or knowledge, apparently "forbidden knowledge", in that man is able via curses taught him by Ea to overpower the lesser gods. I understand that the Hebrews have merely reworked these themes of a lost chance at immortality, (BECOMING LIKE A GOD) and attainment of "forbidden knowledge" in a god's garden in Eden (Eridu lies in a plain, the Sumerian word for plain being Edin). Note that Enki (Akkadian Ea) in another hymn bears the epithet Ushumgal, meaning "great serpent/dragon" who _walks_ about in the fruit-tree garden he has planted at Eridu, where he creates man to toil in his city garden, replacing the Igigi gods of that onerous task.
Sandar's translation seems _to me_ to capture the notion that Adapa "the man" has knowledge granted him by his god Ea (Enki) making the "man" LIKE A GOD, recalling the Edenic serpent telling Eve she will become "like a god" possessing knowledge:
Anu addresses Tammuz (Sumerian: Dumuzi) and Gizzida (Nin-gish-zida) his gate guards, who in other myths were able to assume the form of a serpent and also were the life force in fruit-trees as vegetation deities:
"What was Ea about to GIVE KNOWLEDGE of all nature to a wretch of a man, TO MAKE HIM LIKE ONE OF US, and with such a name for WISDOM ? But now that he is here what else can we do ? Fetch the bread of life and he shall eat it."
When they brought him the bread of life he would not eat.
When they brought him the water of life he did not drink.
When they brought him a garment he put it on...
Then Anu, the lord of heaven, looked at the man and laughed,
"Ah, Adapa, why did you neither eat or drink, stupid man; perverse mankind; you will never now have eternal life.''My master Ea ordered me, "You shall not eat, you shall not drink."
(p. 171. "Adapa: The Man." Translation by N. K. Sandars. Poems of Heaven and Hell From Ancient Mesopotamia. London. Penguin Books. 1971. paperback)
So, man was offered immortality by Anu, Dumuzi and Ningishzida, but Ea's cunning caused a naive, trusting man to obey his lying god. 'The man's' (Adapa's) acquistion of "forbidden knowledge" was not from eating a forbidden fruit in a god's garden. He was given _illegally_ the 'forbidden knowledge" by Ea "the trickster god", who is famed for playing tricks on his fellow gods as well as mankind. The Hebrews in recasting this myth have 'the man's' God, denying him _knowledge_and_immortality. Ea did deny Adapa "knowledge," as well as immortality: he didn't let Adapa know that the food presented him would bestow immortality MAKING HIM LIKE A GOD (just as the Edenic serpent had predicted: "YOU SHALL NOT DIE...YOU SHALL BECOME LIKE A GOD...").
Adapa is NOT presented as a SINNER like Adam. He is praised as being BLAMELESS, having "pure" hands; he is conscientious and diligent in serving his god. Adapa is portrayed as THE MODEL OF MEN, perhaps this means that all men should emulate him in his blamelessness? Ea has NO COMPLAINT WITH HIS SERVANT (Yahweh having found "fault" with Adam). Adapa is GIVEN WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE by his god, although DENIED IMMORTALITY:
"Wide understanding he [Ea] had perfected for him [Adapa]
to disclose the designs of the land.
To him [Adapa] he [Ea] HAD GIVEN WISDOM; ETERNAL LIFE HE HAD NOT
GIVEN HIM.
Ea, created him as THE MODEL OF MEN.
The SAGE...
The capable, the MOSTWISE...
THE BLAMELESS, THE CLEAN OF HANDS, the ointment priest,
the observer of rites...
Bread and water for Eridu daily he provides,
WITH HIS CLEAN HANDS he arranges the (offering) table."
(p. 76. "Adapa." James B. Pritchard. Editor. The Ancient Near East, An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University. 1958)
Anu was not the only god who possessed the "bread and water of life" (at his heavenly abode) which could bestow immortality if consumed, there was another god who dwelt on the earth at Eridu who also possessed these items, Enki (Ea) the master of Adapa. In another myth Ea (Enki) sends messengers to the underworld to revive (restore back to life) a dead Inanna with "bread and water of life." Inanna before descending into the underworld to visit its ruler tells her servant Ninshubur that if she has not returned to the earth's surface after three days and nights to seekout the help of Enki who will bring about her release.
"Inanna then descends to the nether world...she is turned into a corpse, which is then hung on a stake. Three days and nights pass. On the fourth day, Ninshubur, seeing that his mistress has not returned, proceeds...in accordance with her instructions...Enki...devises a plan to restore her to life. He fashions...two sexless creatures, and ENTRUSTS THEM WITH THE "_FOOD OF LIFE_" AND THE "_WATER OF LIFE_", with which they are to proceed to the nether world...they...sprinkle upon it [the corpse] "the FOOD OF LIFE" AND THE "WATER OF LIFE,"...and thus revive the dead Inanna." (p. 154. "Religion, Rite, and Myth." Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago & London. The University of Chicago Press. 1963. ISBN 0226-45238-7. paperback)
Adapa had three duties, he was a fisherman, a baker and a priest who prepared daily food offerings for Ea/Enki. I understand that the "bread and water" presented Ea by Adapa was in fact "the bread and water of life." The gods must eat earthly food or they will die just like man. The Sumerian mythographers have merely "spiritualized" the water and bread that sustains man into a "magical" food which sustains the gods assuring them their immortality, and if consumed by man will give him immortality like a god too. We know from the Adapa myth that it is most probably bread which is the "food of life" appearing in the Inanna resurrection myth.
Adapa does NOT acquire KNOWLEDGE ILLEGALLY BY DEFYING HIS GOD (Ea/Enki), Adam DOES.
Adapa is "TRICKED" out of a chance for immortality by HIS GOD who warns him NOT TO EAT the "bread and water of death" that will be presented him in Anu's heavenly abode or he will die. ADAPA _OBEYS_ HIS GOD, Adam does NOT OBEY his God. Because Adapa OBEYED his god he loses out on a chance to obtain immortality. Because Adam DISOBEYED his God he loses out too. However a SERPENT is presented as TRICKING ("beguiling") Eve (and thus Adam via his wife) NOT GOD. Adapa is NOT TRICKED BY A SERPENT, but by HIS GOD, Ea (Enki). However, further research on my part has revealed that Enki bore the Sumerian epithet ushumgal meaning "GREAT SERPENT/DRAGON," a mythological beast which walks upon four legs. Another hymn prasies Enki's VENOMOUS WORDS which ensnare and undo "Sinners". A hymn exists praising Ea as the ushumgal who raises up a wonderous tree in his earthly fruit-tree garden in Eridu. I "suspect" that "perhaps" Enki (Ea) the ushumgal or "great serpent/dragon" might be _one of several prototypes_ lurking behind Genesis' portrayal of a Serpent tricking Eve (and Adam) out of chance to obtain immortality. Please click here for the pre-biblical origins of Eden's Serpent from _several prototypes_ appearing in the Mesopotamian myths.
Adam seems almost to be a "parody" of Adapa: Adapa is BLAMELESS, of PURE HANDS, OBEDIENT, NON-DEFIANT, while Adam is BLAMEABLE, NON-OBEDIENT, DEFIANT (he "knew" he wasn't suppossed to eat the forbidden fruit). Yet BOTH OBTAIN KNOWLEDGE (or WISDOM) and BOTH LOSE A CHANCE AT IMMORTALITY VIA TRICKERY. Clearly, for me, the Hebrews are refuting or denying Mesopotamian beliefs about how man came to acquire knowledge and wisdom and lose a chance of attaining immortality via failure to consume the bread and water of life. I reject the Christian Apologist arguments that because the locations and names of people are different and the morals differ too that it is "impossible" that Genesis is a recast of Mesopotamian myths and beliefs regarding the relationship between man and God.
Blenkinsopp (Professor Emeritus of the Old Testament at Notre Dame University) on Atrahasis and Gilgamesh motifs in Genesis (The Atrahasis myth explains how man came to be made by the gods and why they later attempted to destroy him in a world-wide flood):
"...just as Genesis 1-11 as a whole corresponds to the structure of the Atrahasis myth, so the garden of Eden story has incorporated many of the themes of the great Gilgamesh poem." (pp. 65-6. "Human Origins, Genesis 1:1-11:26." Joseph Blenkinsopp. The Pentateuch, An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New York. Doubleday. 1992. ISBN 0-385-41207-X)
Humanist scholars understand that the Hebrews did not create their concepts in isolation, they drew from and were influenced by the religious concepts of their day. My research suggests that the late Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer was correct, the Sumerians had in their literature, two millennia earlier, anticipated many of the motifs and concerns appearing the in the Hebrew Bible, especially the book of Genesis.
Kramer (Professor Emeritus of Assyriology, University of Pennsylvania):
"The literature created by the Sumerians left its deep impress on the Hebrews, and one of the thrilling aspects of reconstructing and translating Sumerian belles-letteres consists in tracing resemblances and parallels between Sumerian and Biblical literary motifs. To be sure, the Sumerians could not have influenced the Hebrews directly, for they had ceased to exist long before the Hebrew people came into existence. But there is little doubt that the Sumerians had deeply influenced the Canaanites, who preceeded the Hebrews in the land that later came to known as Palestine, and their neighbors, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Hurrians and Arameans." (pp.143-4, "The First Biblical Parallels," Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins at Sumer, Twenty-Seven 'Firsts' in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books.[1956] 1959, pbk.)
Kramer's explanation, below, of how the ancient Sumerians sought to explain the creation of the world and man, _for me_ applies just as well to Genesis' fanciful explanation of the creation of the earth and man:
"...modern thinking man is usually prepared to admit the relative character of his conclusions and is skeptical of all absolute answers. Not so the Sumerian thinker; he was convinced that his thoughts on the matter were absolutely correct and that he knew exactly how the universe was created and operated." (p. 82. "Man's First Cosmogony and Cosmology." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 History Begins at Sumer by The Falcon's Wing Press)
"The mythographers were scribes and poets whose main concern was the glorification and exhaltation of the gods and their deeds...The aim of the myth-makers was to compose a narrative poem that would explain one or another of these notions and practices in a manner that would be appealing, insipring, and entertaining. They were not concerned with proofs and arguments directed to the intellect. Their first interest was in telling a story that would appeal to the emotions. Their main literary tools, therefore, were not logic and reason, but imagination and fantasy. In telling their story, these poets did not hesitate to invent motives and incidents patterned on human action which could not possibly have any basis in reasonable and speculative thought. Nor did they hesitate to adopt legendary and folkloristic motifs that had nothing to do with rational cosmological inquiry and inference...The mature and reflective Sumerian thinker had the mental capacity of thinking logically and coherently on any problems, including those concerned with the origin and operation of the universe. His stumbling block was the lack of scientific data at his disposal. Furthermore, he lacked such fundamental intellectual tools as definition and generalization, and had practically no insight into the the processes of growth and development, since the principle of evolution, which seems so obvious now, was entirely unknown to him." (pp. 80-81. "Man's first Cosmogony and Cosmology." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 History Begins at Sumer by The Falcon's Wing Press)
I understand Genesis is a polemic, deliberately challenging Mesopotamian views of the relationship between man and the gods. The challenge sometimes involves "inversions" and transformations of earlier concepts. (1) Gods become _a_god; (2) Failure to eat of the "bread of life" to obtain _immortality_ becomes failure to eat of a "tree fruit" to obtain immortality; (3) An event occuring in heaven -Adapa failing to eat the "bread of life" at Anu's heavenly abode- is placed on the earth in a fruit-tree garden in Eden; (4) The Sumerian portrayal of NAKED men and women as the gods' servants -they denying man the knowledge it is wrong to be naked- becomes Yahweh keeping Adam and Eve in a state of NAKEDNESS as his servants in Eden denying them the knowledge it is wrong to be naked; (5) The gods' intent to keep man _FOREVERMORE_ their agricultural servants working in their earthly city gardens in edin-the-floodplain becomes inverted into a wrathful god EXPELLING man from his garden; (6) The notion that Igigi gods rebelled over the "onerous work conditions" in the Anunnaki gods' earthly gardens reveals _life was NOT idyllic_ in the gods' gardens vs. the Hebrew notion _life was idyllic_ then Adam sinned and was expelled from this idyllic world. So I see the Hebrew account of Adam and Eve and their expulsion as reformattings ("inversions") of Mesopotamian concepts of the relationships between the gods and man.
As noted earlier, above, the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" does _not_ exist as a motif to my knowledge in _any_ Ancient Near Eastern myths other than the Hebrews' Genesis account.
The Hebrew author may possibly have had some dim foggy tradition of a naked man and woman in a gods' garden serving the god in a state of nakedness and dreamed up a fruit-tree conferring knowledge to have the couple realize they are naked after eating of it. As this article points out (below), the Mesopotamian myths do mention eating of a tree to acquire knowledge. In one case the knowledge is sought by the god Enki inorder to decree the fruit's usefulness to man and the gods, in another case, the fruit of the trees gives the goddess Inanna sexual knowledge. My research is directed at attempting to determine the _original_ Mesopotamian themes and motifs and how the Hebrews later transformed them as a challenge to Mesopotamian belief about the relationship between god and man.
The "Bread of Death" and the "Bread of Life" _recast_ as "Fruit of Death" and "Fruit of Life" in Genesis:
Adapa was warned on the earth in Eridu by his god Ea (Enki) NOT to eat "the Bread of Death" or drink "the Water of Death" or he would surely die. In Anu's heaven he is presented "Bread of Life" and "Water of Life" which will give him immortality. I understand that the Hebrews, employing "a new twist," have transformed the Bread of Death into a Fruit of Death which if eaten will cause Adam to die, said fruit being from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The "Bread of Life" offered by Anu has been _recast_ by the Hebrews as a Fruit conferring Immortality if consumed. In other myths we learn that Ea (Enki) who is called an ushumgal or "great serpent/dragon" has created a garden full of fruit-trees for himself near his shrine. He is, in another myth, responsible for creating man of the clay over the apsu in Eridu to replace the toiling Igigi gods who compalin they have no rest from agricultural toil in his city garden. I thus understand that Ea's FRUIT_TREE_GARDEN was known by Terah and Abraham who lived at Ur of the Chaldees (Tel Muqqayar near Eridu) and they (Terah and Abraham) used fruits from these trees TO REPLACE "Bread of Death" and "Bread of Life" in the Hebrew _recasting_ of motifs from the Adapa and the Southwind myth. Enki the ushumgal is praised for the mes-tree he plants in Eridu, it is a "wonderous" tree of cosmic proportions and with its many fruits is considered the equivalent of a grove of fruit trees stretching over the land. I suspect Enki the ushumgal who planted this fabulous tree has been transformed into Eden's serpent who is assocaited with a wonderous fruit tree that confers knowledge on Eve (cf. below for more details).
One gets the notion from Genesis's narrator that by "eating a fruit" of a tree one can "obtain knowledge." This concept appears in Sumerian myths. Kramer has noted that Enki, the god of Wisdom, desires "TO KNOW" about several plants in his wife's garden. His assistant does the actual picking of the plants and presents them to Enki for eating. Later, Enki's enraged wife, Ninhursag, learns what has happened. Having eaten of her plants without her permission, she curses her husband with death. Enki becomes deathly sick and feels the pain of death beginning in his various body parts. Eventually a fox is successful in persuading Ninhursag to relent, and heal Enki. She asks him what part of his body "hurts" and then makes either a god or goddess to heal that part.
Note the parallels to Adam and Eve. Adam does not pick the fruit, another does. A wife is seen as bringing about the downfall of her husband and his impending death for eating forbidden fruit. The important concept, however, is that the god "of Wisdom," before eating each plant, asks "What is this ?" then he "obtains knowledge by eating" the plant. Note also that both Adam and Enki eat of a Tree-
Kramer (Emphasis mine):
"Enki in the marshlands looks about, looks about, he says to his messenger Isimud: "Of the plants their fate I would decree, their 'heart' I WOULD KNOW; What, pray is this (plant) ? What, pray, is this (plant) ?" His messenger Isimud answers: "My king, THE TREE-PLANT," he says to him; He cuts it down for him, HE (Enki) EATS IT." (p.148, Kramer)
Another Sumerian myth about "the Queen of Heaven," Inanna, has her speaking to her brother, Utu the sun-god, to the effect that she has no knowledge about love and sex, she requests that he accompany her in a descent to the earth, to the mountains, where she will eat the various plants there. It is only after having eaten these assorted, un-named herbs including, apparently, Cedar and Cypress trees, that Inanna now possesses knowledge about love and sex in order to perform her wifely functions (in hymns she is "the bride" of Dumuzi and the goddess of Love and of Sex).
Inanna speaking to Utu (Emphasis mine):
"I am unfamiliar with womanly matters...I am unfamiliar with womanly matters, with sexual intercourse...kissing...Whatever exists in the mountains, let us EAT that. Whatever exists in the hills, let us EAT that. In the mountains of herbs, in the mountains of CEDARS, the mountains of CYPRESSES, whatever exists in the mountains, let us EAT that. After the herbs have been EATEN, after the cedars have been EATEN, put your hand in my hand, and then escort me to my house...Escort me to my mother-in-law, to Ninsumun..." ("A shir-namshub to Utu" [Utu F], The Electronic Texts Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford University, England; http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr432f.htm)
It appears to me that Inanna is _EATING _OF_TREES_, Cedars and Cypresses, to acquire knowledge. That is to say "eating of a tree" confers knowledge.
Leick, alluding to the above verses, _also understands_ that Genesis' motif of knowledge being obtained by eating a fruit is indebted to earlier Sumerian myths (emphasis mine):
"Inanna and Utu is a mythical incident in a Sumerian hymn (BM 23631), which explains how Inanna came to be the goddess of sexual love. The goddess asks her brother Utu to help her go down to the kur where various plants and trees are growing. She wants to EAT THEM IN ORDER TO KNOW the secrets of sexuality of which she is yet deprived: 'What concerns women, (namely) man, I do not know. What concerns women: love-making I do not know.' Utu seems to comply and Inanna tastes of the fruit (the same motif is also employed in Enki and Ninhursag and of course in Genesis I) which brings her knowledge." (p. 91. "Inanna and Utu." Gwendolyn Leick. A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology. London. Routledge. 1991 [Leick has a Doctorate in Assyriology from the University of Graz in Austria, and lectures at Richmond College and the University of Glamorgan, United Kingdom])
We see now, that eating of a tree does impart knowledge in the Sumerian texts about Enki and Inanna. Some readers may be wondering just what is it that Inanna is "eating" associated with a Cedar Tree ? The answer: Pine Nuts (or more correctly "Cedar Nuts")! In Middle Eastern cuisine, Pine Nuts are at times sauteed in olive oil and served as a complement or garnish to a number of different dishes in Israel, Syria, and the Lebanon.
Leick on Dumuzi (biblical Tammuz):
"In the mythological texts Dumuzi features primarily in connection with the steppe (Sumerian edinu) and the goddess Inanna..."
(pp.31-33. "Dumuzi." Gwendolyn Leick. A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology. London. Routledge. 1991)
Radau (1913) noted that Dumuzi's bride Inanna (Ishtar) was called "Inanna of edin" and the "Lady of edin":
"...Inanna-edin, Nin-edin..." (p. 42. Note 6. Hugo Radau. Sumerian Hymns and Prayers to the god Dumu-zi or Babylonian Lenten Songs from the Temple Library of Nippur. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania. 1913)
Radau noted that although edin or edin-na meant "desert" (a desert plain or steppe) and was a location associated with Dumuzi the shepherd and his sheepfold, the term was also applied to the netherworld as in edin Arali :
"Edin in the Dumuzi texts signifies always the desert in the sense of the "netherworld"; cf. C. T. xv, 19:20, edin Arali, "the netherworld Arali." (p. 17. Radau)
Dumuzi bore the epithet mulu edin which Radau translates as either "man of edin" or "lord of edin", which appears also as be-el si-rim, "lord of the desert" (p. 17. Radau)
Radau noted three edins: an-edin, ki-edin (pp. 2, 29) and arali-edin (p.17) appear in Sumerian texts. Kramer had noted that an-ki meant "heaven-earth" (an= heaven, ki= earth). I "suspect" accordingly that the Sumerians had "three" edins, a heavenly edin (an-edin), an earthly edin (ki-edin) and an underworld edin (arali edin). Inanna has been translated to mean "lady of heaven," and she is also called nin-edin "lady of edin," perhaps she is the lady of all three edins as she dwelt in heaven as 'the lady of heaven", married Dumuzi the shepherd on the earth and was a prisoner of the underworld until Dumuzi as her surrogate effected her release ?
From the above texts it appears that Inanna, who ate of Cedar and Cypress trees to acquire knowledge about love-making to perform her duties as Dumuzi's bride, was also associated with an earthly Eden, a desert-plain/steppe (Sumerian edin, edinnu, edin-na). To the degree that Eve eats of a tree in Genesis, in a garden _located_in_ Eden, and Inanna bears the epithet or title "Inanna of edin" or "nin (lady) of edin" as a wife of the "lord of edin" (mulu edin) Dumuzi, could these Mesopotamian concepts have been "recast" as a Adam and Eve, a man and wife in Eden ? That is to say Inanna, the "lady of edin" is a possible prototype of the biblical Eve, a lady in Eden, both having eaten of a tree inorder to acquire knowledge.
To the degree that the Inanna and Utu myth understands that the goddess OBTAINS KNOWLEDGE BY EATING OF A CEDAR TREE, it is worth noting here that Ezekiel understands that Eden possesses CEDAR TREES (Ez 31:8-9). I have identified some motifs from the Epic of Gilgamesh as being borrowed, transformed and reformatted in Genesis' mythical garden of Eden account. In the Gilgamesh Epic the ONLY motif regarding FORBIDDEN ACCESS TO TREES, is when Enkidu leads Gilgamesh to the Cedar mountain guarded by Huwawa, a half-human monster, who denies access to these trees by humans. The reason why Enkidu can lead Gilgamesh to these trees is that he frequented the mountain in the course of his wanderings over Edin (the steppe) with his animal companions. Huwawa is slain by our heroes, and they cut down the Cedar trees to use them for timber at Uruk. Perhaps the motif of "forbidden access to trees" appearing in Genesis is an echo, recalling the episode with Huwawa (sometimes rendered Khuwawa or Khumbaba). Did the motif of _forbidden trees being guarded_ by Huwawa come to be transformed into Genesis' cherubbim and Ezekiel's cherub ? Perhaps Ezekiel's notion of Cedars in God's mountain-top garden recalls the forbidden cedar mountain associated with the Sumerian Edin ?
Ezekiel asociates the garden of God with a mountain (Cedars/Pines tend to grow on mountains):
Ezekiel 28: 13, 14, 16 RSV
"You [the king of Tyre] were IN EDEN, THE GARDEN OF GOD...With an anointed GUARDIAN cherub I placed you; YOU WERE ON THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD...you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out..."
Ezekiel 31: 3, 8-9 RSV
"Behold, I will liken you [Pharaoh] to a cedar in Lebanon...THE CEDARS in the GARDEN OF GOD could not rival it...all the trees of EDEN envied it, that were in the GARDEN OF GOD."
Leick's "pine forest" is the cedar mountain :
"Gilgamesh said to his friend, Enkidu, my friend, your mother a gazelle, and your father a wild donkey sired you, their milk was from onagers, they (?) reared you, and cattle made you familiar with all the pastures. Enkidu's paths [led to] the Pine Forest..." (p. 91. "Gilgamesh VIII." Stephanie Dalley. Myths From Mesopotamia: Creation, the flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Oxford & New York. Oxford University Press. [1989] reprint 1989. ISBN 0-19-281789-2. paperback)
The Genesis account portrays Adam and Eve as naked and unashamed, rather like little children, but after eating of the "Tree of Knowledge" they realize they are naked and cover themselves, they also later on have sex, resulting in the births of Abel and Cain. That is to say, it is AFTER having eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that they THEN engage in sexual intercourse, which recalls somewhat what happen to Inanna, she eating of a Cedar and Cyrpress tree to acquire sexual knowledge. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the wild hairy man of the Steppe (Sumerian: edin, Akkadian: edinu) called Enkidu, has SEX with a priestess called Shamhat, who disrobes near a watering hole visited by him and his animal companions. After 6 days and 7 nights of copulation he rises to rejoin his animal companions but they flee from him. In bewilderment he turns to the temple prostitute and she asks him , "Why seek the companionship of animals, he NOW "possesses knowledge like a God", he sould live with men in cities". She gives him "food fit for a god" and clothes him, and they leave the steppe or plain (steppe/plain in Sumerian being edin) for Uruk.
In the Mesopotamian myths man was made to till and work the earthly "garden of the Gods." The purpose of this garden was to provide the gods dwelling in earthly cities (as well as heaven) with food. Thus the food raised in earthly irrigation-fed gardens is "food fit for a god," as man's _FIRST exposure_ to "garden-grown food" was when the gods made him to till and work THEIR earthly garden.
Enkidu who roamed with animals for companions now has been "civilized" via sex by a woman. She has provided him garden-produced food, food man was instructed to plant, harvest and present to the gods, Enkidu is clothed and leaves edin (the steppe) with the temple prositute. I understand that the Hebrews in Genesis' garden of Eden have merely transformed and reworked the earlier Mesopotamian myths about how and why the gods came to make man and how he acquired food fit for a god, and forbidden knowledge (sexual or carnal knowledge, and the wearing of garments like the gods); I thus understand that Enkidu has been tranformed into Adam and Shamhat into Eve; the hunter who brought her to edin-the-plain to entrap him has become Yahweh-Elohim, the Hebrew God.
Genesis' serpent tells Eve her eyes will be opened and she will be like a god ( Please click here for my article identifying the Edenic serpent's prototypes as probably being Enki, Ningishzida and Dumuzi/Tammuz in the "Adapa and the Southwind" myth which was the Mesopotamian explanation for how man came to loose a chance to obtain immortality for himself):
Ge 3:4 RSV
"But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
After eating the fruit Adam and Eve's eyes are opened, they realize they are naked and clothe themselves with aprons made of fig leaves (Ge 3:7)
The opening lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh, suggest for me, themes mirrored in Genesis' Garden of Eden myth concerning Adam and Eve having hidden or secret knowledge revealed to them, they SEEING that they are naked after eating a fruit. Gilgamesh SAW everything, he KNEW all things, WISDOM is his, HIDDEN THINGS are REVEALED. These motifs appearing in the very first lines of the Epic appear to me to have been recast in the Adam and Eve scenario (Adam being a recast of Enkidu and Gilgamesh and Eve being the temple harlot Shamhat). Gilgamesh seeks knowledge on how to obtain immortality from the only human to attain it, the Mesopotamian Noah called variously Ziusudra, Utnapishtim or Atrahasis. It was Enki or Ea (Aya) who warned him of the Flood and to build an Ark. It was Anu and Elilla (Enlil) who bestowed immortality on Ziusudra and wife after the Flood, setting them in an earthly paradise called Dilmun "at the mouth of the rivers," (the Tigris and Euphrates), perhaps present day Qurnah where modern Arab traditions locate Eden.
Heidel (Emphasis mine) :
"He who SAW everything within the confines of the land;
He who KNEW all things and was versed in everything
...WISDOM...
He SAW SECRET THINGS and REVEALED HIDDEN THINGS...
He brought intelligence [knowledge] of the days before the flood..."
p. 16. Alexander Heidel. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. 1946, 1949. Reprint 1993. pbk.)
I understand that Mesopotamian myths about the God of Wisdom, Enki have been reformatted and lie behind -in part- the Edenic myth. Below, are excerpts on Enki's planting on the earth a wonderous garden with fruit-bearing trees, which I suspect came to be later transformed into Eden.
Enki builds a temple at Eridu on the banks of the Euphrates for himself. He lives in the depths of the Abzu (The Abyss or freshwater ocean under the earth, source of freshwater streams for irrigation). He plants a fruit orchard or garden for his temple. The myths understood Enki was the source of the earth's freshwater rivers (His semen is the freshwater filling rivers and irrigation canals). In the biblical Eden, a river rises in the midst of a garden filled with fruit trees, tended by Adam, this water source (ed), apparently a spring, becomes the source of four rivers, the Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates. Evidently, Enki's fruit-tree garden has been transformed into Eden. And the freshwater Abzu, where Enki lives becomes the spring (ed) in Eden from which the four rivers arise which encompass the Edenic world.
Genesis has suggested for some commentators that Man was a vegetarian before the Flood, but after that event God allowed man to consume flesh and consequently all animal flesh came to fear man. Some Mesopotamian myths portray man as a naked animal wandering with other wild animals in the edin (the desert-like steppe or plain of Mesopotamia), EATING GRASS. He is NOT portrayed eating animal flesh. He also drinks water with the animals at watering holes in the wilderness of edin. No animal offers harm to man in this world ( cf. the so-called Eridu Genesis myth). I suspect that Genesis is recalling the Mesopotamian myths of man originally being a vegetarian (eating grass) but "recasting" this motif as man eating "of fruit-trees" (Ge 2:9) and other "green plants" (Ge 9:3) in God's garden in Eden.
As regards Genesis' notion of the animals "fearing" man, this motif does appear in Mesopotamian myth. In the Epic of Gilagmesh, the naked hairy wild man of the steppe, Enkidu (who has no father or mother like Adam), roams with his animal companions, eating grass with them and drinking at their watering holes. After 6 days and 7 nights lying in the sexual embrace of a temple harlot called Shamhat brought from Uruk to seduce him by a hunter, Enkidu, after sating his sexual lusts, turns to rejoin his animals friends and resume their companionship, they flee from him in fear. He has lost their trust, he has "become human" through sexual exposure to the temple harlot, who represents civilized mankind who wears clothing, dwells in cities and who raises food crops in the gods' city gardens. Man in the cities is also a "flesh-eater", he raises cattle, sheep and goats for milk and cheese and he slaughters these animals for meat. Enkidu's animal companions had come to fear civilized city-dwelling man because a hunter from Uruk had come to their steppe setting up traps and pits and snares to capture them, kill them, and sell their hides and flesh in Uruk. Earlier, Enkidu to protect his animal friends filled in the pits, and tore loose the rope snares set by the hunter, thus the reason the hunter brings Shamhat to entrap him with sex and separate him from his animal friends, the hunter having been told by Gilgamesh that once Enkidu has sex with womankind the animals will reject him as their companion.
I understand that Genesis is refuting, denying and challenging the Mesoptamian myths regarding the origins of man and of the gods and their relationship. Genesis DENIES that man in the beginning ate grass, instead he eats tree-fruits and other "green plants" in a god's garden. Wild animals and savage naked man are denied access to the gods' city gardens for foraging. Genesis DENIES that a sexual relationship between a man and a woman (Enkidu and the harlot) causes animals to flee from man in dread and fear. Just as God came to realize the animals were not fit companions for Adam and made Eve, so Enkidu learns turns aside from his animal friends to find companionship with Shamhat. She shares her clothes with Enkidu, teaching him it is wrong to be naked, and clothed they both leave edin the steppe to dwell in Uruk.
Ge 2:9, 16 RSV
And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow EVERY TREE that is pleasant to the sight AND GOOD FOR FOOD...You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.
Ge 9:3 RSV
The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I GAVE YOU THE GREEN PLANTS, I give you everything.
The garden of Dilmun is another source of Edenic imagery. The Mesopotamian "Noah," Ziusudra and wife, have become Adam and Eve. They were placed "at the mouth of the rivers" _in the East_ where the sun rises. Perhaps this statement "mouth of the rivers" became the justification for having four streams arising from one source, a spring or fountain in Edin, the plain ? Strangely, Kramer understands pi-narate to mean "source of the rivers," but Speiser understands that this means "mouth of the rivers," (cf. p. 179. E. A. Speiser. "The Rivers of Paradise." Richard S. Hess & David Toshio Tsumura, editors. I Studied Inscriptions Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11. Winona Lake, Indiana. Eisenbrauns. 1994. ISBN 0-931464-88-9). The Tigris and Euphrates do bisect the great Mesopotamian plain, creating lush marshlands near Qurnah and Basra in Lower Mesopotamia. I understand Dilmun to be "East of" Shuruppak and Uruk, assuming that Ziusudra in stating it lie in "the east" is speaking of East of he and Gilgamesh's original homes. That is to say, the western border of Dilmun is Edin the plain or steppe, including the marshlands east of Shuruppak and Uruk, and Dilmun's eastern border is the Zagros mountain range source of precious stones and minerals as well as where the sun rises each day as portrayed on Mesopotamian cylinder seals. The "sea" Gilgamesh crossed to get to Dilmun is the Tam-tu, or "sea-lands," the marshes east of Shuruppak, Uruk and Eridu (Ancient inscriptions stating Eridu lay on "the seacoast").
Professor Cassuto argued that Eden probably originally meant "a place well-watered" which would be an apt description of Eden's spring (Hebrew: ed) that possessed enough water to form four great world rivers. Eridu is not only located on the Euphrates, it is also near the great marshes of Lower Mesopotamia, and in myths Enki is portrayed punting his reed boat in these marshes singing their praise. The watery nature of the area, a great river, plus marshlands and fens, seem to me to qualify for "a place well-watered." Perhaps via assonance, or similarity in sound, Sumerian Edin, Akkadian/Babylonian Edinu became `dn, "a place well-watered" in NorthWest Semitic ?
Cassuto on Eden:
"In Eden, in the place called Eden. The suggested explanations of the name that connect it with the Sumero-Akkadian word edinu ('steppe-land, wilderness') or with the expression ha` okhelim lema`adhannim ['those who feasted on dainties'] (Lam. iv.5), are unacceptable: the first, because it does not fit the context; the second because the stem `adhan in question corresponds to the Arabic ghadana spelt with a ghayin whereas in Ugaritic we find the stem `dn, with an ordinary `ayin, whose signification is well-suited to our theme. In the Epic of Baal, for example, it is stated (Tablet II AB, V, lines 68-69): wn `p `dn mtrb b`l y`dn `dn [to be rendered according to some authorities: 'and now also the moisture of his rain/ Baal shall surely make moist: y`dn `dn are derived from the root `dn] in connection with the watering of the ground. In this connotation it is possible to find the root `adhan also in Hebrew: and thou givest them to drink from the river of thy watering [`adhanekha; E.V. Thy delights] (Psa. Xxxvi 9); and in rabbinic language" rain waters, saturates, fertilizes and refreshes [me`adden] (B. Kethuboth 10 b); 'Just as the showers come down upon herbs and refresh [me`addenim] them', etc. (Sifre Deut. 32:2). The etymological meaning of the name Eden will, accordingly be : a place that is well watered throughout; and thus we read further on: that it was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord (xiii 10)." (pp.107-108, Vol.1. Umberto Cassuto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Part One. Jerusalem. Magnes Press, The Hebrew University. 1953- 1989. ISBN 965-223-480X )
Professor Wenham on Eden:
"It is simpler to associate Eden with its homonym "pleasure, delight" (2 Sam 1:24; Jer 51:34, Ps 36:9). Whenever Eden is mentioned in Scripture it is pictured as a fertile area, a well-watered oasis with large trees growing ( cf. Isa 51:3; Ezek 31:9, 16, 18; 36:35, etc.), a very attractive prospect in the arid East. (For confirmation of this interpretation, ct. the newly discovered old Aramaic root `dn, "enrich," [A.R. Millard, VT 34 919840 103-6]). This lush fecundity was a sign of God's presence in and blessing on Eden." (p.61, Gordon J. Wenham. Word Biblical Commentary, Genesis 1-15. Vol. 1. Waco, Texas. Word Books. 1987. ISBN 0-8499-0200-2)
Professor Kramer on Enki creating a fruit-tree garden near his shrine in Eridu:
"Enki filled the building with lyres, drums and every other kind of musical instruments. Surrounding the temple was a delightful garden full of fruit trees, with birds singing all around and frolicking carp playing among the reeds in the streams....sings the praises of the sea-house. Then Enki raises the city of Eridu from the abyss and makes it float over the water like a lofty mountain. Its green fruit-bearing gardens he fills with birds; fishes too he makes abundant." (Samuel Noah Kramer. Sumerian Mythology. West Port, Connecticut. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1988)
Professors Kramer and Meier on the fabulous mes-tree he plants in Eridu, which possesses fruits. Enki also creates man to replace the Igigi gods to toil on their behalf in his Eridu garden.
"Lord who walks nobly on heaven and earth, self-reliant, father Enki...king, who turned out the MES-TREE in the Abzu, raised it up over all the lands, GREAT USHUMGAL WHO PLANTED IT IN ERIDU -its shade spreading over heaven and earth - A GROVE OF FRUIT TREES stretching over the land...Enki...lord of wisdom...you have given the people a place to live...you have looked after them, you have made sure they follow their shepherd...Enki, king of the Abzu, celebrates his own magnificence - as is right: I am lord. I am the one whose word endures. I am eternal. (p. 39. "Enki and Inanna: The Organization of the Earth and Its Cultural Processes." Samuel Noah Kramer & John Meier. Myths of Enki, The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989)
Kramer _denied_ the notion held by some scholars that the mes tree had no fruit (cf. p. 216 note 6 to p. 39. Samuel Noah Kramer & John Meier. Myths of Enki, The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989). He understood that the above statement about "a grove of fruit trees stretching over the land" was a reference to the mes-tree. If I am understanding this verse correctly, _it appears to me_ that the mes-tree is being likened to being "the equivalent" of a whole grove of fruit trees stretching over the land. That is to say it is a huge tree of cosmic proportions, its roots are in the depths of the abzu/apsu or underearth freshwater ocean where Enki dwells and its top is in the clouds. This, of course, is poetic hyperbole and exaggeration, but nonetheless, the mes-tree probably is indeed an unknown species bearing fruits and it is planted by Enki (Akkadian Ea) who bears the Sumerian epithet ushumgal "great serpent-dragon." I suspect that the Bible's notion of a walking talking serpent associated with a "wonderous" fruit tree that can confer knowledge on Eve is a recast of Enki the ushumgal who planted the fabulous mes-tree at Eridu. The mes-tree's wonderous fruit becomes the fruit from the Bible's Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that brings death to Adam and Eve, replacing the "bread of death" motif in the Adapa and the Southwind myth.
Of interest _to me_ is a passage from The Epic of Gilgamesh speaking of "a garden of the plain," as plain is "edin" in Sumerian, perhaps we what we have here is the earliest or "_first_" mention of a "garden of edin" ? Also of interest is the presence of trees in this "garden of edin," the biblical garden of Eden being famous for its trees.
Kramer (emphasis mine):
"To the...GARDEN OF THE PLAIN he [Gilgamesh] directed his step,
The...-tree, the willow, the apple-tree, the box-tree, the
...-tree he felled there."
(p. 178. "Slaying of the Dragon [Huwawa or Humbaba], the First St. George." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer, Twenty-seven "Firsts" In Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959. paperback)
The Sumerians and later Babylonians and Assyrians all had a concern about the Who, What, Why, Where, When and How of Man. They wanted to know how did man come to be created by the gods ? What was man's purpose in life ? Why did he experience death ? Was there ever a time that he had a chance for obtaining immortality ? What happened after death ?
All of these issues are addressed in Genesis, but not to the satisfaction of some moderns. We must remind ourseves of the adage that a composition reflects the age in which it was composed. I have suggested elsewhere that Genesis is a composition of the 6th century BCE (the Exile), but incorporating some pre-exilic notions preserved in Sumerian (3rd millennia BCE) as well as Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian religious literature of the 9th-6th centuries BCE.
Now to address the questions of Who, What, Why, Where, When and How.
The Mesopotamians understood man had been created to be a servant or slave to the gods, to work the earth as an agriculturalist (Adam is an agriculturalist), making and clearing drainage ditches, growing and harvesting food, and then presenting it to the gods to eat via sacrifices. In making man, the lesser gods, called the Igigi, obtained freedom from their earthly labors (their toil being taken over by man), they entered into "the resting" of the greater gods or Annunaki.
According to "some" Mesopotamian myths (most specifically, "the Epic of Atrahasis") there were two sets of earth-dwelling gods living in cities they had made for themselves in edin-the-plain of Sumer, with irrigated gardens which they had planted for their sustenance. The Igigis' purpose was to set-up and maintain via planting, weeding, tilling, and dredging irrigation ditches, gardens for the Annunaki, in which were grown fruits and vegetables.
That is to say, BEFORE man's creation there EXISTED a _"garden of the gods"_ in Lower Mesopotamia, who's purpose was to provide fruits and vegetables for earth-dwelling gods, the Annuaki and Igigi. When the Igigi complained of their toil in this garden and threatened rebellion, _THEN_ man was "created to replace them," he would till and care for the God's Garden. The myths contradict each other as to man's creation. One myth has man being made by Enki to tend and till _his_ garden at Eridu to replace the Igigi while another myth has man being created to replace the Igigi at Nippur who work in a garden belonging to Enlil, Enki's brother. In any case, both myths agree somewhat with Genesis, man was created to work in the garden of _a_ god (Enlil or Enki), which had been planted _before_ man's creation.
Note the parallels with Adam and Eve, they are placed in a GOD'S Garden, to "till and keep it."
Professor Foster:
"When the gods were man, they did forced labor, they bore drudgery. Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods, the forced labor was heavy, the misery too much: The seven (?) great Anunna-gods were burdening the Igigi gods with forced labor...[The gods] were digging watercourses, canals they opened, the life of the land...They heaped all the mountains. [ years] of drudgery, [ ] the vast marsh. They counted years of drudgery, [ and] forty years too much ! [ ] forced labor they bore night and day. They were complaining, denouncing, muttering down in the ditch, "Let us face up to our foreman the prefect, He must take off this our heavy burden upon us ! (pp.52-3, "The Story of the Flood," [The Atrahasis version]." Benjamin R. Foster. From Distant Days, Myths Tales and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Bethesda, Maryland, CDL Press, 1995, ISBN 1-883053-09-9, paperback)
The Anunna gods acknowledge the burden of the Igigi and their "clamor":
"Ea made ready to speak, and said to the gods [his brethren], what calumny do we lay to their charge ? Their forced labor was heavy. [their misery too much] ! Every day [ ] the outcry [was loud, we could hear the clamor]. There is [ ] [Belet-ti, the mid-wife], is present. Let her create, then a human, a man, let him bear the yoke...[let man assume the drud]gery of god...She summoned the Anunna, the great gods...Mami made ready to speak, and said to the great gods, "You ordered me the task and I have completed (it) ! You have slaughtered the god, along with his inspiration. I have done away with your heavy forced labor, I have imposed your drudgery on man. You bestowed (?) clamor upon mankind..." (pp.58-59, Foster)
The Igigi gods in gratitude fall at her feet, kissing them, she having freed them from toil, and declare a new name for her "Mistress of All the gods" (Belet-kala-ili).
A CAVEAT ("WARNING"):
As can be seen from Professor Foster's above translation the Igigi gods are objecting to the making of watercourses and canals, NOWHERE does the text say they are working in the Anunnaki gods' city-gardens ! So, why am I claiming the Igigi worked in the Anunnaki gods' gardens ?
I am stepping back and looking at the "big picture" ! We have two sets of gods dwelling in cities they have made for themselves on the earth, the senior gods called the Anunnaki or Anunna and the junior gods called the Igigi. The Anunnaki are making the Igigi do the work. What is the purpose of canals and watercourses in Mesopotamia ? Its not to water the grass lawns near the temples. The cities of Lower Mesopotamia are habitable only if a food-supply is available for the occupants.
The watercourses, canals and irrigation ditches MAKE POSSIBLE THE CITY-GARDENS OF THE GODS. Thus I INFER that when the Anunnaki sit down to a meal, they as the senior gods are not out in the hot sun planting the crops, nor are they hoeing out the weeds, nor are they harvesting the crops, nor are they preparing the crops for the table. The Anunnaki are eating the garden-produce, and someone has to make all this "happen."
According to the myths Man has not yet been created, so that leaves the Igigi gods as bearing these burdens. That is to say it is my understanding that they not only are digging-out watercourses and canals, but irrigation ditches, and planting, hoeing and harvesting the crops to feed the Anunnaki.
When it is at last decided to REPLACE THE IGIGI WITH MAN, it is man who will now dig watercourses, canals, irrigation ditches and plant the crops, hoe them of weeds and harvest them and present them as food in the temples and shrines to the Anunnaki and the Igigi. Hence the reason I understand that the Igigi were burdened with toil in the gods' gardens. The gods' gardens cannot exist without water from man-made watercourses, canals and irrigation ditches.
Both the Mesopotamian and Hebrew myths have the gods creating man to "work in and care for THEIR garden." Hence the reason Adam and Eve, when they make their FIRST appearance on the earth, it is _in a Garden_ belonging to a God. The Hebrews have _omitted or transformed_ a number of motifs in the Mesopotamian myths as to why and how man came to be made, his purpose was to till and maintain an earthly garden belonging to the gods in heaven, for their sustenance. In one Mesopotamian myth (The Atrahasis Epic) the gods denied man "any" food from "their" garden and were outraged when one of their kind called Enki or Ea (pronounced Aya or Ayya) broke "ranks" and allowed man to eat of the harvest for his sustenance (cf. my article on the Prebiblical Origins of the Hebrew Sabbath for the details). The gods were also outraged to later discover that Enki, the god of Wisdom, had given man "forbidden knowledge," specifically having taught him powerful incantations and curses to use against some of the lesser gods. I understand that a Mesopotamian Enki lurks behind the portrayal of Yahewh in Genesis 1-11 along with the Late Professor Kramer.
Man's purpose in life then, was to serve the gods, to keep their bellies full. Some may wonder why does Genesis open with God having created a Garden of Eden and providing it with fruit trees, telling Man not to eat of two trees in particular. To the degree that Mesopotamian myths claim that the gods MUST eat earthly food, and personnally plant and harvest it, it would make sense from a Mesopotamian perspective for a god to "plant" a garden of fruit trees to eat therefrom for himself, allowing man as his servant to also partake of the earthly harvest.
Black and Green on the Mesopotamian gods making man to be their servant, to feed them :
"The widespread Mesopotamian idea of man having been created to act as the servant of the gods meant that it was considered necessary to feed and clothe the gods constantly and to make them presents. Among these various sorts of offerings, the term sacrifice refers especially to the killing of an animal. Exactly the same food and drinks were offered to the gods as were consumed by humans, with perhaps more emphasis on the luxury items: frequent fresh meat, fish, cream, honey, cakes and the best sorts of beer." (p. 158. "Sacrifice and Offering." Jeremy Black & Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, An Illustrated Dictionary. London. The British Museum Press. 1992)
"Unlike the Greek Olympians with their ambrosia and nectar, the Mesopotamian gods had no special foods which were the privilege of divinity. However, in the story of the sage Adapa, Anu (An) decides that Adapa shall be offered the 'bread of life' and the 'water of life' when he visits heaven, and it is clear from the context that to have consumed these would have conferred (eternal) life. In fact, believing them to be the bread and water of death, he declines and loses his chance of immortality. The gods lived on the sacrifice of sheep, fish, cereals and oil which mankind was obliged to offer them regularly: the same foods were consumed by man himself." (p. 85. "Food and Drink of the Gods." Jeremy Black & Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, An Illustrated Dictionary. London. The British Museum Press. 1992)
"In Mesopotamia, it was man's duty and the reason for his creation to take care of the material needs of the gods, which included the provision of food...Animal sacrifice, therefore, was regarded as the literal means of satisfying the gods' appetites...The sheep seems to have been the primary animal of such sacrifice, although goats and cattle were also sacrificed...The sacrifice of a goat (called 'man substitute') was used in some rituals to divert sickness or portended evil from individual persons." (pp. 30-32. "Animal Sacrifice." Jeremy Black & Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, An Illustrated Dictionary. London. The British Museum Press. 1992)
According to the Adapa myth, Man, in the form of Adapa, a priest serving Enki at Eridu in southern Mesopotamia in edin-the-floodplain, had an opportunity once, to obtain immortality by consuming food and drink offered to him by Anu in heaven. Being forewarned by his god, Enki, not to eat anything in heaven or he would surely die, Adapa passed up the chance at immortality. Because of his obedience to his god, he lost out on immortality for himself and mankind. Enki is portrayed as "giving man (Adapa) wisdom and knowledge, but denying him immortality," for he wants man to serve him. The Hebrews evidently transformed this motif into man "disobeying his God" and eating the forbidden fruit, thus loosing a chance at immortality.
Heidel, on Adapa-
"He had given him wisdom, (but) he had not given him eternal life." (p.148, "The Adapa Legend," Alexander Heidel. The Babylonian Genesis. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. [1942, 1951], 1993. ISBN 0-226-32399-4 pbk)
It is of note that no "fruit tree" appears as a motif in the Adapa Legend. It was NOT a "fruit" from a tree that Adapa failed to consume, it was "bread and water of life," the very items he prepared daily at Eridu for his god Enki to consume (he is described as a fisherman and baker and prepares daily for his god, pure water, bread and fish). But, we must allow the Hebrews some artistic freedom, what we moderns today call "creative artistic license" or "artistic interpretation", in reformating and transforming the earlier concepts and motifs into a new story with a different understanding of the relationship between Man, God and the Cosmos, as noted by Lambert who made the following observation:
"The authors of ancient cosmologies were essentially compilers. Their originality was expressed in new combinations of old themes, and in new twists to old ideas."
(p.107, W.G. Lambert, "A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis," [1965], in Richard S. Hess & David T. Tsumra, Editors. I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood. Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1994)
Professor James (1888-1972, Anthropologist in the field of Religion and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of London)understood that Tammuz and Shamash (the sun-god) were guardians of the Kiskanu tree at Eridu, which he suggests is a possible prototype of Eden's Tree of life:
"In the myth of Adapa Tammuz and Ningishzida are represented as the doorkeepers of heaven, very much as Tammuz and Shamash are said to have been the guardians of the kiskanu-tree in Eridu which had the appearance of lapis-lazuli and was erected on the Apsu and rooted in the underworld." (p. 10. E. O. James. The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. Leiden, the Netherlands. E. J. Brill Publishers. 1966 & 1997)
James understood that near Eridu the Tigris and Euphrates emptied into the sea in antiquity. Of interest here is that Dilmun, thought to be an Edenic prototype by some scholars, is portrayed as lying at "the mouths of the rivers" (the Euphrates and Tigris ?) in the Epic of Gilgamesh:
"At Eridu at the head of the Persian Gulf were formerly the two rivers flowed into the sea and gradually produced the alluvial fertile delta, the human race was said to have been fashioned from clay by the sky-god Anu and endowed with the breath of life by Enki, the lord of the watery deep, whose temple 'the house of wisdom', was erected there. In its grove (engurra) stood the sacred kiskanu-tree, having the appearance it was said of lapis-lazuli and stretching towards the subterranean apsu where Enki had his abode. Being the almost certainly the black pine of the Babylonian paradise it was believed to have derived its vitalizing power from the waters of life and made operative in the tree of life." (p. 13. E. O. James. The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. Leiden, the Netherlands. E. J. Brill Publishers. 1966 & 1997)
Sandars on Tammuz and Ningishzida (Gizzida) as heavenly tree constellations or stars :
"Unlike Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, who won eternal life for himself through his obedience to a god, in Adapa mankind was given the chance of eternal life and lost it through obedience to a god...Of the two lesser gods, Tammuz and Gizzida, who stand at the east gate of heaven, Tammuz has descended from Dumuzi, and Gizzida was a god of healing sometimes connected with the underworld. Gizzida was called Lord of the Tree of Truth, as Dumuzi-Tammuz was Lord of the Tree of Life -trees that were stars planted in heaven." (p. 167. "Introduction to Adapa: the Man." N. K. Sandars. Poems of Heaven and Hell From Ancient Mesopotamia. London. Penguin Books. 1971. Paperback)
Is it possible that Genesis' two trees planted in the Garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, may be reflections of Tammuz and Ningishzida as two heavenly trees (they being vegetation deities) ? Did the "east gate" of Anu's heaven, guarded by Tammuz and Ningishzida come to be transformed into Eden "in the east," and the two gods became associated with the Cherubim, the two winged sphinxes frequently portrayed with sacred trees in Canaanite and Phoenician art forms of the Iron Age (ca. 1200-587 BCE) ? According to Professor Jacobsen Dumuzi/Tammuz was the life-force in the date palm which caused it to bear fruit (dates) while Nin-gish-zida was the life-force in trees, his name meaning "lord of the good tree." So, in a sense Adapa was presented food ("bread and water of life") which would give him immortality on Anu's behalf by two tree-gods !
According to the late Professor Jacobsen (Professor Emeritus of Assryriology, Harvard University), Ningishzida means "Lord of the Good Tree," and the trees' roots are serpent symbols and this god is "the life-force" within the tree itself. That is to say this god is a vegetation deity:
"...the god Ningishzida, "Lord of the good tree," who represented the numinous power of trees to draw nourishment and to grow, had as his basic form that of the tree's trunk and roots; however, the winding roots, embodiments of living supernatural power, free themselves from the trunk and become live serpents entwined around it." (p. 7. Thorkild Jacobsen. The Treasures of Darkness, A History of Mesopotamian Religion.. New Haven & London. Yale University Press. 1976)
Tammuz or Dumuzi (the latter being his Sumerian name) is also a vegetation deity (like Ningishzida), associated with the numinous power in the date clusters of date palms according to Jacobsen:
"Correspondingly, the bridegroom, Amaushumgalanna, represents what is to be stored in the storehouse. As indicated by his name, which means "the one great source of the date clusters," he is the personified power in the one enormous bud which the date palm sprouts each year, and from which issue the new leaves, flowers and fruits. Dumuzi-Amausshumgalanna is thus a personification of the power behind the yearly burgeoning of the palm and its producing its yield of dates; he is, in fact, the power in and behind the date harvest." (p. 36. Thorkild Jacobsen. The Treasures of Darkness, A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven & London. Yale University Press. 1976).
Note: Not all scholars agree with Jacobsen's rendering of Ama.ushumgal,an.na as meaning "the one great source of the date clusters." Instead they (Langdon and Leick) render "the mother is a heavenly dragon," please click here for further details.
In later Jewish texts, the Apocrypha, the tree of life in the garden of Eden is associated with a date palm.
Surprisingly Nin-gish-zida is portrayed at times as a serpent-dragon on four legs, with two wings and a pair of horns, at other times he is human with serpent-dragon heads erupting from his shoulders. That is to say Nin-gish-zida is associated with the numen of trees and serpents. In one myth Tammuz/Dumuzi flees his bonds and captors by asking the sun-god Shamash to take pity on him and turn him into a serpent, which he does and he slithers out of his bonds. Tammuz/Dumuzi is also associated with the Apsu/Absu or abyss where Enki dwells. So, Adapa was offered the "bread and water of life" by two deities who were associated in various ways with trees and serpents. Could these associations have been recast as Eden's serpent and the trees of Knowledge and of Life ? In another hymn Enki is described as being a great dragon who "stands" in the fruit-tree garden of Eridu (the Greek word dragon means "large serpent") so Enki is associated with serpents and trees too.
If Jacobsen is correct about Tammuz and Ningishzida's associations with serpents and date palms perhaps this why the Hebrews have the notion of a serpent associated with a tree telling man he will not die and will be like a god if he eats the fruit forbidden him by his God ? Adapa's warning from Enki was given at Eridu, where a fruit-tree garden exists that Enki planted for himself. Adapa is his servant and bakes bread and prepares fish (he is also a fisherman) and fresh water to present daily to Enki. I suspect Enki's fruit-tree garden has become Eden's garden of fruit trees. Even today, this region is famed since antiquity for its many date palm plantations, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which were associated with Eden in Genesis. Eridu lies in Sumer, which lies in Lower Mesopotamia, which is a great flood-plain. The Sumerian word for "plain" is edin or e.din (Akkadian/Babylonian edinu). Thus Enki's fruit-tree garden planted by him next to his shrine in edin-the-plain where he warned Adapa not to eat the food or drink the water offered by Anu for he would surely die, becomes the Garden of Eden and Yahweh-Elohim warning Adam and Eve.
Adapa's refusal to consume the "bread and water of life" summoned by Anu and presented, apparently by Tammuz and Ningishzida, causes Anu to order his two gate guards to "take the man and return him to his earth." I understand that this has been reformatted into Yahweh-Elohim ordering the Cherubim to expell Adam and Eve from Eden, Adam being returned to the earth he was made from to grow in toil his sustenace and to die and return to the earth as dust. That is to say, I understand Tammuz and Ningishzida to not only lie behind Genesis' notion of two trees in the garden, but of a serpent, and they are one of several mythical prototypes of the Cherubim.
But, where is "Eve" in the Adapa myth, there is no woman present in this account? I understand that the biblical story of Eden is drawing motifs from several different and contradicting Mesopotamian myths. Eve is a recasting of Shamhat, the temple priestess/harlot who sells her sexual favors to generate revenue for the temple she serves in Uruk. Adam is in part, a re-cast of Adapa as well as Enkidu, the NAKED man who roams edin-the-plain with wild animals for companions. The harlot seduces the "innocent" naked man of edin-the-steppe/plain, telling him he "is now like a god," and should abandon his animals friends and live with men. She leads the innocent child-like Enkidu away "like a mother" to Uruk to meet Gilgamesh, clothing him with her garment before they leave edin-the-plain and telling him to EAT the bread and drink (beer?) set before him by shepherds in edin. After eating the food and drink Enkidu becomes "like a human" and puts on a new change of clothes and abandons his wild animal friends to dwell with mankind and Gilgamesh in Uruk.
Does there exist in some "ancient art form" a scene of wonderous winged beasts guarding
TWO SACRED TREES and FOUR STREAMS OF WATER, which might suggest Eden's TWO trees and FOUR STREAMS (the Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates) ? YES, a wall mural exists at ancient Mari on the Euphrates in the palace of Zimri-Lim (reigned ca. 1778-1758 BCE), a contemporary of the king of Babylon called Hammurabi. The Mari archives also mention a nomadic tribe called the Banu-yamina "sons of the right [hand]" (the right hand being the "south" as the Syrians orientated themselves to face the east in noting east, west, north and south) and a few scholars have tentatively suggested that perhaps the Israelite tribe of Benjamin is being recalled by these peoples (cf. Professor Niels Peter Lemche's observations). Some scholars have suggested that the Cherubim are Winged Sphinxes found in Late Bronze Age art forms of the Hittites, Syrians, Phoenicians, Canaanites and Egyptians. The Mari mural shows some of the beasts to resemble said creatures. We are told by the Bible that Abraham settled in Haran, in northern Syria. Benjamin's ancestors are "Arameans" or Syrians, and north Syrian art of the 2d millennium BCE does know of TWO TREES guarded by winged beasts and four streams of water. It is _my suspicion_ that Mari's mural lies -in part- behind the Garden of Eden's imagery in the Hebrew Bible. In later Jewish traditions the Tree of Life is understood to be a DATE PALM, and a DATE PALM is one of the trees in the Mari mural, so perhaps the notion that Eden is the source of four great streams and TWO trees of some importance guarded by winged beasts is recalling "North Syrian MOTIFS" found on a wall mural at Mari on the Euphrates ? Did the Hebrews pick up the notion of TWO Sacred trees, guarded by winged beasts and four streams of water from contact with Mari in the 2d millennium BCE ?
The Sumerians saw the gods as capricious, vain, and needing their super-egos to be constantly flattered with bombastic hymns of praise, and soothing music to ease their hearts.
The Hebrews evidently had no problem with portraying Yahweh-Elohim as justified in denying immortality for man because he ate of a tree forbidden to him (the Tree of Knowledge). Some Moderns today struggle with the notion of a God denying man immortality because of his attaining knowledge of Good and Evil (he being portrayed as childlike and naive in the scenario).
The Hebrews, evidently, understood that man was different from all other creatures, he had a sense of right and wrong, or sin, nakedness was wrong. The animals devoured each other and were naked, they had no sense of justice or shame. How to explain man possessing these unique qualities ? They explained it by transforming the Sumerian myths about knowledge being obtained by eating, into a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, giving man knowledge about right and wrong.
Some scholars have speculated that the Tree of Knowledge was a Fig Tree because shortly after eating of the tree, Adam and Eve sew clothes or aprons for themselves of fig leaves, realizing that they are naked (Genesis 3:7).
In Psalm 92 the righteous are likened to a palmtree or cedar planted in Yahweh's sanctuary. Cedars don't bear fruit to nourish men, but date-palms do, perhaps the date-palm is envisioned, it lives for hundreds of years and is an important food source in oasis villages.
"The righteous flourish like a palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD, they flourish in the courts of God. They still bring forth fruit in old age, they are full of sap and green..."
(Ps 92:12-14 RSV)
In Ancient Near Eastern art forms a "sacred tree" appears flanked by two winged sphinxes, said creatures being determined by Humanist scholars to be the source of the Hebrew Cherubim. In Phoenician art forms they guard a stylized Lotus Tree, drawing from Egyptian motifs. In Egypt the Lotus was associated with a restoration of a good spiritual life after death in the Egyptian paradise. The blossom recedes into the water at night, but with daylight it rises up out of the water in full bloom, only to recede again when night approaches. The dead are frequently shown with a Lotus blossom held near their nose, to show they too will arise from death. The Egyptain myths stressed that the Sun-god and the gods of Egypt arose each day from the giant Lotus blossom, the righteous dead would also arise from this same, and scenes in tombs show a seated Osris, lord of the Resurrected dead, with a giant Lotus growing near his throne and mummiform gods standing on the blossom, indicating their rebirth.
The Assyrians on the other hand tended to show a stylized Palm Tree with an intricate vine lacework about it, sometimes with winged sphinxes. The biblical motif of the righteous being likened to a palm suggests a borrowing of Assyrian motifs.
Conservative scholarship has provided, I suspect, the correct insights as to the reason for God's portrayal, the Hebrews wanted to transform the capricious, fickle gods into a Loving, Caring God, who wanted only the best for Man, his pinnacle of creation. So Genesis is a polemic against the Babylonian concepts of the gods and their despising man. They made man to serve them in toil and fear, to obtain their rest from labor. Genesis sees God in a completely different light, as noted by Wenham:
"Viewed with respect to its negatives, Gen 1:1-2:3 is a polemic against the mythico-religious concepts of the ancient Orient...The concept of man here is markedly different from standard Near Eastern mythology: man was not created as the lackey of the gods to keep them supplied with food; he was God's representative and ruler on earth, endowed by his creator with an abundant supply of food and expected to rest every seventh day from his labors. Finally, the seventh day is not a day of ill omen as in Mesopotamia, but a day of blessing and sanctity on which normal work is laid aside.
In contradicting the usual ideas of its time, Gen 1 is also setting out a positive alternative. It offers a picture of God, the world, and man...man's true nature. He is the apex of the created order: the whole narrative moves toward the creation of man. Everything is made for man's benefit..." (p.37, Vol. 1, "Explanation," Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 [Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols.], Word Books, Waco, Texas 1987, ISBN 0-8499-0200-2)
Egyptian motifs portrayed the righteous dead enjoying eternal life, which was sustained by a Tree of Life and a Spring of Life (or Water of Life), rather like the New Testament Book of Revelation's notion that the righteous dead will be sustained by Trees of Life and Water of Life. Revelation portrays God's throne as a source of a stream of life-giving freshwater, whereas earlier (ca. 2nd millenium BCE) Mesopotamian art shows the god Enki seated upon a throne decorated with pots, from each of which, pour two streams of life-giving water to mankind (He being a god of Wisdom [He gave wisdom to mankind in the person of Adapa, but denied him and consequently, mankind, immortality, just like Yahweh did to Adam], his throne being the source of the freshwaters which sustain the living).
Revelation 22:1-2 (RSV)
"Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its tweleve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
Conclusions:
It is my understanding that the Hebrews were attempting to explain how man came to be different from the beasts, possessing a sense of justice or right and wrong and shame (man wears clothing to cover his nakedness, the beasts do not). They transformed the Ancient Near Eastern Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian motifs and concepts into a new story about the relationship between God, Man and the Cosmos.
They had two trees, one conferring knowledge and one conferring immortality. The concept of knowledge being attained via eating appears to be Mesopotamian, ultimately, Sumerian, cf. the above account of Inanna acquring knowledge for engaging in sex via the consumption of earthly herbs and apparently, Cedar and Cypress TREES; so too the notion of attaining immortality via the eating "the bread of life" and drinking
"the water of life" as in the Adapa and the South Wind myth. The food presented to Adapa was in Anu's HEAVENLY abode, not on the earth, but the Mesopotamian myths are quite clear, the gods in heaven are "fed" EARTHLY FOOD, grown and harvested and presented to them in sacrifices at temples by mankind, so the food presented to Adapa in heaven had to have been ORIGINALLY raised and harvested ON THE EARTH in gardens or orchards. So, an earthly grown food, the "bread of life" was a source of immortality according to the Adapa myth _and_ knowledge according to the Inanna and Enki myths could be attained via eating of a tree.
There is however, a CONTRADICTION at work here that the reader may not be aware of. The Mesopotamian myths portray the gods as being capable of dying. They can be slain by their fellow gods, various compositions exist attesting to this fact, and in art forms gods are seen slaying each other with swords or knives. So the gods in reality, ARE NOT IMMORTAL ! If they can "be slain", then they can grow hungry and "starve to death" if not fed food from their earthly gardens maintained by man whom they have made to tend the gardens and present them twice daily food and drink at the temples. IN OTHER WORDS, THE CONSUMPTION OF FOOD DOES NOT REALLY CONFER IMMORTALITY_ if it did it would be quite impossible for gods to be slain by each other as occurs in various Mesopotamian myths ! The gods enjoy immortality as long as they are not slain by a fellow god AND they will continue to enjoy their immortality as long as man exists on the earth to present them earthly food to eat, no food to eat and they will die of starvation, that is to say, they MUST EAT in order to stay alive and not die ! So, even if man, in the form of Adapa, ate the "bread of life" and drank "the water of life" he still would not possess immortality for, like the gods, he could be slain by a fellow god ! Food is needed to SUSTAIN LIFE. If one is immortal, and cannot die, there should be NO NEED TO CONSUME FOOD. Here arises another CONTRADICTION, this time from the Bible: Yahweh-Elohim COMMANDS HIS PEOPLE ISRAEL, to serve him daily FOOD AND DRINK, just LIKE the Mesopotamian gods ! Yahweh received food offerings twice a day, morning and evening until the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and ended the offerings. According to the ancient Mesopotamian religious notions, Yahweh ought to be dead by now, having starved to death over the past 2000 years !
Kramer on the gods needing to eat ("sustenance") and their mortality:
"Although the gods were believed to be immortal, they nevertheless had to have their sustenance; they could become sick to the point of death; they fought, wounded, and killed, and presumably could themselves be wounded and killed."
(p. 117. "Religion: Theology, Rite and Myth." Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago & London. University of Chicago Press. 1963. ISBN 0-226-45238-7. paperback)
The Bible describes Cherubim and Palm Trees adorning the walls of Solomon's Temple, suggesting that the Date Palm may have been ebvisioned as the Tree of Life. To the degree that Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves after acquiring knowledge of good and evil, the Fig Tree might have been conceived as the Tree of Knowledge.
Another surprise is that the Egyptian Lotus, combined with the Papyrus into a Sacred Tree/Pillar of the Syro-Canaanite art forms, symbolic of Eternal Life, came to be transformed by the Phoenicians and Canaanites into a Tree of Life, who's iconography became a part of the Temple at Jerusalem (cf. the so-called Iron Age II "proto-aeolic" pillars). Egyptian solar imagery (Lotuses and Papyrus plants) and Mesopotamian beliefs (sacred Palm Trees) are apparently fused and behind Genesis' Two Trees.
I also understand that the Sumerian god of Wisdom, Enki (alternately called Ea, pronounced either Aya or Ayyah) has been transformed into Yahweh-Elohim. In some of the Mesopotamian myths Enki was mankind's creator, he planted a wonderous garden with fruit-trees on the earth at Eridu in Sumer, associated with this garden was the Apsu, source of ALL the freshwaters for the world' rivers, and it is Enki who denies man knowledge and immortality. In another myth, it is Enki who warns the Mesopotamian Noah, Ziusdudra (Alternately called Atrahasis and Utnapishtim) of a Flood which will destroymankind, and has him build an Ark to save his family and animals. Enki in another myth confounds the one language of mankind into a babel of many languages. Other myths have Enlil at Nippur having man made to tend his garden by Enki who slays a local Igigi god who led the mutiny of the lesser gods who were forced to work Enlil's earthly garden. Enlil (Lord Wind) is portrayed as a prime instigator of the flood sent to destroy mankind because his noise denies him rest by day and sleep by night. I understand the brother-gods, Enki and Enlil, to have been fused together by the Hebrews into Yahweh-Elohim, who sent the flood and warned one pious man to build a boat and save self, family and animals.
We are told that Terah and son Abaham were ORIGINALLY of Ur of the Chaldees (Ge 11:28; 31; 12:1), which some scholars locate in Lower Mesopotamia at present day Tell al-Muqayyer. If they are correct, and I assume they are, then perhaps it was Terah and Abraham who transformed the myths about Enki and Mankind into the biblical story ? Having had their "new relevelation" about God and Man's relationship "rejected" by the Lower Mesopotamians, perhaps they "migrated" to Haran in Northern Mesopotamia, hoping to find a more open and welcoming community for their new "insights and revelations" ? Ur is mentioned in the myths as a city that benefited from Enki's blessings.
Later Abraham settles in northern Syria at Haran, and his descendants are called "Arameans."
In northern Syria at Mari is a mural showing TWO sacred trees guarded by winged beasts and in association with the scene are FOUR streams of water. Perhaps an Aramean Israel has reformatted these motifs into Eden's TWO TREES ?
02 Feb 2005 Update:
In some Mesopotamian myths, mankind is portrayed as living in a state of wild savagery, rather like a dumb beast or wild animal, he roams NAKED the steppe or high country (Sumerian Edin, Akkadian Edinu) with other NAKED beasts. Eventually the gods take pity on him and decide to alleviate his hard life. They take him from the steppe, and "civilize" him, teaching him to wear clothing, live in cities, grow food in irrigation-fed gardens, introducing to man the arts of metallurgy, music, etc.
The Hebrews denied the existence of other gods, there is only one God, Yahweh-Elohim. They also denied that gods introduced man to the arts of civilization. Man -Cain and his descendants- learned these arts on his own account (cf. Ge 4:17-22). I accordingly understand that Genesis has INVERTED the Mesopotamian myths about gods providing man with the arts of civiliztaion.
It is my understanding that these Mesopotamian myths _imply_ that ORIGINALLY the "knowledge" about it being "_wrong to be naked_", RESIDED SOLELY WITH THE GODS, hence the reason the myths portray mankind naked and roaming with wild animals in edin (the steppe or high desert plain). ONLY _after_ the gods compassionately bestow "knowledge" on man of it being "wrong to be naked," and introducing him to the wearing of clothes and other arts of civilization is his life improved. I would argue that Genesis is an INVERSION of the concept that the gods FREELY and COMPASSIONATELY gave man knowledge about the wearing of clothing and it being wrong to be naked. Genesis has man acquiring this "forbidden knowledge" as an _affront_ to God, by Eve and Adam.
The late Professor Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of "The Eridu Genesis" (Note I have NOT followed Jacobsen's poetic stanzas format; Emphasis mine):
"Mankind's trails when forgotten by the gods were in the high (i.e., not subject to flooding) desert. In those days no canals were opened, no dredging was done at dikes and ditches on dike tops. The seeder plow and plowing had not yet been instituted for the knocked under and downed people. Mankind of (those) distant days, since Shakan (the god of flocks) had not (yet) come out of the dry lands, _did not know arraying themselves in prime cloth_, MANKIND WALKED ABOUT NAKED. In those days, there being NO SNAKES, being no scorpions, being no lions, being no hyenas, being no dogs, being no wolves, mankind had no opponent, fear and terror did not exist. [The people had as yet no] king. Nintur was paying attention: Let me bethink myself of my mankind, (all) forgotten as they are; and mindful of mine, Nintur's creatures let me bring them back, let me lead the people back from their trails. May they come and build cities and cult-places, that I may cool myself in their shade; may they lay the bricks of the cult-cities in pure spots, and may they found places for divination in pure spots ! She gave directions for purification, and cries for quarter, the things that cool (divine) wrath, perfected the divine service and the august offices, and said to the (surrounding) regions: "Let me institute peace there !" When An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag fashioned the darkheaded (people) they had made the small animals (that came up) from (out of) the earth in abundance and had let there be, as befits (it) gazelles, (wild) donkeys, and fourfooted beasts in the desert..." (pp. 160-161. Patrick D. Miller, Jr. "Eridu, Dunnu and Babel: A Study in Comparitive Mythology." pp. 143-168. Richard S. Hess & David Toshio Tsumura. Editors. I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood, Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11. Winona Lake, Indiana. Eisenbrauns. 1994. ISBN 0-931464-88-9)
Note, that it is the goddess Nintur who takes pity on man and who brings him in from his wanderings with wild animals on the high steppe or edin, introducing him to the wearing of clothing, living in cities, and the arts of civilization. The gods have FREELY and COMPASSIONATELY _given man the knowledge_ that "it is wrong to be naked," that man should wear garments of fine cloth. Genesis has INVERTED the ancient Mesopotamian myths about how man came to acquire knowledge about being naked and wearing of clothes. Note also it is a GODDESS, a WOMAN, who introduces man to the wearing of clothes. After a WOMAN, Eve, has Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, they upon realizing they are naked clothe themselves. So I understand that the goddess Nintur is ANOTHER PROTOTYPE of Eve, in addition to Shamhat the harlot who clothes the naked Enkidu before their leaving the steppe or edin in the Epic of Gilgamesh to dwell in the CITY of Uruk. That is to say, _the wearing of clothes and dwelling in cities_ goes "hand-in-hand as connected themes" in the Mesopotamian myths and in Genesis, Adam's descendants also wearing clothing and dwelling in cities.
Note also that initially in the Eridu myth there is NO fear fear for man in the high steppe or edin, and NO SNAKE. I understand that Genesis _again_ has INVERTED Mesopotamian myths by having a snake in Eden introducing Adam and Eve to FEAR: for when they realize God is in the garden they hide themselves from him in FEAR because they have transgressed his commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Man in Genesis is ALSO introduced to another FEAR, the fear of the snake that bite his heel upon his leaving Eden. In the Eridu myth there is no snake for man to fear. Again, another INVERSION by Genesis has occurred of the ancient Mesopotamian myths concerning the origins of mankind.
Note also that the Bible presents Eden as an "idyllic, IDEAL place for man," but the "Eridu Genesis Myth" suggests that life is "hard" for naked mankind in Edin the steppe. The "good-life" is NOT in EDIN, but IN THE CITIES where man covers his nakedness and dons fine clothing, lives in houses, eats food grown in irrigation-fed gardens, as the gods do. Genesis has thus to some degree INVERTED the Mesopotamian notion that Edin (Eden ?) was NOT the best location for man to thrive in. For Genesis' author cities are NOT built by gods for man to improve his life, but by Cain _the murderer_ and his "murderous" descendants (Lamech boasting of slaying a man, cf. Ge 4: 8, 16, 23-24).
Professor Kramer on cities being initially built and occupied by gods and goddesses and only _later_ by mankind:
"When man had not yet been created and the city of Nippur was inhabitated by gods alone, "its young man," was the god Enlil; "its young maid" was the goddess Ninlil; and "its old woman" was Ninlil's mother, Nunbarshegunu." (p. 146. "Religion: Theology, Rite, and Myth." Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture and Character. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. [1963] 1972 reprint. ISBN 0-226-45238-7. paperback)
Enkidu, which I understand to be _one of several prototypes_ behind Adam, before he met Shamhat, ate grass and lapped water at a watering hole like a wild animal. Shamhat takes him to a shepherd's camp and introduces him to "food fit for a god" (foods grown in irrigation-fed gardens, which man now tills in place of Igigi gods, who earlier tilled the gardens for the heaven-dwelling Anunna gods). Enkidu is befuddled when the food is presented to him, he does NOT KNOW how to eat it. Nor does he KNOW of drinking strong drink (alcoholic beverages like beer and wine). Shamhat steps in and TELLS Enkidu, EAT the food and DRINK the strong drink, which he does. After sating his appetite, his face glows, he is content and he NOW is declared TO BE HUMAN. The shepherd's camp is apparently in the high steppe called edin in Sumerian and edinu in Akkadian, so the naked primitive man eats food intended originally for gods and not for animals. He leaves edin clothed and now a "human" and an "animal" no longer (animals have no sense of good and evil, or right and wrong, or that it is wrong to be naked). Genesis has apparently preserved several Sumerian notions: 1) Man was initially naked in edin; 2) had animals for companions; 3) a woman is introduced to him as a more fit companion; 4) the woman introduces him to food fit for a god; 5) he is persuaded by the woman to eat this forbidden food -it being forbidden for wild animals to eat; 6) after eating this food he dons clothes and leaves edin; 7) while in edin he is declared to be "like a god" now possessing _wisdom_ after having had sex with the harlot.
Pritchard:
"Aruru washed her hands,
Pinched off clay and cast it on the steppe.
[On the steppe] she created valiant Enkidu...
[Sha]ggy with hair is his whole body,
He is endowed with head hair like a woman.
The locks of his hair sprout like Nisaba.
He knows neither people nor land;
Garbed is he like Sumuqan [the god of cattle].
With gazelles he feeds on grass,
With the wild beasts he jostles at the
watering-place,
With the teeming creatures his heart delights in water."
(p.42. The Epic of Gilgamesh.")
After 6 days and 7 nights of sex with Shamhat the harlot-priestess Enkidu attempts to rejoin his animal companions, but they flee from him. He returns to the harlot and she tells him he now has wisdom like a god, why roam with animals for companions, he should dwell in cities with men. She takes him by the hand to a shepherds' camp and introduces him to human food, "fit for a god" (alluidng to the fact that man had been created to till the garden of the gods on earth formerly worked by the Igigi gods on behalf of the earth-dwelling Anunnaki gods who reside in cities). Enkidu does not know the eating of human food, only after a command from Shamhat does he eat, and become human. After the act of eating he then clothes himself; this somewhat recalls Adam's EATING FIRST, then CLOTHING himself. Note that Enkidu, like Adam has no mother, he was formed of a pinch of clay by a deity. Both Enkidu and Adam are naked and are at first, vegetarians, Enkidu eats grass with antelope, while Adam eats of tree fruits.
Pritchard (emphasis mine):
"Holding on to his hand,
She leads him LIKE A MOTHER
To the board of shepherds,
The place of the sheepfold.
Round him the shepherds gathered...
The milk of wild creatures
He was wont to suck.
Food they placed before him;
He gagged, he gaped
And he stared.
Nothing does Enkidu know
of eating food;
To drink strong drink
He has not been taught.
The harlot opened her mouth,
Saying to Enkidu:
"Eat the food, Enkidu,
As is life's due;
Drink the strong drink, as is the custom of the land."
Enkidu ate the food,
Until he was sated;
Of strong drink he drank
Seven goblets.
Carefree became his mood (and) cheerful,
His heart exluted
And his face glowed.
He rubbed [the shaggy growth],
The hair of his body,
Anointed himself with oil,
BECAME HUMAN,
He _put on clothing_,
He is like a groom !"
(pp.47-48. "The Epic of Gilgamesh." James B. Pritchard. Editor. The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press. 1958. paperback)
"Shamash heard the utterance of his mouth...Enkidu, why are you cursing MY harlot Shamhat, who fed you on food fit for gods, gave you drink, fit for kings, clothed you with a great robe...?" (p. 87. "Gilgamesh VII." Stephanie Dalley. Myths From Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Oxford & New York. Oxford University Press. [1989] reprint 1991. ISBN 0-19-281789-2. paperback)
In Genesis a God, Yahweh, is responsible for introducing a woman, Eve, to a naked Adam, she becoming his undoing. To the degree that the sun-god Shamash speaks of Shamhat as "_MY HARLOT_," perhaps this is where Genesis gets its notion of a God, Yahweh, being identified with the woman's introduction to Adam ? That is to say, the sun-god Shamash "lurks behind" Genesis' God. For a picture of Shamash please click here.
Also note that the Harlot is NOT cursed by her god, he defends her actions and berates Enkidu for cursing her ! A shamed and chastened Enkidu, thereupon withdraws his curse and then bestows a blessing on the harlot ! The Hebraic recasting of these motifs has reversed roles, as Adam does not curse Eve, it is a God who does so. An _inversion_ has occured, a god who defended the woman's actions is transformed into a god holding her in blame for a naked man's ominous fate.
Dalley:
"Enkidu listened to the speech of Shamash the warrior.
[His anger abated [?]; his heart became quiet...
'Come Shamhat, I shall change your fate!
My utterance, which cursed you, shall bless you instead.
Governors and princes shall love you...
Rings [and] brooches (?) shall be presents for you..."
(p. 88. "Gilgamesh VII." Stephanie Dalley. Myths From Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Oxford & New York. Oxford University Press. [1989] reprint 1991. ISBN 0-19-281789-2. paperback)
The Sumerian myths speak of Shamhat "like a mother" taking charge of Enkidu, she will oversee his "domestication" and "civilizing" from a naked beast to a clothes-wearing city-dweller. Womankind has traditionally been the nurturer and educator of the young, preparing them to take their place in civilized society. So Shamahet, and later Eve, as women and "mothers" are suitable choices for introducing naked, nieve mankind to knowledge about "right and wrong" or "good and evil", it is wrong to be naked, one must wear clothes in civilized society.
Genesis' notion of Adam's "_FALL FROM INNOCENCE_" at the hands of Eve is mirrored somewhat in Enkidu's accusation and curse brought against Shamhat in "his steppe" (Sumerian edin being rendered steppe/plain) in Foster's below translation (emphasis mine):
"May your purple finery be expropriated,
May filthy underwear be what you are given,
Because you diminished ME, AN INNOCENT,
Yes ME, AN INNOCENT, you wronged me (?) in my steppe."
(p. 56. "Tablet VII." Benjamin R. Foster. [Translator & editor]. The Epic of Gilgamesh. [A Norton Critical Edition]. New York & London. W. W. Norton & Company. 2001. ISBN 0-393-97516-9 paperback)
Foster on Enkidu's curse of the hunter who entrapped him with sex via Shamhat the harlot priestess (bemoaning his fate that he will soon die, and that these two individuals are to blame in corrupting him and separating him from his innocence and companions, the wild animals of the plain):
"I have turned to you, O Shamash, on account of the precious
days of my life,
as for that hunter, the en-trapping man,
Who did not let me get as much life as my friend [Gilgamesh],
May that hunter not get enough to make him a living.
Make his profit loss, cut down his take,
May his income, his portion evaporate before you,
Any wildlife that enters [his traps], make it go out the window!
"When he [Enkidu] had cursed the hunter to his heart's content, he resolved to curse the harlot Shamhat:
"Come, Shamhat, I will ordain a destiny,
A destiny that will never end, forever and ever!
I will lay on you the greatest of all curses,
Swiftly, inexorably, may my curse come upon you...
May brambles and thorns flay your feet..."
(p. 55. "Tablet VII." Benjamin R. Foster [Translator & Editor]. The Epic of Gilgamesh. [A Norton Critical Edition]. New York & London. W. W. Norton & Company. 2001. ISBN 0-393-97516-9. paperback)
"There he is, Shamhat, open your embrace...
let him take your charms!
Be not basful, take his vitality!
...let him lie upon you,
Treat him, a human, TO WOMAN'S WORK !
His wild beasts that grew up with him will deny him,
As in his ardor he caresses you !
...She treated him, a human, TO WOMAN'S WORK,
As in his ardor he caressed her."
(pp. 8-9. "Tablet I," Benjamin R. Foster [Translator & Editor]. The Epic of Gilgamesh. [A Norton Critical Edition]. New York & London. W. W. Norton & Company. 2001. ISBN 0-393-97516-9. paperback)
Some commentators on Eve's curse understand it lasts "forever and ever" on all generations of womankind, and it is the greatest of all curses, to be subject to men and bear children in pain (Ge 3:16). Shamhat's curse -in part- is to be _subordinate_ to the lusts of men who will abuse her and heap scorn upon her. Even today womankind is often seen in some quarters of Christianity as an object of lust, and not to be trusted and to be _subordinate_ to men because Eve lead Adam to sin against God. "Woman's Work" appears to be, according the Gilgamesh Epic, to be _subordinate_ to mankind's lusts. Eve is cursed in that her "desire" (sexual desire ?) will be for her man, which will cause her to be subordinate to him. That is to say I understand Genesis has inverted or reversed a motif from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Enkidu's DESIRE (sexual desire) for the harlot was his undoing. This desire led him to subordinate himself to the harlot's will, he obeys her and leaves his animal companions. Genesis' author has reversed/inverted all this, it will be womankind now who will be subordinated to man's will because of her DESIRE (sexual desire) for her mate.
Of interest is that Adam's curse is to have brambles tear at his flesh when he works the earth as an agriculturalist (Ge 3:18), perhaps this motif has been transformed from the curse of brambles flaying Shamhat's skin ?
Is it possible that Enkidu's request of the sun-god Shamash to "DIMINISH the profits of the hunter's labors" was later transformed into Yahweh's cursing Adam by having "the bounty of the earth DIMINISHED for the man's labors," rather like what happened to the hunter ? That is to say, Enkidu's curse for the hunter_and_harlot becomes Yahweh's curse for Adam_and_Eve ? The hoped for "executor" of the curse, Shamash the sun-god, becomes Yahweh ?
Foster has noted a version of the Adapa myth (which explains how man lost out in obtaining immortality by refuring to eat the bread of life and drink the water of life that would confer it) that has Anu remarking on Enki's cleverness in thwarting his (Anu's) intention to make Adapa immortal by having him eat the bread of life and drinking the water of life. Anu is regarded as the "supreme" god and for a lesser god to succeed in contramanding him is quite a feat !
In Genesis God tells Adam and Eve _not_ to eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil, for he will die if he does so. The serpent tells Eve _to eat_, she will not die, she will become like a god, knowing good and evil. The Edenic serpent is then, portrayed contramanding Yahweh, URGING Eve to eat. In the Adapa and the Southwind myth Adapa is URGED to eat the forbidden food by An (Anu) and his two servants or gate guards, Ningishzida and Dumuzi (biblical Tammuz). Ningishzida in art is shown as a human with serpent-dragon heads erupting from his shoulders and also as a serpent-dragon with four feet, horns and wings. In other myths Dumuzi is called ama-ushumgal-an-na "[the] mother is a serpent/dragon of heaven." Kramer speaks of Dumuzi being the "friend of An," it was Dumuzi who with Ningishzida "put in a good word" for Adapa to "soften-up" An and make him favorable to Adapa. Apparently Dumuzi's being the "friend of An" turned the trick, as An URGES Adapa to eat the "bread and water of life" which will give him immortality.
Kramer identifies Dumuzi the shepherd as being placed in charge of sheepfolds which produce dairy products by Enki (Ea), calling Dumuzi an ushumgal ("great serpent/dragon") of heaven. Interestingly, Dumuzi "the friend of An," stood guard with Ningishzida at An's heavenly abode and all three received Adapa with favor, offering him a chance to obtain immortality via the consumption of the "bread and water of life."
"Dumuzi, the "ushumgal of heaven," the "friend of An,"
Enki placed in [charge] of them [sheepfolds]."
(p. 181. "Enki and the World Order." Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago & London. University of Chicago Press. 1963. ISBN 0226-45238-7 paperback)
Enki (Ea) bears a Sumerian epithet, Ushmugal, meaning "great serpent/dragon". He is described as setting up a wonderous mes-tree in his fruit-tree garden at Eridu, where he walks about. I suspect via a "new twist" the Hebrews have recast the gods Anu, Ningishzida and Dumuzi who offered man (Adapa) immortality, ENCOURAGING HIM TO EAT the bread of life into the Edenic serpent who ENCOURAGES MAN TO EAT the fruit. The god who denied man immortality, Enki ("the great serpent/dragon" or Ushumgal), telling man NOT TO EAT or he will die has been recast as Yahweh. Christianity understands it is the serpent who caused man not to possess immortality, and it is Enki the Ushumgal who does _not_ want Adapa to possess immortality. That is to say in the Genesis myth and in the Adapa and the South Wind myth, it is a "serpent" that succeeds in _CONTRAMANDING_ its 'SUPERIOR' GOD.
Note it is An who ORDERS the food and garment to be presented to Adapa, it is apparently Ningishzida and Dumuzi (both of whom are walking, talking serpent-dragons) who are then, presenting the "bread and water of life" to Adapa on An's behalf.
Professor Foster:
"[He ordered bread of life for him, he did not eat],
He ordered [water of life' for him, he did not drink.
He ordered a [gar]ment for him, he put it on.
Anu laughed uproariously at what Ea had done,
"Who else, of all the gods of heaven and netherworld,
could d[o] something like this?"
"Who else could make his command outweigh Anu's?"
(p. 101. "How Adapa Lost Immortality." Benjamin R. Foster. From Distant Days, Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Betheseda, Maryland. CDL Press. 1995. ISBN 1-883053-09-9. paperback)
As regards the biblical Eden, I understand that several different ancient Mesopotamian myths and "locations" lie behind this concept.
I found these Edens, as a "byproduct" of attempting to document Mesopotamian _parallels_ to the Adam and Eve story in the Bible, as noted in the scholarly literature. To my surprise, I discovered that no single Mesopotamian myth possessed _all_ the elements or motifs appearing in the biblical story. The parallels or motifs were "scattered" amongst several different myths. Another unexpected surprise was to realize that the Mesopotamian myths at times DISAGREED and CONTRADICTED each other about how man came to be made by the gods and WHERE the location of his first appearance on the earth was. I understand that the Hebrews brought these contradicting parallels or motifs together and created the garden of Eden myth from them.
1) According to the Bible man is made by God and placed in the garden of Eden to till and keep the garden. Some Mesopotamian myths understand that man was created to till and tend the earthly garden at Nippur belonging to a god who in myth is called Enlil. The products of this garden were originally tended and tilled by the Igigi gods, who objected to the working conditions. To prevent a revolt by the Igigi, man is made by the god Enki to replace them at Enlil's behest. Enki has an Igigi god slain and his flesh and blood are mixed into some clay making man. So, both Mesopotamia and the Bible understand man's _first appearance_ on the earth is in a garden belonging to _a_ god_, his job being to tend and till it. However, in Sumer, the god's garden is ALWAYS associated with a city that the god dwells in. The Mesopotamian "garden of the god" was NOT in some remote wilderness all by its self as portrayed in Genesis. So, Nippur's _garden of a god_ (Enlil), is an edenic prototype.
2) In another contradicting myth, man is created by the god Enki to tend and till _his_ garden located in the city of Eridu in Sumer. The Igigi gods at Eridu object to their hard toil in Enki's garden so he makes man to replace them. In this myth man is made of clay over the apsu (a freshwater source of all rivers, a spring). Please note that Eridu like Nippur, lies on a great plain or steppe, which in Sumerian is called edin and in Akkadian/Babylonian edinu. So, man is made at Eridu _in_ edin, of its clay or earth, thus Eridu and vicinity is another edenic prototype.
3) Another CONTRADICTING Mesopotamian myth, called by some scholars "The Eridu Genesis Myth" has man in a steppe or plain called in Sumerian edin and in Akkadian (Babylonian) edinu. He wanders this edin NAKED and wild animals are his companions; he eats grass and laps water at watering holes like an animal. Eventually a goddess called Nintur takes pity on naked man's "hard life" in edin the steppe and takes him from this edin and "civilizes him." Man is taught that it is wrong to be naked, he MUST wear clothes when he comes to _dwell with the gods in their cities_ and _work in their gardens_, for the gods wear clothes and nakedness is an offense for them. The gods provide man clothing and settle him in cities built originally to house only the gods. From the gods man learns the arts of civilization, how to make musical instruments, how to forge metals, how to be shepherds, how to grow food in irrigation-fed gardens, as the gods do. To the degree that edin means a "plain, floodplain or steppe", and the Tigris and Euphrates do cross a great _plain_, extending from Baghdad to Basrah these rivers are thus associated with edin. However, please note an interesting contradiction exists here, the cities of Sumer were built in edin the plain. According to one myth in the beginning the gods (called the Annunaki) who built these cities were originally naked like animals, eating grass and lapping water like naked man. So, edin is not only the UNTAMED PLAIN that wild animals and naked man roamed, its also a plain "TAMED" by civilized man, with irrigation canals and networks for gardens and cities ! So, edin the UNTAMED PLAIN which lies _near_ Nippur and Eridu as well as Uruk (biblical Erech Genesis 10:10) is another edenic prototype. The Eridu Genesis myth notes that NAKED man in the UNTAMED edin, knew NO FEAR, no animal offered harm to him. Harm came when man left this edin to dwell in cities and maintain the gardens of the gods in Sumer. Apparently Genesis' notion of an "idyllic eden" is fusing two different Mesopotamian concepts, the UNTAMED edin with the TAMED edin which has cities, canals and irrigated gardens planted by the gods for their self-nourishment.
4) The notion that Adam and Eve ate of forbidden food from a tree is drawn from -in part- the myth about Enki and Ninhursag in the earthly garden of Dilmun. Enki eats without his goddess-wife's permission eight of her plants, in order to "know" them; enraged, she curses him with death, the first plant that Enki consumed is called "a tree plant". She later relents, asking him what body part ails him and thereupon makes either a god or goddess to heal that part. When he complains of his rib aching, she makes Nin-Ti, a goddess to heal his rib (Sumerian ti means rib). In Sumerian Nin-ti can mean "Lady of the rib" and "Lady that makes live." One of Enki's epithets was En-Ti, "Lord of the Rib."A number of profesional scholars have suggested that Eve's being made of Adam's rib is drawing from this myth, as well as her name Eve, Hebrew Kavvah/Havvah meaning "mother of life" located at Dilmun. Some scholars have suggested Dilmun is the island of Bahrain near Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. My research, however, suggests its at or near Qurnah in the marshes just east of Eridu, where the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet to form the Shatt al-Arab which empties into the Persian Gulf near Basra (these marshes are merely depresions _in_ e.din-the-plain). The Mesopotamian Noah called Ziusudra was placed in Dilmun, " _in the East_ where the sun rises, _AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVERS_".
Kramer suggested Dilmun was an Edenic prototype (Note: I understand the "Sumerian Noah and wife place in Dilmun to be prototypes for Adam and Eve):
"Paradise, according to the Sumerian theologians, was for the immortal gods, and for them alone, not for mortal man. One mortal, however, and only one, according to Sumerian mythmakers, did suceed in gaining admittance to this divine paradise. This brings us to the Sumerian "Noah" and the deluge myth, the closest and most striking Biblical parallel as yet uncovered in cuneiform literature." (p. 149. "The First Biblical Parallels." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 published by The Falcon's Wing Press)
But, according to other non-mythcal annalistic texts, Dilmun is a location with a city, it has a king, buildings, boat docks, irrigation canals, plantations of Date Palms, lagoons filled with fish, and marshlands. So, Dilmun, in e.din-the-plain, east of Eridu, Shuruppak and Uruk, is another edenic prototype.
5) The motif of forbidden access to trees appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, when he and Enkidu set out to cut down for timber Cedars growing on a mountain guarded by a half-human monster called Huwawa or Humbaba. Most scholars usually identify this cedar mountain with some location in the Lebanon, famed in antiquity for its mighty cedars, coveted for the building of palaces and temples throughout the Ancient Middle Eastern world. Gilgamesh and Enkidu take 6 days to cross a great plain (called the steppe or E.din) to reach this cedar mountain where Enkidu once roamed with his animal friends. Has Huwawa the guardian of the trees been reformatted in the Cherubbim ? Has the SWORD used by Gilgamesh to slay Huwawa become the "feiry sword" that bars access to the forbidden trees of Eden ? Perhaps Adam and Eve's forbidden access to sacred trees is a reformatting of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's forbidden access to cedar trees ? If so, then it worth noting that Ezekiel mentions the cedars of Lebanon in the Garden of Eden, comparing themselves to Pharaoh who is portrayed like a mighty cedar. That is to say, perhaps a Lebanese cedar mountain in the Epic of Gilgamesh lies behind Ezekiel's imagery of a cedar mountain in the Garden of Eden in the Lebanon ? Thus another "edenic prototype" is a Lebanese cedar mountain.
Ezekiel 31: 3, 8-9 RSV
"Behold, I will liken you [Pharaoh] to A CEDAR IN LEBANON...THE CEDARS in the GARDEN OF GOD could not rival it...all the trees of EDEN envied it, that were in the GARDEN OF GOD."
Some may "wonder" how does the garden of Eden wind up in association with a _mountain_ (Hebrew: Har, pronounced khar) in Ezekiel's imagery, if it originally was associated with Sumerian edin-the-PLAIN ? The answer will surprise you ! In Sumerian hymns, Eridu in Sumer, where Enki lives, and where he "made man to tend and till his fruit-tree garden" is called on occasion, _KUR_, which in Sumerian has several meanings, "land", "the underworld," and "_MOUNTAIN_." Perhaps "_KUR_ERIDU_" became over the millennia, the "Garden of Eden on a mountain" ? Another contradicting myth as noted above, has man created at Nippur to tend the garden of a god called Enlil. Enlil dwelt in a temple-ziggurat called e-kur, meaning "mountain house" (e= house, kur= mountain), so his garden is associated with a mountain too like Eridu.
Kramer (emphasis mine in CAPITALS):
"Then Enki raises the city Eridu from the abyss and makes it float over the water like a lofty MOUNTAIN. Its green fruit-bearing gardens he fills with birds...
Enlil says to the Anunnaki:
"Ye great gods who are standing about,
My son has built a house, king Enki;
Eridu LIKE A MOUNTAIN, he has raised up from the earth,
In a good place he has built it."
(pp. 62-63. "Enki and Eridu: The Journey of the Water-god to Nippur." Samuel Noah Kramer. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B. C. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1944, 1961, 1972, 1997. ISBN 0-8122-1047-6 paperback)
Now, Eridu does has the remains of a great ziggurat-temple, and the ziggurat at Nippur was called the E-Kur "Mountain House" of the god Enlil. So, if one wants to argue for the real physical presence of a "mountain" at Eridu in association with Enki's fruit-tree garden worked by man who has been created to replace the Igigi gods, the ziggurat would be my first choice. The other possible "edenic mountain" is Nippur's ziggurat called the "mountain house" where man was created to work in a god's garden (Enlil's garden).
6) Adam loses out on attaining immortality, he ate the forbidden fruit. This motif appears in several Mesopotamian myths. In the Adapa myth (Adam's prototype according to several scholars) while at Eridu, his god Enki warns him that when he goes up to heaven to face the supreme god An or Anu, not to eat anything offered for its is "the food of death." In reality, it is the "food conferring immortality" on mankind, but Enki does not want to lose man as a servant (He made man to be a servant to the gods). The Hebrews have INVERTED this myth, having man consume forbidden food when in the Adapa myth, man obeyed a lying god and lost out in attaining immortality (but note, neither Adapa or Adam ate the food which would confer immortality on them and via them, mankind). In another INVERSION the Hebrews place the event on the earth (but note that the warning from Enki was given on the earth at Eridu, which lies in e.din-the-plain, where he has a garden of fruit trees he planted next to his shrine). So, another "edenic prototype" is Anu's abode _in Heaven_.
7) By the 2d-1st centuries BCE (Before the Common Era or BC, Before Christ), the Hasmonean Jews had come to locate Eden in the Yemen and nearby Dhofar, sources of spices and incense since King Solomon's days and the Queen of Sheba. This notion is preserved in various books called "The Pseudepigrapha." These books claim that when Adam was expelled from Eden, he asked God to allow him to take from the garden, spices and incense as offerings to God, and God assented. As the ONLY known location for these products was Southwest Arabia (the Yemen and Dhofar), thus Eden came to be "transposed" there from Lower Mesopotamia (the steppe called edin, where are located Eridu and Nippur of Sumer as well as Dilmun and its marshes) to a new location. Jewish communities, according to Yemeni Jewish traditions existed from Mecca and Medina to the Yemen, settled in the days of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, to exploit the spice trade between Sheba and Jerusalem (other traditions say they settled in the area after the fall of Jerusalem, ca. 587 BCE, to the Babylonians). So, by the 2d-1st centuries BCE, Eden had come to be identified with Arabic Adn, the modern port of Aden in the Yemen, the Islamic holy book, The Koran/Quran, calls the "garden of Eden" Jannat Adn. Thus, when The Quran came to be composed in the 7th century CE (CE means "of the Common Era", or AD meaning Anno Domini, "year of our Lord"), its Jannat Adn (however Jannat Adn in the Quran is understood to be in heaven, not on the earth), was a concept the Arabs had picked up from Jews living in their area, which had been a part of Jewish folklore since the 2d century BCE; that is to say, for some 9 centuries Jewish traditions in the areas of the Yemen, Mecca and Medina, had preserved a notion of Eden being in this part of the Arabic world !
8) Even later, additional Pseudepigraphic writings identified Eden with Jerusalem or Bethshean near the Jordan River !
9) Today, some scholars seek Eden in Missouri (the Mormons), others near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates (David Rohl). Another scholar, Dr. Juris Zarins proposed that Eden is submerged beneath the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab in Iraq. By the 1600's and 1700s a number of European scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, believed Eden could never be found because they argued that Noah's Flood had destroyed the original river courses by which it could be pin-pointed or located.
I do NOT understand that Eden is a real place, _its a Hebrew myth_ based on a re-working of earlier Mesopotamian myths, which offer -contradictorily- several different locations, as noted above.
The original pre-biblical prototypes appear to be_all_ Mesopotamian and associated with the great plain of edin in LOWER MESOPTAMIA and the lands of Sumer, Dilmun, and a Lebanese Cedar Mountain abutting edin-the-plain.
Of interest here, is a Mesopotamian flood myth in which Enlil is portrayed as the principal instigator in SENDING a flood to destroy _all_ of mankind which disturbs _his rest_ with its noise. However, his brother, the god Enki, "defies him", and WARNS a pious man called variously Ziusudra, Atrahasis or Utnapishtim of the coming flood and to save himself, family and animals by building a boat. When the Flood ends, an enraged Enlil learns that some humans have survived (Ziusudra and family). Enki confronts his angry brother, beseeching him not to ever again send a flood to destroy mankind. Enlil, relents, and agrees never again to send a flood, then Enlil "blesses" the survivors (Yahweh "blessed" the flood's survivors too, cf. Ge 9:1).
In Genesis it is Yahweh who SENT the flood and he WARNED one man, Noah, to save himself, family and animals by building a boat. I understand that Yahweh-Elohim is a fusion of Enlil who _sent_ the flood and Enki who _warned_ the Mesopotamian Noah, Ziusudra and his family.
So, according to various Mesopotamian "creation and flood" myths man was created to tend and till the garden of _a_ god in edin-the-plain at Nippur (Enlil) and another contradicting myth has man created to work in a garden of _a_ god at Eridu belonging to Enki. Thus the two brother gods, Enlil and Enki, who each had man created to work in their city-garden, are also involved in a Mesopotamian FLOOD myth, the one seeking mankinds' destruction, the other intervening to spare "a remnant" for a new beginning. That is to say, I understand that Enlil and Enki "lurk" behind Genesis' presentation of Yahweh-Elohim.
Another important "theme" or "motif" in the Mesopotamian "creation and flood" myths is that of the gods' attaining REST. Man is made to replace the Igigi gods who toil in the garden of a god (Enlil) at Nippur or at Eridu (Enki). The Igigi thus attain "eternal rest" from agricultural toil with man's creation. In the Mesopotamian flood myth man is to be destroyed because his "noise" disturbs the "rest" of the god Enlil (for whom man was created to work in his garden at Nippur) who complains he can neither sleep or rest ! The myths suggest that the Igigi themselves constantly clamored for a freedom from toil and this clamor was at first ignored by the Annuaki or senior gods (Enki and Enlil). When man is made, we are told that the Igigi gods "clamor" is TRANSFERRED to man ! In other words, the reason for man's "clamor" is for the same reason as that of the Igigi gods' -he has no rest from agricultural toil ! Enlil decides he will obtain sleep and rest from the "clamor" by sending a flood to destroy man. That mankind seeks to enter into the "rest" from toil enjoyed exclusively by the gods is suggested in the Bible when Yahweh swears he will not allow a sinful mankind to enter into "his rest" (cf. Hebrews 3:11, 18; 4:1, 3, 5, 8-11).
Professor Cassuto, struck by parallels in expressions in the Epic of Gilgamesh, proposed that Eve's eating of the tree of good and evil was drawing from motifs in that epic:
"Similar phrases occur in the Gilgamesh Epic in the description of the goddess Siduri; there, too, we find the very words 'pleasant to the sight' [literally 'to behold'] and in a parallel clause 'good to look upon' (Assyrian recension, Tablet IX, v. end)... The expression pleasant to the sight and good for food belong, as we have seen above (p. 74) from the parallel passages in the Gilgamesh Epic, to the general tradition concerning the trees of the gardens of the gods." (p. 108. Umberto Cassuto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part One) From Adam to Noah. Jerusalem. The Magness Press. The Hebrew University. [1944 in Hebrew]. English:1989 reprint)
As is to be expected, "the defenders of Holy Writ," believing the Bible to God's Holy Word, either DENY or DOWNPLAY any "borrowing and reformatting" of Mesopotamian concepts by the Hebrews. The most common stratagem they employ is to note that numerous details differ between Genesis 1-9 and the Mesopotamian myths. In addition the morals drawn about the relationship between god/s and man differ as well. Ergo, for Bible-believing Conservative scholars any parallels between the two cultures are dismissed as nonsense, God REALLY DID reveal to Moses what to write about how Man came to be created by God and later destroyed in a Flood.
However, let it be acknowledged here, that in a search for "The Truth," one MUST study _both sides_, so, dear reader, I would encourage you to pause a moment and click here and read what I regard as a typical Christian Apologist "refutation" of the notion that Genesis is a reformatting of Ancient Near Eastern Mesopotamian myths.
Millard challenges Lambert's above proposal as to when Mesopotamian Creation/Flood myths came to be known in the West, at Syrian Alakah and Byblos (Emphasis mine):
"Did the Hebrews borrow from Babylon ? Neither an affirmative nor a negative reply to the question can be absolutely discounted in the light of present knowledge. Reconstructions of a process whereby Babylonian myths were borrowed by the Hebrews, having been transmitted by the Canaanites, and "purged" of pagan elements remain imaginary. It has yet to be shown that any Canaanite material was absorbed into Hebrew sacred literature on such a scale or in such a way. Babylonian literature itself was known in Palestine at the time of the Israelite conquest and so could have been incorporated directly. The argument that borrowing must have taken place during the latter part of the second millennium BC because so many Babylonian texts of that age have been found in Anatolia, Egypt, and the Levant, cannot carry much weight, being based on archaeological accident. The sites yielding the texts were either deserted or destroyed at that time, resulting in the burial of "librarie" and archives intact. Evidence does exist of not inconsiderable Babylonian scribal influence earlier (e.g., at Alakah and Byblos).
However, it has yet to be shown that there was borrowing, even indirectly. Differences between the Babylonian and Hebrew traditions can be found in factual details of the Flood narrative...and are most obvious in the ethical and religious concepts of each composition. All who suspect or suggest borrowing by the Hebrews are compelled to admit large-scale revisionism, alteration, and re-interpretaion in a fashion which cannot be substaniated for any other composition from the Ancient Near East...If there was borrowing then it can have extended only so far as the "historical" framework, and not included intention or interpretation...The two accounts [Hebrew and Mesopotamian] undoubtedly describe the same Flood, the two schemes relate the same sequence of events. If judgement is to be passed as to the priority of one tradition over the other, Genesis inevitably wins for its probability in terms of meterology, geophysics and timing alone...In that the patriarch Abraham lived in Babylonia, it could be said that the stories were borrowed from there, but not that they were borrowed from any text now known to us." (pp.127-128. Millard)
Heidel:
"...I reject the idea that the biblical account gradually evolved out of the Babylonian; for the differences are far too great and similarities far too insignificant." (p.138. Alexander Heidel. The Babylonian Genesis, the Story of Creation. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. 1947, 1951. Second edition. Reprint 1993)
Tigay on the Epic of Gilgamesh being a bringing together in one grand composition themes from various UNRELATED earlier works (Emphasis mine):
"The Gilgamesh Epic drew heavily upon Mesopotamian literary tradition. Not only did the author of the Old Babylonian version base his epic on older Sumerian tales about Gilgamesh, but he and the editors who succeeded him made extensive use of materials and literary forms originally unrelated to Gilgamesh." (p. 247. Jeffrey . Tigay. The Evolution of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania. 1982)
Heidel agrees (Emphasis mine):
"It has been long recognized that the Gilgamesh Epic constitutes a literary compilation of material from various originally UNRELATED sources, put together to form one grand, more or less harmonious whole...The composite character of our epic is thus established beyond any doubt." (p. 13. Alexander Heidel. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1946, 1949. paperback. reprinted 1963, 1995)
"The work of the Semites, however, did not consist simply in translating the Sumerian texts and combining them into one continuous story; rather, it constituted A NEW CREATION, which in the course of time, as indicated by the different versions at our disposal, was CONTINUALLY MODIFIED AND ELABORATED at the hands of the various compilers and redactors, with the result that the Semitic versions which have survived to our day in most cases DIFFER WIDELY from the available Sumerian material." (p. 14. Alexander Heidel. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1946, 1949. paperback. reprinted 1963, 1995)
Seow on earlier, unrelated compositions being brought together and given "new meanings" _contrary to their original intents_ said observation, _for me_ explaining why Genesis possesses so many INVERSIONS of the earlier Mesopotamian myths, citing research by Tigay ( J. H. Tigay. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania. 1982. And J. H. Tigay. The Gilgamesh Epic: Empirical Models For Biblical Criticism. Phildaelphia. University of Pennsylvania. 1985) :
Seow (Emphasis mine):
"...the Gilgamesh Epic. This text is important here inasmuch as it evidences the ADAPTATION of earlier works of VARIOUS GENRES, some of which are employed within their NEW literary context in a manner CONTRARY to their ORIGINAL INTENT." (p. 285. C. L. Seow. "Qohelet's Autobiography." Astrid B. Beck. Editor. Fortunate The Eyes That See. [A Festshrift in honor of David Noel Freedman] Grand Rapids, Michigan. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1995)
I agree with Tigay and Heidel's assessment that the Epic of Gilgamesh employs an EXTENSIVE borrowing and amalgumating of several originally unrelated strands from different compositions. Lambert noted that the Mesopotamian cosmographers forte was not the creation of new concepts from whole cloth but the combining and reinterpreting of various motifs and concepts from originally unrelated compositions. It is my understanding that Genesis 1-9 (The Creation to Flood account), follows along in the traditions of the Hebrew's Mesoptamian predecessors (Abraham being originally of Ur of the Chaldees in Lower Mesopotamia). Millard noted that for those arguing that Genesis is an EXTENSIVE borrowing and reformatting of many different myths must admit a major transformation exists "UNHEARD OF" in earlier ANE history. The observations by Tigay and Heidel which note the bringing together of motifs from different unrelated compositions and harmonizing them into one grand epic, and Seow's important observation of CONTRARY meanings being ascribed to them in their NEW compositional setting, would _seem to belie_ the notion that the Hebrews were doing anything "new and unheard of" in recasting and bringing together several previously unrelated motifs from a variety different compositions and giving them meanings CONTRARY to their original intents -said compositions having been identified by myself as Adapa and the South Wind; the Epic of Gilgamesh; Atar-hasis; Inanna and Utu; Enki and Ninhursag in Dilmun; the Enuma Elish; etc. In other words, I understand the Epic of Gilgamesh, long regarded one of the earliest, longest and "most polished"compositions of the Ancient Near East, embodies the very same methodologies -the EXTENSIVE harmonizing of DISPARATE motifs from unrelated works, giving them NEW TWISTS- as appear in Genesis 1-9. I find myself in full agreement with the insights of Professor Lambert:
"The authors of ancient cosmologies were essentially compilers. Their originality was expressed in NEW COMBINATIONS of old themes, and in NEW TWISTS to old ideas. Sheer invention was not part of their craft." (p. 107, Wilfred G. Lambert, "A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis,: [1965], in Richard S. Hess and David T. Tsumura, Eds., I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood, Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1994)
11 Feb 2005 Update:
I have argued, along with others, that the Hebrews have apparently transformed the Mesopotamian myths in Genesis, but how does one account for this from a biblical point of view ? Where's the "LINK" ? Perhaps the "MISSING LINK" is _Ur of the Chaldees_, where lived Terah and his son Abraham before their departure to Haran in northern Syria ? Excavations at Ur (Tell el Muqqayar, south of Babylon) have uncovered tablets from all periods of the city's long history, and some preserve the myths of this region dating back to Sumerian times. Leick noted that at times Syrian (Amorite) influence is detectable in some of these myths, they are not "purely" Sumerian, they have been reworked and augmented. Perhaps Terah and Abraham's ancestors were Syrians who had earlier settled at Ur ? Did a "Syrian" Terah and Abraham later come "to make a break" with the local myths and develop their own interpretation of the relationship between God and Man, via inversions of the local myths ? Did they leave Ur because the local populace rejected their new insights or "revelations" and return to their ancestral homeland of Haran, to promulgate their new vision to a less hostile audience ? Cf. my article on Ur of the Chaldees for more details.
Professor Kramer on Abraham of Ur being Genesis' "missing link":
"To be sure, even the earliest parts of the Bible, it is generally agreed, were not written down in their present form much earlier than 1000 BC, whereas most of the Sumerian literary documents were composed about 2000 BC or not long afterward. There is, therefore no question of any contemporary borrowing from the Sumerian literary sources. Sumerian influence penetrated the Bible through the Canaanite, Hurrian, Hittite, and Akkadian literatures -particularly through the latter, since, as is well known, the Akkadian language was used all over Palestine and its environs in the second millennium BC as the common language of practically the entire literary world. Akkadian literary works must therefore have been well known to Palestinian men of letters, including the Hebrews, and not a few of these Akkadian literary works can be traced back to Sumerian protoypes,remodeled and transformed over the centuries.
However, there is another possible source of Sumerian influence on the Bible, which is far more direct and immediate than that just described. In fact, it may well go back to Father Abraham himself. Most scholars agree that the Abraham saga as told in the Bible contains much that is legendary and fanciful, it does have an important kernel of truth, including Abraham's birth in Ur of the Chaldees, perhaps about 1700 BC, and his early life there with his family. Now Ur was one of the most important cities of ancient Sumer; in fact, it was the capital of Sumer at three different periods in its history. It had an impressive edubba; and in the joint British-American excavations conducted there between the years 1922 and 1934, quite a number of Sumerian literary documents have been found. Abraham and his forefathers may well have had some acquaintence with Sumeriabn literary products that had been copied and created in their home town academy. And it is by no means impossible that he and the members of his family brought some of this Sumerian lore and learning with them to Palestine, where they gradually became part of the traditions and sources utilized by the Hebrew men of letters in composing and redacting the books of the Bible." (p. 292. "The Legacy of Sumer." Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. [1963] reprint 1972. ISBN 0-226-45237-9. paperback)
Extra-biblical evidence suggests a Jewish understanding from as early as the Hasmonean period (late 2nd century BCE), that the Israelite forefathers were indeed originally of Babylonia, and only later of Haran of Mesopotamia and that because they had departed from the forms of worship embraced by their ancestors, they were apparently _driven away as heretics_ to Haran and later to Canaan. If I am right in suppossing that the INVERSIONS, transformations and reformatting of the Mesopotamian myths are Terah and Abraham's doing, one can see why they would be driven out of Ur of the Chaldees by the local inhabitants who would _object_ to their religious myths being NULLIFIED by the "revelations" being espoused by these two men.
Here is the account from Judith (believed by some scholars to date from the late 2nd century BCE), note that the Jewish Hasmonean author understands his ancestors were ORIGINALLY CHALDEANS _NOT_ARAMEANS, and that ORIGINALLY THEY LIVED IN CHALDEA _NOT_ ARAM (Syria and Haran, here rendered "Mesopotamia")). He also understands that as CHALDEANS THEY WORSHIPPED MANY GODS, but while in CHALDEA they came to be aware that there was only ONE GOD, and they were driven from Chaldea (Babylonia) by their kinsmen for refusing to worship any longer the gods:
Judith 5:5-9
"Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, said to him, "Let my lord now hear a word from the mouth of your servant, and I will tell you the truth about this people that dwells in the nearby mountain district. No falsehood shall come from your servant's mouth. This people is descended from the Chaldeans.At one time they lived in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers who were in Chaldea. For they had left the ways of their ancestors, and they worshipped the God of Heaven, the God they had come to know; hence they drove them out from the presence of their gods; and they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there a long time. Then their God commanded them to leave the place were they were living and go to the land of Canaan. There they settled, and prospered..." (Herbert G. May & Bruce M. Metzger. Editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. [Revised Standard Version]. New York. Oxford University Press. 1977)
Bibliography :
Jeremy Black & Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, An Illustrated Dictionary. London. The British Museum Press. 1992.
Joseph Blenkinsopp. The Pentateuch, An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New York. Doubleday. 1992. ISBN 0-385-41207-X.
Umberto Cassuto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part One) From Adam to Noah. Jerusalem. The Magness Press. The Hebrew University. [1944 in Hebrew]; 1953, reprint of 1989. ISBN 965-223-480X .
Benjamin R. Foster. [Translator & editor]. The Epic of Gilgamesh. [A Norton Critical Edition]. New York & London. W. W. Norton & Company. 2001. ISBN 0-393-97516-9 paperback.
Benjamin R. Foster. p. 101. "How Adapa Lost Immortality." From Distant Days, Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Betheseda, Maryland. CDL Press. 1995. ISBN 1-883053-09-9. paperback.
Alexander Heidel. The Babylonian Genesis. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. [1942, 1951], 1993.
Alexander Heidel. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. 1946, 1949. Reprint 1993. pbk.
Thorkild Jacobsen. The Treasures of Darkness, A History of Mesopotamian Religion.. New Haven & London. Yale University Press. 1976.
E. O. James. The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. Leiden, the Netherlands. E. J. Brill Publishers. 1966 & 1997.
Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins at Sumer, Twenty-Seven 'Firsts' in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books.[1956] 1959.
Samuel Noah Kramer & John Meier. Myths of Enki, The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989.
Samuel Noah Kramer. The Sumerians, Their History, Culture and Character. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. [1963] 1972 reprint. ISBN 0-226-45238-7.
W.G. Lambert, "A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis," [1965], in Richard S. Hess & David T. Tsumra, Editors, I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood. Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1994.
Gwendolyn Leick. A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology. London. Routledge. 1991.
Herbert G. May & Bruce M. Metzger. Editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. [Revised Standard Version]. New York. Oxford University Press. 1977.
Patrick D. Miller, Jr. "Eridu, Dunnu and Babel: A Study in Comparitive Mythology." pp. 143-168. Richard S. Hess & David Toshio Tsumura. Editors. I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood, Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11. Winona Lake, Indiana. Eisenbrauns. 1994. ISBN 0-931464-88-9.
Hugo Radau. Sumerian Hymns and Prayers to god Dumu-zi or Babylonian Lenten Songs from the Temple Library of Nippur. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania. 1913.
N. K. Sandars. Poems of Heaven and Hell From Ancient Mesopotamia. London. Penguin Books. 1971.
C. L. Seow. "Qohelet's Autobiography." p. 285. Astrid B. Beck. Editor. Fortunate The Eyes That See. [A Festshrift in honor of David Noel Freedman] Grand Rapids, Michigan. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1995.
E. A. Speiser. "The Rivers of Paradise." pp. 175-182. [1959 for the original article]. Richard S. Hess & David Toshio Tsumura, editors. I Studied Inscriptions Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11. Winona Lake, Indiana. Eisenbrauns. 1994. ISBN 0-931464-88-9).
Gordon J. Wenham. Genesis 1-15 [Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols.], Word Books. Waco, Texas 1987.
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