The truths of Genesis and the shadows of Enuma Elish

Just as there are truths that illuminate other truths, there are shadows that, through contrast, help us appreciate and understand timeless realities. As the saying goes, you can only truly appreciate what you want in life by experiencing its opposite.

This is the case with the Book of Genesis. This foundational text of Holy Scripture offers an immense treasury of truth about humanity, the nature of reality, and the relationship of all creation with almighty God. What uniquely illuminates Genesis, however, is another ancient text that is little heard of in Catholic catechetical circles or even from the pulpit. This other text was a competitor of Genesis. It offered another creation myth but did so with a vastly different cosmology and understanding of divinity.

The competing text is the Enuma Elish, composed by the Babylonians some two-thousand years before Christ. Lost for centuries, the Enuma Elish was only discovered in 1875 with the finding of a copy in ruins not far from Mosul, Iraq.

Several aspects of this Babylonian creation myth are important for readers of Genesis because the two texts, while both dealing with divinity and creation, could not be more unalike.

• The Enuma Elish begins with an introduction of the divine realm as the dwelling of two primeval gods: Apsu and Tiamat, representing fresh waters and lower salt waters, respectively.
• The cosmos begins its formation, along with several lesser gods, with the mingling of these waters.
• When successive generations of gods become loud and disorderly, disharmony comes to the divine realm.
• Apsu, the father/grandfather god, grows angry and plans to attack the younger gods. This plan is foiled by the wise god Ea, who lulls Apsu to sleep and kills him.
• Ea brings Marduk, his own son, into being. Marduk becomes the most powerful god of Babylon.
• When Tiamat is persuaded to seek revenge for Apsu’s death, war breaks out among the gods. In a final, epic battle, Marduk slays Tiamet and he uses her body to create the heavens and the earth.
• In subsequent episodes of deicide, Marduk uses the blood of a slayed god to form humanity, intending us to be a race of slaves—indeed, we are to be slaves in service to the gods of Babylon for all time.

When one reads the opening of Genesis—especially its first chapter—these details are important. After all, with this introductory role, Genesis 1 sets in scripture an intensely positive tone for the fundamental truths of God’s relationship with humanity and indeed with all creation.  

Where Genesis reveals the divine realm as one of relation, order, and goodness, the Enuma Elish places disharmony, killing, and war prior to the creation of the world and humanity. In doing so, the Enuma Elish places evil within divinity, and thus hardwires it into creation.

In Genesis, the problem of evil is not encountered until the introduction of humanity—most especially, after humanity uses its free will in that first, primeval act of disobedience explained in Genesis 3. *

In the Enuma Elish, the gods create humanity as a race of slaves. In Genesis, humanity is made in the divine image as co-creators and as the very peak of creation!

In Genesis, God is a personal god. He makes a covenant with His wayward children because it is His loving nature to do so. The gods of Babylon seek no such relationship with humanity.

As a believer that Holy Scripture is God’s inspired revelations to His beloved humanity, it is also telling that while Genesis and the Enuma Elish were written and compiled roughly around the same time in antiquity, Genesis comes to us directly from its historical sources—surviving age upon age upon age. The Enuma Elish was lost for millennia, buried in the sands of time, for one very good reason: It is not true. Its cosmology and anthropology are dangerous and, frankly, depressing. And its understanding of the relationship between divinity and humanity (and all creation) is one that offers no sound way forward in hope.

When I teach adults who are preparing to make their Sacraments of Initiation, or when I speak casually with non-believers or those who are lapsed—I always include a little context by comparing Genesis and the Enuma Elish. In doing so, one can better appreciate the resounding truths of Genesis.

Indeed, compared to the shadows of the Enuma Elish, in Genesis we see affirmed what humanity knows deep in our hearts: the cosmos and all humanity were created not to experience evil or to suffer, but to be in a loving relationship with God. We are not meant to be slaves, but to be free. We are not meant to be at war, but to be at peace. Ultimatley, we are meant to find rest only in what is very good—and what has been so from the beginning.

* This act was to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God forbade so that humanity would not know—and thus experience—evil. Of course, Adam and Eve couldn’t help themselves, and tempted by the Serpent, eat of the tree. In doing so, they unleash the knowledge of suffering to the human condition—and to all the cosmos. The good news is that this means that the antidote to evil is within our grasp: obedience to the divine will. Mary’s obedience will be the pinnacle of this cooperation with God for human salvation, but our own daily obedience is important, too.