under Assyrian domination, some elite Judean youths may have been sent to Assyria for education in Assyrian literature, much as happened in other parts of the Assyrian empire.25 Finally, it is possible that the Judean exiles in Babylon encountered and engaged elements of Babylonian literature during their stay there.26
In the end, the argument for textual influence of Mesopotamian or other traditions must be made on a case by case basis. Nevertheless, numerous discussions in the following commentary will provide support to the idea that the character and broader shape of Gen 1–11 were particularly influenced by primeval compositions and cosmogonic traditions seen in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform literature.
The Character of Mesopotamian Primeval Texts and Traditions
Given the close connections of Gen 1–11 to Mesopotamian literary traditions, our examination of these chapters can be informed by a brief overview of primeval themes seen in this corpus. To start, this literature contains an impressive range of texts devoted all or in part to narrating the gods’ creation of civilized humanity. These include both Sumerian (e.g., Enki and Ninmah, the Eridu Genesis) and Akkadian (portions of the Atrahasis and Enuma Elish Epics) texts, along with a couple of bilinguals (the Ashur bilingual [KAR 4], Marduk bilingual).27 I will term such texts “primeval creation accounts.” In addition, we see a number of important traditions about primeval origins embedded in texts of other genres. They are particularly frequent in hymns (Enki and the World Order, Ninurta’s Exploits, Hymn to the Engura, Song of the Hoe, How Grain Came to Sumer). But we also see such primeval themes occur briefly in some incantations,28 the outset of the Rulers of Lagash list, a part of the Eridu Genesis text, and part of a Sumerian school debate (Debate between Grain and Sheep). This mix of genres shows the overall prominence of themes of primeval origins in the Mesopotamian literary tradition and suggests the possibility of mutual influence of primeval creation narratives on the one hand and the treatment of creation themes in other genre texts (e.g., hymns) on the other.
Notably, the bulk of Mesopotamian primeval creation narratives and cosmological traditions in other genres do not focus generally on the creation of the world per se, but rather on describing the emergence of different aspects of the Mesopotamian canal-based, temple-city social system.29 In doing so, this etiological dimension of numerous Mesopotamian literary texts integrally connect their audience’s world to the story world of the creation narratives, depicting key aspects of contemporary reality, including social reality, as resulting from events at the outset of time. Far from being an added or superficial element of the stories, this overall etiological dimension of creation narratives constituted a key aspect of their claim upon their readers, turning key elements of the contemporary world—e.g., canals, farming, cities, kingship—into testimony of the truth of the creation myths that purported to explain them.
Certainly the creation of humans by the gods (usually Enki/Ea) is often included as a part of this. Nevertheless, even here Mesopotamian compositions include an anticipation of irrigation-based agriculture on which Mesopotamian civilization depended. A particularly frequent theme in Mesopotamian texts is the idea that humans were created to do labor to support the gods. In particular, we see multiple attestations in Sumerian texts of the idea that, prior to the creation of humanity, the lower gods were sorely burdened by labor, bearing the hoe and the bucket30 or more specifically maintaining the canals.31 Yet more Sumerian and Akkadian texts then go on to describe how higher gods then create humanity to alleviate the lower gods’ labor, often after a specific consultation among the gods. These themes appear already in the ancient Sumerian Enki and Ninmah myth, and they reappear in Sumerian compositions (Song of the Hoe, Debate between Grain and Sheep) and the Akkadian Atrahasis Epic, the Akkadian Enuma Elish Epic and several later Akkadian compositions (Ashur bilingual, Marduk bilingual) as well as being briefly mentioned in some incantations.32
These stories of the origins of humans typically occur as parts of broader compositions about the origins of Mesopotamian city-temple culture. Alongside the creation of human beings, we see a particular focus in these Mesopotamian origins texts on themes such as: 1) the origins of the great cities like Eridu (in Sumerian compositions) and Babylon (in bilingual and Akkadian compositions); 2) the creation of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; and 3) the founding of field agriculture along with the canal-irrigation system that made such agriculture possible in Mesopotamia. In the hymn to Enki and the world order, along with the Eridu Genesis, the creator, Enki, is praised as the founder of the first city, Eridu, along with other important Sumerian cities. Later bilingual and Akkadian texts (Enuma Elish Epic, the Marduk bilingual) then shift this achievement to Marduk, who is praised for founding Babylon and its great Esagila temple. So also, Enki (in the hymn to the world order), Ninurta (in the exploits of Ninurta), Marduk (in the Marduk bilingual and Enuma Elish), or the gods in general (in the Ashur bilingual) create the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on which the Mesopotamian irrigation system depended. Finally, the creation of that irrigation system is presupposed in the Atrahasis Epic (where humans take over canal maintenance from lower gods) and explicitly described in the Eridu Genesis, Ashur bilingual, and the Hymn to Enki and the world order.
Notably, this overall etiological emphasis seen in Mesopotamian primeval creation accounts (and creation traditions) seems to have militated against a regular combination of such creation narratives with stories of a world-destroying flood. To be sure, creation and flood are integrated in the Atrahasis Epic, focused as it is on various ways that contemporary life structures resulted from the gods’ attempts to end human multiplication and its accompanying noise. Nevertheless, the flood does not appear at all in most Mesopotamian primeval creation accounts, and the flood is only incompletely integrated with creation-etiological elements in the Eridu Genesis. The documented secondary insertion of a flood account into tablet eleven of the Standard Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic (hereafter “SB Gilgamesh” as opposed to the Old Babylonian [OB] versions) shows that some scribes could bring flood traditions into relation with other textual traditions. Nevertheless, the broader picture of Mesopotamian primeval narratives and traditions shows that narrative integration of creation and flood episodes—seen particularly in the Atrahasis Epic—was the exception rather than the rule.
Finally, I must emphasize that the Mesopotamian literary tradition regarding primeval times is varied, constituted as it is by works of various genres in two languages (Sumerian and Akkadian) that were composed over many centuries. There are important differences across this corpus. For example, the Akkadian texts, which generally lie closer than the Sumerian texts to the time of the composition of Gen 1–11, are distinguished from those Sumerian texts by their more resolutely negative view of the heavy labor put on humans by the gods and their more exclusive picture of humans as created through a process of formation, generally a god or goddess crafting humans out of clay (where several Sumerian texts depict humans as sprouting from the earth).33 In addition, it appears that certain texts enjoyed more prominence in different periods of the Mesopotamian scribal context. In particular, it seems that the Enuma Elish Epic, composed in the later second millennium and synthesizing earlier traditions of varied kinds (e.g., the Anzu and Atrahasis Epics), became increasingly prominent across the first millennium BCE and particularly influenced later representations of primeval times.34 For example, Berossus’s Babylonian History, composed in the early third century, particularly reflects the version of creation seen in tablet VI of the Enuma Elish Epic.35
The Limited Usefulness of the ‘Creation’ Category for Reading Gen 1–11
The following commentary will explore more similarities and distinctions between texts in Gen 1–11 and their Mesopotamian (and other) counterparts. The point for now is to emphasize how the broader focus of the Gen 1–11 materials corresponds to the focus of many Mesopotamian primeval narratives on the overall origins of human city culture and specific temple cults as well. Both sets of material undermine a common contemporary conceptual division between cosmos-oriented “creation stories” on the one hand and other primeval stories on the other. Such an understanding assumes
