The Oxford History of the Biblical World by Michael D. Coogan Read Free Book Online Page A

cool late afternoon (3.8). And the first human, formed by Yahweh from the soil as a potter shapes a vessel and infused with an element of the divine, is made to cultivate and tend the garden.
    The first children of Adam and Eve are Cain and Abel, a farmer and a herder, and Cain’s son Enoch is the first to build a city (Gen. 4.17). Cain’s descendants go on to make musical instruments and bronze and iron tools. In a later generation, after the Flood, Noah will be the first to plant a vineyard (9.20).
    As in the
Sumerian King List
and other Mesopotamian traditions, this primeval history was divided into antediluvian and postdiluvian epochs. Before the Flood came a distant past, when humans lived extraordinarily long life spans. The biblical narrative of the Flood provides the clearest example of direct dependence on other ancient myths. Many of its details are virtually identical to Mesopotamian accounts of the Flood, especially in
Gilgamesh
and
Atrahasis.
In both traditions, a god warns the hero of the impending deluge. Following divine instructions he constructs a boat, waterproofs it, and brings on board his family and all sorts of animals. They ride out the storm, and the boat comes to rest on a mountain. Then, to see whether it is safe to disembark, the hero releases three birds. Here is the way the hero Utnapishtim recounts this episode in
Gilgamesh:
     
When the seventh day arrived,
I put out and released a dove.
The dove went; it came back,
For no perching place was visible to it, and it turned round.
I put out and released a swallow.
The swallow went; it came back,
For no perching place was visible to it, and it turned round.
I put out, and released a raven.
The raven went, and saw the waters receding.
And it ate, preened, lifted its tail, and did not turn round.
Then I put (everything) out to the four winds, and I made a sacrifice….
The gods smelt the fragrance,
The gods smelt the pleasant fragrance,
The gods like flies gathered over the sacrifice.
    (trans. Dalley, 114)
     
    Likewise, in Genesis, Noah releases three birds. The third brings him an olive leaf and when released again does not return. So Noah and his family and all the animals leave the ark.
     
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD , and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind.” (Gen. 8.20–21)
    As in the
Sumerian King List,
in Genesis lives are shorter after the Flood, society becomes more complex, and populations increase. The story of the Tower of Babel, set at the end of the primeval period, tells how the building of a “tower with its top in the heavens” and a city (Gen. 11.4) results in linguistic diversity.
    Like their ancient Near Eastern colleagues, biblical writers used myth to explain the origins of their world. However, for them both, this was not just myth, but history too. The modern distinction between history and myth is perhaps too sharply drawn, since mythic conventions informed the interpretation of the past in ancient historiography, and to some extent do so in modern as well.
    Like the rest of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 1–11 received its final form well into the first millennium BCE , and was clearly intended as an overture to the narratives that follow. These chapters set the story of Israel’s ancestors, its Exodus from Egypt, and its vicissitudes in the Promised Land in a larger, universal context, and consciously connect that later history with creation and primeval events. For the authors of Genesis 1–11, then, the accounts of creation, of the Garden of Eden, of the Flood, were historical as well, connected by genealogy with their own more immediate past. The “generations of the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 2.4), the creation of the world, became the first of a series of births, summarized periodically in the lists occurring