"In [the] beginning . . ."

This phrase is a translation of one word - Bereshith - the name of the book in Hebrew. Nearly all English translations include a 'the', but there is no definite article in either Hebrew or Greek texts with 'beginning'. The phrase could be read, "In beginning..." in the sense of this is the arbitrary place to start the story - the opening scene.

NET Bible Genesis 1 Notes - netbible.org

One should not treat this "beginning" as a proper noun - "The Beginning." The first tangible scene is "void and unformed" and the first observation only occurs after "Let there be light." What comes prior to that has been purposely left ambiguous. This ambiguity has allowed so many commenters to read into the text whatever conditions they require: nothing, space, spacetime, dark matter, clouds of dust, colliding asteroids, barren land, oceans of water, pantheons of gods, or even the cosmic egg. 

Did the Big Bang happen? (2022) by Sabine Hossenfelder - youtube.com

Many translations will bracket (eg. NIV) or italicize (eg. NASB) words that are implied or added for the sake of style or clarity. Since articles, pronouns, and prepositions are often implied and adding a 'the' is traditional, neither the New American Standard Bible (NASB) nor the New International Version (NIV) brackets a definite article - although in this case, the 2013 Genesis Introduction in the NIV Study Bible does. 

"The Chief Rabbi on Genesis" (2009) by Jonathon Sacks - thejc.com

Toledot

As Asimov relates, the Greek word Genesis (γένεσις), which gives the non-Jewish title of this book to the world, means "coming into being." It can also mean the story of origin, history, or lineage and is used in these ways throughout ancient Greek literature (BDAG 2000). Genesis (ie. γενέσεως, γενέσεις) is a translation of the Hebrew word Toledot found in 13 verses of Genesis. Eleven of those verses follow a formula and are widely regarded as the concept that forms the book's organizing structure. A typical example, Genesis 5:1a can be read: 

This is the written account of the toledot of mankind.  

Attempts to understand exactly how Toledot organizes Genesis by purely literary means have ended with inelegant and imperfect models to downright confusion. There are important findings that justify the Toledot's ordering status such as the effect of "coordinating waws" distinguishing between main sections and subsections (Thomas 2011, pgs. 68-72, see the table below), but the overall effect is still much too messy to be considered an act of mere literary style. Some of the messiness: 

1. Whoever assigned verse numbers to the Toledot verses made a bigger mess. Most of the Toledot verses have two independent clauses. Maybe the Toledot clauses were imagined as section headings? It seems that is how most scholars treat them. However, in the book of Psalms, the heading material is left without verse numbers. In scholarly literature, it is common to see these verses divided up into "a" and "b" clauses.

2. Often material from before the Toledot is repeated after. This appears much like a modern chapter book where the material from a previous chapter is summarized in the introduction of a later chapter.

3. Four of the Toledot verses are for secondary characters in the overall story. For all the primary characters except for Noah, the account that follows the Toledot only sparsely features them.

4. The patterns of how Toledot verses are used in the first 10 chapters of Genesis are different than usage in the middle 27 chapters. The last 12 chapters do not contain any Toledot verses.

5. Toledot statements all occur after a lineage or story of origin for the persons or objects they apply. In several cases, if Toledot meant 'origin', it would fit nicely as the end of a section. Except for the first Toledot verse, the person(s) would hypothetically have been able to have written the preceding section as eyewitnesses or by consulting with eyewitnesses.

6. There are four different spellings of Toledot used in the book of Genesis (see Bible Links). The early Medieval rabbinical commentary Genesis Rabba 12:6 and some Christian sources assign these spelling variants unique meanings, but it all seems a bit post hoc and imprecise. Modern Hebrew differentiates meaning on two spellings - תולדות = 'history' or 'annals' and תולדת = 'born of'.

7. Most modern translations translate Toledot as "generations" instead of the broader "origin," or "history," and therefore, expect a genealogy to follow rather than a story.

8. The "generations" translation (NIV: "family line") allows what follows to be about the descendants rather than the origins or ancestors of the objects or persons in question. This seems a bit of a dodge since this contrasts with the accepted meaning of Genesis in Greek literature, and Hebrew has another far more commonly used word for "generation(s)." Of the uses of Toledot outside of the book of Genesis, only Ruth 4:18 unquestionably means 'descendants'. 

The repetition of content around some of the Toledot verses shows breaks in Genesis that cannot be easily accounted for based on literary form alone. This can be accounted for if Toledot verses either start or end different source documents. The duplicate material following some of the Toledots is an introduction to a document that, at one time, was physically separate from the material before. 

If one were to ignore chapter and verse numbers and replace the "generations" translation of Toledot with "origins" or "family history" it can be seen that at least some of these Toledots could mark the end of distinct documents, especially 5:1a and 6:9a. Two Toledot verses are already widely recognized as the end of sections - Genesis 2:4a ends the first vision of creation and Genesis 10:32 ends the Table of Nations. Although Genesis 10:32 does not precisely follow the Toledot formula, the next story - the Tower of Babel - does not begin with a Toledot verse. 

Therefore, most of the perceived messiness in the Toledot backbone of Genesis is a failure to realize that these verses are marking the beginnings and endings of source documents of differing lengths. Potentially, each of these documents could be from a separate source and scribe. Since there are quite a few documents - at least 10, possibly as many as 14 - this strongly implies that the book of Genesis regarded as a whole is an anthology.

The DH and TH

Asimov's Guide to the Bible (AGB) takes the standard Documentary Hypothesis (DH) approach to sources. Popularized by the late 19th-century scholar Julius Wellhausen, this approach ascribes the Pentateuch (and therefore, Hexateuch) to a variety of authors writing patches of each story at different times for different reasons well after the events were to have taken place. Supposedly, much of this patchwork was written, compiled, and edited in or after the Babylonian exile (c. 600 BC). Only occasionally does the patchwork correspond to the sources of Genesis when considered as an anthology. 

While the Documentary Hypothesis has been widely accepted, it has also been widely refuted and is an extremely biased approach to biblical literature. Ostensibly, the DH was created to explain the doublets, disjunctions, and different names for God used in the biblical text, but as more parsimonious explanations became available, there was a doubling down on the DH at liberal and 'secular' institutions. At its best, it has been a working consensus. At its worst - an academic shibboleth and cudgel wielded by the ivory tower. It is on its way out, merely waiting for its 20th-century proponents to die off and the remaining 'secular' scholars to find another academic prejudice to pivot to. As this approach is gradually explained by a fawning Asimov, I will comment on its weaknesses. In this case, Asimov's chosen scholars are denying the tradition that Moses is in any way the author of any book of the Pentateuch. 

Review of John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism - biblearchaeology.org

The naked assertion - deemed "actual fact" by Asimov - that the legal code in the Pentateuch was developed well after Moses is an example of the kind of bias the DH produces. However, large parts of the legal code only make sense in light of the Exodus. The concept of law had been around for quite some time with specific treaty laws evident in the northern Levant around 2300 BC (Podany 2010, pgs. 29-32). Hammurabi had conquered Mesopotamia long before Moses - possibly in or just after the time of Abraham. His famous law code, which bears a strong functional and stylistic resemblance to the Mosaic code, had been widely dispersed and was widely known. As Asimov comments later, the Hebrews had experienced the laws and cultures of the various Canaanite tribes and traders, as well as Egypt under both the Hyksos and native Egyptians. It is perfectly reasonable for the Hebrews to have a well-developed legal code found in the Pentateuch from inception. It is equally unreasonable to believe the Hebrews did not have an established legal code and foundational story long before their exile to Babylon. 

The Tablet Hypothesis

Every facet of the original Documentary Hypothesis has received blistering criticism. It takes quite a bit of prejudice to see the DH as anything more than a working consensus now. Even Wikipedia (2022) - the great defender of consensus - has conceded "The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now collapsed." One of the earlier 'secular' scholars rejecting the DH, Norman Whybray (1987, p.236) sums it up thus: 

These written materials may have been long or short, few or numerous: the only thing which may be regarded as certain is that they were not comprehensive documents like J, E, and P combined into a single narrative by a series of redactors. 

However, to honest people aware of their prejudices, the traditional views that have Moses or God Himself as the original authors of all the content of Genesis, much less the whole Pentateuch, are also not tenable. How then did these texts come about? 

Undoubtedly, there are multiple sources involved in Genesis - the book reads like an anthology. Moses, above others, had the access, education, experience, and aloofness to compile the documents. This may not have been as difficult a process as it first seemed. P. J. Wiseman - father of the well-known Assyriologist Donald "D.J." Wiseman - showed as early as 1936 that Genesis retains fairly typical tablet sequencing and identification information, implying that much of the source material was written in cuneiform script on several clay tablets. Each of these tablets may represent different authors of source material prior to Moses. The compiler of Genesis has copied the tablets so closely that it is often still clear where one tablet ends and another begins. 

Evidence of Tablets in the Text of Genesis (pdf) - bcresources.net  Main Chart png

While not widely known, sometimes simplistic, and containing some now outdated archaeology, Wiseman's book New Discoveries in Babylonia About Genesis (1949, 5th ed.) is still a thought-provoking read of discovery. The Tablet Hypothesis that Wiseman proposed has been the only reasonably self-consistent concept of Sumerian and Akkadian sources to have touched academia. While well regarded in some Christian circles, it only just touched academia and was then cast behind the furniture during the time secular scholarship had been so enthralled with the DH. While having some difficulties, I have found the Tablet Hypothesis to be something of a revelation, allowing a move from defense to offense. In each section where it applies, I will end with some perspective that a modified version of the Tablet Hypothesis can give. 

New Discoveries in Babylonia About Genesis (1949, 5th ed.) by P. J. Wiseman - biblicalarchaeology.org.uk 

The Tablet Hypothesis (TH) is a far more objective hypothesis of sources than the Documentary Hypothesis, which, after more than 140 years of evolution in academia, does not have a shred of hard evidence to support it. Instead of imploring people not to look behind the curtain, as many traditionalist accounts are accused, the Tablet Hypothesis shows that the compiler of Genesis designed the book so that a reader could identify some of the source material -- just as you would expect from an anthology. Even though this is a hypothesis about multiple sources, the Tablet Hypothesis is largely incompatible with the Documentary Hypothesis or other proposals of late sources. 

In Wiseman's preferred embodiment of the Tablet Hypothesis, the Toledot verses are colophons - information at the end or on a side of a clay tablet which might convey an incipit, author, whom the tablet was written, and/or what the tablet is about. This is overreaching a bit. Many of the Toledot verses in Genesis cannot be put at the end of passages without significant issues, but the first three can and show many of the elements he expected and recognized. I will argue that most of the remaining Toledot verses are used as bridges by the compiler to mark the transition to another document in the anthology, while still providing source information for the previous document. In contrast, most versions of the Documentary Hypothesis, including the version Asimov espouses, effectively ignore the significance of the Toledot verses.

Resetting Moses

Questions of origin and source are not at all recent. Quite often the exercise of asking will tell us something about how to read the text. In most cases, a long-standing rabbinic or Christian tradition has provided some semblance of an answer. For instance, a broad traditional view of the source of the Pentateuch is clearly stated at the beginning of the 3rd century AD Pirkei Avot, also known as Ethics of the Fathers: 

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua gave it over to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly.

One must be careful not to take these kinds of statements more literally than they were intended. For instance, the book of Deuteronomy would be recognized by any rabbi at any time to be part of the Torah, and yet the text of Deuteronomy makes clear several times (Deut. 1:3-5; 4:44-49; 32:48-50; 34:1-6) that it was not produced on Mt. Sinai. The author of Pirkei Avot used the place of Sinai as a symbol to convey the Torah's prophetic origin and ultimate source as from God. And yet, some people will insist on taking the text above in its most literal form despite the obvious contradiction it produces with the biblical text. 

The Documentary Hypothesis was able to edge in and get traction in the late 19th and 20th centuries by squashing "literalisms" and entrenched but unwarranted traditions held in various faith movements. In many cases, the unwarranted traditions were bigger, flashier, definitive "updates" to more reliable and responsible ancient traditions. Perhaps the ultimate example of "updated" tradition is the belief that Noah's ark came to rest on the highest peak in Turkey, the volcano now called Mt. Ararat (16,854 ft.) instead of the anciently attested - but still high above the Mesopotamian plain - Mt. Judi (6520 ft) at the edge of northern Mesopotamia; or Mt. Nisir (Pir Omar Gudrun) at the northeast corner of Mesopotamia; or east of Mesopotamia at the edge of the ancient land of Aratta (eg. OECT 04, 153 c 40) - wherever that was - beyond ancient Dilmun and Elam, as is represented in the even more ancient Sumerian texts.

The extra-biblical traditions surrounding Moses are many and mighty. Even the relatively conservative Tablet Hypothesis lives athwart the tradition that the book of Genesis was a dictation of God by Moses on Mt. Sinai. With that in mind, truth is served by resetting these extra-biblical traditions to reasonable, defensible premises. These premises are not conclusions but sound common-sense foundational assumptions that anyone should begin their inquiry.

The Pentateuch portrays Moses as a qualified scribe (eg. Exodus 17:14; 24: 3-7; 34:1-4; 34:27; Numbers 33:1-2; Deut. 28:58-60; 29:20-21, 29; 30:10, 31:9, 31:22), but if Moses were anything like a princely official of Egypt, as his name and story imply, there would not be a strong reason to believe very much of the Pentateuch was handwritten by Moses. Even overlooking that most references to Moses are in the third person, he dies near the end of Deuteronomy. Large sections of the Pentateuch - and most of the book of Deuteronomy - are dictations by a secretary (or secretaries). Called amanuensis, this has been common practice for royalty and high officials since the dawn of writing. The modern-day speechwriter and biographical ghostwriter are in the same line of work.  

Positing a secretary is not mere speculation. Evident from early Sumerian writing and known throughout Mesopotamia, the highest position in a god's or ruler's entourage is the sukkal. Usually translated as secretary, the sukkal is shown throughout the literature to wield enormous power, influence, and message crafting in their own right. The sukkals of the major Mesopotamian gods were themselves well-known gods. One way to view Moses' relationship with "The Voice" is as a sukkal. A way to view Aaron's leadership alongside Moses is as a sukkal. 

For history concurrent with Moses, scribes were commissioned by Moses' administration, if not personally, to record events as they happened. They may have also set these accounts into easily reproducible manuscripts. Since all copies were made by hand, writing material was relatively expensive (unless clay tablets were used), and literacy was relatively uncommon, brevity and ease of memory are at a premium, which accounts for the condensed style, parallelism, and poetry in the text. In addition, with tablets - and to a lesser extent scrolls - the size and format can constrain the length of the story or influence what sources are chosen for a particular anthology (such as Genesis) and which are not. Therefore, one should not assume that what was included in Genesis constitutes all the pre-exodus texts available to Moses' administration.

Whether warranted or not, the responsibility for the work of any administration - ancient or modern - falls upon the principal leader. Analogous attestations are constantly applied to modern government and religious administrations. The people credit (or more likely blame) the chief leader for any event during his administration the leader may have remotely had a part. Therefore, the work of Moses' administration on the Pentateuch broadly counts as authorship by Moses.

The respected historian and Hebrew language scholar Gary Rendsburg would put the writing of Genesis one or two generations later than Samuel. Rendsburg is a prolific secular scholar who rejects the Documentary Hypothesis on literary and historical grounds. He sees a motivation for writing Genesis as justifying the idea of kingship during David's and Solomon's reigns. Primarily he cites Genesis 17:6 and 16 predicting future nations and kings; the Genesis 15 boundaries of Israel somewhat matching that during David and Solomon's reigns (1 Kings 5); and Jacob's dying blessing upon Judah in Genesis 49:10:

The scepter will not depart from Judah, 

nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, 

until he to whom it belongs [Shiloh] shall come 

and the obedience of the nations shall be his. 

However, it is a non sequitur to cite these verses as each of them is portrayed in Genesis as prophecy. It is putting the cart before the horse to cite them as evidence of having been written in the time of the first kings. The prophecies and predictions would have been reported regardless of when Genesis was first written. By citing them as primary evidence, Rendsburg is affirming the shibboleth of critical scholarship that prophecy isn't real and/or the authors are too dumb to predict Israel will one day have a king like everyone else. The prejudice is the presupposition that the Genesis writer(s) made it up to suit their purposes. The other cited evidence - such as Genesis 14:18 concerning Melchizedek, Genesis 17:6, 16; 22:14, and the younger son motif - are sufficiently elastic to provide arguments for the present form of Genesis at any time between Moses and the Septuagint. 

The Book of Genesis as a Product of the United Monarchy (2018) by Gary A Rendsburg - youtube.com 

While the denial of prophecy is at odds with the plain meaning of the text, in his Book of Genesis course for The Great Courses Rendsburg ably demonstrates he is capable of reading the text without this critical prejudice. He shows by treating the Genesis text as a unified whole that he can read with a believer's prejudice as intended. There in lies a pernicious "either...or" - only one of these prejudices can be true and both may be false depending on the purported prophecy. Both prejudices are statements of faith. Either way is faith-seeking understanding. There is no neutrality. 

The scholar then is captured by their prejudices. When put that way, we must look away from Rendsburg's actual conclusion - which is bound to be wrong if the prophecy is real - and instead look at how he conducts his scholarship to measure the value of his ideas. Are there any other prejudices or academic fiction lurking there? Rendsburg's literary and historical approach seems sound and laudable. He is not interested in manufacturing criticisms or obstinate with his preferred views. He seems to want to let the text be true on its terms unless a judgment of evidence or his critical prejudice doesn't allow it. He even provides a potential source in Melchizedek and Jerusalem for the Mesopotamian content in the first 10 chapters of Genesis. The result? The Rendsburg rendition produces a discrepancy with the text of maybe 40 years, versus 400 years for Asimov and the Documentary Hypothesis. 

This is progress, but it also means the wise seeker must always be wary of the prejudices of the scholars - both the believing and non-believing. Nobody is neutral. They must all be kept at arm's length. The value of their scholarship can only be judged by the quality of their argument, objectivity, and evidence - not by conclusions steered by prejudice. This does not leave much room for trusting consensus unless that consensus is based on unassailable evidence.

The Sumerian Connection

The key question, however, is not about Moses and his time, but the genetic founder of Judaism - Abraham. Genesis 11:27-32 and 12:1-9 quite clearly represent Abraham and his family as immigrants to the southern Levant from somewhere in the core of Mesopotamia sometime in the early 2nd millennium BC. Several chapters of Genesis are spent detailing his family roots going all the way back to a people/tribe/settlement named Adam in a garden East of Eden. One of the most incredible finds in the early 20th century is the Sumerian agricultural civilization built upon southern Mesopotamia's flat, resource-poor alluvial plain. The Sumerians gave us the first form of writing. 

Of course, the oldest sources attesting to Abraham in the Bible should hearken back to that Sumerian connection. The common word for plain and plateau in Sumerian is eden 𒂔, and the common word for habitation or settlement is the compound word a-dam 𒀉𒁮. Unpacking the cuneiform symbols that make adam shows a visual pun that is used extensively in the beginning chapters of Genesis. With other puns, it will be seen that a large part of Genesis is translation and transliteration from the cuneiform writing used in Mesopotamia.

The many parallels between the beginning chapters of Genesis and 3rd and 2nd millennium Sumerian literature were recognized as soon as Sumerian could be reliably translated. This laid bare the poor assumptions and arrogance of so many assertions of the DH. For instance, the vertical axis of gods An (heaven, above), Enlil ("Lord Spirit/Wind/Breath"), and Enki/Ea ("Lord Place/Earth", "House/Temple of Living Water") were the essential creator gods for the Sumerians and the earliest Akkadians, long before the Babylonians imagined their city god Marduk as a replacment for Enlil in the Enuma Elish. Not only are Semitic translations of the names of the Sumerian triad found in the biblical texts, but the epithets, literary devices, and language used to describe them are also strongly paralleled. 

As an example, consider the obvious parallels between Genesis chapter 1 and the prologue to Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World, ETCSL 1.8.1.4 - a modern composite translation last revised in 2003 by The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Project of the University of Oxford. Also below are lines 8 to 26 of an earlier translation by the prolific Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, slightly revised in 1961 from work first published in 1938 (Kramer 1938). The first 6 or 7 lines were too broken to be translated from Kramer's source tablets. 

Gilgameš, Enkidu and the nether world - ETCSL 1.8.1.4 lines 1-26

In those days, in those distant days, [ud re-a ud su3-ra2 re-a]

in those nights, in those remote [or "opening" from ba9-ra2 𒁁𒊏, "to open"] nights, 

in those years [mu, “year” or “name”], in those distant years;

4    in days of yore [ud ul], when the necessary things had been brought [e3-a-ba] into manifest existence [pa, "branch or frond"], 

in days of yore [ud ul, “distant day”], when the necessary things had been for the first time properly cared for, 

6    when bread had been tasted for the first time in the shrines of the Land [Kalam-ma, familiar land, ie. Sumer], 

when the ovens [imšu-rin-na 𒅎𒋗𒆸𒈾] of the Land had been made to work,

u₅ =  BURU₅×AMAR@t  (see ePSD2) to ride, to sail

It does not appear that Sumerian has a basic action word for swimming (ETCSL and ePSD2 search "swim"). The closest is gir ("to slip, glide, slide, dive, submerge") not used for something like swimming until after Sumerian times. The flying words therefore would seem to cover swimming as well. 

Lines 17 and 18 end with the RI 𒊑 verb that could take the meaning "hurled" or "thrown," but who is hurling? This only seems to work with hailstones from An, Enlil, a storm deity (eg. Iskur), or a deity with access to the sky. If the mentioning of stones is intended only for size, weight, and effect, the more likely verb is dal  (ie. ba-an-da-dal), which could give lines 17 and 18 as: 

17 Against/for/with the king the small ones he/she (Enki or Ereshkigal) caused to fly, 

18 Against/for/with Enki, the large ones he/she (Enki or Ereshkigal) caused to fly;

>>The "Against/for/with" is due to the latitude the dative suffix and verb chain allow in meaning. The correct one is determined by context. If the context is Enki causing them to fly, all three may be in play. 

So what is Enki doing? Is he creating the ecology of the air and sea? Is his providence, foreshadowed in the bread and ovens of lines 6 and 7, causing a feeding frenzy? Or is he on his way to conquer chaos and death? All of these make sense of the continuing text and are not mutually exclusive. Enki has created and provided for life out of chaos (ie. the sea) so wild that once set to flight, it comes back to alight or attack the boat. The primary purpose of the text mentioning Enki sailing to Kur is to highlight that for later in the story that even Enki is threatened on the voyage, and yet he has the means of navigating Kur.

DH and Cuneiform Translation

The main scholarly prejudice bred by the Documentary Hypothesis is that the Torah is very late, derivative, and fictional. With such a large semantic range in many cuneiform symbols, this prejudice has caused some translators to burnish their credentials by seeking meanings that avoid similarities to biblical language, even to the point of preventing parsimony. I will call these Bespoke Translations. It is not that bespoke translations are wrong, but rather that the idiosyncratic translation choices make it difficult for the non-specialist to make the obvious connection to other texts. The upshot is that the positive biblical parallels that can be made are likely to be substantial - the bespoke translator simply didn't have a choice but an obvious parallel. 

Samuel Noah Kramer's translation work is relatively free of such prejudice. He has, in many of his works, highlighted and discussed biblical parallels. In this 1961 translation, however, Kramer believed the logogram Kur was referring to some monster or dragon. In this case, the reference to the underworld queen Ereškigal ("Woman of the big place") shows Kur as the underworld with strong similarities to the Hebrew idea of Sheol. While Kur 𒆳 (mountain, hill, mound, land, city-state) does have a wide and important range of meanings, it is not so wide as to be a dragon. This misunderstanding constitutes the biggest problem in his translation of the passage. Apart from this, I consider Kramer's translation to be the better of the two above. 

To be fair, line 13 concerning Ereshkigal and Kur is particularly "troublesome," leading to a wide variation in meaning among interpreters (Gadotti 2014, pgs. 244-245). Some have Ereshkigal already Queen of Kur, receiving a portion of the earth as a gift. Another has Enki being given to Ereshkigal as a gift. Most have some slight variation of the ETCSL translation above. The point of Enki's sailing to Kur for the overall story is merely to show that Enki can navigate Kur with difficulty -- not tell a complete or even summary story. The outcome of this line has a critical determining effect on how to take the passage of Enki sailing to Kur. Altogether, the clues are telling us this episode is parallel to the 5th day of creation:

Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living beings, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the dome of the heavens!

The story of Enki setting sail for Kur is also the model that Noah's ark and the Mesopotamian deluge stories recapitulate. The surface parallels are obvious: the land of abundance descending into noisy chaos; Noah as the representative of Enki recreating life that is not so noisy and sinful; the emphasis and special concerns for the birds in the ark. There are many other parallels produced in Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld, such as Utu opening a hole in Kur to rescue the former wild man Enkidu. This parallels the window in the roof of the ark opened by God at the end of the deluge. So, we should expect even deeper parallels if we have more of Enki's sailing story. 

Tablet Structure

The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh was compiled and translated from separate Sumerian episodes like this one. There are at least five different independent episodes known in Sumerian without considering variants. 

"Mesopotamian Epic" (2009) by Scott Noegel -  faculty.washington.edu

One fragmented version of this episode from Me-Turan ends by referencing the incipit - the first line of a document taken as a title - of the next tablet in the sequence. 

His heart was smitten, his insides were ravaged. 

The king began to search for life. 

Now the lord once decided to set off for the mountain where the man lives. 

Sure enough, Gilgameš and Ḫuwawa (Version A) ETCSL 1.8.1.5 starts with the incipit. Notice the extensive repetition in the first 7 lines so typical of Sumerian literature: 

Now the lord once decided to set off for the mountain where the man lives; 

Lord Gilgameš decided to set off for the mountain where the man lives. 

He spoke to his slave [arad] Enkidu: 

"Enkidu, since a man cannot pass beyond the final end of life, 

I want to set off into the mountains, to establish my renown there. 

Where renown can be established there, I will establish my renown; 

and where no renown can be established there, I shall establish the renown of the gods." 

With just a few snippets from two tablets of Gilgamesh, we see in Sumerian literature that everyone agrees existed much earlier than the book of Genesis, all the major stylistic features - doublets, disjunctions, and different names for God - that form the foundation of the Documentary Hypothesis - may it rest in peace. 

Elohim is the plural of El or Eloah, which are the primitive words for highness, authority, strength, and power, and generic words for god. El is also the title/name for the Caananite's supreme deity, closely related if not synonymous to the Akkadian El or Il, itself synonymous with the Sumerian supreme god of heaven An. The semantic range of the words El and Elohim is enormous, ranging from "strong man" to God over the universe - about the same range as the English word 'god'. This is the source of some confusion as context is required to determine if El or Elohim is referring to created powers or the uncreated God.

With Elohim, a singular verb form is used when referring to the God of the Hebrews in much the same way that English speakers specify a particular sheep, elk, or fish. Contrary to Asimov, no tradition needs to be defied to translate elohim as multiple 'gods' since the word is routinely used throughout the Old Testament in this way. Elohim, which is as much a title as a name, is used for the unimpeachable God when referring to his cosmic characteristics, such as in the general overview of creation here in the first chapter of Genesis.

The Hebrew Name for God - Elohim - hebrew4christians.com

There is a quirk of Semitic languages called Mimation - not unrelated to the overall "broken plural problem" common in these languages - that might have a bearing on the Hebrew plural ending. How mimation is used has a large part to play in the classification and perceived evolution of the different branches of Semitic languages (Ratcliffe 1998, ch. V). In early East Semitic languages such as Old Akkadian, mimation is simply the adding of an 'M' sound to the end of a noun, possibly as a "marker of determination" (Buccellati 1996, pg. 358). In English, roughly the same thing is achieved by using the definite article - 'the' - but the definite article does not appear to have entered West Semitic languages like Ugaritic or Canaanite until the second millennium BC (Buccellati 1996, pgs. 134, 354).

According to texts such as the Middle Babylonian God List An Anum, the Sumerian An corresponds to the Akkadian Anum or Elim, where the 'm' ending is attached to a singular noun. This was inconsistently applied - the final 'm' is often dropped - and so becomes Anu or Ilu - adding to the confusion. However, in Hebrew (and Ugaritic), normally the 'm' ending designates a plural. 

Akkadian is the core Semitic language of Mesopotamia and includes in its classification the various dialects of Babylonian. To achieve a plural in Akkadian the usual practice is "lengthening the vowel after the stem boundary." (Ratcliffe 1998, pg. 152)  For example, the singular "king" Sharrum is made plural as Sharruu. The syllabic cuneiform script easily allowed for the distinction of the singular and the plural. Being an abjad of only consonants, the Phoenician/Canaanite/Hebrew script derived from Egyptian scripts had few mechanisms to represent vowels short, long, or otherwise, taking what may have been a minor difference between the languages and segregating it into a major one.

So to avoid or at least not compound the confusion, the Hebrews might regard Elohim as an archaic vestige of Abraham's family moving from an East Semitic area with deep Sumerian roots (Ur of Kessid) to a West Semitic area (Canaan). 

The AGB suggests polytheism is the most likely reason for the plural. Theism requires gods as persons. Polytheism requires the worship of two or more of the highest caste of persons delineated by some sort of fundamental disunity. However, there is no evidence in the text that Elohim has a true competitive peer. At several places in the Bible, such as in the first vision of creation and the 10 plagues of Egypt, the actions and content serve to make insignificant powers that are taken to be competing gods. The legendary materials surrounding Abraham also rule out anything but monotheism (see Ur of the Chaldees). 

The plural could be intellectual modesty - not wishing to over-specify God. In this sense, the meaning would be "the ultimate powers" or "the Godhead," or perhaps a more developed but still open-ended meaning such as "the breath, the Logos, and ultimate authority beyond." Much thoughtful Jewish commentary looks at the plural as the "Faces of God." The use of the word is such that whatever uncreated powers one might delineate, God is One. 

The AGB also suggests the royal 'we' or the Trinity for Elohim and the 'Us' of Genesis. This idea of a plural of majesty - "Me and my administration" - would give Elohim the meaning of "God of gods" (Deut. 10:17) or perhaps the later used "LORD of Hosts." Neither ancient Hebrew nor ancient Greek texts have quotation marks (or much else for punctuation), so it is not clear whether the two verses that use the pronoun 'Us' in Genesis should be taken as a direct quotation, paraphrase, or reconstruction.

In any case, if Elohim is not referencing the Levantine versions of the Sumerian An, Enlil, and Enki/Ea (see below), it is doubtful the plural is so developed as the three hypostases of the Trinity - a concept of God not thoroughly vetted until the fourth century AD. However, the main components of the Trinity are in the text here and elsewhere: the completely independent universal creator; the life-giving and sustaining breath/wind/spirit of God; and the power of His word ever-present and working through all creation. 

“Elohim” in Biblical Context - hebrew-streams.org

Even the most partisan reading of the Bible views the Israelites as a small island of monotheism in a sea of polytheism. The Hebrew terms used for God would have to be understood within this surrounding polytheistic context. During the second millennium BC, various gods were being promoted to the top of the pantheon, supplanting the supreme Canaanite, Akkadian, and Sumerian god El/Il/An. One of these was the hero-god Hadad/Adad/Iškur, later equated with the Greek god Zeus and sharing similar stories. Another was the elevation of the city god of Babylon - Marduk - as expressed in the Enuma Elish (see Babylonian-Akkadian-Sumerian below). Regardless of the usurper, El/Il/An was still in the pantheon as the Father of the gods, but no longer as the unimpeachable leader by the time of Moses. It would make sense then for the Mosaic administration - if not earlier Hebrews - to use a title for the supreme god that distinguishes the God of the Israelites from the reductionism of the surrounding cultures plunging ever deeper into polytheism with their idolatry. As a title, Elohim would capture the unity in the diversity of the Godhead against the polytheism that wanted to make the Jewish God just one or two or three among many.

Triad or Trinity?

Of course, if Elohim is referencing the Sumerian triad of An, Enlil, and Enki/Ea, a strong version of the Trinity is built into the Hebrew religion from its very foundation. There really should not be much controversy in saying so. Consider The Lament for Sumer and Urim, ETCSL 2.2.3 - a theological description of the fall of the Akkadian Empire sometime in the last quarter of the third millennium BC - several hundred years before Moses. The ending prayer suggests it was originally written during the Neo-Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur - the last gasp of Sumerian as a living language. Lines 1-11:

To overturn the appointed times [ud, literally "daylight"], to obliterate the divine plans, the storms [ud again, "day storm"] gather to strike like a flood.

An, Enlil, Enki and Ninḫursaĝa [or Ninmaḫ] have decided its fate - to overturn the divine powers of Sumer, to lock up the favourable reign in its home, to destroy the city, to destroy the house, to destroy the cattle-pen, to level the sheepfold; that the cattle should not stand in the pen, that the sheep should not multiply in the fold, that watercourses should carry brackish water, that weeds should grow in the fertile fields, that mourning plants should grow in the open country [edin]...

When everything goes to hell, only four gods really matter - the creating triad and Ninḫursaĝa (a.k.a. Ninmah, Nintur) working in unity and concert. According to the story, the rest of the gods - or at least their idols - must skip town. Only the moon god Nanna - also called Suen ("Knowledge Lord") and a member of the "Seven Gods that Decree" - has the gumption to humbly ask why. Ironically, Suen was left out of the loop - he didn't know. However, he is rewarded for his humility by being allowed to reinhabit his chief temple at Ur and for Ur to regain some of its grandeur.

But here we have four gods in unity - a quadrunity?! 

Enki's spouse (ie. Damgalnuna = "Great Spouse of the Prince"), Ninḫursaĝa/Ninmaḫ is a goddess who usually personifies the mountains, hills, and earth/land/soil not covered by seawater. Another name for her used in other texts (eg. Enki and the World Order, 1.1.3) is A-ru-ru literally meaning "water removed removed" which can be contrasted to the word for flood a-ma-ru - "water placed to remove." Ninḫursaĝa is one of the main "mother earth" figures in Sumerian mythology, used in a way not much different than how earth/land/ground is used in Genesis chapter 1: 

9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.  10 And God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the waters He called “seas”; and God saw that it was good.  11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit according to their kind with seed in them”; and it was so....

24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind: livestock and crawling things and animals of the earth according to their kind”; and it was so.

The biblical text like the Sumerian texts has Earth integral to a process of creation rather than Elohim merely speaking and poof, there it is. There is an understanding of the ecology of life - the creature is suited to the land because it developed in and on the land. Likewise, Earth when named by Elohim is at the very least an evolution of a previous state. Being a changeable and changed object of creation, Earth is not included in the usual reference to Elohim - that is, God.

Unity of An and Enlil

In contrast, the immutable An and unimpeachable Enlil are everywhere in unity in the early literature. The Lament for Sumer and Urim shows many of the features typical to Sumerian literature that relate to this unity. Metaphors of storm and flood are used to describe the advance of people from the Zagros mountains - the Gutians - laying waste to Sumer. Despite most of the major gods having significant parts in this, the text clearly claims Enlil is the chief figurehead that should be blamed for all of it. Lines 69-79:

The people, in their fear, breathed only with difficulty. 

The storm immobilised them, the storm did not let them return. 

There was no return for them, the storm did not retreat. 

This is what Enlil, the shepherd of the black-headed people, did: 

Enlil, to destroy the loyal households, to decimate the loyal men, 

to put the evil eye on the sons of the loyal men, on the first-born, 

Enlil then sent down Gutium from the mountains. 

Their advance was as the flood [a-ma-ru] of Enlil that cannot be withstood. 

The great wind of the countryside [edin] filled the countryside [edin], it advanced before them. 

The extensive countryside [edin] was destroyed, no one moved about there.

Also lines 163-173, 292-302, 340-349. In addition, in the text there is extensive use of wind as an element of destruction playing on the polysemous meaning of Enlil's name "Lord Wind" and haunting, playing on the meaning "Lord Spirit."

When a divine decree (ie. me) given by Enlil is challenged, it is often justified as given "by the order of An and Enlil." Lines 364-370, Enlil speaking: 

Oh Nanna, the noble son ……, why do you concern yourself with crying? The judgment uttered by the assembly cannot be reversed. The word of An and Enlil knows no overturning. Urim was indeed given kingship but it was not given an eternal reign. From time immemorial, since the Land was founded, until people multiplied, who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence for ever? The reign of its kingship had been long indeed but had to exhaust itself. O my Nanna, do not exert yourself in vain, abandon your city."

Also lines 21, 56-57, and 474. 

Supporting this, An and Enlil are found in parallel phrasing even in negative references throughout Sumerian literature. In The Lament for Sumer and Urim lines 22-23:

after An had frowned upon all the lands, 

after Enlil had looked favourably on an enemy land, 

Lines 56-59:

Its fate cannot be changed. Who can overturn it?

It is the command of An and Enlil. Who can oppose it?

An frightened the very dwellings of Sumer, the people were afraid.

Enlil blew an evil storm [ud gig-ga], silence lay upon the city.

Playing on the omnipotence of An and Enlil, in verses 493-518 the author prays in parallels after the fortunes of Sumer have improved. The author shows that An represents the ultimate power much in the same way as the singular Elohim does to the Hebrews.

May An not change the divine powers of heaven, the divine plans for treating the people with justice.

May An not change the decisions and judgments to lead the people properly. 

To travel on the roads of the Land: may An not change it. 

May An and Enlil not change it, may An not change it. 

May Enki and Ninmaḫ not change it, may An not change it.

That the Tigris and Euphrates should again carry water: may An not change it. 

That there should be rain in the skies and on the ground speckled barley: may An not change it. 

That there should be watercourses with water and fields with grain: may An not change it. 

That the marshes should support fish and fowl: may An not change it.

That old reeds and fresh reeds should grow in the reedbeds: may An not change it.

May An and Enlil not change it. 

May Enki and Ninmaḫ not change it

.....

These elements showing the unity of An and Enlil above can be found throughout the main current of Sumerian literature, even in many of the texts that feature usurping gods such as.

Enki in Unity

Apart from verses In The Lament for Sumer and Urim showing he played his part by changing water courses, the most interesting lines showing the unity of Enki with Enlil are 163-173: 

On that day [ud-ba] the word of Enlil was an attacking storm [ud-dam]. Who could fathom it? 

The word of Enlil was destruction on the right, was …… on the left. 

This is what Enlil, the one who determines destinies, did: 

Enlil brought down the Elamites, the enemy, from the highlands. 

Nanše, the noble daughter, was settled outside the city. 

Fire approached Ninmarki in the shrine Gu-aba. 

Large boats were carrying off its silver and lapis lazuli. 

The lady, sacred Ninmarki, was despondent because of her perished goods. 

On that day [ud-ba] he decreed a storm [ud] blazing like the mouth of a fire [ka izi-gin7]. 

The province of Lagaš was handed over to Elam. 

And then [ud-bi-a] the queen also reached the end of her time [ud-da-a-ni].

The figurehead of the destruction is Enlil, but the "one who determines destinies" is also a normal epithet for Enki. "Who could fathom" Enlil the Great Mountain (kur gal, in Semitic languages, this becomes variations of El Shaddai), the Ruler of All the Lands destroying mankind? Everybody. Enlil is always the figurehead of utter destruction because he is provoked by the noise/discord/dissonance/sin of the forest of humanity. For instance, the great Mesopotamian flood (ie. Noah's flood) is called the "Flood of Enlil" in verse 77 for exactly this reason. And also in the Eridu Genesis ETCSL. 

But Enki the attacking storm - the destroyer? No one. He is the Word - the embodiment of the me of destiny. The one who gives favorable destinies to gods and men. Nudimmud - the intimate creator prince of life and lover of mankind. He was the savior of mankind during the great Mesopotamian deluge which is one of just a couple of situations in all of the Sumerian literature that seems to put Enki at odds with Enlil. Despite their huge overlap in function and domain, there is hardly any daylight between them. Enlil's and Enki's blurry line of demarcation is merely between the forest and the trees of humanity.

If Enki - who is often called the "junior Enlil" - is the "word of Enlil," we should expect the rest of the passage to relate to persons intimate to Enki and the resolving of personal destinies. That is exactly what we see. The goddesses Nanše and Ninmarki are the daughter and granddaughter of Enki (if taking texts literally). Lagash falling to Elam leads to a personal statement of a fate fulfilled - "the queen also reached the end of her time." Although the passage above was probably translated to English with a simple identification of Enlil in mind, it is still easy to see that in this case the "word of Enlil" is referencing Enki.

Reading back the "word of Enlil" (inim den-lil2-la2) into the rest of the text we find some statements that at first only seem to reference An and/or Enlil are actually referencing a trinity:

21. ...to obliterate the divine plans by the order [inim] of An and Enlil

57.  It is the command [inim] of An and Enlil. Who can oppose it?

365. The word of An and Enlil knows no overturning.

454. Father Enlil, the one who advises with just words, the wise words of the Land

470-474.  [Enlil speaking] "May the land, south and highland, be organised for Nanna. May the roads of the mountains be set in order for Suen. Like a cloud hugging the earth, they shall submit to him. By order [inim] of An and Enlil it shall be conferred."

The word for 'word', inim is a translation in context of the logogram KA 𒅗 which could also mean mouth, speak, command, voice

>>Fire as the motif of a challenging and attacking Enki/Ea.   ka izi-gin7 Motif of judgement Rev. 11:5

In Redeeming Asimov, I will continue to use the term "Sumerian Triad" because to call it a "trinity" raises hackles from those whose prejudices will not let them concede the depth of their unity. The only real quibble that could be found in early Sumerian literature concerns the Flood. Even if there is still a quibble, "the Sumerian Triad" is at the very least a bi-unity of An and Enlil, and a canny Enki keeping humanity from total destruction.

Bob and the French Fry Demon

Even though it is clearly in play, Asimov does not consider the ancient philosophical conundrum of the One and the Many. Stated simply, all the objects that we consider as singular can just as easily be identified as a plural. For example, my friend Bob could also be described as a bunch of organs, or cells, or molecules, or subatomic particles. So which is it? The singular or the plural? Bob or a bunch? 

I have the habit of thinking of Bob as a person (ie. singular) who is often in control of the bunch (ie. plural) of cells that we call his body (ie. singular), so he deserves to be considered as a singular unified being. On the other hand, the bunches of materials that make up his body are constantly coming and going. Is the food he just ate also Bob? What about his excrement, at what point does it cease to be Bob? After a few years, most of the bunch of cells that is Bob die and are replaced by new. Is the young Bob sufficiently the same as old Bob to merit both being considered in the singular? Or should we name a new Bob after every meal and every bowel movement? Maybe we should consider the essential Bob - those bunches of organs inside Bob that he requires to live. But then is the kidney he donated still Bob? And what to make of the enormous amount of microbiota that doesn't share Bob's DNA? 

John Stuart Mill - one minor mistake (2023) by Jeffrey Kaplan - youtube.com 

Even if we arbitrate that there is one Bob, is Bob One? I've noticed his persona is not quite the same depending on the company and his normally pleasant and patient demeanor turns to greedy retribution if he senses someone is covetous of his French fries - he tried to stab my hand with a fork! Does that mean there are a bunch of Bobs sharing the same bunch of cells? Or is it Bob and the French Fry Demon? Or is it just Bob? 

The problem of the One and the Many continues to confound arguments that require a hard singular-plural distinction. Just like with Bob, considering the One and the Many should guard against over-precision when dealing with God, gods, Godhead and Trinity.

The Problem of the Many - plato.stanford.edu 

When applied to the God of the Hebrews, the One and the Many can provide the etymology of Elohim all by itself, which obviates the discussion of polytheism, monolatrism, and henotheism common among the glib, captious and inconsiderate. If we look to the first chapter of Genesis to answer the question what is God and what is not, the dividing line is very clear - God is all of reality that is not temporal - that which is incorruptible or imperishable. So far in Genesis, this is identified as the Creator, His word, and His spirit (ie. wind or breath). That which can perish or is corruptible is the creation - the heavenly host and all of the earth, water, sky, plants and animals in it. This distinction underlies the offense of idolatry and was picked up in the reasoning of several New Testament writers, as shown for instance in Romans 1:22-24:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (NASB)

Evolutionary Prejudice

"Early beliefs were always polytheistic and monotheism was a late development..." - AGB

Asimov ends this section with an old scholarly prejudice that is no longer thought tenable. In the years after Charles Darwin published his famous book Origin of Species, evolutionary progressions were applied to almost anything regardless of warrant. Some of these fads still exist, such as Julius Wellhausen's Documentary Hypothesis. Another that Wellhausen helped popularized - the unilinear evolutionary stages of religion - has been so starved of evidence that professional historians and anthropologists long ago ceased giving it credence (Bellah, 1964). 

Monotheism of the Ancient Hebrews: Evolved, Invented, Stolen or Revealed? - jewsforjesus.org

"The Evolution of Religion" by Charles Mathewes - the-american-interest.com

"Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion" (2016) by Peoples, Duda, & Marlowe - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"Carefully and sparely, and with great vigor and beauty . . ." - AGB

Thankfully and wisely, Asimov does not enter the morass of the evolution-creation debate. At least not in the AGB. However, so much is in the first chapter and four verses more comment is needed. The first distinction between the 'secular' and the believers' approach is found here (and it is not creationism).

God speaks the world into existence. As described in the Introduction, this speaking is in part a metaphor for the universal order, which the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus popularizes for Greek philosophy much later as the Logos - "the Word." The spoken word is in contrast to the world which is "formless and void" (NASB) or "wild and waste" (Fox 1983), signifying chaos as much as emptiness. To be clear, 'chaos' means unordered rather than disordered - unpurposed rather than outside God's authority.

Right from the first verse, it can be seen this is more than mere history. Few if any events in this account could have been observed by a human. This forces the reader to choose to deal with the text as either a created or a received work. It is either the fact-free speculation of a poetic propagandist or an account of observations and model of reality the author believed to be coming through a message from God. The difference is night and day. When considering the genre, for instance, a created beginning of Genesis doesn't nicely fit within any historical genre except for Sumerian "In the day..." literature - so modern scholars have had to invent other genres to contain it. As a received text it fits squarely in the ancient genre of Prophecy.

The Many Genres of Scripture - biblegateway.com

Like Asimov, the vast majority of 'secular' readings require the text to be a creative work. Taken this way, it is widely agreed that the writer knew of other ancient polytheistic cosmogonies and carefully corrected against them. So, even though the wind (ie. 'breath' or 'spirit') and the abyss (ie. "the deep") are mentioned in the second verse, there is no anthropomorphic story-line for the Sumerian-Akkadian king of the gods Enlil (literally "Lord Wind/Breath/Spirit") or personification of the deep such as in the gods Namma, Antu, Yamm, Tiamat, Heh & Hauhet, and Nun & Nuanet, who symbolize variously the primeval waters, wife of the supreme god, chaos monster, chaos of infinity, and the unformed abyss in Sumerian, Canaanite, Babylonian-Akkadian, and Egyptian accounts. Astrology fairs no better. The sun disk, moon, and stars - described as lamps and lights to keep from naming pagan gods - do not come onto the scene until the fourth day, ruling out the authority and efficacy of Ra the sun god, Aten the sun disk, or any other astrological worship. There is not even a hint of sex or fertility cult in the account. This is the least mythological creation account in all of the ancient worlds, making it all the more ironic that modern critics would cast it away as so much superstition.

There are alternative views the Tablet Hypothesis makes possible. The biblical account could be a translation of an early piece of literature, preceding some of the idolatry and image-making that magnified and multiplied the lesser gods. Both visions of creation are told in startlingly simple language using word concepts no more difficult than Dr. Suess' Cat in the Hat. Any of the earliest literary scripts would have the required logograms. The first vision does not even suggest that a convention of kingship had been established. Is it a coincidence that the most important of the earliest known and most important Mesopotamian gods, such as An, Enlil, Ninmah, and Enki, are either persons or personifications of the elements of creation in the biblical account?

The Sumerian genre of "In the day..." literature presupposes a well-known earlier creation account that would be a close parallel with the biblical creation. There is even a strong aspect of a Logos theology where the creative triad of An, Enlil, and Enki/Ea bring and maintain the existence of things by divine word (Kramer 1963, pgs. 112-116). As noted in the Introduction and above, the divine speech that orders the future of the universe and everything in it (Sumerian: me) is not merely used by but embodied in Enki, who is usually seen as the third person of this triad. What is still missing from history is the creation in a single account as we have it in Genesis and the specific detail of seven divine days of creating, neither of which is unlikely given what we know of Sumerian culture.

If we are using the principle of parsimony, the availability of very close parallels in the 3rd-millennium and early 2nd-millennium Sumerian literature narrows the source options down to items readily available to Akkadian scribes and their Egyptian counterparts during Moses' time. The first vision might be an Akkadian copy of an earlier Sumerian tablet or a summary of the introductions found in "In the day..." literature or even of the oral traditions that this literature must have originally drawn upon. While the last option may seem highly relevant to some, the existence of visual puns in the second vision - puns that only make sense when reading the text - makes this option far less likely.

The First Vision of Creation

As a received vision, however, the text works quite well and takes little imagination for the modern mind to re-create (especially if mixing time-lapse photography into your imagining). One can assume the recipient at a particular place approximating the Levant or Mesopotamia, with it completely dark and silent... 

Day

Every biblical commentator who has cared to comment represents the light of creation as much more than a bunch of photons. It turns out that literal light is too literal even for the literalists. And there is the rub. The author of the first vision has written a fairly literal account of his vision, but visions and other prophecies in the rest of the Bible tell us we should unpack them phenomenologically and even allegorically (eg. Pharaoh's Dream, Genesis 41). Many of these other visions also tell us that the observer or author may not fully understand what he is being shown (eg. Joseph's dreams, Genesis 37:1-10). A literal interpretation still serves us by giving a first-order theological outline that in most cases a figured interpretation should not stray far from. The history, however, may be very different. 

The light of creation builds upon the universally understood light metaphor where light represents clarity, order, judgment, and progress, as well as a bunch of photons. Darkness represents the opposite - confusion, chaos, malevolence, regress, storminess, and emptiness. The light of creation and growth followed by the darkness of destruction and desolation gives a sequence that demands an analogy to day and night. 

Particularly problematic for the consistent literalist is that a day is defined in two different ways in this vision - the time of daylight and a complete cycle of light and dark from morning to morning. Both of these are regarded in the text as divine definitions of 'day'. Both are regarded before the sun appears in the text. The Hebrews will add a third, as they define each day as going from sunset until sunset. Adding in the vague usage, this leaves us with at least four distinct ways the concept of 'day' is used in the Bible:

• Vague - A period that could be a day to thousands or even millions of years. The NASB translation often designates the vague use as "in the day" or "in that day".

• Light - Daylight. Light as day (eg. Gen. 31:39-41) and/or the light metaphor (eg. Amos 5:8-9).

• Age Cycle - A light metaphor event conjoined with darkness, such as the day-ages of creation (eg. Zechariah 14:6-7, Psalm 90,  "Day of the Lord").

• Calendrical - A definite accounting of time equal to nighttime plus 12 proportional hours of daylight (ie. 24 hours total in our modern accounting) or a certain time in a month, season, or year (eg. NASB - "on the day"; "on that day", except when used in poetry). Proportional hours or "sundial hours" account for the yearly 10 to 14 hour period of daylight in the Near East.

Day - biblestudytools.com

Word Study: Yom (2005) By Greg Neyman - oldearth.org

The Sumerian use of 'day' - represented by the logogram UD 𒌓 - has all these variations of meaning and more. The logogram was most commonly used for the word ud with the primary meanings of sun, sunlight, daylight, and day. In Old Babylonian times and onward it could signify a relative time reference - "when" - used in the same way as the Middle Babylonian enūma. 

One of the more interesting meanings in Sumerian literature for this word is "day-storm", probably signifying the terrifying afternoon thunderstorms that sometimes darkened the sky and yet often produced welcome rain on parched land. The literature starting with "Day-storm..." is of a closely related genre - if not a sub-genre - of the "In the day..." literature (Lambert). Metaphorically "day storm" was used in Sumerian literature as a way to have a time of "darkness" during an otherwise progressive phase of a day-age. In this way, a "day-storm" also acts as a smaller division of a day-age much as an Epoch is a smaller division of a Period, and a Period is a smaller division of an Era in our modern Geologic Time Scale. Like the "day-storm," nearly all of the time divisions in Geologic Time begin with a dark event such as a mass extinction. 

Consider the different metaphorical uses of 𒌓 in The Lament for Eridug, ETCSL 2.2.6  Segment A, lines 19-26 with the UD logogram used in each of the bold words: 

The evil-bearing storm went out from the city. It swept across the Land -- 

a storm which possesses neither kindness nor malice, does not distinguish between good and evil. 

Subir [ie. people from northern Mesopotamia] came down like rain. It struck hard. 

In the city where bright daylight used to shine forth, the day darkened. 

In Eridug where bright daylight used to shine forth, the day darkened. 

As if the sun had set below the horizon, it turned into twilight. 

As if An had cursed the city, alone he destroyed it. 

As if Enlil had frowned upon it, Eridug, the shrine Abzu, bowed low. 

The logogram UD 𒌓 was also commonly used for other words meaning "to dry", "white", "bright", "to shine", "clean", and the sun god Utu. Also a god of justice, the Sumerian Utu is synonymous with the Akkadian sun god Shamash. The cognate shemesh is the common Hebrew word for the sun.

Viewpoint of the observer

Even if it is assumed the observer's viewpoint approximates somewhere in Mesopotamia, are we to take this merely by latitude, also with longitude, or by connection to the African/Gondwanaland continent or Asian continent? This determines the climate, setting, and type of life observed. In any case, with differing sea levels and continental movements, a significant time of the vision would be spent near or over ocean as in Day 5 and potentially Day 4. For instance, the limestone rock layers underlying the Basrah area of Iraq show the area to have been under a shallow sea most of the time going back to at least the Cretaceous period some 120 million years ago. So also the varieties of Jerusalem Stone - such as Meleke and Nari that make up so many structures in the Levant - were formed from the deposition of tiny shelled sea creatures going back 90 million years ago. 

Geology of Iraq - researchgate.com

Phenomenology of the author

The author is given a vision with creatures he can easily identify by kind and practical relation. So the Cambrian period explosion of species, including the filling of the seas with trilobites, up to the various placoderms, like the famous Dunkleosteus in the Devonian period are skipped over. Descendents of these creatures - if there are any - would not be easily recognized by the receiver.

Late appearance of sun, moon and stars

The sun, moon, and stars do not appear clearly until Day 4. The implication is that the fraction of unclouded sky is small from the observer's viewpoint until sometime after the first trees, which would have to be sometime after the Carboniferous period. This may be the only test for the vision model that geology does not provide a ready answer. The clearing of the sky so the "lights in the dome of heaven" are readily visible should be one of the chief agents of natural selection reflected in the phenotypes (ie. observed characteristics) of creatures that evolved during this place and time. 

The lights and clearing of the sky also contain a metaphorical element as well. Creation is becoming progressively more clear and realizing its purpose. In addition to unclouded skies, it has been suggested that the first creatures who were able to discern the "lights in the dome of heaven" came about at this time. 

The light of the sun, moon, and stars provided the first possibility of accounting for time until the water clock was invented sometime before 1500 BC. If the text is taken strictly, the light of the stars is seen and declared "good" before the "evening and morning" ending Day 4. This suggests the observer of the vision held the light and dark cycles of divine days distinct from the sunlight and stars of physical day and night. 

Darkness ≠  mass extinction

The great Permian mass extinction fits very well with the end of Day 3. The Permian extinction so thoroughly resets the clock on animal life that, by some accounts, animal life does not recover its previous diversity until after the Triassic period. This would help explain why there is no mention of living things in the Day 4 account, which would correspond to the Triassic period. 

First for the ancient, then for the modern

To be clear, the Vision Model promoted here is to be taken in tandem with a functional model that would be understood by the ancient audience. To the ANE ancient, the creation vision is about the way the world is phenomenally ordered, not its physical being, which is the modern preoccupation. The ancient receiver of the vision was in no position to appreciate the elements of the vision that would appeal to modern people over 3000 years later. Therefore, the functional model must be in the lead. The basic functional approach of John Walton is both sound and wise, although I have questions and concerns with the details - such as his speculation of time being "created" on Day 1. 

Origins Today: Genesis through Ancient Eyes with John Walton - youtube.com 

One might quibble with this Vision Model of creation or disagree with the whole speculative project. I will not require it of anyone. It is offered as a model to be further refined and validated until it can meet the tipping point of a rational consensus. It is enough to say that the first vision of creation must be in the genre of prophecy to even be functionally true and that the divine days have a metaphorical and numerological purpose rather than strict accounting. However, as a believer a question constantly compels me towards this vision model - How else could the creation of the world through the Logos be communicated to both ancient and modern people using ancient language and idiom in less than 500 words?

The Numerology of Genesis 1 - biologos.org

Day of the Lord

For those who profess each of the seven days in the first vision of creation to be the 24 hours as known to mankind rather than the light and dark phases of a divine day, the seventh day where God ceases creating - the Sabbath - ended long ago. This leaves a few critical mysteries throughout the rest of the Bible: 

1. Why is the Sabbath such an important event if nothing happened on it 6000+ years ago? There is no question that the Hebrews see it as important. Exodus 31:12-17 stipulates a penalty of death for any Israelite desecrating the Sabbath. It is not just the seventh day of the week. In Hebrew life, almost every aspect of time that is a multiple of 7 is given special significance: 

1. Six days of the week are for work and gathering, the seventh is a rest from work to focus on God - Sabbath.

2. In addition, there are seven High Sabbaths during the year which may or may not fall on the seventh day of the week.

3. The seasonal festivals are structured around sevens, such as during the first month (Exodus 12:1-20):

   • Day 1 - New Year, New Moon nearest the Spring Equinox

   • Day 10 - Selecting the Passover lamb - Shabbat HaGadol

   • Day 14 (2 x 7) - Passover - Pesach

   • Day 15 (Full Moon) - Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with the first and seventh days as High Sabbaths.

4. Seven sabbaths (7 x 7 = 49 days) are counted after Passover (Counting of the Omer) leading to Pentecost - Shavuoth - which is a High Sabbath.

5. The seventh month of the year is now the main feast month and mirrors the first month:

   • Day 1 - Feast of Trumpets - Rosh Hashanah - High Sabbath

   • Day 10 - Day of Atonement - Yom Kippur - High Sabbath

   • Day 15 (Full Moon) - Feast of Booths for 7 days with the first and seventh days as High Sabbaths.

6. Every seventh year, fields are to be left fallow, debts are to be forgiven and slaves are to be set free - Sabbatical year.

7. Every 49th year (7 x 7 = 49) will be a Year of Jubilee where all land in Israel returns to its original owners.

"Sabbath" - biblegateway.com

In like fashion, the number seven shows up at many of the significant events in Jewish history.

1. Lamech, the seventh son of Adam (through Cain), lived 777 years and had 7 patriarchs pass away during his life. (Genesis 4, 5)

2. Noah, the son of Lamech and seventh son from Cain, survived the deluge. His name means "rest" or "repose." (Genesis 5:28-31)

3. A seven day warning is given to Noah in which he must load seven pairs of each clean animal onto the ark. (Genesis 7)

4. Pharoah's dream is for seven years of feast followed by seven years of famine. (Genesis 41)

5. The chief symbol of Judaism is the Menora, a seven lamp lampstand which sat in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle and the temple. (Numbers 8)

6. Solomon built the first temple in seven years (1 Kings 6:38).

7. The dedication and celebration of the first temple lasted "for seven days and seven more days, that is, fourteen days." (1 Kings 8:65)

Babylonian-Akkadian-Sumerian

Asimov considers this first vision of Genesis to be another artifact of the Documentary Hypothesis called the P or Priestly document. The P documentary material is noted by anything abstract and aloof. Supposedly P document material was written during or after the exile (c. 600 BC) because it assumes the E and another document, the J document. This hypothesis originally came from an academic climate in the late 19th and early 20th century with an even more extreme view called Pan-Babylonianism which asserted that nearly all civilized culture had its origin through or in direct association with ancient Babylon.

In Memoriam: Panbabylonianism by E. L. Meszaros - contingentmagazine.org

The Babylonian stories from which the P document supposedly comes are a reworking and expansion of Akkadian stories, which are themselves copies of Sumerian stories. Sumer is usually credited as the first true civilization with the first writing to approximate speech. The sanity of the biblical creation and flood accounts match as often to the earlier literature from Sumer than the much more numerous Neo-Babylonian texts we have from the time of the exile. In Asimov and in general, biblical source material ascribed to close contact with the later Babylonian culture of the Exile is available closer to an original form from the earlier Old Babylonian, Akkadian, and Sumerian cultures. Also, the availability of writing and some strong parallels to biblical material come from Levantine sources not directly beholden to Mesopotamia such as Ebla (~2300-1600 BC), Ugarit (~1200 BC), and Egypt. Of course, if you are rigidly beholden to the Documentary Hypothesis, you must believe the creation account came from Babylon during or after the exile.

The Great Flood: Parallels - Livius.org

The Babylonian myth most cited as the source for the First Vision of Creation is the Enuma Elish. The similarities are such that they obviously share some common sources. What are those sources and why did they diverge? We can at least partially answer both of these questions - the Enuma Elish is "an invented mythology that had the goal of creating a new cosmology for the god Marduk" (Brisch 2012; similar Lambert 2007, pgs. 17-18). Nearly all of the stories in the Enuma Elish are meshed together from stories previously ascribed to other gods. Marduk replaces, coopts, demotes, or joins the highest gods such as Enlil, Ninurta, Anu, and Enki/Ea. 

Chapter Two  Mesopotamian Creation Stories (2007) by W.G. Lambert - google.com/books 

Congruent with this, Piotr Michalowski (1990, pg. 390) sees the Enuma Elish as a way to elevate the minor city god Marduk above Assyria's great namesake god Assur: 

The difference in religious hierarchy...became important during the late second and early first millennia when Babylon, for most of this period quite weak and often under the direct rule of Assyria, depended for its survival not on military means, but primarily on a form of ideological blackmail. For Babylon was perhaps not the powerful military and economic force in the world, but it was the center of knowledge, learning, and of the old Sumerian tradition... There can be no comparison between incommensurate hierarchies; and so in order to assert the primacy of Marduk, the Babylonians had to make their pantheon homologous to that of Assyria. The central act in this reform was the exaltation of the city god of Babylon to the status of a national deity, an exaltation that provided a direct counterpart to Assur. The complex cosmology of Enūma Eliš put Marduk in the equivalent role that Assur had in Assyria, while at the same time it connected the Babylonian deity with older Sumero-Babylonian cosmological traditions. One should, therefore, note that the composite structure of Enuma Elish and the reuse of older cosmological and religious materials in the text, are not simply compositional features, but carry a complex ideological message.

Marduk is not the first god put above the Sumerian triad of An, Enlil, and Enki/Ea. During the Akkadian empire in the 3rd millennium, the god Ninurta may have been first (see Nimrod). Possibly even before the flood, Namma the mother god of the deep (see Enoch [of Cain]). In the later half of the 2nd millennium, the mysterious foreigners known as the Kassites ruled Babylonia mixing and correlating their gods with the southern Mesopotamian ones. Certain Kassite kings put gods ahead of the triad such as the sun god Shamash, storm god Adad, moon god Sin, and of course Ninurta. Marduk is often mentioned in these texts, but in the second rank and often as nothing more than the minor city god of Babylon. The first clear reference to Marduk as the head of the pantheon consistent with the Enuma Elish is in the 13th century BC, late into the rule of the Kassites (Lambert 2013, pgs. 269-270).

One of the tricks used to achieve this new cosmology is to take names and epithets for a particular god and through some linguistic one-upmanship reckon each as a different god. For instance, the supreme god of heaven Anu(m) could also be known as An, Anšargal, Anšar, Enšar (meaning "lord of all" or possibly "lord greenery" in which case referring to Enki/Ea), and the number 60. The šar in these names has the meaning of "totality," "king" and the number 3600 (ie. 60 x 60). In the Enuma Elish, many of these epithets are divided up to be ancestors of Anu. Most of the earlier Sumerian texts treat An as uncreated and represent him without physical form. Furthermore, An is almost always interacting with the world through or in parallel with the god Enlil.

Another trick is to personify things to the point they are treated as gods. The subterranean freshwater - sweet water or living water - had long been called the Abzu and was known through many references as the abode of the god of wisdom and destiny Enki/Ea. The importance of the Abzu for the productiveness of the Mesopotamian plain (ie. eden) and the creation of mankind by Enki/Ea made the word a synonym for temple. It is only in the Enuma Elish and later references to it that the Abzu is regarded as a god. The sparsely mentioned Sumerian mother god Namma could be construed as the Abzu god, but the Enuma Elish only mentions Namma as the mother of Enki and strongly implies the Abzu is male - the freshwater regarded as semen.

>>Yet another trick is to give an appearance of families of ancestors preceding An by listing pairs of gods as if they were male and female when in fact they are merely synonyms or the names from two different languages. 

Therefore, treating the Enuma Elish as an authoritative text of early Sumerian and Akkadian religion is like treating the Book of Mormon as an authoritative text for the Second Temple period that Jesus was born into - they are both highly corrupted derivations of literature and theology, cherry picking sources from many centuries before to achieve their goals in support of a novel religion. The formation of both of these texts gives us a primer for how belief in the supreme unified god degraded into polytheism.

The Book of Genesis is an anthology. The sources of the first 10 chapters are Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets that were translated to the Phoenician/Hebrew script before or during the Late Bronze Age Collapse - roughly the time of Moses and the Exodus. The anthology was assembled before the first acknowledged kings of Israel - at least that is the straightforward conclusion of someone approaching the evidence who can allow the possibility of the text being true. 

The first vision of creation understands God (ie. Elohim) as a trinity along the lines of the main current of the already ancient Sumerian religion which had the godhead of An, Enlil, and Enki/Ea. Although there are further linguistic and philosophical peculiarities, the plural construction of the word Elohim when used as a singular in the text alludes to this trinity in leadership over a divine council of lesser gods. 

The first vision must have been understood to be a type of prophecy - a message coming in a vision or dream - to have any credibility in ancient times. Therefore, the vision should be read that way. Although the ancient is far more concerned with how the world was ordered, phenomenologically the first vision matches key elements of natural history leading up to humans as would be expected of a true vision. Whether read as prophecy or as a version of Sumerian cosmology or both, there are not fundamental incongruencies with established natural history.

The seventh day is forward prophecy - it is predicting the future from when it was given. A future that may very well be our present.