Commentary by Lee Bright, version 0.6
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 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 common word for plain and plateau in Sumerian is eden 𒂔.
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 replacing 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. Alongside lines 8 to 26 is a translation by the early and 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.
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,
8 when the heavens had been separated from the earth,
when the earth had been delimited from the heavens,
when the fame [mu, “name” or “year”] of mankind had been established,
11 when [ud, "day"] An had taken the heavens for himself,
when Enlil had taken the earth for himself,
when the nether world [kur] had been given to Ereškigala as a gift;
14 when he set sail, when he set sail [u₅],
when the father [aya] set sail for the nether world [kur],
when Enki set sail for the nether world --
17 against the king a storm of small hailstones arose [𒊑]
against Enki a storm of large hailstones arose.
The small ones were light hammers,
the large ones were like stones from catapults (?).
The keel of Enki's little boat
was trembling as if it were being butted by turtles [niĝ2-bun2-na],
23 the waves at the bow of the boat
rose to devour the king like wolves
and the waves at the stern of the boat
were attacking Enki like a lion.
After [u₄] heaven had been moved away from earth,
After earth had been separated from heaven,
After the name of man had been fixed;
After [u₄, "day"] An had carried off heaven,
After Enlil had carried off earth,
After Ereshkigal had been carried off into Kur as its prize;
14 After he had set sail, after he had set sail,
After the father for Kur had set sail,
After Enki for Kur had set sail;
17 Against the king the small ones it (Kur) hurled,
Against Enki, the large ones it hurled;
Its small ones, stones of the hand,
Its large ones, stones of . . . reeds,
The keel of the boat of Enki,
In battle, like the attacking storm, overwhelm;
Against the king, the water at the head of the boat,
Like a wolf devours,
Against Enki, the water at the rear of the boat,
Like a lion strikes down.
While the parallels to the first chapter of Genesis are obvious in both the translations above, they could be more obvious. The wide range of possible meanings that could be given to most Sumerian cuneiform logograms is such that the translator's underlying assumptions are ever-present. On the other hand, for a translator to not commit to a thread of thought produces a translation so bland and politically correct as to be useless. Therefore with no implicit shade towards the translators, I will often give relevant additional and alternate meanings in brackets and address larger issues in commentary.
An incipit is the first line or part of the first line used as a title. The incipit "In those days..." (ud re-a) is found multiple times in several ancient library catalogs from around Sumer. It turns out that at least four pieces of literature have the same incipit and many other tablets start in similar ways. These tablets comprise the "In the day..." genre that consists of a prologue with a time reference or "day-storm" reference in the beginning lines. Details of Sumerian cosmology tangential to the story are then briefly summarized in the prologue before entering into the main acts of the literature. The creation days in Genesis chapter 1 are closely paralleled to many of these prologues.
[A]ll Sumerian cosmological prologues are functional to the compositions they introduce and provide authority to the events described by setting them as far away as possible from the contemporary times. The main elements of the Sumerian cosmological thought are maintained more or less consistently in the various compositions.
The line 2 "remote" is the verb ba9-ra2 𒁁𒊏, "to open" or "to spread out", which is an apparent homonym and perhaps cognate of Hebrew bara', the second word in Genesis and a unique word for shaping and creating only used of divine activity in the Bible. The ba9 logogram is the BAD 𒁁 sign, larger but otherwise the same shape as ÚŠ 𒍗 (blood, death) both of which are frequently used for idim 𒅂 (spring, underground water), til 𒌀 (complete, to make complete, end, finish), and til₃ 𒋾 (to live, to dwell, keep alive, sustain). In Akkadian syllabic writing, the word for "lord" (Sumerian logogram EN ) is most commonly begun with the BAD sign (Gordin & Sáenz 2022) - be-lu-um 𒁁𒇻𒌝 or be-lum 𒁁𒈝. Therefore, to the ancient Sumerian (and Akkadian) reader, these symbols and their meanings are all associated. Indeed they are part of a massive set of Sumero-Akkadian puns in Genesis chapters 2 and 3.
The root of the verb ba-da-ba9-ra2-a-ba ("had been separated") in line 8 is ba9-ra2 again giving the same sound in the same position as line 2. Lines 1 and 9 have the same situation with different verbs - su3-ra2 ("distant") and ba-da-sur-ra-a-ba ("had been delimited"). This symmetry shows line 9 completes a section.
In Sumerian, the typical word for 'year' mu is the same word and symbol as 'name'. The connection is that Mesopotamians had names for each year. Many lists of year-names have been found with names honoring high officials or recording important events that happened. Nothing in the first 5 verses demands the days, nights, and years be plural, although that is an easily justifiable translation choice given the context.
Mesopotamian Chronology - livius.org
Lines 4 to 16 (lines 3 to 15 in Kramer 1938) all end with -a-ba 𒀀𒁀. Each -a-ba ending makes up the end of a verb chain - a verb with its conjugating prefixes and suffixes normally found at the end of Sumerian sentences. The conjugation implies that the interests of the patient or object are immediately affected, thus a 'when' or 'after' would be appropriate (see ePSD2 Sumerian Morphology Tables: Verb Suffixes). Both translations have each line beginning with a relative time reference of 'after' or 'when' corresponding to the -a-ba endings.
In some lines, the a-ba might also be taken as a second verb meaning "I gave/allotted/caused", but that begs the question of who is speaking: Ansar? An? Enlil? The goddess Inanna will repeat most of these lines twice to convince others to help her. Who is the authoritative source she is repeating?
While the relative time reference 'after' and 'when' is justified, both translators show line 11 in ETCSL 1.8.1.4 in the original Sumerian marked as beginning with the typical sign for "day, daylight" UD 𒌓. If it had the appropriate adjective or suffix, it could be construed as a relative time reference or discourse marker such as ud ul ("distant day"), ud-da ("when, if") ud-ba ("then, meanwhile"), or ud-bi-a (sequential or consequential "then", Crisostomo 2017). Since it comes without any adjective or suffix, it is hard not to see this as a definite time reference. If so line 11 should read: "The day when An had taken the heavens for himself". Furthermore, Kramer also infers UD is missing at the beginning of line 8 (Kramer 1938, pg. 3, marked as line 7).
A definite time reference like this is the usual way the Sumerians delimited an epoch of time and should not be taken as a literal 24-hour day. This can easily be seen in the first three lines where "those days" and "those nights" are then followed by years. The days before years idiom is also a feature in biblical texts such as Genesis 5:4 among others:
Then the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were eight hundred years, and he fathered other sons and daughters.
Enki is regarded as both father (aya) and king (lugal, "big man") even though lines 6 and 7 references Sumer (kalam-ma, "the Land"). All three in the creative godhead are represented as father and king in differing contexts, but Sumer is considered Enlil's special domain before Old Babylonian times and under his special protection. Enki is usually regarded as the prince who will become king, the chief lord of Sumer, and king of the foreign lands. Already the lord of lords, in a future from Sumer, he is deemed to be the king of kings.
ETCSL's 'Hailstones' in lines 17 and 18 is an (over)interpretation in context. Floods and storms are such common metaphors for swarming action and conflict in Mesopotamian literature that specifying the type of stone when the text is not so specific is unnecessarily misleading. In any case, there is no specific logogram for 'storm' - it is inferred in both of the translations above. The logogram RI 𒊑 in lines 17 and 18 has several verbs that it can represent. Although transliterated as the verb ri (to impose; to lay down, cast, place) in both translations above, if it were to be interpreted as dal ("to fly, to cause to fly") there is one case in the literature where the verb chain would have to do with a storm sweeping in, but only in a sentence with a storm object mentioned (ETCSL 2.2.3 line 207). Alhena Gadotti's more nuanced translation (2014, pgs. 14-15; 154) avoids mentioning a storm at all.
The logograms for 'stone' na4 𒉌𒌓 do not occur until lines 19 and 20, where it is stated the "small ones" are hand size! A little big for a small hailstone. Since line 13 had clearly set the domain of Ereškigala as being Kur and not the troposphere (ie. Enlil's domain) or heaven (ie. An), sailing to Kur would be in a domain in which a real weather event was unlikely. A storm is outside of the purview of the goddess. Rocks falling from the ceiling of a cave as Enki navigates an underground river would make more sense of the text, but these are not hailstones.
The main intention of lines 19 and 20 seems to be to describe the size, weight, and therefore overall effect of the objects as they alight or attack the boat - not specify the objects. This leaves open wide possibilities as to what is being described. If we insist on physicalism, It could describe the earliest flying insects from over 350 million years ago that "share a common evolutionary history with crustaceans" (Scott 2004, Cassella 2020), looked like rocks, and therefore were metaphorical rocks. However, these lines are particularly difficult to interpret and drive the translation:
In GEN [ie. Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld], na4 šu-kam ["stone of the hand" or "light hammers," line 19] modifies the expression tur-tur-(bi) ["small small," lines 17 and 19], and is parallel to na4 gi gu4-ud-da-kam [line 20] which is defined as gal-gal-(bi) in ["big big," lines 18 and 20]. Whereas na4 šu-kam is attested outside GEN, na4 gi gu4-ud-da-kam is hapax legomenon. Literally, the latter means “the stone which causes the reed to dance/jump”, whereas na4 šu-kam may be rendered as the “stone of the hand”, but both these translations are at best unsatisfactory.
>>The word 'stone' na4 = NI.UD 𒉌𒌓 - a combination of the common logograms for "oil" and "day" - easily suggests a polysemous or metaphorical meaning, just as dust and clay are in use for acts of creation later on. For instance the transposition UD.NI 𒌓𒉌 = ud zal is a word for the passage of time at dawn used later in lines 47, 48, 91, and 92. The context of the verses is the breaking of dawn with the detail of the clamour of little birds or "sparrows" (buru5mušen 𒉅𒄷 ) or in some tablets, "flocks of little birds" (mušen-buru5mušen 𒄷𒉅𒄷 , ETCSL 1.8.1.4 line 92) producing parallels.
47, 91 When dawn was breaking [𒌓𒉌], when the horizon became bright,
48, 92 when the little birds [𒉅𒄷], at the break of dawn [𒌓𒉌], began to clamour,
In support of this are the flying words of lines 14 to 18 making a visual pun. These are verb roots with logograms of similar shapes like ḪU 𒄷, RI 𒊑, and BURU₅ 𒉅 that are persistently used in different parts of speech with birds and other flying things such as locusts and butterflies. Lines 14-16 use 4 times the verb u₅ 𒄷𒋛 which means "to ride" or "to sail a ship." The word is made of two independent logograms usually noted as ḪU.SI, but the scholarly ePSD2 Sign List has it described as a BURU₅×AMAR@t.
u₅ 𒄷𒋛 = ḪU.SI to ride, to sail
ḪU 𒄷
mušen bird; determinative for flying thing
SI 𒋛
u₅ = BURU₅×AMAR@t (see ePSD2) to ride, to sail
BURU₅ 𒉅
bur₅ locust Akk. erbu; raven Akk. arību (1 case)
buru₅ sparrow, small birds;
AMAR 𒀫
amar young, youngster, chick, calf
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, or a storm or sky deity. 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 causing a feeding frenzy? Or is he on his way to conquer chaos and death? All of these make sense of the continuing text. 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 and/or attack the boat. The primary purpose of the text mentioning Enki sailing to Kur is to highlight for later in the story that even Enki is threatened on the voyage and yet he has the means of navigating Kur.
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 more 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 at length 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, nation-state) does have a wide and important range of meanings, it is not that wide. This misunderstanding constitutes the biggest problem in his translation of the passage. Apart from this, I consider Kramer's translation to be the better one 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.
Frustratingly to our modern eyes, the introduction is not obviously in chronological order. Either the "necessary things..."brought into manifest existence" or the separation of heaven and earth are the earliest events. If the "necessary things" are the lesser gods (ie. anuna) as the use of the word pa ("branch, frond" or possibly ugula "overseer, foreman") suggests, we know from other texts most of lesser gods were produced after the separation of heaven and earth. Many of the lesser gods were not produced until after man came into existence. The verse may not be that narrowly focused and so the abundance, bread, and ovens could be on both sides of the separation of heaven and earth.
Enki is known as the "lord of plenty of the Anuna gods" in other texts (ETCSL search "plenty" & "abundance" ).
Most of the prologue above is repeated two more times in a higher-pitched dialect called Emesal by the goddess of sex and jealousy, Inanna. This kind of repetition is a common characteristic of Sumerian literature. In Emesal, Enlil is addressed as dmu-ul-lil2 ("ancient name Spirit/Wind/Breath") and Enki is addressed as dam-an-ki ("wild bull of heaven and earth"). Instead of king (lugal, "big man"), Enki is addressed as lord (u3-mu-un-ra, logographically "named face/eye of the Land").
Interestingly, the first 10 lines are not repeated by Inanna, but in their place repeated both times:
My brother, in those days when destiny was determined, when abundance overflowed in the Land...
This suggests the things of "manifest existence", the shrines, the bread, and the ovens are not yet products of mankind, but products created to start and sustain the fulfillment of destiny - mankind being one of the final things destined ("named") from this age for the future. From other texts, bread has roughly the same metaphorical "sustenance of life" meaning as in the Bible, possibly even to the extent of John 6:35 where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
>>Inanna has established that lines 4-10 are parallel to lines 11-26. Enlil is the breath of life. Enki is setting sail for Kur as the baker and bread of life. Kur is the netherworld, but more than that and most importantly, it and mankind are the endpoints of the journey - the endpoint of destiny. The imagery of bread and oven invokes the image of the dough being stuck to the walls of a Tannour oven or the dough placed directly on the coals and covered with coals to make ash-bread (Backen, Bäckerei · Baking, Bakery S. 387). The wild living things in their habitats are the ovens in their shrines. In Sumerian theology, there is a goddess for each type of stable habitat (see Enki and Ninhursag). Enki is both giving them their daily bread (see Enki and Ninmah) and baking bread for the future in the ovens of life.
Lines 4 to 10 reference creation events from the point of view of destining the earth without mentioning the relevant gods, while Lines 11 to 26 are at least partially parallel showing the activity of named gods. If that is so, "the name of man being fixed" is parallel to "the nether world had been given to Ereškigala as a gift."
Afterwards, Enki set sail.
The story of Enki setting sail for Kur is the model that Noah's ark and the Mesopotamian deluge stories are recapitulating. 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 with the window in the roof of the ark opened by God at the end of the deluge. So, we should expect deeper parallels even though we have so little of Enki's sailing story.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
"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).
For nearly a century it was thought that humans sequence through animism, polytheism/pantheism, and ancestor worship before reaching monotheism - the most advanced stage. Not only is the full sequence not clearly demonstrated anywhere in the world, but there is also increasing evidence from a variety of cultures showing ancient belief in a most-high God that could stand alone, implying that polytheism is a corruption of an earlier monotheism. It is not at all difficult to speculate ANE religion back to a theological Big Bang before recorded history - God was One and then mankind exploded the One into an ever expanding soap opera of idolatry.
"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.
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...
Parallels
The Vision
The air swirls and pulses with heat. Utter silence is broken with the thunderous words, "Let there be light!"
A molten surface brightens and then churns with ripples and waves of a red-orange glow, occasionally capped with blues and purples. Scattered light of a whiter hew appears from above. And then suddenly the air goes dirty with darkness.
- - -
A Modern Understanding
A long, long, long time ago...
The force of gravity gradually brings gas, dust and rock into roughly the same orbit around a protostar. Gravity and collisions cause compaction and heat that morphs and melts matter together. The lumpy earth turns into a sphere. As the new planetoid melts through to the surface, red-orange and blue-purple splotches grow until all the earth glows. Gases are released into the ashy darkness creating the earth's first atmosphere.
Nuclear fusion ignites within the super-hot core of the distant protostar. A million years later, intense light in the visible spectrum leaves the plasma surface of the sun and travels for about 8 minutes until it shines diffusely upon a molten earth.
The earth is bombarded with meteoroids. A planetoid collides with the earth. Dispersed debris orbits that gravity eventually coalesces and compacts into the moon.
Diffuse light gradually lightens the surface from its smoky darkness. The words boom, "Let there be a dome amid the waters, and let it separate waters from waters!"
A mist rises and then clears as dense clouds form greys and blues like a beaten sheet of tin across the sky. The sky fades with ashen cloud as below a liquid glow reddens.
Black spots form and change position, grow and become still. Darkness consumes until cracks of red are all that remain, fading to black. A mist can be felt, puddles form, followed by rain and then, torrential rain.
- - -
Just like the weight of the widest part of a spinning top, the moon stabilizes the earth's rotation. Ash and orbiting debris clear so that diffuse sunlight can just make it through. The denser lower atmosphere decreases in temperature. Water vapor and other gases condense to form clouds and even rain.
As the surface cools and rock forms, pressure builds beneath. The constant eruptions of small volcanoes fill the atmosphere with ash and smog. Eventually, most of the earth's surface cools to black.
The clouds come lower as the atmosphere cools, liquid water can make it to the surface of the earth without immediately evaporating away. Water pools. Rain falls nearly every day for millions of years.
The breaking of the rain causes something like dawn. A new age of water is revealed. The surface of the earth becomes a more turbulent liquid - capping white or reflecting the same color as the sky. The words boom, "Let the waters be gathered to one place, and let dry land appear!" Rusty red earth is pushed from out of the water. Ocean waves pound against the rock, quickly forming red beach. Volcanoes ooze and occasionally burst forth in the distance.
Again, the words boom, "Let the earth sprout forth with sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that bear fruit, after their kind, in which is their seed, upon the earth!" The ocean tints green. Different splotches of greens and reds compete on the land. Algae mats, moss, liverworts, cooksonia, and other plants weather the red rock. Soil clumps soon bear lycopods, horsetails, and ferns. Increasingly larger species sprout, eventually reaching tree size. Cycads and Ginkgo, and finally conifer trees take over the land creating quiet tropical jungles.
The overcast clouds tint to deeper blues as the earth cools and darkness takes hold.
- - -
Water pools all across the surface of the earth, except for a few of the persistent but quickly eroded volcanoes. Large plates of ocean floor collide, bend and break, ooze and explode to form the first long-standing island mountains poking out of the ocean.
Primitive life has already formed much earlier creating oxygen as a waste product. As oxygen saturates the ocean and escapes into the atmosphere, iron oxidizes everywhere turning everything not already green with life a rusty red.
Once life can make it on land, oxygen-tolerant plants persist and evolve into ever larger and more complex forms. Eventually, seeding plants came about in the Carboniferous period, whose swampy forests are responsible for most of the coal seams on Earth. Fruiting trees such as Ginkgo follow.
Without enough respiring creatures, the over-production of oxygen from the massive expansion of plant life progressively thins out the greenhouse gases as all the continents collide into one. An ice age takes hold of the earth followed by a warm and dry world on the super-continent Pangaea where only conifer forests thrive - the Great Permian Extinction.
Parallels
Just before first light a voice booms, "Let there be lamps in the dome of heaven, to separate the day from night!" The sun disk can be seen through the clouds and haze. For the first time, the disk moves into a patch of blue sky. Staring at it becomes impossible without pain.
"...and let them be signs to mark seasons days and years!" The dome lightens, then turns pink to twilight. As the setting sun ignores the constellations of the Zodiac, a gibbous moon rises in the east. Stars appear, revolving around a star in a constellation far from Ursa Minor while the planets wander in a line with the setting sun.
- - -
The sky is big and blue on the super-continent Pangaea and surrounding ocean. The sun is usually out and also the moon. The first dinosaurs have appeared, if we look to the land, but nothing recognizable to a Mesopotamian whose land by any account would be underwater in the Tethys Sea. Then the Triassic Extinction.
At night, the stars are seen in all their brilliance, for the first time. Their movement in circles through the night sky and steady pattern through the seasons gives the first evidence that Earth is rotating in space as it revolves around the sun...or using the principle of parsimony, the sun, planets, and stars all revolve around the Earth...or, from the author's point of view, simply move across the dome of heaven.
Sunrise reflects off a shallow sea near a marshy shore. "Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living beings, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the dome of the heavens!" A plesiosaur surfaces nearby. Sharks weave between the branch coral below, along with crab, turtles, and scores of different kinds of fish. Several flying lizards - Pteranodons - swoop in for fish. Later more birdlike creatures fly overhead.
The voice returns, "Bear fruit and be many and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl be many on the earth!" Schools of fish are apparent below. The Pteranodons circling above are gradually replaced by flocks of birds.
A bright light streaks across the sky to meet the horizon. A deafening sonic boom follows and then a wall of watery darkness descends as the lights in the dome of heaven are snuffed out.
- - -
The gradual breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea throughout the Mesozoic Era massively expands the shoreline creating a multitude of closely connected shallow seas and wetlands. Marine life teams and diversifies in these ideal conditions.
Cretaceous PeriodMeanwhile, flying lizards take to the sky. Later, small feathered theropod dinosaurs begin to glide down from trees and then properly fly, displacing the aerobatic lizards and then diversifying into huge populations of bird species over the next 150 million years.
A large meteor comes hurtling into the earth's atmosphere. After shooting through the atmosphere at over 5 times the speed of sound, the meteor impacts what is now the Yucatan peninsula. A massive tsunami decimates all the shorelines in the small but growing Atlantic Ocean. The force of the impact creates an enormous crater and ejects pulverized material high into the atmosphere. Ejected material travels all around the tropics and then the rest of the world, creating a thick band of darkness that sunlight cannot easily pierce - the Cretaceous Extinction.
Parallels
Light shines dimly on a sea of ferns. The voice returns, this time as if coming from the ferns: "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the herd-animals, the creeping creatures, and the wild animals, each according to its kind."
The ferns give way to patches and then wide expanses of grassland as the temperature increases, creating the first proper fields. All the while, different kinds of mammals scurry about gradually increasing in number and size. Some are in herds, some in packs and some are solitary, but all are suited to the land. Insects, lizards and snakes are seen creeping and slithering throughout this time, while birds continue to fly above.
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Small groups of tiny primates have wandered in and out of view from the time of the ferns. Their different physical features and the gaps of time between seeing them bring little sense that they are branches of the same tree. The latest group to roam into view are naked and hairy humans. They quickly take the highest rung in the food chain by organized hunting, gathering, and fishing.
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
The camps turn into villages as the hunter-gatherers learn to cultivate the land and use beasts of burden. Herd animals are corralled and bred for work and food.
“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
As the sun moves into the late afternoon, orchards of fruit and fields of grain take over all the open watered land. Reed huts give way to brick and stone. Trails give way to cobble. Brick gives way to concrete and steel. Cobble gives way to asphalt. Everything is bigger and better than before but also somehow diminished and demeaned.
Through the twilight, mankind curses God and destroys the earth. God and earth reciprocate. The stars revolve around Polaris tonight!
- - -
Cenozoic Era
Because of the resilience of spores, the first plants to return in great numbers are ferns. Surviving the blast and fall-out, flowering plants of various sorts slowly find their niche among the ferns. Although grasses might have been sparsely seen before, occurring first in the Cretaceous period (ie. day 5), the first fields of grass en masse show up during this time.
The last remnants of the dinosaurs - birds - reestablished first, outnumbering mammals. Here and there many types of small mammals survived the end of the Mesozoic catastrophe. A warming climate caused mammals to quickly diversify during the Eocene period, some 50 million years ago, to produce the easily identifiable relatives of all the major kinds we see today. While the Eocene does end with a mass extinction, it is a mere rain cloud in the sky compared to the evidence of Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous extinctions.
Primates inhabited the Levant and Mesopotamia sporadically during the Cenozoic Era. The major evolutionary chains that eventually lead to mankind happen elsewhere. DNA studies have led some to conclude that all humans alive today are directly related to a man from western Africa who lived some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago and a woman in eastern Africa 100,000 to 230,000 years ago. In the most popular version of the story for anthropologists, Modern Humans migrated from Africa through the Levant, Arabian Peninsula, and Mesopotamia to all the other continents of the world.
The rest is history.
We currently live at the end of the sixth day with a cloudy horizon. Whether the day is at twilight or even dawn is a matter of much speculation.
In the midst of what some are calling the Great Anthropocene Extinction, mankind has provoked and dominated almost all living creatures on Earth. With a population of some 7.5 billion, mankind has explored and ravished most of the land and much of the ocean. In the last century, he has realized the power to destroy all living things. Our dominion is demanding and unforgiving.
In our twilight, we curse God and destroy the earth. God and earth reciprocate. The stars revolve around Polaris tonight!
Parallels
No words are spoken. God has ceased creating. The world has achieved its ordained order. It is said that God is at rest.
God and earth rest on a day that has no end.
- - -
Into Eternity
A remnant of chosen mankind survives through the dawn, but only with what has been gathered, saved, and prepared. Mankind is fully self-domesticated and on their own recognizance. The people of God thrive during their ordained time. The rest of mankind expends and accelerates to ever higher peaks, and their own destruction.
The last of remaining life lives on land that will not sustain it. Eventually, the last breath exhales and expires.
God and earth are at rest for all eternity.
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.
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.
Each of God's days of light and dark represents a major stage in the history of the Earth. This should not be controversial as Psalms 90:3-6 shows that divine day-ages are a normal way of thinking by the time of the Davidic Kingdoms:
You turn man back into dust
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it passes by,
Or as a watch in the night.
You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep;
In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.
In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew;
Toward evening it fades and withers away.
I've not found it difficult to give a version of the vision matching natural history because scientific consensus has progressively become more certain and put the speciation of birds from the dinosaurs earlier and earlier. In the early to mid-20th century, birds would have presented considerable difficulty. That being the case, it may be helpful to explore the properties of a Vision Model of creation in light of possible future developments in the field of natural history.
Which Came First: the Dinosaur or the Bird? (2015) by Michael Balter - audubon.org
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.
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.
Likewise, the only branch of dinosaurs that the author would recognize is the birds. Consequently, the text pairs sea creatures with flying creatures on Day 5, which creates a setting for the vision over the ocean where the land-borne dinosaurs would never be seen.
Except for seed plants first developing through the Carboniferous and birds in the Jurassic, the vision highlights the massive expansion in diversity and population of living things instead of their first occurrences.
Spindle diagram showing the branching of major classes. The width represents number of families thereby showing the diversity of vertebrates through geologic time.
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.
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.
For the Triassic period to match Day 4, the sky must clear and perhaps remain clear during the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic. However, the data is so coarse that there is a question of whether a mass extinction event occurred at all. This is the time when continental movements began to break up Pangaea. Life had to adapt or die as lakes, seas and varied climates developed. But continental movement is slow even by geologic time. The change may have been so slow that no particularly strong short period mass extinction occurred. Natural selection may have done its diversifying work without worldwide catastrophic extinction events. The 'night' analogy in the vision of creation does not require a catastrophe per se. Rather, it requires a period that looks like regress followed by a time of flourishing. Regress it was to life as it existed during the Late Triassic. Creatures had to first survive before they could flourish.
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 seven-day week held by the Hebrews is quite common among ancient cultures because of its utility. Although the moon orbits the Earth every 27.32 days, the phases of the moon go from New Moon to Full Moon and back again in 29.53 days. During the lunar cycle the Earth has moved in its orbit around the sun. The change in perspective accounts for the extra 2 days of the lunar cycle.
Thirty days is the standard size month in ancient literature. While mathematically it might seem better to have a five or six-day week, the appearance of the key phases of the moon work in quarters: new moon, first quarter, full moon, third quarter and back to new moon. Seven days is within 10 hours of being one-quarter of a lunar cycle. The dwell time for both New Moons and Full Moons is almost two days, somewhat hiding the 10-hour discrepancy.
Moon Phases Simulation - opb.pbslearningmedia.org
Why Are There 7 Days In a Week? EXPLAINED - youtube.com
In addition to the pedagogical and prophetic use in the stages of creation and festivals of the Hebrew lunar calendar, the seven-day week is a convenient and easily discernible division of time between a day and a lunar month. This convenience extends to the uneducated who need only look at the phase of the moon to have a close estimate of the day of the month. Because of this convenience, the cleanliness laws make particular use of the week as a time to reassess, such as during a quarantine (Leviticus 13 among other places).
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:
Six days of the week are for work and gathering, the seventh is a rest from work to focus on God - Sabbath.
In addition, there are seven High Sabbaths during the year which may or may not fall on the seventh day of the week.
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.
Seven sabbaths (7 x 7 = 49 days) are counted after Passover (Counting of the Omer) leading to Pentecost - Shavuoth - which is a High Sabbath.
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.
Every seventh year, fields are to be left fallow, debts are to be forgiven and slaves are to be set free - Sabbatical year.
Every 49th year (7 x 7 = 49) will be a Year of Jubilee where all land in Israel returns to its original owners.
In like fashion, the number seven shows up at many of the significant events in Jewish history.
Lamech, the seventh son of Adam (through Cain), lived 777 years and had 7 patriarchs pass away during his life. (Genesis 4, 5)
Noah, the son of Lamech and seventh son from Cain, survived the deluge. His name means "rest" or "repose." (Genesis 5:28-31)
A seven day warning is given to Noah in which he must load seven pairs of each clean animal onto the ark. (Genesis 7)
Pharoah's dream is for seven years of feast followed by seven years of famine. (Genesis 41)
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)
Solomon built the first temple in seven years (1 Kings 6:38).
The dedication and celebration of the first temple lasted "for seven days and seven more days, that is, fourteen days." (1 Kings 8:65)
2. Why is each of the remarkably short days of creation not further attested within the Tanakh (ie. Old Testament)? Almost every other feature of the creation account is referenced except the literal day (see table below).
Genesis 5:1-2 and Exodus 20:8-11 are ambiguous on this matter.
The "days" throughout Genesis chapter 5 are measured in hundreds of years.
The second vision of creation (Genesis 2:4-3:24), which is mostly an inset of the sixth day of creation, doesn't cooperate by packing more events than could reasonably fit into a 24 hour period time with only 12 hours of daylight. Adam's naming of the animals would have to have been trivial (eg. Homer the lion, Shaniqua the giraffe, Gertrude the cobra, etc.) and "deep sleep" would have to be a cat nap for any hope of it to work.
The literalism that requires a 24 hour creation day further implies that Adam was created a single person instead of a population. Who then did Adam's son Cain fear, where did he get his wife, and for whom did he build a city (Genesis 4)? Do we all owe our existence to an orgy of incest? In fact, all this dissonance with a 24 hour long creation day has been used as supporting evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis ().
Psalms 90 proposes the transition of one divine day to another - paralleled to a "watch in the night" - might take a 1000 years or more. Therefore with three watches in a night, and assuming an equal number during daylight, a divine day could literally take upwards of 6000 years (see Psalms: Moses [Psalm 90]). And metaphorically, millions.
3. What are we to make of the term "Day of the Lord" sprinkled throughout the Old Testament? Certainly, this would be the right term for the seventh day (Isaiah 58:13-14), a day God "blessed and sanctified" after completing his work. Except for the exile to Babylon, which is treated as a type episode (Zeph. 1:2-6), the greater Day of the Lord is always an event in the future - a day of light that has no end for those deemed righteous (eg. ) and darkness to be dreaded for everybody else (eg. Amos 5:18-20, Isaiah 13:1-13, Zeph. 1:1-3, 14-18, Proverbs 16:4). Does that mean the Sabbath is prefiguring a future event rather than commemorating the past?
"Day of the LORD, God, Christ, the" - Baker's Evangelical Dictionary
4. Why does the "Day of the LORD" so often parallel the seventh day of creation, events of the seventh month, and other Sabbath sevens?
Zechariah chapter 14 alludes to all the feasts commemorated on the Seventh Month, specifically naming the Feast of Booths at the end.
The dawn of the Day of the LORD is described as a time of darkness where the "sun will be turned to darkness and moon to blood" (Joel 2:30-31, also Isaiah 13:10; cf. Zechariah 14:6-7).
Amos 9:11-15 - David's booth is restored paralleling the Zechariah 14 feast of booths.
The feast of Trumpets calling the nations to war. Judgment as in the day of Atonement (Joel 3:1-14, )
5. Why do statements coming from Jesus and New Testament persons imply their time is at the end of the sixth day of creation?
In John 5, Jesus answers the criticism that he is working on the Sabbath when he heals the paralytic with the words, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” Not only is he agreeing that he is working on the Sabbath, but he is also asserting the day it commemorates - when God ceases work after creating - has not come yet or is just beginning. This and his declaration of equality with God made the Jews want to kill him (John 5:16-18)!
In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, the Day of the LORD had not yet come, but the analogy puts the time of writing in a metaphorical evening or night.
Hebrews 4 argues the Sabbath rest is in the future for believers.
In 2 Peter 3, the author assumes he is writing from the sixth day in arguing for patience - "like a thousand years" - for the Day of the Lord. He ends his epistle with a salutation usually translated as, "To him be glory both now and forever! Amen." This is more literally translated as "...unto an age-lasting day. Amen" (Marshall, 1980) or:
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unscrupulous people and lose your own firm commitment, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. - 2 Peter 3:17-18, NASB
It becomes clear with just a few critical questions that the biblical writers who ventured to comment understood the days of creation as divine day-ages and the Day of the Lord as the event the Sabbath and other events prefigure. The Day of the Lord is the final divine day-age of the earth, the culmination of creation, and extends beyond the earth into eternity.
>>There is a slight variation on this that the Sumerian literature allows.
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.