Creation  Studies

In the Beginning Creation and Evolution in Cuneiform Texts

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

13 January 2012

           There is one aspect very clear in literature of the Ancient Near East: evolution is unheard of. All the ancient cultures understood that the world was created. There is not a single line suggesting that things evolved out of themselves or from lower forms working around or near them.

           God created Adam and Eve after He created the world. He did so in seven days and rested on the seventh-day to set us an example to do the same. It was Saturday. We know it since Jews are still worshipping on Saturday because the commandment in the book of Moses, Exodus chapter 20 says you should worship on Sabbath. If the Jews were careful to worship on Saturday in the past, you can accept that Moses also worshipped and rested on Saturday and God’s seventh-day was also on Saturday.

           Certain texts at Yale were transliterated and translated by George Barton (George Barton, Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918]) and they explain that the world came into being through creation:

Reverse (Barton 1918: 56 text YOS 8 lines 28-30).

28. u-mu-un mu-ne-eš-ib-gál mu-da-    28. The lord caused them to be; they

   an-gál-li-eš                         came into existence.

29. man-na-ne-ne za-ki dam ne-ne      29. Companions were they; a man

   ba-an-gub-bu-uš-a                   with a wife he made them dwell ;

30. gig-bi gan-a gar tag-me-eš     30. By night, by day they are set as helpers.

           The whole context is creation. They did not exist before He caused them to be. They were companions, the man and the wife. They were helpers to each other evening and mornings, by night and by day.

           In the following lines the text made no mistake in bringing Creationist thinking to the fore:

4. kalm-e-bi dtak-ku nu-ub-da         4. Land and water Takku had not

  an-dim-ma-aš                      created

9. anše-ra bir-a-bi nu-ub-tu-ud       9. Horses and cattle had not been created

19. nam-lù un-zu erim-nun-a gá-e-    19. Mankind he planned; many men

   ne                              were brought forth;

           A creation tablet was also found at Ebla or Tell Mardikh, about 55 km south of Aleppo in North Syria. The site was excavated in 1964 and the city was discovered in 1973. Nearly 20,000 tablets were found that dated to the days of the birth of Abraham, who was born in 2229 BCE. The language of Ebla was a Semitic dialect as well as using Sumerian. Palace archives were found in 1975.

           Three versions of the Eblaite creation hymn have been found. They state

Lord of heaven and earth:

the earth was not, you created it,

the light of day was not, you created it,

the morning light you had not [yet] made exist.

           How should a Seventh-day Adventist react with this strong Semitic doctrine of Creation nearly 790 years before Moses wrote Genesis? Simple. Moses wrote Genesis with the Book of Adam (Genesis 5:1) and the Book of Noah (Genesis 6:1) which recorded in detail how God originally created the earth and heavens. At Ebla also the name of Adam appear as one can see in a-da-mu. The name of Eve also appear there and other biblical names like Jerusalem. One of the most powerful rulers of Ebla was called Ibrium, a name very related to Eber, one of the forefathers of Abraham. Scholars agree that Ebla “white rock” was a strong city between 2400-2240 BCE. We know that Sargon the Great started ruling with the last king of Ebla Ibbi-Sipish.  Ibbi-Sipish was Ibrium’s son. One should not miss the word habiru or Hebrews here. The flood was in 2523 BCE and since all peoples originated and dispersed from Noah and Noah died in 2169 BCE (Genesis 9:28) and Abraham was born before Noah died, and Ebla existed before Noah died, one can assume that the historical data of Noah found its way in outside literature as well. There has to be a mirror of the mind of Noah and Adam in cuneiform texts. It is natural that Ebla of that time should have a creation account that reads very similar to the Book of Adam and what we have in Genesis 1 and 2, which are excerpts from the Book of Adam. There was a god at Ebla called yh by G. Pettinato but resisted by many scholars as ia. Regardless how they want to transliterate it, the phonics are the same. The Hebrew God to Moses was Yahweh or Yah, abbreviated. This is very remarkable. Moses met the God of his fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Exodus 3:6. Abraham is contemporaneous with Ebla and Abraham’s God was Yahweh and Ebla’s god was ia or Yh.

           From the optimism about creationism of the Bible finding inroads in surrounding cultures ever since Adam and after the Flood of Noah into the Sumerian and Akkadian cultures, Egypt and elsewhere, one has to mention the opposite paradigm. This paradigm is the most popular trend for the past century and a half. That Babel influenced the Bible and not vice versa.

           An old scholar that has set himself the task as breaking down the power and authority of the Creation accounts of Scripture, is Hugo Radau. In modern times scholars try to revive his theories since it serves very well to break down a fundamentalistic and literal reading of Genesis and furthermore, it helps people not to take the Bible serious and thus stay in the Sunday as Lord’s Day churches, thinking that even though the Bible says you should worship Saturday and not Sunday, that it is not important.

           The book is Hugo Radau, The Creation-Story of Genesis I: Sumerian Theogony and Cosmogony Analecta Gorgiana 174 (Gorgias Press, 2010). The book is full of serious methodological errors. At http://www.egw.org at VAN WYK NOTE we have discussed this book and author in depth. A repetition of his creation denial is not necessary. He sees it as a fabrication using Babylonian myths in cuneiform texts as precursor.  

           The Babylonian Legends of Creation and the Fight between Bel and the Dragon texts were found at Niniveh. Radau used these texts as well. What Radau does not tell the public, is that by the time these texts were composed (650 BCE) the Israelites were already 73 years in Niniveh and Assyria. Thousands of them settled there. Their children learned Assyrian fluently and worked as scribes in the library of Niniveh copying these myths and legends. Fusion or acculturation took place and Moses’ Creation accounts, the Flood Accounts of Genesis 6-11, the Rebellion in Heaven theme of the Bible, all found their way into the cuneiform texts at Niniveh. There is even a Sabbath text at Niniveh and at http://www.egw.org at VAN WYK NOTE we have discussed this text and others that dated later under and after the Babylonian empire. The presence of Jews in Assyria can no longer be denied. Radau is outdated and stand under correction. The same can be said about the Encyclopaedia of the Bible by Cheyne 1899-1903 in four volumes. Detailed and the data very helpful but the interpretations completely off the mark or outdated.

           When Richard Dawkins thus push for Evolutionism in our day and age, he is totally ignorant of the setting of the Ancient Near East in which there is absolute no room for any thought on evolutionism. It is a modern construct. The cult of evolutionism was not known in the days of Ancient Near Eastern literature.

           The texts of creation at the Niniveh library was from the days of Ashurbanipal (668-626 BCE). Between 1866-1870 nearly 20,000 tablets were worked through by George Smith of texts that was originally found by H. Rassam in 1852.

          It was in 1870 that Rawlinson and Smith noted Creation allusions in the tablet JK. 63. Some more fragments were found by Smith between 1873-1874. In January of 1875 Smith published about 20 tablets he has found outlining the series on the Creation in cuneiform tablets.

           In 1876 Smith published his Chaldean Account of Genesis (London: 1876).

           It was Rawlinson who suggested in 1865 that “certain portions of the Babylonian and Assyrian legends of the creation resembled passages in the early chapters of Genesis”.

           In 1898 L. W. King was asked to prepare an exhaustive publication of all the creation texts. George Smith found out that there were seven tablets of Creation. King published his edition as L. W. King, Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum Part 13 (London: 1901). Scholars are guessing that these late cuneiform text of Creation is based upon earlier texts in the Old Babylonian and earlier Sumerian periods, but such clear evidence has not turned up yet. These texts used by Radau and presented by Smith, King and others like Heidel represents creation theories or views that post-date the Creation account of Moses by 810 years. Plus the Israelites lived in the area and must have had an influence upon the Assyrian empire just like New York today has a strong influence upon the USA. This analogy should not escape any scholar today.

           The cuneiform texts do not allow for a theistic-evolution. There is nothing in cuneiform texts that a god set things in motion for it to evolve in what it is today. Theistic-evolutionism is a modern compromise or construct and nihilists and atheists claim that there is no difference between an evolutionist and a theistic-evolutionist (see the views of the atheist Hamilton in the 1960’s).  

If you want to be biblical, you cannot embrace deviations from it