Gospel & Universe ♒️ The Currents of Sumer
Again, Minus 1 Plus 1
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Most of what I’m stressing here is a positive take on Mesopotamian myth. I see it as an enriching origin of later ideas in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This contrasts with the modus operandi of traditional Jews and Christians, who see Mesopotamian and polytheistic religion as inferior, misguided, even demonic. Returning to Enns’ book Genesis For Normal People we see a writer helping his readers to be more aware of Mesopotamian myth, and in some ways making them understand that there is a great deal of borrowing, especially in the Flood narrative. Yet Enns also sees things, despite his attempt to avoid bias, in terms of zero-sum.
1 + -1 = 0
Enns suggests that the Mesopotamian version of the Flood is mostly about a grumpy and violent Enlil, who commits genocide because of a petty reason: humans are making too much noise. He suggests that this makes the Jewish story unique and better:
Their God [Yahweh] isn’t grumpy or petty. Rather God has standards that humans, who are made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27), are to uphold. As the writer of the story puts it, “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (6:5). This is the reason given for the flood, Israel’s theological explanation for a massive tragedy: it was God’s response to human failure, the failure to reflect God in the world as image-bearers. God wipes the slate clean and starts over by choosing Noah, the righteous one, as the new beginning.
Yet why is the Jewish narrative any better than the Mesopotamian one?
-1 + 1 = 0
In the Mesopotamian narrative a rather Naturalist or Zeus-like god (Enlil) is balanced by a more Romantic or Promethean god (Ea). This suggests the two sides of higher powers: the brute power of Nature and the more humane power of compassion. Enlil is very close to the Naturalist’s God in the sense that he’s brutally indifferent to the state of man, but the important part of the story isn’t about his grumpiness or about his unreasonable genocide. It’s about the solidarity that Ea shows in going behind that grumpy, violent god’s back and saving humanity.
Laozi says something similar about the brutal and loving side of higher powers when he says that “Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs” [used in sacrifices and then thrown away], and yet the Dao is repeatedly seen as the Mother that nourishes all creatures and asks nothing in return. One might also see the Arts & Sciences in this way: astronomy locates the ruthless power of stars clashing into stars, and geology explains how earthquakes and tsunamis wipe out millions of people, yet biology, genetics, sociology, literature, art, and religion focus on the beauty of life, the caring of one animal for the next, the groupings of villages working together, the temple and church with their angels looking upward to the invisible fount of this beauty, awed at the inextricable combination of power and grace.
To blame a flood on the idea that people didn’t follow a set of rules, or on the idea that everyone (except Noah) became so thoroughly evil that they must be exterminated seems less reasonable than the Mesopotamian version for at least two reasons. First, Yahweh set up the situation in the first place, so either the rules were made too hard or the humans were made too weak; either way the fault seems in the making. This isn’t the case of an unsolvable problem of theodicy (why God allows evil), but rather a case where the reason behind the Judeo-Christian explanation is simply unacceptable: God is so frustrated with his own creation that he sends a mighty flood to destroy it. Second, the Mesopotamian scenario is more humane in that the conglomerate of religious power (the gods) don’t have a consensus to do such a near-genocidal thing. Enlil might, but Ea wouldn’t. In both the Jewish and Mesopotamian scenarios the deities save one man, but only in the Jewish version is there a consensus — of one — that the idea of an almost complete genocide is a good one. How does this mean that the Jewish version is better? How does this show that the Jewish God alone has standards? In the polytheistic version, there’s a possibility of dissent, and of curbing excessive use of power. Isn’t this a more reasonable, fair, and merciful standard for governance?
It seems odd for the Jewish text to set up such a violent notion of God, especially from a global religious perspective, which might include Christ’s forgiveness, the sacrifice of bodhisattvas, and Krishna’s argument about dharma (he says in the Bhagavad-Gita that one should use violence only if absolutely required). Some might argue that the Old Testament God is there to contrast with the more merciful Christ, yet this doesn’t excuse his near-genocidal act as much as it stresses its violent and cruel nature.
It’s odd for Yahweh’s near-genocidal act to be normalized, or falsely compared to ‘worse’ pagan behaviour. Nor is it comforting to have his act justified within its own narrative framework, as if from dust to dust could be squared with from chaos to chaos:
The order that God established on Day 2 is reversed in the days of Noah; God has reintroduced chaos. The cosmos is as it once was formless and empty, tohubohu. And it's a fitting verdict. God is only giving humanity a dose of its own medicine. If God's creation behaves in a "disorderly" and chaotic way, God will unleash the forces of chaos upon it to wipe the slate clean and introduce a new order.
If God saved the universe from Chaos, why then return to operating in a chaotic manner? Wouldn’t finding the villains, murderers, and rapists and then erasing them — and only them — from the face of the earth be a better solution? The other solution sounds suspiciously final. The only thing that justifies it is that all the humans back then were really devils, whose “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” I’ve never heard of such a humanity.
I don’t want to indulge in too much zero-sum argument, yet it may be necessary in order to cancel out the other zero-sum argument. Otherwise, the notion that the Jewish narrative is always superior will continue to prevail.
What we get from all this however is a greater or cumulative zero sum:
(Jews 1 + Meso -1) + (Jews -1 + Meso 1) = Jews 0 + Meso 0 = 0
Wouldn’t it be better to have a more positive outcome?
Jews 1 + Meso 1 + Jews 1 + Meso 1 = Jews 2 + Meso 2 = 4
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