posted on Sep, 21 2010 @ 01:49 AM
To reconnect a bit with the original aims of this post:
Is Yahweh Marduk?
Zecharia Sitchin in an interesting discussion takes up a question that will have become unavoidable: “So, who was Yahweh? Was He one of them? Was He
an extraterrestrial?” Well, in one sense he is, of course, an extraterrestrial, since he comes from beyond the Earth! But is – or was – he an
Anunnaku? Or, more generally, an inhabitant of Nîbiru? Or really the prime creator?
Sitchin establishes a series of comparisons with gods named in the clay plates. Even though there are various similarities with each of these gods in
the biblical descriptions of Yahweh, the comparison doesn’t work out with anyone of them, since there are also contradictions. Yahweh cannot be one
of them. Sitchin then tries with Thoth, the Egyptian god, who in Sumer was called Ningishzidda. He also was a son of Enki. But the comparison
doesn’t work out here, either.
Then, finally, he compares Yahweh with Marduk. He refers to Isaiah 46,1 and Jeremiah 50,2, since they predict that Marduk [3] with his son Nabu will
on the Day of Judgment bow down before Yahweh and be broken in pieces. That could, however – in view of the not very friendly relations between the
Hebrews and the Babylonians, where they had been in exile – be seen as a politically motivated portrayal. He then also finds an objection in a
Babylonian text, according to which various functions of Marduk are transferred to other gods. This would, in his view, contradict monotheism and,
therefore, Yahweh could not be Marduk. In my view one could also se that as a confirmation! If we regard this assignment of functions as Marduk
delegating tasks to other gods, who thereby represent Marduk in their functions, things look a bit different. These gods, in a way, are then
manifestations or forms of appearance of the one Marduk, as he works through them! The hypothesis that Yahweh would be Marduk is then no more so out
of place. [4]
Delitzsch wrote in a much disputed work [5]: “Yes, the old testament poets and prophets even went so far that they transferred Marduk’s heroic
deeds directly to Yahweh and then celebrated the latter as the one, who at the beginning of times crushed the heads of the sea monster (Ps 74:13ff,
89:10), as the one who smashed the accomplices of the dragon (Job 9:13).” With this, he meant the fight of Marduk against Ti’âmat, who is often
described as a dragon of the primordial waters and sometimes also as a serpent with seven heads. “Passages like Isa 51:9: ‘Up, up! Equip yourself
with power, arm of Yahweh! Up! Like in the primordial days, the generations of the beginning of times. Were you not the one who cut the dragon in
pieces and pierced the monster?’ Or Job 26:12: ‘In his power he conquered the sea and in his cleverness he crushed the dragon’…” (his own
translations from Hebrew).
Rahab
The name Rahab occurs in two senses in the Bible. It is the name of a prostitute who was bribed to help the Hebrews to take the town of Jericho by
means of a wicked trick. Thus she betrayed her own people. But this is not the one we are concerned with here.
Rahab is also the “dragon” in the “chaos” – i.e., the primordial energy – that was before the creation, and she is compared to Ti’âmat
in Enûma Elish and even identified with her. Later she was regarded as a demon.
The name occurs in the latter meaning in the following essential passages (and a few others that are not essential to us here):
Job 9:13 “If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers of Rahab do stoop under him.”
Job 26:12 “He [Yahweh] divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab. 13 By his spirit he hath garnished the
heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.”
Ps 74:12 “For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. 13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou breakest the
heads of the dragons [Rahab and her company] in the waters. 14 Thou breakest the heads of the whales in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the
people inhabiting the wilderness.
Ps 89:9 “Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. 10 Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is
slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.” (Ps 89:10-11 in another counting.)
Isa 51:9 “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut
Rahab, and wounded the dragon?”
[Not all Bible translations mentioned Rahab by name here, but the Hebrew text does (רהב), except in Ps 74:12, where she is alluded to among the
“dragons in the water”.]
If we here replace “Yahweh” with “Marduk”, these quotations could just as well refer to Enûma Elish with Rahab corresponding to Ti’âmat
and the water to the primordial energy before creation, which actually is Apsû, from which creation then emerged. John Day has in a comprehensive
academic work dealt extensively with “God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea” and sees these things in a similar manner, except that he
doesn’t dare to compare Yahweh and Marduk. Instead, he wants to demonstrate an origin in the Cana‘anite mythology and not, as several other
scientists do, in Enûma Elish. Since, however, the Cana‘anite texts (inscriptions) handed down to us begin at about 2350 BCE – and that
fragmentary – and the Sumerian civilization is older than the oldest of these handed down texts, one cannot exclude that the Cana‘anites could
have taken over mythological themes from the Sumerians. Even though the clay plates containing Enûma Elish date back to between 1800 and 1600 BCE,
the mythology described therein could well be of much earlier origin and have belonged to the Sumerian culture long before they were recorded in the
plates.
It is interesting that Day also takes up the plural in Gen 1, like “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). He refers to
other authors and himself explains it such that God would have consulted a “divine council” (composed of the “sons of God”). To that he quotes
Ps 8:5: “For thou hast made him a little lower than the gods (‘elohim, here often translated as ‘angels’), and hast crowned him with glory and
honor” (in another counting Ps 8:6) [6, p. 54]. Here we may again think of the Gnostic doctrine of Yaldabaoth and the Archons…
References
1. Zecharia Sitchin: Divine Encounters, Avon, New York, 1995: “Endpaper: God, the Extraterrestrial”, p 347-380
2. Singular: Anunnaku, plural: Anunnaki.
3. He is in the Bible called Merodach and is according to Sitchin also called Bel, even though both names are stated in Jer 50:2 as if they are
two.
4. Jan Erik Sigdell: Es begann in Babylon, Holistika, Meckenheim, 2008, pp 109-110.
5. Friedrich Delitzsch: Babel und Bibel, J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1902, pp 33-34
6. John Day: God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, Cambridge University Press, London, 1985.