메소포타미아 창조설화에서의 인간 창조

성경과 메소포타미아의 바벨론과 아시리아에 전해져 오는 창조설화를 보면 비슷하면서도 확연하게 다른 점이 있다. 아래 내용들은 아카디아쪽으로 전해져오는 창조설화인데 바벨론의 신인 마르둑이 티아맛과 그의 남편인 킨구를 제압하고 킨구의 피로부터 인간을 만들어냈다는 내용이다. 그런데 인간을 만들어낸 이유가 신기하다. 신들의 편의를 위해 노예로 부리기 위해 만들었단다.

"We have had occasion to refer to the Mesopotamian Enuma elish. This story’s account of man’s creation provides another interesting counterpoint to the biblical story. In Enuma elish the earth is created from one-half of Tiamat’s corpse. All the deities who had sided with Tiamat against Marduk now receive as their sentence the opprobrious duty of maintaining the earth. Such manual labor is weary and beneath their dignity. In response to their pleas, and in return for building a house for him, Marduk proceeds to create man from the blood of a fallen god, Kingu (consort of Tiamat):

  Arteries I will knot
  and bring bones into being.
  I will create Lullu, “man” be his name
  I will form Lullu, man
  Let him be burdened with the toil of the gods,
  that they may freely breathe—
  They bound him (Kingu), held him before Ea
  inflicted the penalty on him,
  severed his arteries;
  and from his blood he formed mankind
  imposed toil on man, set the gods free.

Man is created as an afterthought, and when he is created he is predestined to be a servant of the gods. There is nothing of the regal and the noble about him such as we find in Gen. 1. Basically he is a substitute, one who is created from the blood of a rebellious deity. The anthropologies of Gen. 1 and Enuma elish could not be wider apart."

Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 140.

 

Relation to Other Ancient Cosmologies

"Ancient Israel’s conception of creation parallels those of other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In fact, every aspect of ancient Israel’s creation conception has an antecedent from somewhere in the cultural setting of the ancient Near East (Walton, Genesis 1, 197). One parallel is the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which the Israelites appear to have known and were likely exposed to during the Babylonian Exile (586/7–539 BC). The Enuma Elish portrays creation as arising out of a violent battle between two deities: Marduk and Tiamat. Upon defeating Tiamat, Marduk slices her in half (compare Gen 1:6). The Old Testament may preserve some memory of a primordial battle with chaos, exemplified in texts where Yahweh engages in a contest with the sea creatures Rahab and Leviathan (Job 9:13; Pss 74:13–15; 89:10; Isa 27:1; 51:9). Also, the name “Tiamat” may be related linguistically to the Hebrew word for “deep” (תְּהוֹם, tehom).
The ancient Israelites’ understanding of creation also differed from the wider context of the ancient Near East. Whatever elements may have been picked up, adapted, or incorporated into ancient Israel’s view of creation have given them a new meaning.

  •      Unlike the Enuma Elish, the Israelite conception of creation understands the world and its inhabitants—human and animal alike—to be the product of a single Creator.
  •      Israel understands Yahweh as a friendly God who enters deeply into relationship with creation and works tirelessly for the betterment of the created order; conversely, in the Enuma Elish, humanity was created to fulfill the drudgery tasks of the gods.
  •      Ancient Israel does not understand creation as arising out of a primordial contest between deities. Even if such a tradition lies behind texts like Job 9 and Psa 74, the graphic violence with which the Enuma Elish describes the creation of the world has no resonance in the biblical imagination of creation.

An additional difference is the aspect of violence and gender. Tiamat is a female deity while Marduk is a male deity. The story portrays a male inflicting violence male on a female; further, sexual overtones seem to resonate in the battle scene. The Enuma Elish says: “They engaged in combat, they closed for battle. The Lord spread his net and made it encircle her, To her face he dispatched the imhullu-wind so that she could not close her lips. Fierce winds distended her belly; Her insides were constipated and she stretched her mouth wide.” A juxtaposition of this text with the initial blessing bestowed upon humanity in Gen 1:28 to be fruitful and fill the earth indicates that the biblical understanding of creation does not extol male against female violence, but affirms the beauty and power of genuine, respectful human relationships and sexuality.
The ancient creation myth Atrahasis (circa 1600 BC) mimics the sequence of creation, uncreation, re-creation prevalent throughout Genesis (Fretheim, God and World, 65). Ancient Near Eastern cultures appear to have told many flood stories and possessed a rich fund from which ancient Israel was able to create its own unique, multifaceted view of creation."

John E. Anderson, “Creation,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2013, 2014).

 

What Is the Human Role in the Cosmos? (Why Were Humans Created and What Is the Decreed Destiny of Humanity?)

"The roles assigned to humans bind them together in their common plight and bind them to the gods in servitude. Egyptian sources offer no explanation for the creation of humans. Sumerian and Akkadian sources consistently portray people as having been created to do the work of the gods—work that is essential for the continuing existence of the gods, and work that they have tired of doing for themselves.
Enki and Ninmah: servants for the gods: “The corvée of the gods has been forced on it.”
KAR 4: “The corvée of the gods will be their corvée: They will fix the boundaries of the fields once and for all, and take in their hands hoes and baskets, to benefit the House of the great gods.”
Atrahasis: “Let him bear the yoke, the task of Enlil, Let man assume the drudgery of god.”
Enuma Elish: To bear the gods’ burden that those may rest.

In Israel people also believed that they had been created to serve God. The difference was that they saw humanity as having been given a priestly role in sacred space rather than as slave labor to meet the needs of deity. God planted the garden to provide food for people rather than people providing food for the gods. The explanation offered in KAR 4 shows that the priestly role of people was included in the profile, but still in terms of providing sustenance for the gods. The shared cognitive environment is evident in that all across the ancient world there was interest in exploring the divine component of humankind and the ontological relationship between the human and divine. In Mesopotamia the cosmos functions for the gods and in relation to them. People are an afterthought, seen as just another part of the cosmos that helps the gods function. In Israel the cosmos functions for people and in relationship to them. God does not need the cosmos, but it is his temple. It functions for people.
With this understanding of human origins, history has begun and the stage is set for it to unfold. We will now explore how this unfolding drama was understood and transmitted."

John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 214–215.

 

Tablet VI

  When Marduk hears the words of the gods,
  His heart prompts (him) to fashion artful works.
  Opening his mouth, he addresses Ea
  To impart the plan he had conceived in his heart:
  “Blood I will mass and cause bones to be.
  I will establish a savage, ‘man’ shall be his name.
  Verily, savage-man I will create.
  He shall be charged with the service of the gods That they might be at ease!
  The ways of the gods I will artfully alter.
  Though alike revered, into two (groups) they shall be divided.”      (10)
  Ea answered him, speaking a word to him,
  Giving him another plan for the relief of the gods:
  “Let but one of their brothers be handed over;
  He alone shall perish that mankind may be fashioned.
  Let the great gods be here in Assembly,
  Let the guilty be handed over that they may endure.”
  Marduk summoned the great gods to Assembly;
  Presiding graciously, he issues instructions.
  To his utterance the gods pay heed.
  The king addresses a word to the Anunnaki:      (20)
  “If your former statement was true,
  Do (now) the truth on oath by me declare!
  Who was it that contrived the uprising,
  And made Tiamat rebel, and joined battle?
  Let him be handed over who contrived the uprising.
  His guilt I will make him bear. You shall dwell in peace!”
  The Igigi, the great gods, replied to him,
  To Lugaldimmerankia, counselor of the gods, their lord:
  “It was Kingu who contrived the uprising,
  And made Tiamat rebel, and joined battle.”      (30)
  They bound him, holding him before Ea.
  They imposed on him his guilt and severed his blood (vessels).
  Out of his blood they fashioned mankind.
  He imposed the service and let free the gods.
  After Ea, the wise, had created mankind,
  Had imposed upon it the service of the gods—
  That work was beyond comprehension;
  As artfully planned by Marduk, did Nudimmud create it—
  Marduk, the king of the gods divided
  All the Anunnaki above and below.      (40)

James Bennett Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament  (3rd ed. with Supplement.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 68.

 

The creation of mankind in Mesopotamian myths involves the blood of slain deities and sometimes the mixture of clay material. Enuma Elish tells how the deity Kingu, leader of the Tiamat armies, was slain and from his blood was made mankind, whose purpose was to relieve the lesser gods of their toil.(ANET, 74) In the Atrahasis epic the lesser gods revolted against their duties of canal digging, and the higher gods called upon the mother-goddess, Nintu, to create mankind. Upon Enki’s direction the deity Geshtu-e (or Wê-ila) is slaughtered, and from his blood and flesh mixed with clay was formed a clay figure. The lesser gods spat upon the clay.

From his [Geshtu-e] flesh and his blood
Let Nintu [mother-goddess] mix clay,
that the god and man may be thoroughly mixed together in the clay.
(W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atraḫasîs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 59; also W. Moran, “The Creation of Man in Atrahasis I 192–248,” BASOR 200 (1970): 48–56.)

Later, after Nintu’s incantation, she pinches off fourteen pieces, constituting seven males and seven females. Atrahasis has human beings made up of both material and divine elements, here the blood of a deity.
Sumerian Enki and Ninmah depicts mankind created of clay, also for the purpose of relieving the gods from their hard duties. It involves a bizarre and disastrous twist where the rival gods in a drunken orgy make humans with all manner of defects, the chief being a crippled human.
(See S. N. Kramer and J. Maier, Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–14, 31–37.)
In Gen 2:7 the first man is made of “dust” and endued with life by the divine inbreathing. But there the analogy ends, for mankind is not created to meet the needs of deity, but God’s actions serve the needs of the man and woman by providing the idyllic Eden.

K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26 (vol. 1A; The New American Commentary; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 94–95.