The Lost World of Adam and Eve (31 page)

3
Note particularly the construction of a garden area in Nineveh by Sennacherib. See full discussion and the proposal that this is actually the famous “hanging gardens of Babylon” in Stephanie Dalley,
The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

4
That there could be a time lapse between designating the cosmos as sacred space (Gen 1) and actually establishing the terrestrial center and putting people there (Gen 2) would be illustrated by the time lapse that exists between God designating Canaan as the covenant land grant to Abraham and the actual inhabitation of that land centuries later at the time of Joshua.

5
Carol L. Meyers,
The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult,
American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation 2 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976); Detlef Jericke, “Königsgarten und Gottes Garten: Aspekte der Königsideologie in Genesis 2 und 3,” in
Exegese vor Ort: Festschrift für Peter Welten,
ed. Christl Maier, Rüdiger Liwak and Klaus-Peter Jörns (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), pp. 161-76, draws out the similarities between the Garden of Eden and the royal gardens of the ancient Near East and considers them cosmic gardens (pp. 172-74); Lawrence E. Stager, “Jerusalem as Eden,”
Biblical Archaeology Review
26, no. 3 (2000): 41, lists biblical occurrences of waters flowing from the temple; Manfred Dietrich, “Das biblische Paradies und der babylonische Tempelgarten: Überlegungen zur Lage des Gartens Eden,” in
Das biblische Weltbild und seine altorientalischen Kontexte
, ed. Bernd Janowski and Beate Ego (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), pp. 281-323, esp. pp. 290-93; Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Solomon’s Temple: The Politics of Ritual Space,” in
Sacred Time, Sacred Place: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel
, ed. Barry M. Gittlen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), pp. 83-94; Victor Hurowitz, “Yhwh’s Exalted House—Aspects of the Design and Symbolism of Solomon’s Temple,” in
Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar,
ed. John Day (New York; London: Continuum; T & T Clark, 2005), pp. 63-110; Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in
“I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11,
ed. Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura, Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 4 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), pp. 399-404, reprinted from
Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A: The Period of the Bible
(Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), pp. 19-25; and Moshe Weinfeld, “Gen. 7:11, 8:1-2 Against the Background of Ancient Near Eastern Tradition,”
Die Welt des Orients
9 (1978): 242-48.

6
Bloch-Smith, “Solomon’s Temple,” p. 88.

7
Hurowitz, “Yhwh’s Exalted House,” p. 87.

8
It should be noted that there are many other points on which
Jubilees
offers a very different interpretation than that presented in this book, so I am not suggesting that if an interpretation is found in
Jubilees
it is right. This simply shows that the interpretation of Eden as sacred space is an ancient idea, not a modern one.

9
Gary A. Anderson,
The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), pp. 55-58, 79-80. For example, Ephrem considered the tree of wisdom to be like the veil of the temple and the tree of life to be the holy of holies. See Ephrem the Syrian,
Hymns on Paradise,
intro. and trans. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), p. 57 (Paradise Hymn 3.13).

10
See Kathryn L. Gleason, “Gardens,” in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East,
ed. Eric M. Meyers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 2:383; Renate Germer, “Gardens,” in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt,
ed. Donald B. Redford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2:5; and Othmar Keel,
The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms,
trans. Timothy J. Hallett (New York: Seabury, 1978), p. 135. It should be noted that temples and palaces often shared adjoining space (Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “‘Who Is the King of Glory?’: Solomon’s Temple and Its Symbolism,” in
Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King,
ed. Michael D. Coogan, J. Cheryl Exum and Lawrence E. Stager [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994], p. 26).

11
Stager, “Jerusalem as Eden,” p. 43.

12
Alix Wilkinson, “Symbolism and Design in Ancient Egyptian Gardens,”
Garden History
22 (1994): 1-17.

13
See a translation on the Oxford website for Sumerian literature at
http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1.1#
. For analysis of this and other relevant texts, see Bernard F. Batto, “Paradise Reexamined,” in
In the Beginning: Essays on Creation Motifs in the Ancient Near East and the Bible,
ed. Bernard F. Batto (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 54-85, originally published in
The Biblical Canon in Comparative Perspective,
ed. K. Lawson Younger Jr., William W. Hallo and Bernard F. Batto, Scripture in Context 4 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1991), pp. 33-66.

14
Stordalen,
Echoes of Eden,
pp. 144-46.

15
See Batto, “Paradise Reexamined,” pp. 59-62.

16
Stordalen,
Echoes of Eden,
pp. 153-55.

17
For defense of this equation see Walton,
Genesis,
pp. 170-72.

18
The primary manuscript of this tale was found at Amarna (therefore fourteenth century
B.C
.). This means that the tale was known in the region in the Late Bronze period—the period of Israel’s entry into the land. The earliest known manuscript evidence is in Sumerian and dates to the Old Babylonian period. Full listing of the extant manuscripts is found in Shlomo Izre’el,
Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), pp. 5-7. Translation is in
The Context of Scripture,
ed. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 2003) vol. 1, p. 449.

19
Izre’el indicates that even though Adapa is presented in the text as a “single human being,” he “definitely symbolizes humanity or, rather, the essence of being human” (
Adapa,
pp. 120-23).

20
Adapa B68; Izre’el,
Adapa,
pp. 20-21. For discussion see Tryggve N. D. Mettinger,
The Eden Narrative: A Literary and Religio-historical Study of Genesis 2–3
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), pp. 104-7.

21
Differences include plot, setting and characters. Though food is included in both, they are very different sorts of food. There is no tempter or temptation. For more detailed discussion of these, see Mettinger,
Eden Narrative,
p. 108.

22
Translation of the Sumerian in CT 16.46 by Daniel Bodi, used with permission.

23
Known in Akkadian as the
kiškanu
tree. See discussion in Ake W. Sjöberg, “Eve and the Chameleon,” in
In the Shelter of Elyon: Essays on Ancient Palestinian Life and Literature,
ed. W. Boyd Barrick and John R. Spencer, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 31 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), pp. 217-25; and Mariana Giovino,
The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History of Interpretations,
Orbis biblicus et orientalis 230 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 12-20, 197-201.

24
As a cosmological feature, one thinks also of the “primeval hillock” represented in all Egyptian temples as the mound that first emerged from the waters.

25
This tree has prominence throughout the ancient Near East in the Old Testament period, from an early-second-millennium Sumerian epic,
Lugalbanda and Anzud,
to the later mid-first-millennium
Story of Erra and Ishum
(
meshu
tree). In the
Gilgamesh Epic
it is known as the ḫ
uluppu
tree, and it is featured prominently in neo-Assyrian palace reliefs. For thorough discussion (though with idiosyncratic interpretation), see Simo Parpola, “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy,”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
52 (1993): 161-208.

26
See discussion in Daniel Bodi, “Ezekiel,” in
Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament,
ed. John H. Walton (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 4:472-73; Matthias Henze,
The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar: The Ancient Near Eastern Origins & Early History of Interpretation of Daniel 4
(Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 77-80; and Daniel I. Block,
The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 187-89.

27
Gilgamesh tablet XI, lines 281-307. See n. 20 in previous chapter; see also A. R. George,
The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:721-23. See also his discussion concerning the realities of Dilmun (= Bahrain), 1:524. Note there also his consideration that the text of
Gilgamesh
actually refers to a particular coral that has the appearance of a plant and is fabled to have medicinal value.

28
Herman L. J. Vanstiphout,
Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta,
Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World 20 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), p. 119.

29
Another example is a plant of birth in the tale of Etana, a plant that will allow Etana’s barren wife to bear children.

30
By using this language I am not abandoning the idea that God is the source, merely recognizing that literary shaping is in the realm of the human aspects of Scripture.

31
Giovino,
Assyrian Sacred Tree.

32
Parpola, “Assyrian Tree of Life,” p. 161.

33
Giovino, however, is not convinced it is a real tree at all but thinks it could be a cult object representing a tree (
Assyrian Sacred Tree,
conclusions on p. 201).

34
Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger,
Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel,
trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998).

35
Barbara Nevling Porter,
Trees, Kings, and Politics: Studies in Assyrian Iconography,
Orbis biblicus et orientalis 197 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 11-20. Giovino,
Assyrian Sacred Trees,
p. 104, in contrast, is reticent since the palm flower clusters are too large to be represented as they are on the reliefs.

36
Stordalen,
Echoes of Eden,
p. 290. In fig. 14 on p. 490 he also shows an interesting Assyrian seal that shows a divine figure with a drawn bow protecting a tree from a horned serpent that is reared up.

37
Parpola, “Assyrian Tree of Life,” p. 173.

38
Some have favored the term
sacramental
; see Stordalen,
Echoes of Eden,
pp. 291-92.

39
For the location of Dilmun, see George,
Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic,
vol. 1
,
pp. 519-20; he says that “mouth of the rivers” refers to any place where river waters rise to the surface from the Apsu (p. 521). If this is true, the mouth of the waters is equivalent to Apsu, and the phrase refers to the domain of the god Ea. The Springs of Bahrain were considered the mouth of the rivers in antiquity.

40
Stordalen argues for peripheral (
Echoes of Eden,
pp. 297-99). See also Umberto Cassuto,
Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part 1: From Adam to Noah,
trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), p. 118, where he argues that the garden is not situated in the world. Ephrem, along with Gregory of Nyssa, contended that the garden was outside time and space. He viewed the garden as a conical canopy to the earth with the underside of the cone being the solid sky of the cosmos (Ephrem the Syrian,
Hymns on Paradise,
p. 54).

41
Ziony Zevit,
What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 108-11.

Proposition 14: The Serpent Would Have Been Viewed as a Chaos Creature from the Non-ordered Realm, Promoting Disorder

1
Thorkild Jacobsen, “Mesopotamian Gods and Pantheons,” in
Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture,
ed. William L. Moran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 24; Jeremy Black and Anthony Green,
Gods
,
Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), p. 139; see also W. G. Lambert, “Trees, Snakes and Gods in Ancient Syria and Anatolia,”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
48 (1985): 435-51.

2
Nicole B. Hansen, “Snakes,” in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt,
ed. Donald B. Redford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3:297.

3
John H. Walton, “Genesis,” in
The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), pp. 35-36.

4
All Pyramid Text citations refer to utterance numbers and are taken from Raymond O. Faulkner,
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).