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Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition
In Slaying the Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition , Bernard Batto argues that biblical authors, like other ancient Near East authors, used mythic traditions in composing their works. Batto joins massive evidence with masterful argument to show that myth actually lies at the heart of the theological enterprise of the biblical authors. Slaying the Dragon is sure to provoke dicussion on the theological relevance of myth in the biblical tradition.
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1992
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October 2, 2018
There were many peoples living and interacting at the time the different parts of the Bible were composed, so there should be no surprise that they used, borrowed and reworked each other's myths and mythical elements.
The author sets out to show how the Babylonian myths - Atrahasis (about the creation of humans and gradual upgrading - or downgrading - of them, and also of the flood) and Enuma Elish (about the battle of the old gods against the personified primeval sea, which is eventually conquered by the son of one of the gods, who later gets to rule everything) - influenced the stories of the Bible.
The Garden story, according to the author, draws inspiration from Atrahasis by showing the origin of human nature (separate both from animals and gods, also mortal), but the main focus of the book is how "battle against the sea / sea-monster / chaos" shows up in different Biblical stories. When God separates the Red Sea, it's an echo of Marduk killing the primeval Sea-Goddess.
There's a lot about the motif of God conquering Chaos, personified either by the sea, or by Egypt. It's mostly based on textual analysis and interpretation, which, I don't know, might go either way. I mean, every mythological victory could be called "victory against chaos" if you're determined to search for that, not sure if it adds anything.
The influence of Canaanite mythology by means of Gilgalite traditions was interesting, as well as connecting Christian mythology to Babylonian (the son of god is doing stuff instead of the god himself).
Anyway, I feel it was not a bad book, but not exactly what I expected. I was hoping to see more mythological traditions and elements interplay with each other, and it's mostly searching for evidence of "conquering sea / chaos" in the Biblical stories.
The author sets out to show how the Babylonian myths - Atrahasis (about the creation of humans and gradual upgrading - or downgrading - of them, and also of the flood) and Enuma Elish (about the battle of the old gods against the personified primeval sea, which is eventually conquered by the son of one of the gods, who later gets to rule everything) - influenced the stories of the Bible.
The Garden story, according to the author, draws inspiration from Atrahasis by showing the origin of human nature (separate both from animals and gods, also mortal), but the main focus of the book is how "battle against the sea / sea-monster / chaos" shows up in different Biblical stories. When God separates the Red Sea, it's an echo of Marduk killing the primeval Sea-Goddess.
There's a lot about the motif of God conquering Chaos, personified either by the sea, or by Egypt. It's mostly based on textual analysis and interpretation, which, I don't know, might go either way. I mean, every mythological victory could be called "victory against chaos" if you're determined to search for that, not sure if it adds anything.
The influence of Canaanite mythology by means of Gilgalite traditions was interesting, as well as connecting Christian mythology to Babylonian (the son of god is doing stuff instead of the god himself).
Anyway, I feel it was not a bad book, but not exactly what I expected. I was hoping to see more mythological traditions and elements interplay with each other, and it's mostly searching for evidence of "conquering sea / chaos" in the Biblical stories.
July 18, 2017
SPOILERS - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
I am giving this 3.5 stars, but Goodreads makes me pick, so I am going with 3 stars.
Bernard Batto goes down the rabbit hole of mythmaking in this book about the early texts of the Old Testament. He works to show that the scribes who gave us the priestly version of the creation account, to the priestly Exodus narrative, used myth to recontextualize these events and give them a framework that has stood the test of time.
From Gilgamesh to Atrahasis, to the combat myths of Babylon like Enuma Elish, these writers worked to show that Yahweh was greater than the Sea, or greater than the forces of chaos that rules the ancient near eastern world (ANE).
Chapter 1 - The Myths of the Ancient Near East
Gilgamesh
The earliest copies of the stories of Gilgamesh come to us from about 1900 to 1600 BCE, and other than his meeting up with Utnapishtim, I didn't see much a connection as to why this author brought up Gilgamesh and his adventures with Enkidu. There was some bit about great life advice on p. 22, but other than this I didn't see much influence on the Old Testament. Obviously Utnapishtim and the flood have relevance, but that was all.
Atrahasis
This text talks about an 18th century epic that contains the creation myth as well as a flood account. The name "Atrahasis" is a Sumerian king from before the great flood. The author says that this is much more than a flood account, however, it "deals with the issues of theogony and cosmogony; that is, it makes mythic statements about the origins of the gods and the cosmos and humankind in primordial time." (p.27)
In this story, the gods caused the flood because humans were too noisy. I always thought that this was weird when I heard these stories in college. The author gives some context when he says, "to disturb the sleep of the chief deity was symbolic of challenging the sovereignty of that god." Later, the author suggests that a god resting means that he is all powerful. A god who rests has things in control!
The author illustrates how Atrahasis views humans - as servants to the gods. (p.32) To think that a human could enter the divine realm, to Atrahasis, was unthinkable. The author is setting us up for the conflict in Genesis 1-3, when Eve wants to be like the Gods.
Enuma Elish
This is another Babylon creation myth (from about 1000 BCE - see p. 35) that was recovered in 1849 on 7 clay tablets. It focused on the supremacy of the god Marduk and his destruction of the mighty chaos monster Tiamat. Marduk offered to destroy the mighty monster Tiamat, on the condition that, if he succeeded, the other gods in the divine council would make him their king (p.34). They agreed, and Marduk defeated Tiamat, splitting her body in two, and with half he formed the heavens as a barrier to keep out the waters above. He had Qingu (the son of Tiamat and also her lover- gross!) killed and from Qingu's blood mixed with clay he formed mankind.
Marduk retired his warbow by hanging it up in the sky in the heavens where it would forever shine. Obviously the author is going to connect the story of Marduk and Tiamat to Genesis 1-9 with the splitting of the waters in the creation account to the bow in the sky in the Noah account. He does say that these narratives were used to establish why Babylon was the place to be - it had the coolest gods! He also says that Enuma Elish is at least a partial replacement for Atrahasis, which meant that this story trump other older creation accounts, making Marduk and by association, Babylon, the best of the best.
Later editors reworked this story, making it their own creation epic, thus supplanting the older stories. This is what ANE scribes did. The author writes, "Throughout I have stressed the deliberateness by which the Babylonian authors composed their new mythic syntheses. This point can be made very tellingly again by noting that when Enuma Elish reached Assyria, Assyrian editors replaced the name of Marduk with that of their own national god, Ashur. With but a few strokes of the sylus, these Assyrian editors radically altered the original function of the epic. Instead of undergirding Babylonian hegemony, the revised Enuma Elish now supported Assyrian hegemony over Babylon! (p.39)
And this, the author will say again and again, is what the Yahwists will do with their scribes and their creation accounts, especially the priestly author/scribe.
The Yahwist Primeval Myth
This chapter illustrates how the "J" author, or the Yahwist, sets for immortality as a divine prerogative that is to be denied to humanity (p.47). This is reminiscent of the epic of Gilgamesh, where we read the same thing. You also have the words for noncreation, or chaos throughout the stories. We have all kinds of dragon/leviathan/Rahab/Chaos monsters in the Bible, and that is the point: The authors of these texts were trying to show that Yahweh had defeated chaos, was working to defeat the sea/waters/chaos/dragon because he was and is the supreme god of the universe.
The author goes to show parallels between Atrahasis and J's story of creation on pages 51-52. There are several. He says, "the dependency of the Yahwist upon stock ancient Near Eastern creation motifs is once again evident." (p.53) From a creator who is kind of learning as he goes, to the idea of rebellion, the inability of man to attain divine status, to even the idea that man could live up to 120 years, these are all parallels with Atrahasis and ANE mythology. The "J" account becomes Israels "origin story".
Chapter 3 - The Priestly Revision of the Creation Myth
Like many scholars, Batto believes that the "P" or priestly account was written after 586 BCE and the fall of Jerusalem. This strand of the Torah was written to strengthen faith in Yahweh amidst the sadness of the exile and destruction of the temple.
Batto goes on to show that the P author used many motifs from Enuma Elish to produce his creation text. From "tehom" (which is a cognate of the Akkadian "Tiamat") to the creation of the lights, the firmament, and the order of creation, Batto believes that the P author cribbed from Enuma Elish. We also have the idea of rest. He says, most important is the linking of divine rest (Gen. 2:1-3) with creation. As I have shown elsewhere, common to all versions of the Semitic Combat Myth is a motif of divine rest." (p.78)
He writes, "God's salvific power is presented as most evident in two events: in his victory over the chaos monster at the creation of the world, and in the splitting of the (Red) Sea when he freed his people from Egypt." (p.82) The combat myth had great appeal to these Israelites in exile in 586 BCE. It allowed them to acknowledge that their world had been destroyed without losing their faith in Yahweh as the supreme ruler of heaven and earth. Their suffering was part of the way things worked in a universe that was having a fight between the forces of good and evil.
ANE stories all talked about the fight against chaos, against the sea (p.85). God worked to hold back these forces, and in this narrative we see Yahweh holding back the waters with the firmament, as well as his power to let loose these waters on Pharaoh in the Exodus narrative. You've got Marduk hunging up his bow in Enuma Elish, and Yahweh hanging up a bow in Genesis 9 following the flood. Batto's conclusion to this chapter is that P was a writer of his time. This is what scribes did, they reworked material to suit their purposes. In this case, P was writing a story of the awesome power of Yahweh over the forces of evil and chaos. He writes, "P would have difficulty understanding our modern concern over whether there literally existed a paradisiacal divine garden or whether God actually created humankind by modeling a clay antrhopoid figure into whose nostrils God blew the breath of life, or similar questions... the notion that something is true only if it is historically accurate is a prejudice we moderns inherited from our Enlightenment mentors. For P these primeval stories were vehicles that enabled one better to approach the mysterium tremendum of the divine." (p.99)
Chapter 4 The Exodus as myth
Once again we have a combat story, a divine smack down between Yahweh and Egypt. We have the dividing of the Sea, we have many biblical authors repeating the story of the Exodus to illustrate the power of God in our lives over the power of evil and chaos. He quotes Isaiah 43:1-3, 18; 51:9-10; Exodus 15:6-8, 16-18 all as part of this combat motif and the power of Yahweh over chaos to redeem his people. Nephi does this as well with his working of his texts (which we would expect, since he was a product of his time. See: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1987/04/re... See also: https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/literatu... )
Batto makes good use of the idea that the "Yam-Suf" is not only the "Red Sea" but the "Sea at the end of creation" or the "Sea of Annihilation" - he says, "Yam Sup" literally means "Sea of End/Extinction" (from the Hebrew root sup, "to come to an end," "to cease")." Great stuff! Pharaoh was cast to the ends of the earth. He was annihilated, literally, in this text!
In this chapter, Batto goes on to show us that Yahweh is involved in another creation, that of making Israel itself. He is fashioning a new, glorious creation, and this Exodus story is recreated in our lives when we defeat the chaos of our lives and come unto God. Nephi uses these themes just like P does, only he is more explicit in his use of these terms as he has to struggle to teach his lazy and dull brothers to show them that Yahweh has more power than men.
Chapter 5 Crossing Dry Shod: Mythopoeic Speculation in Cult
Batto's premise is that P put the idea of the crossing the Red Sea on dry ground in this text and that it never happened, that J and E left it out, and only later was this added. I was unconvinced throughout this entire chapter of his premise and found his evidence to be lacking.
I did like his battle with chaos scriptures
Psalms 74:11-15 - God smashed the head of the dragon
Psalms 77:17-21 - The Exodus was a battle with chaos
Psalms 93:3-4 - Yahweh rules over the sea
Psalms 89:9-10 - The sea as an embodiment of a chaos dragon
Psalms 46:2-3; 107:29 - Yahweh's victory over the sea provides confidence that chaos will not overwhelm the present day
Psalms 106:7-9 - God rebuked the Red Sea so that his mighty power might be known
Chapter 6 Egypt and God as mythic symbols in Ezekiel
The author ends with showing us how Egypt symbolized chaos and the dragon. The "hooks in the jaws" explanation was the best I have ever come across in scriptural commentary, and I have read a ton on these chapters in Ezekiel before. This was worth the price of the book for me. (see p. 156-157). I also liked the outline of the book of Ezekiel and will be using this in my teaching of the Old Testament.
Ezekiel has quite a bit to say to Egypt! Batto writes, "Egypt is the personification of historical evil. Within the oracles against the seven historical enemies of Israel Egypt is the seventh and last named and presumably, therefore, the worst of the lot. Furthermore, Ezekiel directs seven oracles against Egypt alone; and these oracles take up as much space as all the oracles against the other nations combined! Egypt is singled out as more severing of Yahweh's wrath than all the other nations of the earth." (p. 162)
Why is this? According to Ezekiel, it is because Egypt got Israel into worshiping false gods. He calls Egypt the "great dragon" - see Ezekiel 29:3
Did I like this book? Yes! Did I love it? No, but I could have. I wanted more. I wanted Batto to really convince me of his ideas in chapter 5, and he fell short. Will I read more of his stuff? Yes. There is much more to the story, and his short bit at the end regarding the New Testament writers really got me thinking. It connects so much for me. So I will give Batto 3 and a half stars.
I am giving this 3.5 stars, but Goodreads makes me pick, so I am going with 3 stars.
Bernard Batto goes down the rabbit hole of mythmaking in this book about the early texts of the Old Testament. He works to show that the scribes who gave us the priestly version of the creation account, to the priestly Exodus narrative, used myth to recontextualize these events and give them a framework that has stood the test of time.
From Gilgamesh to Atrahasis, to the combat myths of Babylon like Enuma Elish, these writers worked to show that Yahweh was greater than the Sea, or greater than the forces of chaos that rules the ancient near eastern world (ANE).
Chapter 1 - The Myths of the Ancient Near East
Gilgamesh
The earliest copies of the stories of Gilgamesh come to us from about 1900 to 1600 BCE, and other than his meeting up with Utnapishtim, I didn't see much a connection as to why this author brought up Gilgamesh and his adventures with Enkidu. There was some bit about great life advice on p. 22, but other than this I didn't see much influence on the Old Testament. Obviously Utnapishtim and the flood have relevance, but that was all.
Atrahasis
This text talks about an 18th century epic that contains the creation myth as well as a flood account. The name "Atrahasis" is a Sumerian king from before the great flood. The author says that this is much more than a flood account, however, it "deals with the issues of theogony and cosmogony; that is, it makes mythic statements about the origins of the gods and the cosmos and humankind in primordial time." (p.27)
In this story, the gods caused the flood because humans were too noisy. I always thought that this was weird when I heard these stories in college. The author gives some context when he says, "to disturb the sleep of the chief deity was symbolic of challenging the sovereignty of that god." Later, the author suggests that a god resting means that he is all powerful. A god who rests has things in control!
The author illustrates how Atrahasis views humans - as servants to the gods. (p.32) To think that a human could enter the divine realm, to Atrahasis, was unthinkable. The author is setting us up for the conflict in Genesis 1-3, when Eve wants to be like the Gods.
Enuma Elish
This is another Babylon creation myth (from about 1000 BCE - see p. 35) that was recovered in 1849 on 7 clay tablets. It focused on the supremacy of the god Marduk and his destruction of the mighty chaos monster Tiamat. Marduk offered to destroy the mighty monster Tiamat, on the condition that, if he succeeded, the other gods in the divine council would make him their king (p.34). They agreed, and Marduk defeated Tiamat, splitting her body in two, and with half he formed the heavens as a barrier to keep out the waters above. He had Qingu (the son of Tiamat and also her lover- gross!) killed and from Qingu's blood mixed with clay he formed mankind.
Marduk retired his warbow by hanging it up in the sky in the heavens where it would forever shine. Obviously the author is going to connect the story of Marduk and Tiamat to Genesis 1-9 with the splitting of the waters in the creation account to the bow in the sky in the Noah account. He does say that these narratives were used to establish why Babylon was the place to be - it had the coolest gods! He also says that Enuma Elish is at least a partial replacement for Atrahasis, which meant that this story trump other older creation accounts, making Marduk and by association, Babylon, the best of the best.
Later editors reworked this story, making it their own creation epic, thus supplanting the older stories. This is what ANE scribes did. The author writes, "Throughout I have stressed the deliberateness by which the Babylonian authors composed their new mythic syntheses. This point can be made very tellingly again by noting that when Enuma Elish reached Assyria, Assyrian editors replaced the name of Marduk with that of their own national god, Ashur. With but a few strokes of the sylus, these Assyrian editors radically altered the original function of the epic. Instead of undergirding Babylonian hegemony, the revised Enuma Elish now supported Assyrian hegemony over Babylon! (p.39)
And this, the author will say again and again, is what the Yahwists will do with their scribes and their creation accounts, especially the priestly author/scribe.
The Yahwist Primeval Myth
This chapter illustrates how the "J" author, or the Yahwist, sets for immortality as a divine prerogative that is to be denied to humanity (p.47). This is reminiscent of the epic of Gilgamesh, where we read the same thing. You also have the words for noncreation, or chaos throughout the stories. We have all kinds of dragon/leviathan/Rahab/Chaos monsters in the Bible, and that is the point: The authors of these texts were trying to show that Yahweh had defeated chaos, was working to defeat the sea/waters/chaos/dragon because he was and is the supreme god of the universe.
The author goes to show parallels between Atrahasis and J's story of creation on pages 51-52. There are several. He says, "the dependency of the Yahwist upon stock ancient Near Eastern creation motifs is once again evident." (p.53) From a creator who is kind of learning as he goes, to the idea of rebellion, the inability of man to attain divine status, to even the idea that man could live up to 120 years, these are all parallels with Atrahasis and ANE mythology. The "J" account becomes Israels "origin story".
Chapter 3 - The Priestly Revision of the Creation Myth
Like many scholars, Batto believes that the "P" or priestly account was written after 586 BCE and the fall of Jerusalem. This strand of the Torah was written to strengthen faith in Yahweh amidst the sadness of the exile and destruction of the temple.
Batto goes on to show that the P author used many motifs from Enuma Elish to produce his creation text. From "tehom" (which is a cognate of the Akkadian "Tiamat") to the creation of the lights, the firmament, and the order of creation, Batto believes that the P author cribbed from Enuma Elish. We also have the idea of rest. He says, most important is the linking of divine rest (Gen. 2:1-3) with creation. As I have shown elsewhere, common to all versions of the Semitic Combat Myth is a motif of divine rest." (p.78)
He writes, "God's salvific power is presented as most evident in two events: in his victory over the chaos monster at the creation of the world, and in the splitting of the (Red) Sea when he freed his people from Egypt." (p.82) The combat myth had great appeal to these Israelites in exile in 586 BCE. It allowed them to acknowledge that their world had been destroyed without losing their faith in Yahweh as the supreme ruler of heaven and earth. Their suffering was part of the way things worked in a universe that was having a fight between the forces of good and evil.
ANE stories all talked about the fight against chaos, against the sea (p.85). God worked to hold back these forces, and in this narrative we see Yahweh holding back the waters with the firmament, as well as his power to let loose these waters on Pharaoh in the Exodus narrative. You've got Marduk hunging up his bow in Enuma Elish, and Yahweh hanging up a bow in Genesis 9 following the flood. Batto's conclusion to this chapter is that P was a writer of his time. This is what scribes did, they reworked material to suit their purposes. In this case, P was writing a story of the awesome power of Yahweh over the forces of evil and chaos. He writes, "P would have difficulty understanding our modern concern over whether there literally existed a paradisiacal divine garden or whether God actually created humankind by modeling a clay antrhopoid figure into whose nostrils God blew the breath of life, or similar questions... the notion that something is true only if it is historically accurate is a prejudice we moderns inherited from our Enlightenment mentors. For P these primeval stories were vehicles that enabled one better to approach the mysterium tremendum of the divine." (p.99)
Chapter 4 The Exodus as myth
Once again we have a combat story, a divine smack down between Yahweh and Egypt. We have the dividing of the Sea, we have many biblical authors repeating the story of the Exodus to illustrate the power of God in our lives over the power of evil and chaos. He quotes Isaiah 43:1-3, 18; 51:9-10; Exodus 15:6-8, 16-18 all as part of this combat motif and the power of Yahweh over chaos to redeem his people. Nephi does this as well with his working of his texts (which we would expect, since he was a product of his time. See: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1987/04/re... See also: https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/literatu... )
Batto makes good use of the idea that the "Yam-Suf" is not only the "Red Sea" but the "Sea at the end of creation" or the "Sea of Annihilation" - he says, "Yam Sup" literally means "Sea of End/Extinction" (from the Hebrew root sup, "to come to an end," "to cease")." Great stuff! Pharaoh was cast to the ends of the earth. He was annihilated, literally, in this text!
In this chapter, Batto goes on to show us that Yahweh is involved in another creation, that of making Israel itself. He is fashioning a new, glorious creation, and this Exodus story is recreated in our lives when we defeat the chaos of our lives and come unto God. Nephi uses these themes just like P does, only he is more explicit in his use of these terms as he has to struggle to teach his lazy and dull brothers to show them that Yahweh has more power than men.
Chapter 5 Crossing Dry Shod: Mythopoeic Speculation in Cult
Batto's premise is that P put the idea of the crossing the Red Sea on dry ground in this text and that it never happened, that J and E left it out, and only later was this added. I was unconvinced throughout this entire chapter of his premise and found his evidence to be lacking.
I did like his battle with chaos scriptures
Psalms 74:11-15 - God smashed the head of the dragon
Psalms 77:17-21 - The Exodus was a battle with chaos
Psalms 93:3-4 - Yahweh rules over the sea
Psalms 89:9-10 - The sea as an embodiment of a chaos dragon
Psalms 46:2-3; 107:29 - Yahweh's victory over the sea provides confidence that chaos will not overwhelm the present day
Psalms 106:7-9 - God rebuked the Red Sea so that his mighty power might be known
Chapter 6 Egypt and God as mythic symbols in Ezekiel
The author ends with showing us how Egypt symbolized chaos and the dragon. The "hooks in the jaws" explanation was the best I have ever come across in scriptural commentary, and I have read a ton on these chapters in Ezekiel before. This was worth the price of the book for me. (see p. 156-157). I also liked the outline of the book of Ezekiel and will be using this in my teaching of the Old Testament.
Ezekiel has quite a bit to say to Egypt! Batto writes, "Egypt is the personification of historical evil. Within the oracles against the seven historical enemies of Israel Egypt is the seventh and last named and presumably, therefore, the worst of the lot. Furthermore, Ezekiel directs seven oracles against Egypt alone; and these oracles take up as much space as all the oracles against the other nations combined! Egypt is singled out as more severing of Yahweh's wrath than all the other nations of the earth." (p. 162)
Why is this? According to Ezekiel, it is because Egypt got Israel into worshiping false gods. He calls Egypt the "great dragon" - see Ezekiel 29:3
Did I like this book? Yes! Did I love it? No, but I could have. I wanted more. I wanted Batto to really convince me of his ideas in chapter 5, and he fell short. Will I read more of his stuff? Yes. There is much more to the story, and his short bit at the end regarding the New Testament writers really got me thinking. It connects so much for me. So I will give Batto 3 and a half stars.
June 13, 2013
This book is an invaluable resource for understanding some basic ANE foundations for how the Bible's writers formed their theologies through a method Batto calls "mythopoeic speculation." These basic foundations are broadly termed the "common semitic combat myth," informing everything from the myths of origins in Genesis to the eschatological myths of Daniel 7 and Revelation.
April 26, 2018
This is essential reading for those interested in mythology within the biblical tradition. J.J. Collins calls it 'the best study available' on this theme, and it is, indeed, the best that I've found thus far. I think that it would be interested to do a more accessable study in church (or in a pub philosophy group) on these themes and how they might change normative Christian approaches to the Bible and, thus, to everything else (religion, philosophy, politics).
February 4, 2013
Batto's book is thought-provoking, if not entirely convincing, particularly with regard to the connection of the Exodus account with the Dragon-Combat myth found in the Bible (e.g. Psalm 74). He is in the minority of scholarly opinion, even among critical scholars, in assigning no historical value to the Exodus tradition. Also, he argues that 'yam suf' should be translated the 'sea of the End,' rather than the traditional 'sea of reeds.' By so doing, he is able to assert the creative speculation that the priestly editor of Exodus was explicitly alluding to YHWH's combat with the Sea Dragon(which is a derivation of the Enuma Elish Epic). So, the Exodus story is myth, and not history, in his evaluation.
But in historiography, correlation does not establish causation, and the evidence here is interesting, but overstated. That said, most will be shocked to discover the prolific mentioning of Sea Dragons in the Bible at all (e.g. Rahab, Tiamat, Leviathon, Yamm). This is a wonderful piece of scholarship, overall.
But in historiography, correlation does not establish causation, and the evidence here is interesting, but overstated. That said, most will be shocked to discover the prolific mentioning of Sea Dragons in the Bible at all (e.g. Rahab, Tiamat, Leviathon, Yamm). This is a wonderful piece of scholarship, overall.
May 24, 2020
Pretty dense (for me, at least) but well worth the effort. This book establishes satisfying connections between the Bible and the older Mesopotamian mythical traditions, while advancing a helpful framework for how the received biblical text took shape. It seemed shakiest when discussing the exodus, but even then I found it convincing. I'm curious what subsequent scholarship has had to say about Batto's conclusions.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews