Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World

In typical Near Eastern creation stories, creation begins with the separation of the heavens from the earth. This usually involves dividing the primordial cosmic ocean, so that after creation, there will be one ocean surrounding the earth and another above the heavens. In some traditions (including many biblical passages), this event also involves a conquest by the creator god over a primordial sea monster – usually named Leviathan or Rahab in the Bible. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which some biblical authors were probably familiar with, Marduk defeats the sea monster Tiamat and divides her body in half to make the heavens and the earth. After this, “He surveyed the heavens and the earth.” (V.65) The other gods then celebrate Marduk’s kingship, and Marduk proceeds with plans to create humans. An older creation story is found in the Sumerian Myth of the Pickaxe, in which the god Enlil separates the earth from heaven: The Lord, that which is appropriate verily he caused to appear,The Lord whose decisions are unalterable,Enlil, who of the land from the earth, brings up the seedTook care to move heaven away from earth,Took care to move earth away from heaven. “The heavens and the earth” can also function as a merism – an expression that uses two opposite or exclusive terms to express the totality of everything in between. So “the heavens and the earth” often just means “the cosmos” or “everything”. “Heavens” itself just refers to the sky. In Mesopotamian cosmology, the sky was the upper realm of the tripartite cosmos (sky, earth, and netherworld). It includes the firmament, which was a solid dome or cover that the ancients thought was up above our heads. They also believed that the sky was full of water, giving it its blue color. In fact, the Hebrew name for the sky, shamayim, might have been related to Akkadian shame, meaning “place of water”. (Wright 54) The use of the plural most likely expressed the vastness of the sky rather than the belief in multiple heavens. A few books I recommend on the subject: The Early History of Heaven by J. Edward Wright Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by Ronald Hendel (expensive, unfortunately) Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World by Edwin Good I also have a video here where I provide a much longer and more thorough explanation of how the cosmos is depicted in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), with many more citations you can follow up on.