Mythology

were regarded as the special gift of Yahweh (cf. Jer. 5:24; 14:22; Deut. II:9-12, et al.). Hence the background here is not Mesopotamian or Egyptian, but Palestinian, and represents the early Canaanite idea of how life and cultivation in Canaan first came into being. But before the sending of rain from Yahweh, which is implied in verse 5, a mysterious, event took place which is not attributed to the act of Yahweh. In verse 9 it is said that something came up from the earth and soaked the surface of the ground (’adamah, the soil). Both the Authorized Version and Revised Version render the Hebrew word ‘ed as ‘mist’; the only other occurrence of the word is in job 36 :27, and its meaning is very uncertain. The versions suggest the meaning ‘fountain’, or ’spring’, something breaking up from the depths of the earth, and some such meaning is more suitable to the context here. The suggestion is that the soil is soaked by some unexplained outbreak of water, and thus prepared for the first creative act. Yahweh proceeds to mould man out of the moist earth, like a potter. The Hebrew word used here for ‘made’ is not the word used in the P account (1:27), but is the regular word used for the potter’s operations. In the various Mesopotamian myths of creation the making of man is depicted as a magical operation by which some of the gods in consultation fashion man out of clay to be the servant of the gods. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, after his conquest of the monster Tiamat, the god Marduk makes man out of clay mixed with the blood of the god Kingu. In the Yahwist’s source the blood of the god as the vital principle is replaced by the divine breath; Yahweh breathes into man’s nostrils ‘breath of life’. The idea of the creation of man as the act of a divine potter is also found in the Egyptian myth, where the god Khnum is depicted as forming the first man and woman on a potter’s wheel. But the source of the Palestinian myth which the Yahwist is using is probably Mesopotamian, as other details of the story suggest. Then, out of the same soil, Yahweh causes trees of various kinds to grow, and in the original form of verse 15 he assigns to the man whom he has fashioned out of the soil the task of tilling and caring for the soil. The Hebrew form of verse 15 shows that the Yahwist has introduced an element of the Paradise story into a context to which it does not belong, as we shall see farther on. Next, and again out of the soil, Yahweh moulds animals and birds, to see if they may provide a help for the man, but since the man recognizes none of these as suitable for this purpose, Yahweh causes a magic sleep (the Hebrew word tardemah indicates a supernatural sleep; compare Gen. 15:12) to overwhelm the man, and takes out a ‘rib’ (the Hebrew word also means ’side’) and ‘builds’ it into a woman. When the man awakes from his supernatural slumber he recognizes the woman as his counterpart, and in 3:20 gives her the name Hawwah, Eve, which means ‘life’. The other appellation given to her in 2:3, ‘Ishshah, is not a proper name but the usual Hebrew word for ‘wife’, the feminine of ‘ish, man, or husband (cf. Hos. 2:16). This is the outline of the ancient Palestinian myth of creation which the Yahwist has used in the construction of his narrative. Now we find that he has woven into this myth with its Palestinian colouring another myth with an entirely different background, the myth of Paradise. This element is first introduced in 2:8, where it is said that Yahweh ‘planted a garden in Eden, to the east’; in verse 9b the two mythical trees are brought into the story; in verse 15 the garden of Eden has been inserted in place of the original ’soil’, and in verses 16- I7 we have the prohibition against eating of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. In the original form of the prohibition the nature of the tree was probably not disclosed.

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