The God of the Bible is unlike any other divinity described in the history of mankind.

The creation account of Genesis is a victim of its own success: its influence is so pervasive that people today don’t realize how unusual it is.

The great Babylonian creation epic known as Enûma Elish begins with the mingling of the god of fresh water, Apsu, with the great ocean and mother of all things, Tiamat. The other gods are born of them. But because the young gods were noisy and wild, Apsu decided to destroy them. The young gods, however, learn of their father’s plan and kill Apsu. They then turn on their mother Tiamat. Tiamat, in self-defense, unleashes an army of monsters against the young gods. Finally, a god named Marduk challenges his mother to single combat for dominion over all the gods. Tiamat opens her vast mouth to swallow Marduk, but he hurls the winds against her and lets loose a great arrow, which tears her entrails from her body and pierces her heart. Pitiless, he executes his mother and throws her lifeless corpse on the ground. He splits her skull and cuts her corpse in two, one half becoming the firmament of the sky and the other the earth. Eventually, Marduk creates mankind in order to provide the gods some relief from their labors.

Written around the fifteenth century BC in cuneiform Akkadian, Enûma Elish was first discovered by modern scholars on a series of seven clay tablets in the ruined library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (modern-day Mosul, Iraq).

What is interesting about this ancient mythological account of the creation of the world is how many of its fundamental themes are found in other creation myths worldwide: the primordial sexual union (hier gamos) of the gods, the overthrow of the “old” gods and their replacement by the new, the suffering of the gods, the rank immorality and scheming of the gods, the need the gods had for human beings as slaves or providers of nourishment, and so forth.

Indeed, it is only when you spend some time studying the mythologies of ancient peoples (or modern ones, for that matter) that you truly grasp that the creation account described in the Bible is unique. The details of ancient mythologies differ; but many of their key concepts, their underlying assumptions about the nature of the world and man’s place in it, are identical.

Take the ancient Greeks, for example. Everyone knows something about the Greek gods if only from watching Xena: Warrior Princess or Hercules on TV.

According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the primordial earth mother, Gaea, first gave birth to Uranus, the sky. She had an incestuous relationship with Uranus and gave birth to the first gods, the twelve Titans. She also gave birth to hundred-armed monsters known as the Centimanes. Gaea’s son-husband Uranus was horrified by these deformed offspring and shut them up in the depths of the earth.

But Gaea plotted with her youngest child, Cronus. When evening came and Uranus slept next to Gaea, as he always did, Cronus crept up on the sleeping Uranus and, wielding a large sickle, castrated him and flung his bleeding genitals into the sea. The blood from these bleeding genitals fell to earth and became the Furies.

You can see immediately how similar this all is with the account of creation in Genesis.

Later, Cronus liberated his brothers, the Titans, who eventually mated with one another and gave birth to nymphs and gods. Cronus himself married his sister, Rhea, but each time she gave birth, Cronus, fearing an ancient oracle that he would be overthrown by one of his children, swallowed up each infant as it was born.

Zeus escaped his father Cronus’s murderous cruelty, however, and eventually forced his father to vomit up the god-children he had swallowed. Then began a great war between the old gods, the Titans, and their upstart children, the Olympians. For ten years, the earth shook in fury as the gods did battle with one another, with Zeus flinging lightning bolts across the heavens. Eventually , the Titans were defeated, locked and chained in the depths of the earth, and Zeus and the other “young gods” reigned on Olympus.

Scripture Says

“The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.

Genesis 1:2–3

And God said: “Let there be light”

For more than two centuries, liberal scholars have pointed to superficial similarities between biblical religion and the religions of the ancient Near East—in an effort to demonstrate either how Israelite religion “evolved” out of Near Eastern mythologies or, alternatively, that “all religions teach the same thing”—while ignoring the vast differences between them.

For example, scholars point to alleged parallels between the Enûma Elish and the account of creation in Genesis. In Genesis, creation is accomplished in six days followed by a day of rest. In the Enûma Elish, there are six generations of gods followed by rest.

But while modern scholars ponder these minor parallels, they often miss the staggering differences between the two accounts.

The great Israeli biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann divided the religions of the world into two basic groups:

pagan religion, by which he meant all the religions of mankind from the beginning of history until today with the sole exception of . . .

the religion of ancient Israel and its successors, Christianity and Islam.

For Kaufmann, virtually all religions of the world—up to and including the “high paganism” of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the like—are based upon a very simple, very fundamental idea: the existence of “a realm of being prior to the gods and above them, upon which the gods depend, and whose decrees they must obey.”

This “meta-divine” realm—envisioned as a great womb, water, mist, or sky—contains the preexisting “seeds” or eggs from which all things, including the gods and goddesses, are created.

In a sense, Kaufmann agreed with New Age followers who insist that “all religions teach the same thing,” although Kaufmann would qualify that by saying, “All religions except the religion of the Bible teach basically the same thing.”

What they all teach, in essence, is that the universe is a closed system determined by fixed, mechanistic laws, and all things in it—up to and including gods and goddesses—must obey these unchanging, eternal laws.

The religions differ in the details, but the underlying worldview is remarkably consistent. In the words of atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, there is, quite literally, “No Exit.” This is karma or the Tao: the law of cause and effect. And all things, including both gods and men, are subject to it.

That is why the ancient divinities of “the nations” are sexual beings who desire and mate with one another. They are subject to time, to fate, to death and resurrection. They sleep. They suffer. They must do battle to keep chaos at bay.

For example, in the Rig Veda, a vast collection of proto-Hindu hymns that dates back to 2000 BC, the central god Indra does battle against Vritra, a monstrous dragon who holds back the waters of the world in a mountain. This is a common motif in ancient mythology: a sky god that does battle against the primordial chaos of the sea or waters. Eventually, Indra uses his thunderbolt (vajra) to split open Vritra’s head and releases the waters.

The world of paganism is, therefore, one of divine conflict, of cosmic struggle and uncertainty. The forces of nature, while often harmonious, can sometimes be fierce and cruel . . . and paganism has a very simple, very logical explanation for this reality: The gods frequently do battle with one another.

Were Adam and Eve Real?

What Skeptics Say: The Hebrew word adam simply means “man,” and therefore the story of Adam and Eve is clearly just a myth. There was no real Adam and Eve.

Reply: The fact that the Bible describes the first human being by the name Man (Adam), or the first woman Eve (from the Hebrew haya, for “life”), hardly proves that Adam and Eve are merely mythic figures. In the dawn of creation, there was certainly an original human couple from whom all of humanity is descended—an idea that recent DNA testing has supported. So-called “mitochondrial Eve” is the name given by geneticists for an ancient ancestor from whom all human beings are descended. Ironically, Charles Darwin and biblical conservatives both argued for monogenism, the belief that human beings are all descended from a primeval human couple. The alternative, polygenism, has very little support in scientific circles. The fact that the Bible uses figurative, non-scientific language in describing the original human pair does not detract from the truth of what it affirms.

The Bible in American History, Part IV

“That Book [the Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.”

Andrew Jackson

Virtually alone of all the world’s religions, the religion of the Bible has no such theogonic myth.

“In the beginning, God created heaven and earth,” Genesis 1 says simply. We are so used to hearing it, and so unfamiliar with alternative accounts of creation, that we don’t realize what is missing.

There is no story of, or explanation for, the origin of the Divinity. The Bible does not tell us where God comes from.

God simply is.

And not only that: The God of the Bible is utterly unlike any other divinity described in the long history of mankind.

“The basic idea of Israelite religion is that God is supreme over all,” Kaufmann says in his magisterial, multivolume history of Israelite religion, The Religion of Israel. “There is no realm above or beside him to limit his absolute sovereignty. He is utterly distinct from, and other than, the world; he is subject to no laws, no compulsions, or powers that transcend him.”¹

The God of the Bible does not sleep. He does not mate. He does not suffer any material hardship. His power is limitless.

All it takes for God to create is for Him to will it.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gn 1:3). The great cosmic phenomena of the universe—the sun and the moon, the firmament of the sky—are not rival divinities but his creation. “The main point of Christianity was this,” wrote G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy. “Nature is not our mother; Nature is our sister.”

There is no pre-existent realm. There was only a “formless void” (tohu vevohu).

There is no inexorable Fate, no Destiny. There is only the will of God.

There are poetic figures of speech, to be sure—God walks “in the garden in the cool of the day”—but he does not eat, does not sleep, does not mate. He draws upon no external source of power. He never tires. He does not need sacrifices for food.

What’s more, the God of the Bible is a God of justice and morality. The pagan universe was, according to Kaufmann, one of “amoral magical forces.” In contrast, the world of the Bible is one of divine righteousness. The God of the Bible does not lie, cheat, or steal. He keeps all his promises.

And God said: “Let them be misconstrued”

Kaufmann was no fundamentalist, no believer in the inerrancy of scripture.

In fact, he believed that the radicalness of the Bible’s conception of God led to actual errors in the Bible text. Specifically, Kaufmann believed the Bible’s depiction of pagan religion was factually incorrect.

This presented to Kaufmann a vast enigma: Liberal scholars have long presupposed that Israelite religion evolved slowly out of its surrounding pagan milieu with YHWH merely being viewed as the chief or tribal god of Israel among many other gods. Yet Kaufmann says, “The Bible is utterly unaware of the nature and meaning of pagan religion.”

Pagan religion, as it actually was, views the gods and goddesses as personified natural forces that are represented by statues or idols. Yet the Bible, Kaufmann said, seems to think that the idols are all there is to pagan belief. It refers to “Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites” or to “Chemosh, the abomination of Moab,” but not to the gods’ functions in nature or even to their alleged characteristics.

“The myths of the pagans are not even derided as idle tales, as fabrications, nor are they utilized in poetic figures,” Kaufmann says. Instead, they are denounced as fetishes, mere “wood and stone.”

A Book Atheists Want to Burn

Anything and everything by G. K. Chesterton—one of the most quoted writers in English—who proves that a Christian apologist can be cleverer, wiser, and funnier than any skeptic. Good places to start: Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.

“Those who have recognized this remarkable peculiarity are too enthralled by the assumption that the biblical writers knew the pagan myths to recognize its significance,” Kaufmann says. If the biblical authors “meant to say that idols are vain because the gods they represent are nonexistent, why do they persist in arguing that idols are things of naught because wood and stone are of no avail? . . . How is the silence of the entire Bible—prophets, narratives, and laws alike—concerning pagan mythology to be explained?”

Kaufmann’s answer to this riddle is a controversial repudiation of liberal biblical scholarship of the last two hundred years.

He argues that the radical monotheism of the Bible, far from evolving gradually and only appearing in its full-fledged form during the Babylonian Exile, in fact goes back to “the earliest strata of Israelite religion.” This is, in fact, precisely what the biblical account in Genesis insists is the case.

For a variety of complex reasons that we cannot discuss here, Kaufmann rejects the traditional “source” theory of the Hebrew Bible, along with the view that Israelite religion “evolved” gradually out of lower, pagan forms.

He does this, not because of a belief in scriptural inerrancy, but because the evidence of Israel’s radical monotheism was so all-pervasive throughout the entire Hebrew Bible that it could only have come through a sudden, society-wide transformation.

Not surprisingly, Kaufmann locates this “society-wide transformation” with Moses and the theophany at Sinai.

It was Moses—whom Kaufmann believes was absolutely a historical figure—who ultimately gave shape to the radical monotheism of the Bible, just as the biblical text says.

Old Testament scholars (liberal or conservative) have not fully embraced or even digested Kaufmann’s theories, yet he raises interesting questions about the dominant assumptions that have undergirded critical biblical scholarship.

He is an example of how rigorous, text-critical scholarship frequently turns the pet theories of conservative and liberal scholars on their heads—how a careful reading of the text can actually support a more traditional viewpoint.

The biblical forest

In the end, the creation accounts in Genesis demonstrate how the Bible is the victim of its own success: In Western societies, at least, so all-pervasive is its influence—so universal is its basic cosmological outlook—that people today don’t realize just how unusual it really is.

Its ideas, values, and cosmological outlook now so totally dominate the world we live in that we are largely unaware of them. But by shaping Western civilization—including Western law, government, science, media, and education—the Bible has shaped the world.

Indeed, for all the talk of “multiculturalism,” the truth is that most modern people in the West are almost entirely ignorant of the sacred texts of other peoples, whether ancient or modern.

To put it simply: living in the midst of the biblical forest, we quite literally can’t see the trees.

Who Said It?

“There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history.”

Sir Isaac Newton

A Book Atheists Want to Burn

The Canon of Scripture, by Frederick Fyvie Bruce; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

It’s similar with Western liberal democracy.

Because our world embraced the ideals of democratic self-government, the typical young Westerner has a difficult time realizing just how radical and world-altering these ideals really are—at least until he or she visits a society that utterly rejects them.

People who grew up under Communist dictatorships, or spent time in Islamic countries, have a better appreciation for ideas such as limited government, the separation of powers, free speech, universal human rights, the dignity of women, and the illegitimacy of slavery—ideas, as we’ll see, that come from the Bible.

Most fundamental of all, however, is the Bible’s view of cosmic origins. It represents a radical, historic break with virtually every religion and philosophy that came before and most of what came after it.