Texts in Conversation
In Enuma Elish, the god Marduk organizes time after his victory, fixing the year and its seasons and setting the moon and sun in place. Psalm 74 credits God with the same ordering of time, establishing day and night and creating summer and winter.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Enuma Elish V
The Seven Tablets of Creation
Ancient Near East
He fashioned heavenly stations for the great gods, And set up constellations, the patterns of the stars. He appointed the year, marked off divisions, And set up three stars each for the twelve months. After he had organized the year, He established the heavenly station of Ne-beru to fix the stars' intervals. That none should transgress or be slothful He fixed the heavenly stations of Enlil and Ea with it. Gates he opened on both sides, And put strong bolts at the left and the right. He placed the heights of heaven in her Tia-mat's belly, He created Nannar, entrusting to him the night. He appointed him as the jewel of the night to fix the days, And month by month without ceasing he elevated him with a crown, (Saying,) 'Shine over the land at the beginning of the month, Resplendent with horns to fix six days. On the seventh day the crown will be half size, On the fifteenth day, halfway through each month, stand in opposition. When Šamaš [sees] you on the horizon,
Date: 1800 - 1750 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Psalms 74:16
Hebrew Bible
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you fed him to the people who live along the coast. 15 You broke open the spring and the stream; you dried up perpetually flowing rivers. 16 You established the cycle of day and night; you put the moon and sun in place. 17 You set up all the boundaries of the earth; you created the cycle of summer and winter. 18 Remember how the enemy hurls insults, O Lord, and how a foolish nation blasphemes your name. 19 Do not hand the life of your dove over to a wild animal. Do not continue to disregard the lives of your oppressed people.
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Notes and References
... Indeed, there is a marked parallelism between the phrasing of our passage and that of the Babylonian poem. For if the Psalmist declares that the triumphant gods appointed the luminaries of heaven, Enuma Elish likewise describes him (tablet 5 line 1 and following) as proceeding at once to determine the positions of the moon and stars. And if the Psalmist portrays him, somewhat allusively, as fixing "all the bounds of the earth," Enuma Elish clarifies the allusion by stating explicitly (tablet 6 lines 56-57) that immediately after his triumph, "plans and designs were fixed, the stations of heaven and earth were disposed among all of the gods" -- an interpretation which is in turn confirmed by a further reference to the same thing, and in the same terms, in Deuteronomy 32:8 (the Septuagint): "He fixed the bounds of nations in accordance with the number of the gods." Again, if our texts assert that the victorious lord then "created" summer and winter, his words find a perfect parallel in Enuma Elish tablet 5 line 3 where the triumphant Marduk is said to have "fixed the year and prescribed limitations [namely seasons]." ...
Gaster, Theodor H.
Thespis Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East
(pp. 449-450) Harper and Row, 1961
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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