P'like You're "P" the Priestly Writer

Story, chat in Adult Sunday School this morning to introduce reading and discussion of Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a, the First but not Oldest Creation Story in the Bible. TW+

Let’s pretend, and let me tell a story to set the scene. Play like -- P’like you are Judean, a Jerusalem Jew, and a temple priest. With many other Jews, p’like you recently returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian Exile. You arrive home to find the city and temple a mess, a disaster needing reconstruction. And your job as one of those restoring the temple and the temple cult of worshiping the One True God, the God of Israel seems almost insurmountable. Worse, worst in your eyes as a priest, many of the working class Judean commoners, dirt farmers and   lowly shepherds who were left behind in the Exile -- consorted with Palestinians, worshipers of Baal, and assimilated their pagan religion in which the Baal is god of the fields, and Astarte, his consort for fertility, the Sun is a god, and the Moon is a god, the stars are gods, there are gods in the fields, and in the trees, in the clouds, in the rain, in the ocean and rivers. YHWH, the One God, God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses has been forgotten. 

As one of the priests, part of your task is to help call these people back to YHWH the One God. What will you do? Think, think, Priest-man, think.

From your years in Exile, you remember the religion of Babylon, with their hero god Marduk. Marduk, patron god of Babylon, is the victor and conquering hero of a story --  a powerful mythology that may have had origins in ancient Sumeria -- a story that is called Enuma Elish. Enuma Elish means “when on high,” and it’s like bereshith, “in the beginning,” the name of our book Genesis. The Enuma Elish is a powerful story that the priests in Babylon read to the people once a year as their liturgy in a festival of celebration (which may have been the Babylonian king’s birthday, I do not know -- notice that King Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned in our Old Testament lesson from Jeremiah for today). Enuma Elish, which you heard many times, begins, “When on high, heaven had not been named ...” and it proceeds to tell the Babylonian creation story that goes like this, with me making it very short!

Enuma Elish, when on high heaven had not been named -- Before there was earth and dry land, there was the female chaotic monster Tiamat, goddess of the salt water ocean which is chaos itself; and there was the male god Apsu (Abzu), the fresh water god. These two god/goddess mate and produce younger gods and goddesses. Party animals, the youngster gods party too long and too loud, and are out of control. Apsu cannot sleep, becomes angry at the youngster gods and decides to kill them. Ea, son of Anu god of the sky, learns of the plot and kills Apsu. Tiamat is enraged at the murder of her husband, and war breaks out. Damkina, wife of Ea, gives birth to Marduk, a mighty warrior, hailed as “Son of the Heavens.” As war battles on, Marduk kills Tiamat. He then slices her body in two. The part of the body with the ribs he makes into a dome that is the firmament above, holding the waters out. (The ribs are good reinforcement for the arch of the dome). With the rest of Tiamat’s body he makes the dry land. 

This fits the world view of the day, that the dry land of earth is a flat and mountainous disk surrounded by the great salt sea. Above the disk of earth is a blue dome, which sure enough it’s still there, you can go outside and look up and see it. The disk of dry land sits on pillars that hold it up out of the fresh water beneath it, water that feeds rivers, ponds, lakes and streams. The blue dome above the land holds back the fresh water that supplies the rain when the windows are opened. We’ll experience that next week when we study about the Great Flood with Noah and the Ark.

Anyway, in all this, the gods and goddesses find that they have too much to do, are working too hard, no time to play, they need someone to do the work that has to be done; so humans are made to be the servants of the gods and do all the work. Unlike with the God of Israel, with Marduk and company humans are not beloved stewards, but slaves. And the seven day week is not new with Israel, there’s a six-day week, and the seventh day is a nightmarish day of evil horrors when you don’t dare even go out of your house.

OK, we’re still p’liking! Remembering this Babylonian mythology, you the Judean priest returned from Exile in Babylon, decide to write a sacred story correcting not only the Babylonian mythological nonsense, but also setting straight the outrageous Canaanite religion of gods all over the place that the Judean common people swallowed while everybody else was away in exile. 

Your name is “P for priest,” and your corrective story is of the One True God. You call him Elohim, which is plural, “gods” but you mean it both to honor him and to show that Elohim has all the power that the pagans had thought was many gods.

Instead of “Enuma Elish, in the beginning before heaven was named,” your story begins “Bereshith, in the beginning, when Elohim began to create heaven and earth.” 

Today in the Temple, you are going to read your story to the gathered people of Jerusalem. From this day forward, it will be the primary creation story of God’s people Israel, a story in which Elohim begins with churning chaos and brings order. Later, in the Christian era, people will come to realize that it’s God’s own story, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Let’s listen to your story. And as we listen, notice how your story, the Priest’s story, puts down, item by item, one by one, all the nonsense of both Babylon and Canaan, and raises up the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses.

This is the first time I've done this. Totally dissatisfied with my ranting football blog post from early this morning, I am leaving it up instead of deleting it, but substituting my rambling Sunday school lesson as my real blog for today, September 29. TW+