A Brief History of God

Faith

/feɪθ/…Strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

Oxford English Dictionary

Faith is one thing, academic history is another. Faith is a conviction in the truth of something, even in the absence of evidence or despite the existence of contradictory evidence. History, although potentially coloured by the personal convictions of the writer, or the period in which it is produced, is an attempt to use the available evidence to understand the past and account for changes over time.

I am not, therefore, attempting to dislodge or contest faith in the existence of a God. History and faith are barely compatible. Faith begins with an unshakeable conclusion (in this case, ‘God exists’), and interprets subsequent evidence through that filter. History on the other hand, tries to form a view from the evidence available, and must always retain a caveat, that any conclusion may have to be revised with the introduction of new evidence.

What I will attempt, is a very brief historical view of the origins of the God found in the Old Testament Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious texts.

This blog was inspired by a Facebook post which asked readers to reply ‘Amen’ if they believed in the ‘literal truth of every word’ of the Bible, so that seems like a good place to begin.

The problem for the historian, is understanding in which language the ‘truth’ is written. Many Christians, and certainly the original Facebook poster, read the Bible in the English language, probably based on the King James I version, commissioned by James and completed in 1611. This was a translation of the Latin of the Roman Empire. However, the Latin version was a translation of the Greek from the 3rd century BC (more on this in a moment), and the Greek was a translation of Hebrew. Finally, the origins of many of those Hebrew texts go back to clay tablets inscribed with versions of writing called cuneiform, from as early as around 3,000BC.

So, talking about the truth or otherwise of the ‘words’ of the Bible is a little more complex than it initially appears. Which words? Linguistic ‘Chinese Whispers’ from one language to another means that errors creep in, misspellings, mistranslations, meanings misunderstood, deliberately altered to suit socio-political purposes, and so forth. Some words don’t have literal translations in other languages, and so require interpretations that may or may not convey the original intention, if indeed original intentions can be accurately understood over millennia.

The Bible is not a self-contained book, but a collection of diverse texts from across a long period of time. Texts were compiled into what we might think of as one of the first ‘Bibles’ in Egyptian Alexandria, in the reign of Ptolemy II inthe 3rd century BC. Ptolemy asked Hebrew scholars to compile a Greek translation of their historical and religious texts. Legend has it that God inspired 72 scholars to separately write an exact copy of each other’s work overnight. This version of the Bible became known as the Septuagint, or ‘seventy’, after the approximate number of translators. The Septuagint contains some texts retained in the modern English language version of the Bible and some which are not. However, there are also fragmentary remains of at least seven other versions of the Bible in Greek, most of which have been lost. It is hard therefore, to know which of these versions, lost, rejected, or retained in the modern Bible, is or was the intended authoritative version.

Distinct versions of Christianity developed as the ‘Western’ tradition, the ‘Eastern Orthodox’, and the ‘Oriental Orthodox’ traditions. Each has, over time, debated, excluded and included, different ‘books’, to compile different ‘Bibles’. Naturally, each tradition considers its own canon to be authoritative, but the convoluted and contested evolution of the Biblical tradition makes it challenging to determine exactly what the Bible ought to contain and what it ought not, if indeed there is one over-riding authoritative Bible.

So, is the whole thing simply an invention? Not at all. Indeed, the first books of the Old Testament are very probably reflective of the history and culture of the earliest settlers who built the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian civilisations from around 4-5,000 BC onwards, along the Tigress and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq, an area we call Mesopotamia.

The narratives with which we are familiar, the creation of the world in seven days, the creation of Man and Woman, the tending of the Garden of Eden, God’s destruction of the world in a flood for example, are probably a re-imagining of creation-stories which descend from these earliest cultures. Such narratives were polytheist, or involved multiple Gods rather than just one.

The first clue that the Bible is a re-working of older traditions, is in the name of its opening book. ‘Genesis’ is the title given in the Greek language, and means ‘origins’. But the original Hebrew title is ‘B’reshith’, which means ‘in the beginning’, also the opening lines of the text. This was a Mesopotamian tradition, to name a text by its opening lines. The Greeks best translation of ‘in the beginning’ was ‘genesis’, or ‘origins’. Hence what we know as ‘Genesis’, is likely derived from a much older Mesopotamian tradition.

In both the Biblical and the earlier Mesopotamian narratives, the universe and everything in it were created from a watery void in a seven-day period.

In both traditions, Man is created from the clay of the earth, ‘in the likeness of God’ in the Bible, and ‘in the likeness of the Gods’ in the Mesopotamian traditions. In the Mesopotamian versions, the earth is mixed with the blood of a slaughtered God. In the Biblical tradition, there is, of course, no slaughtered God, but Adam means ‘red’ or ‘red clay’, and also has a linguistic connection with blood.

Woman, or Eve, was created from Adam’s rib. In Mesopotamian traditions, the Goddess of Life was called Nin-Ti. ‘Ti’ has a dual meaning, both ‘to give life’, and also ‘rib’. The rib was the main healing area over which the Goddess Nin-ti had power. In the Bible, Eve is given the title of ‘Mother of all the Living’. This is the same title given to a Mesopotamian Mother-Goddess, Ninhursag, who coincidently healed the rib of another God, Enki. The ‘rib’ motif for Eve then, would appear to be Mesopotamian in origin.

In the Bible, Man is created to tend the paradise of the Garden of Eden. In the earlier Mesopotamian traditions, Man is created by the minor Gods, also for agriculture, but to do the arduous work of growing food for the major Gods, whom the minor Gods served.

In both traditions, Man is destroyed in a global flood, although in the Bible Noah is given the task of saving the animals and Mankind itself. In the Mesopotamian traditions, this task is also given to one man. Perhaps the famous non-Biblical version of this story is found in Gilgamesh, where Noah’s place is taken by Utnapishtim, although the same story is found in many other traditions which pre-date the Biblical story of Noah, each with its own flood-hero.

So, if the origins of these stories lie in an older tradition, what is the purpose of the Genesis narrative?

Most scholars agree that the Genesis narrative was formalised in its current form around the 5th and 6th centuries BC. This is also around the time that the Jews were held captive in Babylon, and then allowed to return to their homeland. Genesis therefore represents both a religious text, but also a story of origin which provided some sense of their roots for a captive people, and as they returned to begin a new life in their old homeland. However, Genesis also represents a major shift in religious belief.

Archaeological evidence in Israel suggests that before the Babylonian captivity, the Hebrews in Israel were polytheists, as evidenced by shrines to the many different Gods found in their dwellings. It is after their return from Babylon that the Hebrews turn to monotheism, or the belief in just one, rather than many Gods. The likelihood is, that the Hebrew religion was heavily influenced by another monotheist religion they encountered in Babylon, namely, Zoroastrianism.

In each case noted above in Genesis, the Biblical tradition replaces the multiple Gods of the older tradition, with just the one God of the Bible. But there is another notable difference. The God of the Biblical tradition creates Man out of love, cares for him, and judges Man from a moral perspective. This replaces the older Mesopotamian tradition, where Man is created as a slave-race for the Gods, and where the Gods are as capricious and liable to the same weaknesses as Man. For example, the God of the Bible creates Man to tend to agriculture, but as a pleasurable and welcome task in paradise. In the Mesopotamian tradition, Man is also created for agriculture, but to perform difficult and arduous tasks in the service of the Gods. In both traditions, Man proliferates across the globe before God destroys Mankind. In the Bible, this is for the moral failings of Man. In the Mesopotamian tradition, it is because Man is making too much noise and disturbing the sleep of the Gods. Biblical God cares about Man; the Mesopotamian Gods couldn’t care less. Ultimately, the Biblical God regrets destroying Man and makes an eternal promise to nurture him, whereas the Mesopotamian Gods are upset that Mankind is saved by their version of Noah.

Genesis therefore represents the introduction of both monotheism, the worship of just one God, and also the introduction of love and morality as the driving forces of religion, rather than simply the selfish needs and desires of the Gods of older tradition.

It should be remembered that the ancient Hebrew patriarchs begin with Abraham, who lived in the older Mesopotamian cultures discussed above. Abraham and his descendants (Isaac, Jacob, Joseph) journey from their ancient Mesopotamian homelands. The ‘Hebrews’ as we now call them, reach Egypt, leave Egypt under Moses, and eventually conquer and settle the Promised Land of Israel under Joshua. Starting with Abraham, they took their ancient religion with them during this long journey over distance and time. They continued to worship their traditional Mesopotamian Gods, although their religion slowly changed and morphed into something new and different. This culminated in their experiences of monotheism in Babylon. Genesis is therefore a re-imagining of many traditions and stories with which the Hebrews were familiar for more than a thousand years, re-worked as a consequence of social and political change and encounters with new cultures.

Finally, if the Bible is a re-working of Mesopotamian religion, can we identify the God of the Bible in the older Mesopotamian tradition? Yes, we probably can!

When He (She?) speaks to Moses through a burning bush, the God of the Old Testament tells Moses that He is ‘the God of your ancestors’:

Moses then said to God, `Look, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The god of your ancestors has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is his name?” what am I to tell them? God said to Moses, `I am who I am’.

Exodus 3:13-14

‘I am who I am’? This puzzling phrase has long perplexed theologians, but there is a simple explanation. We are accustomed to reading the Bible in English, but the Hebrew phrase is not ‘I am who I am’, but `Eyah asher Eyah’, which can also be translated as, `I am (the one) who is called Eyah’.

So what? Well, ‘Eyah’ was another name for Ea or Enki, all different names for a God of the Mesopotamian pantheon. So what God is telling Moses, is that He is one and the same as one of the ancient Gods which Moses’ ancestors worshipped, and with which even ‘modern’ Hebrews would have been familiar over a thousand years later when Genesis was written. So, a God of the Mesopotamian pantheon, Ea, Eyah, or Enki, has morphed over time and space to become the God of the Bible worshipped today.

If God exists, I would rather hope that He (or She) would want us mortals to understand that the modern Christian Biblical tradition is not unique, but an amalgamation of different beliefs and cultures over a long period of time. If every word is literally true, then believers must also accept the ‘truth’ of the many older Mesopotamian Gods. Christianity does not represent something separate or superior to other religions; instead many religions originate from common sources. Surely God’s message, if there is God to have a message, is one of inclusion rather than exclusion?