page_title: The Bible and violence
section_title: Genesis and violence at creation
hierarchical_section_title: The Bible and violence / Theological reflections and responses / Genesis and violence at creation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Darstellung von Tiamat in Form einer Schlange auf einem babylonischen Rollsiegel English: A creature often incorrectly described as depicting Tiamat (see that article for why this is not an iamge of that mythological figure) on a Babylonian cylinder seal - uploaded without reference to any reliable source Nederlands: Tiamat
context_page_description: The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament contain narratives, poetry, and instruction describing, recording, encouraging, commanding, condemning, rewarding, punishing and regulating violent actions by God, individuals, groups, governments, and nation-states. Among the violent acts included are war, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, murder, rape, genocide, and criminal punishment. The texts have a history of interpretation within the Abrahamic religions and Western culture that includes justification and opposition to acts of violence.
context_section_description: In 1895 Hermann Gunkel observed that most Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation stories contain a theogony depicting a god doing combat with other gods thus including violence in the founding of their cultures. For example, in the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, the first step of creation has Marduk fighting and killing Tiamat, a chaos monster, to establish order. Kenneth A. Mathews says, "It has been typical of scholarship since Gunkel's Schöpfung und Chaos (1895) to interpret Genesis 1's subjugation of 'the deep' and division of the 'waters' as a remnant of the battle motif between Marduk and watery Tiamat, which was taken up by the Hebrew author and demythologized, [but] most contemporary scholars now see the association of the Hebrew tehôm ('deep,' 1:2) with Tiamat as superficial."  "The fact [the Genesis creation account] was likely part of the last stages of the creation of the Pentateuch may indicate that the portrait of God in Gen. 1:1–2:4a was normative for those who gave the Old Testament canon its present shape. Hence, it seems that the account of God creating without violence in Gen. 1:1–2:4a “now serves as the overture to the entire Bible, dramatically relativizing the other cosmologies."
  Canaanite creation stories like the Enuma Elish use very physical terms such as "tore open," "slit," "threw down," "smashed," and "severed" whereas in the Hebrew Bible, Leviathan is not so much defeated as domesticated.  Theologian Christopher Hays says Hebrew stories use a term for dividing (bâdal; separate, make distinct) that is an abstract concept more reminiscent of a Mesopotamian tradition using non-violence at creation. Most modern scholars agree that "Gen. 1:1–2:4a narrates a story of God creating without violence or combat. In [the Genesis] account, the elements do not represent rival deities, and the story declares the creation “good” (Gen. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). What is more, in Gen. 1:1–2:4a the elements participate in the process of ordering at God's invitation (Gen. 1:9, 11, 20).”  Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says "God's characteristic action is to "speak"... God "calls the world into being"... "The way of God with his world is the way of language."
  These stories in Genesis are not the only stories about creation in the Bible. In Proverbs 8, for example one reads of personified Wisdom being present and participant in creation.  There is also what is called the "agon" (meaning struggle or combat) model of creation in Psalms 74 and Isaiah 51:9–10 in which God has victory in battle over the monsters of the sea. Historian theologian Christopher Hays says, there is similarity to the Canaanite myths in these Hebrew verses.  However, he also says the differences are more pronounced than the similarities.  Hays says Enuma Elish and Memphite theology are focused on a certain locale, where Genesis one does not mention a location (Isaiah 66:1); as has been noted, there is no theogeny in Genesis; and in the Canaanite stories the creators are glorified by being identified with other known deities whereas in Genesis, YHWH is glorified by the denial of other deities.
  The intent of Genesis 1:1-2n concerning "creation from nothing" is disputed. Jon Levenson, writing Jewish biblical theology, asserts the creation stories in Genesis are not ex nihilo, but rather a generation of order out of chaos, similar to other ANE creation myths; the order allows life to flourish and holds back chaos which brings violence and destruction, which has never been obliterated and is always breaking back in.  He finds that the writers of the Hebrew Bible referred to God's actions at creation as a statement of faith in a God who could protect and maintain them, or who could also step back and allow chaos to rush back in, as God did with the Flood.  He finds that the writers of the Hebrew Bible also held up God's actions at creation as a challenge for God to act, and a challenge for themselves to work in covenant with God in the ongoing work of generating and maintaining order.  In this, the Bible story is dissimilar to the both
caption: Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal impression from the eighth century BC identified by several sources as a possible depiction of the slaying of Tiamat from the Enûma Eliš[94][95]
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