The Ebla verison of the Dragon/Serpent Conflict Myth

by Leolaia 14 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  I think I just came across the oldest known West Semitic version of the conflict myth in a mythological text from third-millenium B.C. Ebla (c. 2200-2000 BC):

  "I have bound Habhaby. I have bound his tongue. I have found the barrier of his teeth. I have bound you on a black stone by the double doors and struck the Sea (tihamatim) with a reed. I have bound you by seven mighty contraptions. I have bound you by the zidanu and amana. I have bound you by the tails of the Sun and by the horns of the Moon. Seven youths and seven maidens are exalted, and [...] the Star (kabkabu). The bricklayer will lay the bricks by the double doors of Ellil, father of the gods and the Star has established him as representative to Ellil, father of the gods. Ellil, the father of the gods performs the magic. Spell of the Star. [...] I have bound you on Zazaum, O no-good one. [...] O Sun-god! May you lay the bricks and build the house of Ellil the father of the gods. [...] The Star is appointed as the emissary to Ellil the father of the gods. [...] The earth has confined the serpent (bashanu); O serpent in the sea (ba-tihamat)! [...] So says the magician Dagama [to the serpent]: 'I have smitten thee'. [...] May Hadd fetch the dazzling stone and the triple-garment for the Star [who was appointed to induce Ellil to perform the magic]". (ARET 5).

  Very striking is the fact that the storm-god Ellil has his palace built after defeating the sea-serpent (bashanu, the same word that refers to Lotan in Ugaritic myth in KTU 1.5 i 1-5), the use of a word cognate to Hebrew thwm and Akkadian Tiamat, and that while contraptions, a reed, and celestial objects were used to bind and defeat Habhaby, Ellil uses magic through the person of Daguma to defeat the monster. As for the name Habhaby, it occurs in Ugaritic in unduplicated form in KTU 1.114 R 19-20 as the "creeping monster (hby) with horns and tail (b'l qrnm w dnb)" who attacks El after he drank in his palace and "El fell down as though dead, El was like those who go down into the underworld" (Asherah and Anat then cure him). One possibility is that the monster here is a prototype of Western conceptions of Satan, or a satyr-like monster. Pardee and Wyatt suggest that the name derives from Egyptian hpy, the deified Nile River worshipped in the incarnation of the Apis bull. He would thus provide the necessary horns and tail. Note that the description of the moon is consistent with the bull-iconography of Yarih and Sin in Assyrian and Mari/Nuzi texts.

  For a full detailed discussion of this conflict myth in the OT and NT, especially with regard to Leviathan and Rahab, please see the following thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68098/1.ashx.
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  JCanon

  Hi Leolaia, very interesting. Thanks again for the interesting commentary.

  The Biblical parallels I see are that the dragon is cast out and bound to the earth. That's very Revelation where Satan in the form of the dragon is cast to the earth and confined there. Interesting that it is the "sun god" who is the primary participant here. In the Bible the sun-god would be Jesus/Michael.

  In other mythic representation we find the serpent being bruised in the head. Since this was an Edenic concept I'm wondering if Satan went from being a mere snake into a dragon as in the case of the Bible. Thus I'm wondering the significance of a dragon-type god. Maybe the "dragon" aspect is misapplied by Western culture? I got the idea that it was considered a beautifully decorated creature like some of the lizards that are beautiful and perhaps irridescent.

  Interesting -- certainly consistent with the original conflict between God the Father, the chief son and sargeant at arms and this rebel god who is cast down to the earth.

  JC
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  Leolaia

  You are right that the story in Revelation 12 is paralleled somewhat in the much earlier Eblaite text, tho by viewing the Semitic conflict myth through a Christianizing lens (e.g. stipulating an "original conflict" for the myth and by reading "Satan" into the text) you run the risk of distorting the meaning and purpose of these texts. Again, we are dealing with the primeval chaos of the "watery deeps" (tiahamatim), restrained and defeated through creation and divine power, and not a Christian notion of a "rebel" or renegade angel. Indeed, when you look at the legends of Enlil, Marduk, Zeus, and especially Baal, it is the storm-god who revolts and unseats the Sea/Deep as the reigning god. In the Enuma Elish, Tiamat is something of a tyrant who is attacked by Marduk (= Enlil) in a rebellion. Yamm is El's "beloved son" that the nasty upstart Baal (=Yahweh in Israelite mythology) decides to attack and unseat as king. In reality, there are a number of different conflicts in Canaanite mythology involving El, Baal, and Anat in different roles as protagonists, defeating different mythological enemies. You would like to view the conflict as something that happened in a rebellion of Satan after God created the cosmos, but the primary result of the conflict is Creation itself -- Creation occurred through such a conflict between the creator-god and the chaos entity, yet the conflict is also part of competition in the divine pantheon. The conflict with Baal-Hadad and Yamm is an example of this. The texts in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 draw directly on this mythological context, and confusedly mix and combine motifs refering to different deities to refer to one particular rebel deity in particular. Thus the morning-star god Shahar being named, but through the name of his son Helal, and whose fall really that of another morning-star god, Athtar. Clearly the biblical use of older myths is a secondary use. It is the same with Revelation. Although the chaos monster is named as Satan the Devil, theologically an angel being within Jewish apocalyptic writing (i.e. Satan'el), the original motif of the monster as embodying the Sea is still latent in the text. I know of no reputable scholar who studies Near Eastern conflict myths claim that the biblical version is original, when so much evidence is against it. Please see GOD'S CONFLICT WITH THE DRAGON AND THE SEA: ECHOES OF A CANAANITE MYTH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT by John Day (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), which gives a complete discussion on the evidence of the biblical dependence on older pagan myths, and their use in the NT. Especially please see chapter 4, "The eschatologization of the divine conflict with the dragon and the sea," which shows how the original myth was altered in Daniel and Revelation.

  The astral imagery in the Eblaite story is quite striking, and reminiscent of Revelation. I know of no biblical evidence that Jesus or Michael was solarized; instead, Jesus is linked to the morning star in Revelation (which is interesting considering the mythological background of the morning star in Isaiah with Shahar and Athtar). The other mythological battles of the Near East are either not located in terms of space (as heaven proper and the earth were not yet created at the time of the battle), or were located on the heavenly mountain (think in terms of Mount Olympus or Mount Casius). The descent of Habhaby to the "earth" is reminiscent of Revelation, but don't miss the point: the astral waters like the heavenly waters of Tiamat and Apsu in Babylonian mythology is confined to the earth to a specific location and placed within boundaries (creating the earthly "Sea"). And in Revelation, this is exactly what the Dragon does: he vomits water and forms a sea (from which other beasts arise). It is thus significant that in the Eblaite version, the word used for the "watery deep" of Habhaby is tihamatim, the plural cognate of Tiamat -- out of whose corpse Marduk created the heavens and the earth. The theme of "binding" the monster is exactly that in Psalm 33:7-8, Proverbs 8:24, 27-29, Jeremiah 5:22, Genesis 1:9, and especially Job 38:8-11 in which God "shut in the Sea with doors ... and shut it within its bonds and set bars and doors". The doors are both mentioned in Job and the Eblaite text, and there is another link in Isaiah 26:20 which mentions hby (reminiscent of Ugaritic hby, Eblaite Habhaby; in each case the "h" is really heth) in connection with ktib dltyk "your double-doors" -- the same word that occurs in the Eblaite myth (daltan "double doors"). The other important thing to note is that the "earth" to which the serpent is "confined" is Eblaite ars [arets], which in Hebrew refers to the "land" but in Ugaritic refers to the "underworld". So we may also have a motif here of an heavenly deity being thrown down to the underworld, which is just what we find in the Rig Veda concerning Vrtra, and in Isaiah 14.
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  Leolaia

  BTW....I don't have the entire translation, just what I've given above, so there are further details which might thrown more light on what is being discussed. It is curious how these unique Ebla texts are almost totally ignored. The Context of Scripture does not include them. Why does Ebla get such short shrift? I understand and realize that most of the texts are financial/administrative in nature, but the genuine literary texts are still buried heavily in the academic literature, mostly available only in Italian translation. What's the deal?

  PP, Narkissos....Comments welcome.
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  LittleToe

  Your s/o is a quantum physicist, isn't he?

  I'm currently awaiting arrival of a book on the origins of Satan (I forget it's name, and suspect it might have been one that you yourself recommended on another thread).

  Thanks, again, for enlarging my mind to things that I was previously oblivious of.
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  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  You know I always read, enjoy and love your posts, even (as most often) when I don't find anything meaningful to add!

  I'm quite ignorant of Ebla literature, and very pleased to learn.

  I checked Isaiah 26:20 though: hby = chabi is usally understood as a unique (!) imperative qal of chbh, which occurs in nifal in 1 Kings 22:25; 2 Kings 7:12; Jeremiah 49:10, as a doublet of the most common chb' "to hide" (never in qal). The BHS suggests a correction to chabe(h). Very strange indeed.

  Bottom line: our "old book" is a new book in a much older world...
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos....Mainly I just didn't want it to just be a JCanon thread....Regarding the hby in Isaiah 26:20 and its alleged connection with the Haby monster in the Ugaritic legend, there is an article on this which is supposed to explain the evidence in detail: C. H. Gordon, "Hby, Possessor of Horns and Tail," Ugarit-Forschungen 18 (1986), 129-132.

  I still wonder why are we so ignorant of Eblaite literature and why it isn't any more accessible. It caused such a big stir in the '70s due to outlandish claims (e.g. patriarchs and Sodom and Gomorrah being mentioned), and then once those claims were disproved, the Ebla texts pretty much got forgotten. Again, I understand most of the texts are boring administrative and financial texts, but still....why are such texts as the one presented above so completely buried in the academic literature? I'm not sure if there is even a full English translation of the above text.

  LittleToe....Well, there is Elaine Pagels' THE ORIGIN OF SATAN, but this work is mainly focused on Satan in the context of early Christianity. Try Gerald Messadie's A HISTORY OF THE DEVIL, which gives a full examination of the influence of Persian thought in theological development on Satan.
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  Leolaia

  BTW, I just noticed another thing. In the Eblaite text, we read "I have bound you on a black stone by the double doors and struck the Sea with a reed (maskilu qanu tihamatim)" (ARET 5, #1 ii:8-10). Now that sounded a little reminiscent of the story of Elisha, and notice the conflict myth motifs in the text from 2 Kings:

  "He took the cloak of Elijah and struck the water (wykh 't-hmym). 'Where is Yahweh, the God of Elijah?' he cried. He struck the water (wykh 't-mym), and it divided (wychzw) to right and left, and Elisha crossed over" (2 Kings 2:14)

  Here we have a smiting of the water and its subsequent division recalls the earlier conflicts with the Reed Sea and the Jordan River in the time of Joshua (the same word also occurs in Isaiah 51:9-10 to indicate the division). Interesting I hadn't noticed this before.

  Note: the /s/ in the normalized maskilu above is a tsade, not a shin, so the resemblence with Hebrew maskil is a coincidence.
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  peacefulpete

  I'm still struggling to understand the last thread. I like the striking the water correlation, perhaps it's significant. I lack the training and backgound to offer anything meaningful.
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  Leolaia

  I lack the training and backgound to offer anything meaningful.

  Well, neither do I have any training. I'm just as much as an amateur as you. I usually just post what I newly learn in my reading.