Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts

Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History

Russell E. Gmirkin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032020846
• eBook ISBN: 9781000578447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts argues that the creation of the world in Genesis 1 and the story of the first humans in Genesis 2-3 both draw directly on Plato's famous account of the origins of the universe, mortal life and evil containing equal parts science, theology and myth.

This book is the first to systematically compare biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek creation accounts and to show that Genesis 1-3 is heavily indebted to Plato's Timaeus and other cosmogonies by Greek natural philosophers. It argues that the idea of a monotheistic cosmic god was first introduced in Genesis 1 under the influence of Plato's philosophy, and that this cosmic Creator was originally distinct from the lesser terrestrial gods, including Yahweh, who appear elsewhere in Genesis. It shows the use of Plato's Critias, the sequel to Timaeus, in the stories about the Garden of Eden, the intermarriage of "the sons of God" and the daughters of men, and the biblical flood. This book confirms the late date and Hellenistic background of Genesis 1-11, drawing on Plato's writings and other Greek sources found at the Great Library of Alexandria.

This study provides a fascinating approach to Genesis that will interest students and scholars in both biblical and classical studies, philosophy and creation narratives.

1 Comparative Methodology and Genesis 1–11

DOI: 10.4324/9781003181774-1

The Primordial History of Genesis 1–11 stands as a clearly defined sub-document within Genesis, an account of the origins of the cosmos, of life, of humanity, of wickedness and toil, of the technological arts, of the destruction of earthly life, of its rebirth after the biblical flood, and of the origin of the nations, including the ancestors of the Abrahamic peoples. The remainder of Genesis, containing stories about the biblical patriarchs, forms a second distinct sub-document, to which the Primordial History forms a preface. It is widely acknowledged today that the Primordial History was an independent composition, added after the completion of the Patriarchal Narratives of Genesis 12–50, and integrated with the latter by a few transitional verses that bridged the two otherwise independent compositions (Crüsemann 1981; Westermann 1984; with a dissenting opinion at Van Seters 1992: 99, 191–3). The Ancient Near Eastern literary antecedents of Genesis 1–11 have been thoroughly explored in secondary literature since the first translation of the Atra-Hasis flood story (Smith 1976; cf. Lambert and Millard 1969: 1–4). Greek parallels to specific episodes in the Primordial History have also been noted from time to time (Niesiołowski-Spanò 2007; Bremmer 2008; Wajdenbaum 2011: 92–112; Louden 2013; Gnuse 2017). The objective of the present study is to demonstrate the systematic use of Plato's Timaeus and Critias in the Primordial History as a whole. Perhaps the most important conclusion is the essential unity of Genesis 1–3, which closely follows Timaeus in the fashioning of the kosmos by a supreme cosmic creator god and the subsequent creation of mortal life forms by his offspring, the pantheon of Greek gods, in what amounted to a second creation story. Another key conclusion is that the god Yahweh Elohim of Genesis 2–3, along with the sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4, were originally written to be understood as the terrestrial offspring of the creator God Elohim of Genesis 1. A further implication is that the origin of Jewish monotheism is to be traced to Plato's Timaeus, a theological development facilitated by the conflation of the local god Yahweh with the cosmic Creator in later biblical texts starting in Exodus.

1.1 Overview of Methodology

This book pursues a deductive approach to identifying the antecedent literary and intellectual influences on Genesis 1–11 by means of the well-known academic disciplines of comparative studies and source criticism. These intersecting disciplines have been fruitfully applied to the Primordial History in the past, primarily in the context of Ancient Near Eastern studies.

Perhaps the most famous example is the biblical flood story. Typological parallels to the flood story are known from around the world, but most are excluded from serious consideration due to separations in time, language or geography that preclude any credible possibility of direct or indirect influence on the biblical tale. Flood stories in which a survivor was spared from a global or regional deluge by preservation in a boat or floating chest are known from both Greek and Mesopotamian literature. These are sufficiently close in geography and time to the biblical story to be considered viable candidates for comparison. The specific motif of the flood hero releasing birds from the ark is known primarily from Genesis and the Atra-Hasis flood story preserved in the Gilgamesh Epic Tablet XI. This literary motif is so strikingly similar as to render virtually certain that the biblical story derives, directly or indirectly, from that found in the Gilgamesh Epic. How specifically this Mesopotamian flood story came to the attention of the biblical authors is an outstanding question that has not been satisfactorily answered, but the identification of the story in Gilgamesh Epic Tablet XI as a literary antecedent of the biblical tale of Noah and the ark is a major achievement that has stood the test of time. This example illustrates the means by which comparative studies can provide a deductive pathway into source criticism.

1.1.1 Comparative Studies

The premise underlying comparative studies is that a culture that is in direct or indirect contact with another culture can exert influence upon that culture in various ways and that the nature of this influence can be investigated by means of comparison. Virtually any aspect of culture that is an expression of its intellectual life is capable of investigation by means of comparison with other interconnected cultures. Subjects of comparison include architecture, material culture, language, religious and civic institutions, literature, folk lore and customs, to name a few. The focus in the present volume will be on literature: more specifically, comparing the mythical, theological, philosophical, scientific and narrative content in Genesis 1–11 with the ideas and literatures of the Ancient Near Eastern, Greek and Hellenistic worlds.

A well-executed comparative study typically takes place in five stages that broadly correspond to those of the modern scientific method.

1. Selection of topic. In the hard sciences, a topic of investigation usually emerges out of observation of new phenomena or problematic data that is unexplained by current models. In comparative studies, there are usually inciting observations on cultural similarities that are suggestive of interesting potential influence of one culture upon another that leads to the selection of a topic for comparative investigation. Examples include the close structural similarities of Greek and Ancient Near Eastern literature,¹ of a royal hierarchy of the gods in Ancient Near Eastern and archaic Greek mythologies (Launderville 2003), the similarities of Greek and Hittite myths regarding the succession of the chief gods (West 2003: 278–9), similarities of biblical and Ancient Near Eastern laws (Malul 1990; Gmirkin 2017), and similarities of biblical and Greek laws.² All of these observations of interesting cultural commonalities led to comparative studies involving the Ancient Near Eastern and Greek worlds and biblical literature.
2. Identification of candidates for comparison. In order to investigate the origin of an intellectual feature of a given culture by means of comparative study, the identification of suitable candidates for comparison becomes crucial. The researcher should cast neither too wide nor too narrow a net in their selection of other times and cultures, which might have had an influence on the target culture. Early comparative studies, such as the 12-volume study of mythology and religion relating to the periodic sacrifice of a sacred king in Frazer 1911–1915, explored typological parallels from around the world in order to draw conclusions, which are now considered of doubtful validity. Samuel Sandmel criticized this overly broad approach as “parallelomania” (Sandmel 1962). Modern comparative studies limit candidates for comparison to cultures within the same “historical stream,” that is, societies in geographical proximity and sufficiently close in time to allow for a direct or mediated flow of ideas (Malul 1990: 13–18, 89–91, 99–101; Talmon 1991: 386). Meir Malul called this the “historical comparative approach,” in contrast to the “typological comparative approach” that cataloged parallels without considering the historical connections between the cultures being compared (Malul 1990). The historical comparative approach was thought to impose a higher degree of rigor in the selection of comparative materials, although in some instances it has resulted in excessively narrow comparisons to be made, undermining the validity of the results (see §1.1.3 below).
3. Inductive collection of data. The next step typically consists of the selection and gathering of relevant comparanda, that is, materials suitable for comparison. Selection of data for comparison is generally governed by the choice of research topic. For instance, an investigation into architectural influences might involve standing remains, archaeological excavations, building inscriptions and, in a period well populated by literature, books or other written references to architecture, all of which might provide specific data on architectural practices transmitted to one culture by its neighbors down through time. This selection of comparative materials is subject to the constraint that the cultures belong to the same historical stream.
4. Deductive testing of hypotheses. Next, the data is systematically compared for both common and divergent features within the historically proximate cultures. An analysis is performed as to whether the commonalities are sufficiently unique or distinctive as to demonstrate the transmission of intellectual traditions between the cultures being compared. In some cases, where there are two-way cultural interactions, establishing the direction of cultural influence may also require supporting evidence and argumentation. This phase of comparison tests whether the hypothesized influence of one culture upon another can in fact be confirmed and suggests the character and limits of that intellectual influence. In cases where potential influences from several candidate cultures are being tested, this phase may help select among competing hypotheses.
5. Establishing mechanisms of transmission. Having established that a transfer of knowledge or practices took place, an effort should then be undertaken to identify the mechanism of transmission, which may be direct, mediated or diffuse. For instance, conquest often directly imposes many cultural features of the new rulers on the subject people and its territory. By contrast, similar pottery styles may be the result of diffuse trading networks with no direct contacts between those originating and those copying those styles. Sometimes a specific identifiable class of educated elite that is in possession of specialized knowledge acts as mediator in the transmission of knowledge, such as in the dissemination of the results of Mesopotamian observational astronomy to the Greek world in the late Classical and early Hellenistic Eras. The study of such social interconnections as a mechanism for the transmission of knowledge falls under the category of network theory. In other cases, transmission of knowledge takes place through mediation by literature transmitted from one culture to another, sometimes long after its original authorship. In all cases, the ultimate objective of comparative studies should include specifying the temporal, historical and sociological context of the transmission of intellectual traditions from one culture to another, to the extent that this is possible. This enriched understanding of the dynamics of cultural interactions goes beyond the limited minimal objective of establishing that some sort of influence took place.

1.1.2 Source Criticism

Source criticism can be viewed as a specialized form of comparative study that seeks to identify the interrelationship between a given text and antecedent intellectual traditions or sources of information known to the author, where such sources may represent other written texts, oral reports or firsthand experiences. The underlying premise is that the author or authors of a given literary work, in areas where they do not possess firsthand experiential knowledge of their subject, can often be shown to have utilized other written or oral traditions available to them within their cultural context, and drew on such texts and traditions in a manner specifically suited to their distinctive literary and rhetorical purposes. Discovering an author's sources helps to identify their intellectual milieu and their interactions with it, allowing the source critic to make inferences about the author's time and place, their social status, and the intellectual and cultural traditions they drew upon or competed with.

The same principles broadly apply to source criticism as to comparative studies with respect to the selection of other literatures for comparison. A given text's literary antecedents must necessarily be sought within other cultures and literatures to which the author plausibly had access and for which, if in another language, the authors had the means to translate. This roughly corresponds to the notion of belonging within the same historical stream.

One element of source criticism that governs the selection of candidate texts for comparison is that an antecedent text must be older than the target text under study, a judgment that requires a preliminary assessment of the date of both texts. However, it may be the case that the absolute or even relative dates of the texts in question are not known. In this case, source criticism becomes an important tool for dati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 Comparative Methodology and Genesis 1–11
• 2 Genesis 1 and Creation Myths
• 3 Genesis 1 and Greek Cosmogonies
• 4 Genesis 1 as Philosophy
• 5 Genesis 1 as Science
• 6 Genesis 2–3 as Myth
• 7 Genesis 2–11 and Plato's Critias
• 8 Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in Plato and the Bible
• Copenhagen International Seminar Series
• Index