Gen 1:1-31 Interpreted as an Ancient Near Eastern Lexical List: A New Hypothesis

The scholarly community has commonly recognized the essential role of lexical lists in Ancient Near East. Benno Landsberger’s study Die geistigen Leistungen der Sumerer revealed the importance of god lists, which occupy the most important place in the hierarchy of the lexical lists as a whole. According to Landsberger, the god lists are referred to as das Göttersystem.

This hypothesis was previously anticipated by Wolfram von Soden in his theory in which he developed the concept of Listenwissenschaft. Von Soden’s theory resulted in the statement that the lexical lists in Ancient Near East represented a complete system of knowledge rather than mere school texts used as an educational tool, the latter idea being insisted on by A. Leo Oppenheim and M. Civil.

Our hypothesis is that the Landsberger and von Soden’s theories can be applied to Gen 1: 1-31. This statement corresponds to the old ideas of Hermann Gunkel as laid down in his work Schöpfung und Chaos in Uhrzeit und Endzeit, in which he discovers the common grounds for the Hebrew and Mesopotamian myths.

In contrast to Gunkel’s view, we consider that the common grounds should be found in lexicographical sources rather than narrative ones.

This new understanding open a genuinely new perspective. Gen 1: 1-31 is constructed as a hierarchy of the process of creation, each created element being desubstantivized (for instance, Gen 1: 14-18).

In my paper, I will explain my hypothesis based on the example of the Nippur god list.