Like eternal, infinite, unchangeable, meaningless existence, being.
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Yes. It would be rather odd to insert non-polemical material into a collection of polemical material. And given that everyone darned well knew that the SKL numbers were symbolic, that would have been the obvious way to regard the Genesis numbers.
There’s a YEC blind spot: they seem to think that because a writer picks up a form and/or method from some source then it gives credence to the source. But that contradicts a very common literary device called “satire”, where someone mocks someone else using their own devices! ANE polemic definitely has a satirical edge, as exemplified by the taunts given by Elijah to the prophets of Ba’al, and that frequently takes the form of “stealing” the other side’s methods and forms. It’s a way of saying, “No, Ba’al isn’t the storm-bringer, Yahweh is”, a way of reclaiming a status that actually belongs to Yahweh.
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This enmity is not declared by the person but assigned by another – as enmity often is. It is certainly relational and not a property of the thing itself. Nor is it a product of consensus. I suppose you can think this is an observation by God rather than an assignment. But I think this a bit tenuous and not how the passage reads. No, “role” is a better word for it than “status.”
Some things are just too difficult to grasp. There is no book you can check out of the library to sort it out for you. No magic number of hours logged in a discussion forum that will solve all mysteries. Lesson learned.
I do not yet have enough of knowledge to say much of those claims. The interpretation seems possible but maybe too simplistic.
It is difficult to imagine that the stories in Genesis 1-11 were just a polemic attack against particular Sumerian stories. A polemic attack may well be one part of the explanation but I assume that the stories includes teaching about the relationship between humans and God in a way that is not just a polemic version of a previous Sumerian story.
Edit:
I prefer to speak about Sumerian or Mesopotamian mythology rather than ANE mythology in this context because there were differing stories in other ANE cultures.
We can even find the idea of creating by speaking from the creation story of Hermeapolis (ancient Egyptian name of the city was Khmunu). The patron god of Hermeapolis was Toth (Djehuti) who could make thoughts to become reality through a combination of correct words, correct expression and creative life force. When the priests in Hermeapolis wanted to lift the status of their patron god and city, it was a natural choice to present their patron god as the god who expressed a creating voice at the start of the creation - their explanation about the world was that everything created is basically harmonic sound that solidified.
What the priests in Hermeapolis did was not unique - most or all key religious centers in Egypt made their own version of a creation story where their patron god was put to a central role. I do not know how widespread this habit was in ANE world but probably many religious centers had creation stories that somehow lifted up the role of their patron god and the religious center.
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Absolutely. All phenomena, ultimately, are. Yet we wallpaper stories on them.
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It seems that from an anthropology perspective, stories are the glue that hold human societies together, so they serve functions that are more essential than wallpaper. We need our narratives to make sense of our experiences and define our identities and roles in the world. Maybe stories are what hold individual humans together too.
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