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This paper proposes an unnoted major link, between the Mesopotamian Etana legend and Genesis's Garden of Eden story by pointing to parallels between the two stories, apparent at different levels, from the structural to the lexical. Cumulatively these point to a dependence by the Eden story on Etana, though it is argued that the appreciation of these matters in tandem, as put forth in this study, serves mutually beneficial purposes. The identification of vestiges of Etana in Eden advances our understanding of Etana no less than of Eden. Most significantly, perhaps, the reciprocal consideration of Etana and Eden sheds light on the manner by which the ancients' reflection on language, respectively Akkadian and Hebrew, provided a key ingredient in the creation of both the Mesopotamian and Biblical tales-in a manner quintessential to the Semitic world.
For Jim Baltimore, who also raised from a pit
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Although its ancient Near Eastern roots are undeniable, the Hebrew Bible is understandably not the obvious choice for the clarification of native and more established traditions stemming from this same soil. As is well known, a legion of questions constitute ever-present challenges to the historical study of the Biblical text; these complicate, almost beyond hope, the possibility of the Bible's employment in the writing of most types of history. And yet it is a fact that the Bible not only continues to proclaim its indebtedness to its ancient Near Eastern ancestry, but on occasion even manages to say something previously unrecognized about the ancestors themselves.1 From time to time the Biblical text is shown to preserve fragments from this world, fragments otherwise lost or overlooked, such that-if approached impartially, without blind faith in the dogma of a bygone age-the Bible can continue to open doors onto previously buried Near Eastern foundations.
Such, it is submitted, is the case with respect to the ancient Mesopotamian Etana legend. This study aims to demonstrate how an appreciation of this story's Nachleben in one of the most celebrated of Biblical traditions actually exposes new perspectives on the earlier Akkadian story. The tradition in question is none other than Genesis's Garden of Eden,2 which, as evinced below, at several consequential points builds on materials from Etana. These points, once exposed, actually illuminate features of...