The Institution of Marriage in Genesis 2 and in Atrahasis

The Institution of Marriage in Genesis 2 and in Atrahasis

Batto, Bernard F
THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES the majority of biblical commentators have assumed that Gen 2:18-25, and v. 24 in particular, either directly or indirectly touches upon the institution of marriage. Some, with an understanding of this text which is analogous to that of Jesus (Matt 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12), have even claimed this text as the foundation of monogamy.I In modern times some scholars have compared marriage in Genesis 2 with marriage in matriarchal societies or erebu marriages in an effort to account for the unexpected statement in Gen 2:24 that "for this reason a man forsakes his father and mother and clings to his wife," a statement which seems out of keeping with the normal patriarchal and patrilocal marital patterns of ancient Israel.2 Other commentators find in Gen 2:24 still other ideal conceptions of marriage, for example, that marriage creates a bond of kinship which transcends both death and divorce,3 or that marriage creates a covenantal relationship between spouses.4
In the twentieth century, however, with an increased awareness of comparative data and social-scientific interpretation, various scholars have challenged the assumption that Gen 2:18-25 must be understood in terms of marriage. Gunkel, in his ground-breaking commentary on Genesis, written in 1901, vociferously rejected the notion that Genesis 2 is concerned with the institution of marriage, much less with monogamy; Gen 2:24 in particular, Gunkel argued, is an ancient attempt to explain the mutual sexual attraction between man and woman as the yearning of the two, originally one, to become one again.' Moreover, the first humans did not engage in sex in Paradise, for in their childlike innocence they had not yet recognized their sexual differences; the first sexual intercourse occurred outside Paradise, when Adam "knew"his wife and she conceived Cain (Gen 5:1).6 Claus Westermann, in his exhaustive commentary on Genesis approves of Gunkel's opinion, though he nuances it considerably. For Westermann, the thrust of Gen 2:18-24 is the formation of "personal community between man and woman in the broadest sense-bodily and spiritual community, mutual help and understanding, joy and contentment in each other," not "the foundation of monogomy [sic]," for the author "is not concerned with the foundation of any sort of institution, but with primeval event" and thus "is not talking about marriage as an institution for the begetting of descendants, but of the community of man and woman as such."7 Westermann concludes that "the primary place is not given to propagation or to the institution of marriage as such," and that "the love of man and woman receives here a unique evaluation."8
Similarly, Bruce Vawter cautions against positing here the ideals of monogamous marriage, since "the kind of interpersonal relationship of which [the Yahwist] was speaking was also conceivable within the institution of polygamy."9 Gerhard von Rad parses the passage as an etiological explanation of the "extremely powerful drive of the sexes to each other,"10 a drive which the Yahwist thought to be "implanted in man by the Creator himself."11 The list of recent commentators adopting similar positions could be extended. 12
This debate over the question whether the author of Gen 2:18-25 envisions the institution of marriage or not can now be settled in the affirmative on the basis of comparative evidence, hitherto overlooked, from the Mesopotamian myth of Atrahasis.13
In my book Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Radition, I argued that the Yahwist-to whom scholarly consensus attributes Gen 2:1825-was in large measure dependent upon the myth of Atrahasis, both for the basic structure of his primeval myth of origins in Genesis 2-8,14 as well as for many of its specific themes." Specifically, I noted that the Yahwist's primeval myth parallels Atrahasis in broad outline: from an original setting in a dry wasteland, to the deity (god, or gods) creating humankind out of clay to serve as substitute laborers for the deity's garden or fields, to a revolt against the divine sovereign leading to an attempt to annihilate the human population through a flood in which but a single man and his family survived, to an offering to the deity by the pious survivor of the flood and a reconciliation of deity and humankind. But while I listed the institution of marriage as one of the parallels between Atrahasis and the Yahwist's primeval myth, I provided no evidence for that.16 Indeed, to my knowledge no commentator on either the biblical text or the Mesopotamian text has discussed this parallel. For that reason, it is incumbent upon me to redress that omission now.
1. The Institution of Marriage in Atrahasis
The failure to notice a parallel between Gen 2:23-24 and Atrahasis can be explained in part by the fragmentary condition of the text of Atrahasis. An additional factor is that Lambert and Millard, in their magisterial edition of newly assembled text of Atrahasis,17 misplaced one fragment.
The relevant passage in Atrahasis comes in the main text at 1.249-308. In this scene, Ea and Belet-ili (Maori), in the presence of the birth goddesses, shape fourteen pieces of clay to create humankind: seven pairs of males and females. Unfortunately, the main text is broken at this crucial point so that the story line is difficult to follow. An Assyrian text of Atrahasis from Ashurbanipal's library (text S), itself fragmentary, helps to fill in the gap. The Assyrian version is so different, however, that only the ideas, not the specific wording, can be used to reconstruct the main (Old Babylonian) version.
In the course of a lengthy article on the institution of the family in Babylonia, Claus Wilcke offers an improved reading of this particular section of Atrahasis, with a new translation in several places.18 In particular Wilcke has improved the reading of 1.273-74:
[in-nam-ma-a]t2 zi-iq-nu / [i-n]a le-ef el-li [i-na ki]-ra-ti ii lu-10 / [ih]-ti-ru aMa-tum u mu-us-si
When a beard appears on the cheeks of a young man, In gardens and by-ways let them choose one another as husband and wife.
When a young man begins to grow a beard, it is obvious that he has reached the age of sexual maturity and, thus, is ready to marry. At Mari, Shamshi-- Addu repeatedly attempted to shame his son Yasmah-Addu into joining his older brother Ishme-Dagan on a campaign against their common enemy with the words "Are you still a boy? Are you not yet a grown man (elu)? Is there no hair on your cheeks?" (ARM 1, texts 61.10-11; 73.43-44; 108.6-7; 113.7-8.). Or again, the Old Babylonian series, ana itti-Ju, under the verb etelu, describes the proper treatment of an adopted son by his legal father: "He did not strike him. He reared him. He taught him the scribal art. He caused him to become a man [Sumerian: "to grow hair on his cheeks"]. He acquired a wife for him."19
Just as the appearance of a beard is the sign of a young man's sexual maturity, so the development of breasts and the growth of pubic hair are the sign of a young woman's sexual maturity and readiness for marriage. In a bal-bale song celebrating the goddess Inanna's wedding to Utu, manna's girlfriends rejoice in Inanna's and their own sexual maturity in these words: This is a motif common to many cultures, of course, rooted in the universal experience of the way in which human bodies naturally develop. It is to be found in the Bible as well. In Ezek 16:6-8 Yahweh reproaches Israel for her infidelity under the metaphor of a foundling girl whom Yahweh has lovingly reared and eventually married:
Then I passed by and saw you weltering in your blood. I said to you: Live in your blood and grow like a plant in the field. You grew and developed, you came to the age of puberty; your breasts were formed, your hair had grown, but you were still stark naked. Again I passed by you and saw that you were now old enough for love. So I spread the comer of my cloak over you to cover your nakedness; I swore a covenant with you; you became mine, says the Lord GOD. (NAB) The image of breasts as a sign of sexual maturity and readiness for marriage also lies behind the dialogue between the bride and her older brothers in the Cant 8:8-10:
Thus, the presence of the word i-ir-ti-Via, "her chest," in Atrahasis 1.272, followed in the next line by a reference to a beard growing on a young man's cheeks, allows us confidently to posit a context about the sexual maturation of young men and women as the time for choosing marriage partners. This is also the import of the small fragment, text R, which Lambert and Millard mistakenly placed at the conclusion of the myth, in tablet 3.21 To judge from Asshurbanipal's Assyrian text S, which partially parallels the Old Babylonian text and which also has reference to similar "regulations for humankind" (usurat nine at this point, text R must be fitted in the break in the main text between lines 260 and 271.22 Accordingly, Atrahasis 1.271-72 must be restored approximately as
[a-na ar-da-ti tu-k] / (... i-na] i-ir-ti-la
When on a young woman breasts / [develop?], on her chest Improving upon Wilcke, the whole complex of lines 271-76 may be restored and translated as follows:
(271-72) [a-na ar-da-ti tu-k] / I... i-na] i-ir-ti-la (273-74) [in-nam-ma-a]r zi-iq-nu / [i-n]a k-et el-li (275-76) [i-na ki]-ra-li il A4-i / [ib]-ii-ru af-la-tum r) mu-us-sh (271-72) When on a young woman breasts [develop?], on her chest, (273-74) When a beard appears on the cheeks of a young man, (275-76) In gardens and byways let them choose one another as wife and husband.
At this point Belet-ili, the mother goddess, apparently suspends her dictation of these "regulations for humankind" (usurat nili, while she completes the creation of the humans by resorting to some kind of ritual birthing process (1.277-90). After she has "given birth" to humankind, she continues with the "regulations for humankind," which now have to do primarily with the procreation process itself. Again utilizing Wilcke's emendations, 1.291306 should be restored and translated as follows: The rest of the "regulations" and the conclusion of the scene are lost in the break. Nevertheless, enough is preserved to make it clear that the myth posits a certain symmetry between the divine creative act and the human procreative act:
Wilcke treats this text not under the heading of "marriage" but under the heading Geburt von Kindern, "birth of children"; he calls it a "mythic account about the divine ordering of procreation and birth."24 It is this, and more. The primary emphasis in the text is on the pairing of humankind into stable communities which we call marriage. According to Atrahasis, the institution of marriage and its corollary of procreation were part of the creator's design for humankind (usurat ni in.
This is not simply a matter of physical attraction or a celebration of love between men and women. In the text one finds frequent use of terms denoting the institution of marriage: "a wife and her husband" (assatum u mussa), and "wifehood and husbandhood" (assati u mututi). The latter phrase is itself a hendiadys indicating "marriage." Although Lambert's and Millard's translation of 1.301 as an explicit statement about the institution of marriage is unwarranted, they are on target, nonetheless, in understanding the intention of the Babylonian poet at this point. Marriage is quintessential to the human condition.
II. Implications for Genesis 2:23-24 One of the first points to notice is that Gen 2:23-24, with its reference to man and woman joining together to form "one flesh," comes at exactly the same point in the Yahwist's primeval myth as the "regulations for humankind" in Atrahasis, namely, at the very moment of the creation of the human species as male and female. Of course, in Atrahasis the human species is equally divided between males and females from the very beginning, while in Genesis 2 the human species is at first created androgynous, a fact which necessitates a second creative procedure by the deity in order for the human species to be appropriately divided into complementary halves, male and female. Both texts, however, end with the human species divided by divine design into complementary genders and ordained to choosing each other as husband and wife (Atrahasis), or to abandoning their parents in order to cling to each other (Genesis 2).
Precisely because of such paralleling of structure and theme in the two texts, Atrahasis provides an important hermeneutical key for unlocking the meaning of Gen 2:23-24. Although some maintain that v. 24 is a secondary addition to the narrative in 2:18-23,25 v. 24 is an integral part of this narrative. Indeed, the narrative reaches its climax in v. 24; in that verse is the goal to which the whole scene has been tending. Humankind was divided into male and female so that the one might have companionship with an cezer kenegdo, a helpmate appropriate to itself. That companionship achieves its realization, according to v. 24, in the union of husband and wife as "one flesh." Male and female taken separately are incomplete; each naturally tends toward the other. Marriage is the bond that reunites them into a natural community of wholesomeness.
Gunkel clearly was wrong in claiming that this text is not about the institution of marriage. There is more involved than the physical attraction of men and women to each other. Westermann is closer to the mark when he writes, "The purpose of the narrative is to lead to a new understanding of the creation of humanity. God's creature is humankind only in community, only when human beings interact with each other."26 But even this is too restrictive. Speaking of v. 24 specifically, Westermann writes, "The significance of the verse lies in this that in contrast to the established institutions and partly in opposition to them, it points to the basic power of love between man and woman."27 Given the parallel in Atrahasis, however, the Yahwist surely intended v. 24 as the equivalent of us urt n/grin Atrahasis, that is, as a universal law regulating the normative behavior of the sexes within a community of marriage. The leaving of one's mother and father to join with one of the opposite sex so that the two become "one flesh" can hardly be seen as anything other than a reference to marriage.
Granted that there are differences between Atrahasis and Genesis. The author of Atrahasis employs the abstraction adli u mututi, "wifehood and husbandhood." The Yahwist uses concrete but more ambiguous terms: is, "man" or "husband," and issa, "woman" or "wife." The author of Atrahasis has the regulations given in a single scene of two contiguous pronouncements of action: a first which has only to do with the pairing of the males and females into marriage partners at the time of puberty, and a second in which the human couple extend the marriage community through the procreation of children. The Yahwist has a comparable duality of pronouncements of action, but only the first, the pairing of husband and wife as one flesh, is associated directly with the moment of creation of humankind as male and female in Gen 2:18-24; the pronouncement concerning childbirth is delayed until the curse of the woman in Gen 3:16. Even so, Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 are but complementary scenes in which the full definition of humankind is being worked out.28 Nevertheless, by delaying the mention of children until a later scene the Yahwist does seem deliberately to drive at least a small wedge between marriage per se and procreation; procreation, thus, is reduced to a secondary end of marriage. By divine design, a design grounded in creation itself, humankind finds its fulfillment in marriage. In marriage both the human desire for community and the natural complementarity of the sexes achieve their intended goals.
Finally, evidence from Atrahasis helps to decide another old debate: whether or not the first couple engaged in sexual intercourse in Eden before they ate of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" and before "the eyes of the two of them were opened" (Gen 3:67). If the Yahwist was indeed following the basic pattern of Atrahasis, it would appear that he also assumed that the primeval couple enjoyed sex as a natural part of their existence in the garden. Coitus is explicitly mentioned for the first time in Gen 4:1, where it serves the function of introducing a story about the next generation and its contribution to the primeval story. But as we have already noted, the Yahwist apparently saw a distinction between marriage and procreation. The first act of procreation was not necessarily the first act of sexual intercourse. As in Atrahasis, the Yahwist assumed that the couple experienced sexual desire as part and parcel of their being, from the moment of their creation. In Gen 3:16c the new element is not the woman's desire for her husband but the fact that now her husband will not return her desire in complementarity; he will attempt to dominate her instead. The first clause, "Your desire is for your husband," is a verbless clause which may be understood as a temporal or continuing condition. Only the second clause, "But he for his part shall rule you," contains a future-tense verb. Neither for Atrahasis nor for the Yahwist was sexual desire introduced by sin or concupiscence (contrary to an opinion dating back to Augustine and beyond).19 Sexual desire, like marriage, is part and parcel of the creation of humankind.
III. Conclusion When Atrahasis 1.249-308 is properly read, it provides an important parallel to Gen 2:18-24. Atrahasis thus provides an important hermeneutical tool for understanding the Yahwist's message and Gen 2:18-24 in particular. The Yahwist follows his source, Atrahasis, in positing that the institution of marriage is grounded in the very design of creation itself, but unlike the author of Atrahasis, who links marriage and procreation closely as if to suggest that the primary function of marriage is procreation, the Yahwist seems to distance marriage somewhat from procreation. For the Yahwist, the communitarian, affective function of marriage takes precedence over the procreative function of marriage.30
' Among others, Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis (2 vols.; New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889) 1. 145; August Dillmann, Die Genesis (Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament 11; 3d ed.; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1875) 79; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (2 vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961) 2. 24; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26 (New American Commentary IA; Nashville: Broadman, 1996) 222-24.
2 W Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (new ed.; London: Black, 1903; reprint, New York: AMS, 1979) 9-30; Cyrus Gordon, "Erebu Marriage," in In Honor of Ernest R. Lachemann on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, April 29, 1981 (ed. M. A. Morrison and D. I. Owen; Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzu and the Humans 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 155-61.
Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1; Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 70-71.
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) 181. Similarly, Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 222. Angelo Tosato ("On Genesis 2:24," CBQ 52 [1990] 389-409) finds that although Gen 2:24 does indeed address directly the issues of marriage, it is not an integral part of the story of the creation of man and woman but is rather a gloss from the Persian period. Tosato (p. 409) thinks that it was added to justify the new norm which was generically antipolygamous and implicitly antidivorce (Lev 18:18; cf. Mal 2:13-16), and perhaps also the new restrictive norms in the area of incestuous and mixed marriages (Leviticus 18 and 20; cf. Mal 2:10-12)."
' Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT 1/ 1; 3d ed.; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910) 13, where he says, "Der Mythus ist oft miBverstanden; er redet nicht von der `Ehe" such davon, dab er die Einehe als normal hinstellen wolle, ist nicht die Rede; vielmehr schafft Gott nur ein Weib, well er nichts uberfltssiges tut: ein Mann and ein Weib konnen die gauze Menschheit zeugen." 0. Procksch (Die Genesis ubersetzt and erklart [KAT 1; Leipzig: Deichert, 1913] 30) adopted a similar position: the institution in question is "nicht eine Rechtssitte, sondern eine Naturgewalt."
Gunkel, Genesis, 41.
Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary (3 vols.; trans. John J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984-86) 1. 232.
8 Ibid., 233, 234.
Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977) 75-76. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (trans. John H. Marks; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961) 82-83.
" Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (2 vols.; trans. D. M. G. Stalker; New York: Harper, 1962-65) 1. 150.
2 See, for example, 0. H. Steck, Die Paradieserzahlung: Fine Auslegung von Genesis 2,4b-3.24 (BibS[N] 60; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970) 95; Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (OBT; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 104; Peter Weimar, Untersuchungen zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Pentateuchs (BZAW 146; Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 1977) 120.
'3 For a very different approach to this same conclusion see Helgo Lindner, "Spricht Gen. 2,24 von der Ehe?" TBei 19 (1983) 23-32.
" Or her primeval myth, should Bloom (in David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom, The Book of J[New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990] be correct in his thesis that J was a royal woman in the court of Rehoboam, son of Solomon.
" Bernard F Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Radition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), esp. chap. 2, "The Yahwist's Primeval Myth," pp. 41-72.
16 Ibid., 52.
11 W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-bars: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969).
" Claus Wilcke,'"Familiengrundung im alten Babylonien," in Geschlechtsreife and Legitimation zur Zeugung (ed. Ernst W MUer; Verdffentlichungen dts Institute fr Historische Anthropologie e.V. 3; Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1985) 213-317, esp. 295-98.
'9 Ibid., 241-42. This passage (ana itti- Su 7.3.16-21) has been published in Sumerian and Akkadian, with a German translation, by B. Landsberger, Materialien zum sumerischen Lexikon 1: Die Serie ana ittisu (Scripts Pontificii Instituti Biblici; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1937) 100-101.
20 Translation by Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once ... : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1987) 18. See also Wilcke, "Familien-- grundung," 243. For the Sumerian text (N 4305 rev. 2.1-3), see Samuel Noah Kramer, "Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107 (1963) 508, 521.
2' Lambert and Millard, Atra-basis, 104.
12 John Van Seters (Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992] 53) has also noticed the misplacement of fragment R, but I dc not find convincing his further suggestion to interpret t4wat nisi and its variant usurate nift= as "shapes or figures of humans" instead of Lambert's "regulations for humankind."
' See Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (2 vols.; Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1993) 1. 167 with the note on p. 200.
I Wilcke, "Familiengriindung," 295.
25 For a history of this interpretation, see Tosato, "On Genesis 2:24," 389 n. 1. For Tosato's own position, see above, n. 4.
26 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 192. 27 Ibid., 233.
21 See Batto, Slaying Me Dragon, 41-72.
' Taking issue with other commentators of his day, Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram 9.3-11 5-19) opined that Eve was created to be a helpmate for Adam precisely in the matter of procreation, and, therefore, that the primal couple eventually would have had coitus in Paradise, even had they not sinned. Such "honorable nuptial union and the bed undefiled" would have been totally rational and perfectly controlled by the will, however, without any ardor
of passion or concupiscence. For this, see St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (2 vols.; trans. John Hammond Taylor, ACW 41-42; New York/Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982) 73-83; see further 11.1 33 (p. 135) and 11.32 42 (pp. 164-65).
30 Whether and how the Yahwist's view in this matter may be reconciled with the priestly theology of humankind's obligation to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Gen 1:28) are questions best left to another forum.
BERNARD F BATTO DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135
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