Creation and chaos: myth and ideology in the ancient Near East and the Bible

This thesis reframes comparative mythological methodology in the context of recent developments in evolutionary anthropology. In doing so, it applies new insights into the origins and function of supernatural concepts in storytelling to biblical, Mesopotamian, Northwest-Semitic, and Egyptian myths. Part 1 provides a broad overview of past theories and identifies a lack of methodological attention to ideological aspects of myth. It outlines Pascal Boyer’s minimal counterintuitiveness (MCI) paradigm and builds on it to arrive at an empirical definition of myth. Expanding further on this definition, a context-specific approach is developed, enabling a broad reading of myths as vehicles for group identity signals. Separately, the agency of mythographers and their original audience is reemphasised against universalist readings; myths are explicitly framed as deliberate and actively-composed texts. Part 2 applies these insights to the well-preserved Mesopotamian mythical corpus, using the well-preserved creation and chaos myths from Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian contexts as examples. A close reading of these texts against the background of MCI theory demonstrates their authors’ (or editors’) concern with contemporary politics, and reveals the in-group-specific nature of supernatural concepts utilised. Furthermore, a diachronic analysis of the key text, Enūma elîš, and its reception demonstrates that the promulgation of, and engagement with, these supernatural concepts was actively shaped by changing ideological concerns in different political contexts. Part 3 raises a further methodological complication by introducing Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation. Combining MCI theory with this approach, this part considers the effect of adaptation on MCI concepts using several (likely adapted) biblical myths as case studies. Inthis context, the compositional process of the adaptations (Gen 1; Ps 29; Ps 104) must be understood as prescriptive, creating a new theological paradigm for its audience, rather than describing an existing one.