Were there any alternate Abrahamic creation myths?

by Celebreth

Edit: Outside the Book of Genesis

ScipioAsina

Hey /u/Celebreth! Would it be possible for you to clarify the question? I'm a little uncertain as to what it entails.

In the meantime, I thought I'd point out that the Book of Genesis itself presents two different versions of creation. The first one ends at Genesis 2:3, and the other begins at 2:4, where the formula "these are the generations/records of..." appears to serve (in the words of Ziony Zevit) as "an editorial join, easing readers over points of discontinuity." There are probably separate sources underlying the work (P and J/E, respectively, if you subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis). Someone better versed on the HB/OT can correct me or go into more detail!

Quote from: Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 75-8.

TitusBluth

Sorry if this is against the rules, I'd just like to suggest that the OP could also ask this question in https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/

Academic biblical studies are a specialized area beyond the remit of general historians and they're likely to get a more in-depth answer there.

nottheprinceofwales

/u/grantimatter commented a bit on this already, but as "one of those gnostic crazies" (quote attributed to /u/dubstripsquads), here's a bit more on it.

You do get a few fun alternate versions from the Gnostic weirdos. Valentinus has the most complicated one, which comes down to us in a few of the Nag Hammadi fragments and the heresiologists Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. The first two chapters of Adversus Haereses give an overview of the myth (which involves a lot of Greek names), which I’ll briefly summarize here:

There are two realms, a realm of the true Divine and a lower realm. Two Aeons (basically primordial ooze deities) exist (Bythus and Ennoea). They produce, through either birth or emanation, a series of other Aeons, for a total of thirty. The last one, Sophia, is too far away to know the Father (Bythus), and she tries to stretch herself toward the Father. She fails because either (1) you just can’t do that or (2) a purifying power called Horos restrains her, and freaks out and brings forth an amorphous substance “such as her female nature enabled her to produce.” So material substance has is beginnings in fear, ignorance, and error.

In Chapter 11 of the first book of Adversus Haereses (Irenaeus of Lyons), you get this as well:

Christ also was not produced from the Aeons within the Pleroma, but was brought forth by the mother who had been exceed from it, in virtue of her remembrance of better things, but not without a kind of shadow. He, indeed, as being masculine, having severed the shadow from himself, retuned to the Pleroma; but his mother being left with the shadow, and deprived of her spiritual substance, brought forth another son, namely, the Demiurge, whom he also styles the supreme ruler of all those things which are subject to him (Irenaeus 1.11.1).

There’s your Abrahamic God, the blind Demiurge. He’s a being produced out of fear and error by Sophia, and he’s cut off from the world of the true divine. Irenaeus (not without merit or reason) accuses the Valentinians of perverting Scripture to fit their apocalyptic worldview, which isn’t actually nearly as apocalyptic as, say, the Sethians. The Gospel of Truth, which is a Valentinian homily thought by many scholars to have been composed by Valentinus himself (Pétrement, p. 351) does get a bit negative, implying a more negative view of the cosmos and more dualistic ontology than general Valentinian cosmology (Meyer, p. 34).

Irenaeus, who had to be one of those terrifying priestly types that’s so much fun at parties, attacked the Valentinians for perverting Scripture to suit their own needs--“So [the Valentinians] proceed when they find anything in the multitude of things contained in the Scriptures which they can adopt and accommodate to their baseless speculations,” he gripes in Chapter 1, and later on he’s joined by Epiphanius, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and the like.

For more on this, I’d recommend the list of books at the end of the answer, but for now, let me summarize a couple of the other myths out of this same fringe group.

The main Sethian myth is pretty much The Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John. It chronicles the creation of the world in a similar vein to the Valentinian myth. In the SBJ, the Father (Depth, etc.) basically contemplates himself and then his contemplation is given form (Barbelo). Barbelo basically asks for a bunch of other things, and this forms "the father’s realm of five. It is: the first human, the image of the invisible spirit, that is, forethought, which is Barbelo, and thought, along with foreknowledge, incorruptibility, life eternal, truth. This is the androgynous realm of five, which is the realm of ten, which is the father.” (SBJ, Nag Hammadi version, trans. Meyer [LINK])

Eventually, after a succession of characters, the fall of Sophia, which is what created the Blind Demiurge in the Valentinian tradition, happens in SBJ as well. The narrative runs thusly (sorry for the long block quote):

She wanted to bring forth something like herself, without the consent of the spirit, who had not given approval, without her partner and without his consideration. The male did not give approval. She did not find her partner, and she considered this without the spirit’s consent and without the knowledge of her partner. Nonetheless, she gave birth. And because of the invincible power within her, her thought was not an idle thought. Something came out of her that was imperfect and different in appearance from her, for she had produced it without her partner. It did not resemble its mother and was misshapen.

When Sophia saw what her desire had produced, it changed into the figure of a snake with the face of a lion. Its eyes were like flashing bolts of lightning. She cast it away from her, outside that realm so that none of the immortals would see it. She had produced it ignorantly.

She surrounded it with a bright cloud and put a throne in the middle of the cloud so that no one would see it except the holy spirit, who is called the mother of the living. She named her offspring Yaldabaoth.

Yaldabaoth is the first ruler, who took great power from his mother. Then he left her and moved away from the place where he was born. He took control and created for himself other realms with luminous fire, which still exists. He mated with the mindlessness in him and produced authorities for himself…

Yaldabaoth stationed seven kings, one for each sphere of heaven, to reign over the seven heavens, and five to reign over the depth of the abyss. He shared his fire with them, but he did not give away any of the power of the light that he had taken from his mother. For he is ignorant darkness.

When light mixed with darkness, it made the darkness shine. When darkness mixed with light, it dimmed the light and became neither light nor darkness, but rather gloom.

This gloomy ruler has three names: the first name is Yaldabaoth, the second is Sakla, the third is Samael.

He is wicked in his mindlessness that is in him. He said, I am god and there is no other god but me, since he did not know where his own strength had come from.

The rulers created seven powers for themselves, and the powers created six angels apiece, until there were 365 angels. These are the names and the corresponding appearances…

Yaldabaoth has many faces, more than all of these, so that he could show whatever face he wanted when he was among the seraphim. He shared his fire with them and lorded it over them because of the glorious power he had from his mother’s light. That is why he called himself god and defied the place from which he came.

In his thought he united the seven powers with the authorities that were with him. When he spoke, it was done. He named each of the powers, beginning with the highest… Each has a sphere in its own realm...

A voice called from the exalted heavenly realm, The human exists, and the human child. The first ruler, Yaldabaoth, heard the voice and thought it had come from his mother. He did not realize its source...

Yaldabaoth said to the authorities with him, Come, let us create a human being after the image of god and with a likeness to ourselves, so that this human image may give us light.

They created through their respective powers, according to the features that were given to them. Each of the authorities contributed a psychical feature corresponding to the figure of the image they had seen. They created a being like the perfect first human and said, Let us call it Adam, that its name may give us power of light.

SBJ puts forth a set of ground rules for achieving salvation. In the Sethian tradition, salvation consists of a sort of Platonic remembrance of “the fallen divine self-knowledge, and a reintegration into its original condition,” which is actualized by coming to know oneself as a possessor of divine self-knowledge. The Secret Book of John runs as an undercurrent in most of the other treatises commonly held to be Sethian; Sethian textual references and recapitulations of the story of creation tend to run along the same lines as the story in Secret Book of John (Turner, p. 787).

The Secret Book of John contains scant direct reference to Jesus Christ. One of these references is the character of the “Savior,” who reveals the book to John ); another is the colophon at the end of one version of the myth, which reads in translation, “Jesus Christ, Amen.” The shorter versions of SBJ (those in Berlin Gnostic 8502 and Nag Hammadi Codex III) have no colophon, much less one that is explicitly Christian (Meyer, p. 132).

-TaborlinTheGreat-

An earlier myth you may want to look at is the Enuma Elish, which was found in the ruins of Nineveh. Many scholars think that this myth directly influenced the writer or writers of the myths we find in Genesis. Another myth found in Nineveh, the Epic of Gilgamesh, carries many similarities to the story of Noah in Genesis. hope this is helpful, I'm only a lowly undergrad, but glad i can contribute.

Flubb

Yes, if you're happy to piece it together: Psalm 74's battle with Leviathan, Psalm 89's battle with Rahab, and Isaiah 27 & 51's battle with the dragon are technically analogues of the Enuma Elish.

grantimatter

If you're counting gnostics as Abrahamic, then the Hypostasis of the Archons has what you're looking for. Basically, it's a counter-reading of Genesis to support a theology based on the idea that the world was created imperfectly by an ignorant, blind creator.

Their chief is blind; because of his power and his ignorance and his arrogance he said, with his power, "It is I who am God; there is none apart from me." When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. And this speech got up to incorruptibility; then there was a voice that came forth from incorruptibility, saying, "You are mistaken, Samael" – which is, "god of the blind."

His thoughts became blind. And, having expelled his power – that is, the blasphemy he had spoken – he pursued it down to chaos and the abyss, his mother, at the instigation of Pistis Sophia. And she established each of his offspring in conformity with its power - after the pattern of the realms that are above, for by starting from the invisible world the visible world was invented.

As incorruptibility looked down into the region of the waters, her image appeared in the waters; and the authorities of the darkness became enamored of her. But they could not lay hold of that image, which had appeared to them in the waters, because of their weakness – since beings that merely possess a soul cannot lay hold of those that possess a spirit – for they were from below, while it was from above. This is the reason why "incorruptibility looked down into the region (etc.)": so that, by the father's will, she might bring the entirety into union with the light.

The rulers laid plans and said, "Come, let us create a man that will be soil from the earth." They modeled their creature as one wholly of the earth. Now the rulers [...] body [...] they have [...] female [...] is [...] with the face of a beast. They had taken some soil from the earth and modeled their man after their body and after the image of God that had appeared to them in the waters. They said, "Come, let us lay hold of it by means of the form that we have modeled, so that it may see its male counterpart [...], and we may seize it with the form that we have modeled" – not understanding the force of God, because of their powerlessness.

"Pistis Sophia" there is an emanation of the true God, a personification of "Faith's Wisdom" or "Wisdom-Faith."

Another text from the Nag Hammadi Library has been called "On the Origin of the World" and gets more into how the blind creator was itself created out of Pistis Sophia:

After the natural structure of the immortal beings had completely developed out of the infinite, a likeness then emanated from Pistis (Faith); it is called Sophia (Wisdom). It exercised volition and became a product resembling the primeval light. And immediately her will manifested itself as a likeness of heaven, having an unimaginable magnitude; it was between the immortal beings and those things that came into being after them, like [...]: she (Sophia) functioned as a veil dividing mankind from the things above.

Now the eternal realm (aeon) of truth has no shadow outside it, for the limitless light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow, which has been called by the name 'darkness'. From it, there appeared a force, presiding over the darkness. And the forces that came into being subsequent to them called the shadow 'the limitless chaos'. From it, every kind of divinity sprouted up [...] together with the entire place, so that also, shadow is posterior to the first product. It was <in> the abyss that it (shadow) appeared, deriving from the aforementioned Pistis.

Then shadow perceived there was something mightier than it, and felt envy; and when it had become pregnant of its own accord, suddenly it engendered jealousy. Since that day, the principle of jealousy amongst all the eternal realms and their worlds has been apparent. Now as for that jealousy, it was found to be an abortion without any spirit in it. Like a shadow, it came into existence in a vast watery substance. Then the bile that had come into being out of the shadow was thrown into a part of chaos. Since that day, a watery substance has been apparent. And what sank within it flowed away, being visible in chaos: as with a woman giving birth to a child - all her superfluities flow out; just so, matter came into being out of shadow, and was projected apart. And it did not depart from chaos; rather, matter was in chaos, being in a part of it.

And when these things had come to pass, then Pistis came and appeared over the matter of chaos, which had been expelled like an aborted fetus - since there was no spirit in it. For all of it (chaos) was limitless darkness and bottomless water. Now when Pistis saw what had resulted from her defect, she became disturbed. And the disturbance appeared, as a fearful product; it rushed to her in the chaos. She turned to it and blew into its face in the abyss, which is below all the heavens.

And when Pistis Sophia desired to cause the thing that had no spirit to be formed into a likeness and to rule over matter and over all her forces, there appeared for the first time a ruler, out of the waters, lion-like in appearance, androgynous, having great authority within him, and ignorant of whence he had come into being. Now when Pistis Sophia saw him moving about in the depth of the waters, she said to him, "Child, pass through to here," whose equivalent is 'yalda baoth'....

So, this is kinda sort Abrahamic, in that it's using figures and stories from Abrahamic faiths, but it's a radical re-envisioning of them.