Bible Review

See Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, Old Testament Library (Philadephia: Westminster, 1969), pp. 239–240.

The mythic allusions are especially well-captured in this translation by Marvin Pope. Job, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 163–164.

A common conjecture about the meaning of this crux; cf. Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon, p. 22, note 57.

See Mitchell Dahood, Psalms 2, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968): p. 205.

The most recent scholarly treatment of the subject is that of John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea; for a more popular presentation see Foster McCurley, Ancient Myths and Biblical Faith: Scriptural Transformations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), esp. pp. 11–71.

In a text so explicitly self-conscious about justifying every facet of Ptah’s role as creator, this statement is a clear witness to the belief that a creation account should conclude with a description of the creator resting. The creator may relax because his work is finished and perfect.

For a convenient translation, see John Wilson in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), ed. James Pritchard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 3rd ed., 1969), pp. 4–5; or Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1, The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California, 1973), pp. 51–57.

See Raffaele Pettazzoni, “Myths of Beginnings and Creation-Myths,” Essays on the History of Religions, Numen Suppl. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1954), pp. 24–36, esp. 32–34; cited with approval by Claus Westermann in Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), p. 167.