Gospel & Universe ♒️ The Currents of Sumer

Introduction & Overview

Religion vs. Religions - Sums - Chapter Overview

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Religion vs. Religions

In this section I explore how early Mesopotamian thinking provides a context for Western understanding of religion, philosophy, and culture. I don’t argue that Judaism or Christianity comes only from Mesopotamia, for while the Jews borrowed numbers, language, narratives and culture, they veered away from Mesopotamian polytheism — as Jean Bottéro notes:

The authors of the Bible were […] very happy to receive new images and myths from outside their land, including from Mesopotamia, provided they could pour them into their own religious mold, adapting them to their religiosity and to their particular view of God. — Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, 1998 (English translation by Teresa Fagan, 2001)

I do, however, argue that the Judaeo-Christian tradition has unnecessarily distanced itself from aspects of its own Mesopotamian ancestry. Using both the traditional views of Peter Enns and the philological and historical views of Jean Bottéro, I argue that the Judaeo-Christian tradition 1) is indebted to Mesopotamia on a deep, often unacknowledged level, 2) overestimates its originality to some degree, and 3) retains a sense of superiority and exclusivity that’s counter-productive.

This third point about exclusivity is difficult to make, given that so much of Judaism is based on its notion of a Chosen People and its claim to a unique monotheism, and given that so much of Christianity is based on its claim of being the elect or the saved ones, and on the claim that we can only reach the Truth by believing in Jesus. As an agnostic that has great affection for religion and for my own European Judaeo-Christian heritage — which I see as far wider than doctrinal Christianity — I argue that the richness and depth of the Judaeo-Christian tradition has little to do with its exclusiveness and superiority. While belief is a key component and a key strength, Christianity weakens itself — and alienates much of its key demographic — by insisting on the unique necessity of their form of belief.

Behind my argument is the notion that religion in general is more important than any particular religion. Against the superiority and exclusivity that infects Judaeo-Christian tradition, I argue that the attempt to connect with the cosmos, and with the divine, is a human aspiration that includes all religions, including a large variety of monotheistic, polytheistic, and philosophic types.

In my view, agnosticism isn’t atheism light, but rather a form of belief in which all sides of life are to be explored: science and reason are part of the spectrum of experience just as much as religion and mysticism — and vice versa.

It’s just that as an agnostic I go further, wanting religion to be an open door rather than a hidden shrine. The a- in a-gnostic comes from its objection to the hidden, secret, occult knowledge of the Gnostics. Christianity says that it’s opposed to this occult secrecy, yet it nevertheless indulges in it when it says that it alone has the key to the doors of Heaven, Eternity, Salvation, Grace, etc. Agnostics argue that Jesus could still be a personal saviour, and figures like Mary could still guide people to the Light, without all the grandiose claims.

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Sums

My perspective is agnostic in the sense that I doubt all forms of religion and I therefore find it especially difficult to believe that one religion is the real or true religion. I suggest that instead of playing a zero-sum religious game, we play a positive-sum game. I suggest that we get the most out of the variety on offer; that we see the depth and wisdom religion offers, yet avoid cutting ourselves off from sources of wisdom just because they don’t exactly match our present understanding.

Too often in the history of Western religions we’ve seen other religions as inferior and at times evil. One of the best instances of this is the way we’ve seen the polytheistic religions and cultures of the Ancient Near East, which is the main cultural and epistemological landscape out of which the Judaeo-Christian tradition arises.

I’ll give one example of this to intimate the many examples I look at in this chapter. In the Mesopotamian story of The Flood, the high god Enlil is bothered by humans and decides to flood the Earth, yet the compassionate god Ea secretly tells Utnapishtim (later Noah) to build a giant boat. After the waters recede, Ea reprimands Enlil for his cataclysmic cruelty, suggesting that it would have been wiser to drown only the people who sinned — or better yet, forgive them:

“But you, the most sage of the gods, the most valiant, how were you able, so rashly, to decide on the Flood? Heap guilt only on the guilty, and sin only on the sinner! Or, instead of doing away with them, pardon them; don’t annihilate them; be merciful to them!”

Because the cuneiform script of the Ancient Mesopotamians was only deciphered in the mid-19th century, for 2,000 years we didn’t know about the Mesopotamian version of the Flood. Even when people refer to it today they don’t often highlight the positive details, for instance the way Ea represents a voice of dissent and compassion, one that questions the notion of a high god’s anger and violence — a notion that’s all too prevalent in the Old Testament, but central to the New.

"The Deluge," frontispiece to Gustave Doré's illustrated edition of the Bible, 1866. Based on the story of Noah's Ark, this shows humans and a tiger doomed by the flood futilely attempting to save their children and cubs. (from Wikimedia Commons)

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Chapter Overview

Historically, Christians accepted the negative Jewish view of the Mesopotamians, reducing them to stereotypes of crude paganism, and to a culture of iniquity (Bottéro challenges this view — see Currents of History). How else could we have arrived at an expression such as the whore of Babylon? (see The Whore).

KKK cartoon showing the Klan removing a woman from a beast. The woman represents the Papacy (the woman is wearing the Papal tiara) and compares the Papacy to the Whore of Babylon. 1925, Source: The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy, 1925. Published by the Pillar of Fire Church in Zarephath. Author: Alma Bridwell White. (from Wikimedia Commons)

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A closer look reveals that Mesopotamia wasn’t only the birthplace of number systems and written script, but also legal codes, institutions, city-states, warfare, organized religion, astronomy, and a rich literature that’s at turns dramatic, poetic, epic, sociological, religious, and philosophical. Indeed, the first great epic in world literature, Gilgamesh, comes from the Sumer and Akkad of the third and second millennia BC. In it we find an adventurous tale of deep political, psychological, and philosophical insight, as well as, embedded within its final tablets, a version of the Flood that’s the basis of the account we find in the Bible (The Flood).

In getting at the disparity between a negative and a positive view of the Mesopotamian contribution to world religion and culture, I use the writings of Peter Enns and Jean Bottéro (The Exegete & the Philologist). In Zero & Positive Sums, More Zero Sum, Gaming Out, The Bounty of Sumer & Akkad, Friendly Gods, and Again, Minus 1 Plus 1 I argue that Enns opens up perspectives inside the Bible, yet he also plays a zero-sum game: he uses the Mesopotamians to show how the Bible is an improved and better version of religion. As an agnostic I have to be open to the possibility that he’s right, yet when looking at religion from a historical perspective (like that of Bottéro) causes and effects don’t always lead to improvement. The Judaeo-Christian notion that polytheism evolved into monotheism is especially fraught with difficulties.

In the realm of religion, as in the realm of literature, 1 + 1 seems a better formulation than -1 + 1. In the former, we end up with a greater sum, and in the latter we end up with nothing, having used one to cancel out the other, just as we have so often done with Judaism + Christianity, Christianity + Islam, Islam + Hinduism, etc.

Agnostics and students of comparative religion may well wonder why we bother playing a zero-sum game at all. Why not see all religions and philosophies as open for business, liable to be experienced, yet still facets of one larger Reality that no one can define? Who here is confident enough to say what exactly God means or what exactly God wants to tell humanity? Who has a balance so finely calibrated that they can weigh one sacred text against another? Who can weigh the value of Reason versus Religion, the demonstrable knowledge of science versus the hidden knowledge of gnosticism? The agnostic finds this impossible, and opts for a positive-sum rather than a zero-sum perspective.

After looking at zero versus positive sum theology, I sum up my arguments and introduce the final pages in Rewind & Fast-Forward. I then look at the question of sin, the afterlife, and forgiveness — in Grace: The Most Positive Sum, Myths of Sin & Divinity, & Post & Other Scripts. Finally, I conclude with The Return of Enlil, a short story in which I conflate 2022 BC and 2022 AD, and in which the anger of Enlil and the compassion of Ea play out in the context of the Ukraine War.

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Next: ♒️ Currents of History

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