“THE EARTH IS FILLED WITH NOISE”
DR.
RONALD A. BRAUNER
Our Sages have taught that “the Torah speaks in the
human idiom” and one understanding of this
instruction, when considered carefully, is that the Torah
responds to ideas and conventions which impact on our lives
from the cultures which surround us. Certainly, we can
recognize the truth of this assertion in our own day but
sometimes it is more diffccult to see this operating in the
Torah’s ancient context.
The week’s parsha is a superb example of the
principle of “speaking in the human idiom.”
Archaelogical discoveries in the 19th
century in
Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria) have
provided us literally with thousands of examples of
storytelling, mythological narratives and similar literary
creativity of the ancient peoples of Sumer, Assyria,
Babylonia. This literature goes back thousands of years and
provides us with invaluable insights into the civilization,
mindsets and cultural values of these early peoples. Such
resources are particularly important for Jews, if for no
other reason than that Abraham and Sarah, as our own Torah
teaches us, came from that very region of the world. Our
own sacred tradition has been well-aware of the role
Mesopotamia played in our own origin and evolution.
Often, passages in the Torah are best understood as
responses
to
matters posed by alien cultures. By understanding what our
neighbors believed, how they worshipped, how they conducted
their lives, we can better appreciate what our Torah is
teaching and what it is asking of us. The Mesopotamians
told an extensive tale about a worldwide flood which
destroyed humankind, about the saving of an individual who
built a boat to withstand the ravages of the inundation and
who, after the flood subsided, regenerated the human race.
The narrative is full of details which recall similar
elements in the account of Noah. But, as the French might
say, vive la
difference! Over and over
again, the sublime moral tone of the Torah proclaims a
vivid contrast to the outlook and values of our primordial
neighbors. One example makes this crystal-clear.
We learn from Mesopotamians about the cause for the
decision to bring a flood and destroy the earth:
When the land
extended and the peoples multiplied,
The land was
bellowing like a bull,
The god got disturbed with their uproar,
(The god) Enlil heard their noise
And addressed the great gods:
“The noise of mankind has become too intense
for me; with
their uproar I am deprived of sleep
…let mankind be destroyed…”
(Atrahasis
II
i:2ff)
In a word – the great flood is brought to destroy
terrestrial life because human beings are noisy and they
disturb the sleep of the gods! Immediately, one turns to
this week’s Torah reading and finds that the Flood of
Noah is brought by God because of mankind’s
immoral
behavior:
“…the earth had become corrupt…and
filled with violence” (6:10). And there, in a
nutshell, is a prime example of how our Torah speaks in the
human idiom. For the pagans (and everyone
knew this
story) the great flood brought quiet for nap-time but, as
we chose to tell the story, the great Flood was a
demonstration of God’s dissatisfaction
with corruption and violence. That theme
would go on to fill the pages of the Bible and the pages of
all subsequent Jewish life: God’s expectation of us
is that we perfect the quality of human life, that we cause
justice and equity and respect for life to prevail. Our
Torah has answered the pagans of antiquity as it continues
to answer the corrupt and violent of our own day -- in an
idiom which both they and we can understand.
Dr. Brauner is Professor of Judaic Studies at Siegal
College, Cleveland, OH
