Was Genesis 1 Dependent on Psalm 104?

9 December, 2024

We are deeply honoured to welcome Professor John Day, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies, University of Oxford, to lead the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group session.

PLEASE REGISTER HERE

Here are the details of this fascinating event.

The left image – a marking of Psalm 104. The Right image – the beginning of Genesis.

Topic: Was Genesis 1 Dependent on Psalm 104?

Abstract: The creation psalm, Psalm 104, has remarkable parallels with the Priestly creation narrative in Genesis 1. Parallels come in all six days of creation and occur in the same order. There are also many parallels in vocabulary. The question is, which came first? I shall put forward five arguments supporting the priority of Psalm 104.
1) Psalm 104 is more mythical; e.g. God has a battle with the sea, whereas in Genesis 1 God’s control of the sea is simply a job of work.
2) The rare form of the word for ‘beasts’ in Gen. 1:24, ḥay^etô, is attested elsewhere only in poetry, including Psalm 104:11, 20.
3) If Psalm 104 was dependent on Genesis 1:1-2:3 it has curiously omitted two of its most important themes, the creation of humanity in God’s image and the sacredness of the seventh day.
4) Psalm 104:9 states that the waters defeated at creation will never flood the earth again. Clearly the psalmist was unaware of the Genesis flood narrative, which he surely would have known if he was heavily dependent on Genesis 1, as some suppose.
5) Every verse of Psalm 104:20-30 has remarkable parallels with pharaoh Akhenaten’s hymn to the sun, all coming in the same order, with one exception. Clearly the psalm is dependent on Akhenaten, and there would be little scope for it to be also dependent on Genesis 1 here.

Speaker: Professor John Day, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, UK

Speaker’s biography: Professor John Day has been Fellow & Tutor of Lady Margaret Hall in Old Testament Studies since 1980, now Emeritus. Prior to coming to Oxford, he studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and held Fellowships at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Durham University. He holds both a Cambridge PhD and an Oxford DD. In 2014 he was President of the Society for Old Testament Study. Prof Day has published widely on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, including 17 books, over 75 articles and 200 book reviews. His early work mainly centred on the impact of Canaanite religion and mythology on the Hebrew Bible, including books on ‘God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea’, ‘Molech’, and ‘Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan’, and an article on Asherah which was awarded a prize by the Society of Biblical Literature. He co-edited the Festschrift for J.A. Emerton on ‘Wisdom in Ancient Israel’ and discovered and published William Robertson Smith’s previously lost 2nd and 3rd series of ‘Lectures on the Religion of the Semites’. His middle years were much taken up with editing, including four Oxford seminar volumes on ‘King and Messiah’, ‘In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel’, ‘Temple and Worship’, and ‘Prophecy and the Prophets’, and he spent 3 years editing the SOTS Book List. More recently, his work has centred on Genesis 1-11, on which he has written two volumes of essays, ‘From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11’ and ‘From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11’. Prof Day is now working on the commentary on Genesis 1-11 in the prestigious International Critical Commentary (ICC) series.

Chair: Professor Aaron Koller, Senior Fellow, Oxford Interfaith Forum

Time: 18:00-19:00 GMT | 19:00-20:00 CET | 10:00-11:00 PT | 13:00-14:00 ET

Venue: Online

PLEASE REGISTER HERE

PSALMS DEC 2024 Download

If you would like to join the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group, please sign up here.