A glossary of shared words
← Ancient texts beside the Bible
Vocabulary the Hebrew Bible holds in common with older Near Eastern languages — sometimes a direct loanword, sometimes a shared root, sometimes just a shared idea wearing similar clothes. A cognate is not a quotation: the same word can carry a very different theology.
tehom / Tiamatתְּהוֹם
the deep; the primeval salt-water ocean, personified in Babylon as the goddess Tiamat whom Marduk kills and splits
Genesis 1:2's 'darkness upon the face of the deep' uses the cognate of Tiamat's name — but with the definite article dropped and no divinity. The 'fountains of the great deep' burst open in the flood (Genesis 7:11) and the deep 'covered' the earth in Psalm 104:6.
kopher / kupruכֹּפֶר
bitumen, pitch — used to waterproof a boat
The word God uses in Genesis 6:14 — 'pitch it within and without with pitch' — is the Akkadian loanword 'kupru', the very substance Uta-Napishtim pours over his ship in Gilgamesh XI. The Hebrew root also gives 'kapporet' (mercy-seat) and 'kippur' (atonement): to cover.
tselem / salmuצֶלֶם
image, statue, likeness — in Mesopotamia especially a royal or divine statue that represents its subject
Akkadian kings set up their 'salmu' in conquered territory and called themselves 'the image of the god'. Genesis 1:26–27 democratises the idea: every human being, not just the king, is made in the 'tselem' of God.
shabbat / shapattuשַׁבָּת
in Babylon, the day of the full moon (the 15th), when the gods' hearts were said to 'rest'; in Israel, the seventh day
Babylon had inauspicious days and a full-moon 'shapattu', but nothing like a recurring day of rest every seventh day for everyone, servants and animals included. The Sabbath is the sharpest structural break between Israel's week and its neighbours'.
raqia‘רָקִיעַ
the firmament — a beaten-out expanse holding back the upper waters
In Enuma Elish the sky is half of Tiamat's carcass, pinned up with a bar and a guard so 'her waters cannot escape'. Genesis 1:6–7 keeps the picture of a solid divider holding back a heavenly ocean, without the body.
‘eden / edinuעֵדֶן
Sumerian 'edin' = open country, steppe, plain; Hebrew 'eden' also carries the sense of 'delight, luxuriance'
The link between Sumerian 'edin' and the garden of Eden is debated — Hebrew has its own root meaning 'pleasure' (compare 'delights', Psalm 36:8). The rivers of Eden in Genesis 2:14, the Tigris (Hiddekel) and Euphrates, are firmly Mesopotamian.
'adam / adamahאָדָם
'adam' (human) from 'adamah' (ground, arable soil)
Mesopotamian creation stories form people from clay mixed with a god's blood or spittle (Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, 'Enki and Ninmah'). Genesis 2:7 keeps the clay — 'the LORD formed man of the dust of the ground' — and replaces the divine blood with the breath of life.
apkallu
the seven antediluvian sages, part-fish, who brought civilisation to humankind before the flood
Mesopotamia had a fixed tradition of wise beings and long-lived heroes before the flood, and king-lists giving the pre-flood rulers reigns of tens of thousands of years. Genesis 5's genealogy from Adam to Noah, with its long lifespans, and the 'sons of God' and Nephilim of Genesis 6:1–4, sit in that same antediluvian frame.
sheol / ‘the land of no return’שְׁאוֹל
the underworld: a dusty, dim house from which the dead do not come back
The Mesopotamian netherworld (see the Descent of Ishtar to 'the house whose enterers are bereft of light, where dust is their food') matches the older layers of the Hebrew Sheol — a shadowy leveller, not yet a place of judgement (Job 10:21–22, Psalm 88, Isaiah 14:9–11).
Galeed / ‘izzi ribanna’גַּלְעֵד
a heap of stones set up as a witness to a covenant
An Accadian proverb calls a foundation-cairn a 'heap of witnesses', glossed in Assyrian as 'heap of covenant'. Jacob and Laban do the same in Genesis 31:47–48, naming the cairn Galeed in Hebrew and Jegar-sahadutha in Aramaic — both meaning 'witness heap'.
Shaddai / šadûשַׁדַּי
Akkadian 'shadu' = mountain; one proposed root for the divine title 'El Shaddai', God Almighty
A footnote in the Hymn to Ishtar connects the word 'sadi' (mountain) with 'El Shaddai'. The etymology is uncertain — 'breast', 'field', or 'destroyer' have also been proposed — but 'God of the mountain' fits a title used mainly in the patriarchal narratives (Genesis 17:1, 49:25).
Watchers / ‘irinעִירִין
a class of angels who do not sleep; in 1 Enoch, the two hundred who fell
Daniel 4 is the only book of the Hebrew Bible to use the word: 'a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven' (4:13, 17, 23). 1 Enoch builds its whole angelology on the term — the Watchers who kept their place, and the Watchers who fell with Samyaza and Azazyel.
Azazel / Azazyelעֲזָאזֵל
in Leviticus, the wilderness destination of the scapegoat; in 1 Enoch, the Watcher who taught weapons and is bound in the desert
On the Day of Atonement one goat is 'for the LORD' and one 'for Azazel', sent into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:8–10, 26). 1 Enoch 10 has God order Azazyel bound hand and foot and cast into a hole in the desert 'till the day of judgement' — the same name, the same wilderness, the same removal of sin. Which way the borrowing runs is debated.