Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 95 No. 2, 2025.
Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.95.2.3
Clay or Something Else?. An Attempt to Explain the Unexpected Lexeme cāpār in Gen 2:7
Dubravko Turalija
orcid.org/0000-0002-8806-3967
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract
Most Old Babylonian stories of genesis speak of the creation of man from divine flesh, blood, saliva, and other organic elements. However, in this creative cycle from divine contents, the so-called »clay« is also frequently mentioned. We advocate the thesis that, instead of so-called »clay«, in addition to divine flesh, blood, and saliva, ancient Eastern anthropology included divine excrement in the creation of man as the primary clayey, adhesive content that was used by the deities to shape a being from divine material with a very low level of divine qualities in itself. The Biblical writer in Genesis 2:7 is deeply aware of all this. Therefore, he introduces a radically different material into the biblical account of the creation of man, one that directly contradicts the concept of organic clay, i.e., divine faeces. The Biblical writer thus chooses the »dust of the ground« as the primary material of the human body. The »dust,« eliminates even the slightest hint of a possible divine excrement from which the human body was formed The holy writer says nothing about how God assembled the loose dust.
Keywords
divine clay; dust in Genesis 2:7; faeces; myths about the creation of man
Hrčak ID:
335035
URI
Publication date:
5.9.2025.
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