An insight from anthropology is that the human body may serve as a symbol of
society. In the ancient Near East, including in Israel, the body mediated
symbolic relationship between of people's experience of their physical
and social worlds. This essay will argue that that this complex symbolic
relationship between the body and the world formed the basis of the ancient Near
Eastern understanding of creation. Because the body functioned as a model for
the world, the procreation of the human body (microcosm) offered an appropriate
analogy for understanding the creation of the world and society (macrocosm). The
essay will focus on a variety of creation metaphors from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
Israel to construct a heuristic model of creation that will delineate the
symbolic relationship between the body and the world.
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