Panbabylonism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Panbabylonism is a school of thought within Assyriology

Assyriology

Assyriology is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia and the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessor; Sumer...

and Religious Studies

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

that considers the Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

and Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

as directly derived from Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...

n culture and mythology. Appearing in the late 19th century, it gained popularity in the early 20th century, advocated notably by Alfred Jeremias

Alfred Jeremias

Alfred Karl Gabriel Jeremias was a German pastor, Assyriologist and an expert on the religions of the Ancient Near East.-Life:...

.

The ideas presented within its framework still carry importance in mythological studies, due to similarities between myths in the comparatively young Bible and much older myths from ancient Mesopotamian mythologies.

The worldview which lies behind the Genesis creation story is that of the common cosmology of the ancient Near East

Ancient Near East

The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Iran The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia...

in which Earth was conceived as a flat disk

Flat Earth

The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...

with infinite water both above and below. The dome of the sky was thought to be a solid metal bowl (tin according to the Sumerians, iron for the Egyptians) separating the surrounding water from the habitable world. The stars were embedded in the lower surface of this dome, with gates that allowed the passage of the Sun and Moon back and forth.

The flat-disk Earth was seen as a single island-continent

Pangaea

Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea is hypothesized as a supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration....

surrounded by a circular ocean, of which the known seas—what today is called the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

, the Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

, and the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...

—were inlets. Beneath the Earth was a fresh-water sea, the source of all fresh-water rivers and wells.

Genesis creation story and the Babylonian creation story

One of the two Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

creation myths was probably derived from the much older Mesopotamian creation myth "Enuma Elish

Enûma Elish

The is the Babylonian creation myth . It was recovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh , and published by George Smith in 1876.The Enûma Eliš has about a thousand lines and is recorded in Old Babylonian on seven clay tablets, each holding...

".

The six days of creation in the Genesis myth parallel the six generations of gods in the Enuma Elish myth in type of god in Enuma Elish that is created (i.e. god of the earth) to what is created or happens on the corresponding day in Genesis (i.e. the waters

Waters

Waters is a surname, and may refer to:* Alice Waters , American chef* Allan Waters , Canadian businessman* Anthony Waters , American football linebacker* Beau Waters , Australian rules footballer...

are gathered together to expose dry land).

Marduk

Marduk

Marduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to...

the sixth generation god makes man as a slave so the other gods can rest. God (Elohim

Elohim

Elohim is a grammatically singular or plural noun for "god" or "gods" in both modern and ancient Hebrew language. When used with singular verbs and adjectives elohim is usually singular, "god" or especially, the God. When used with plural verbs and adjectives elohim is usually plural, "gods" or...

) makes man on the sixth day and he himself rests.

Although the plot line of the Enuma Elish and the Genesis creation account are completely different it is possible to see some very basic connections between the two creation myths.

The Enuma Elish portrays Marduk as setting the constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

s in place rather than being bound by their movements as had all previous deities. The henotheistic idea that one god had control over the movement of the stars, which represented the other gods, appears as a transit to the religion of Biblical monotheism

Monotheism

Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...

.

Through the fusion of their waters six successive generations of gods were born. A war amongst the gods began with the slaying of Apsu, and ended with the god Marduk

Marduk

splitting Tiamat in two to form the heavens and the earth; the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers emerged from her eye-sockets. Marduk then created humanity, from clay mingled with spit and blood, to tend the earth for the gods, while Marduk himself was enthroned in Babylon in the Esagila

Esagila

The Ésagila, a Sumerian name signifying "É whose top is lofty", was a temple dedicated to Marduk, the protector god of Babylon...

, "the temple with its head in heaven."

Comparison of the creation myths

In both Enûma Eliš and Genesis the primordial world is formless and empty (the tohu wa bohu of Genesis 1:2), the only existing thing the watery abyss

Abyss (religion)

Abyss refers to a bottomless pit, to the underworld, to the deepest ocean floor, or to hell.The English word "abyss" derives from the late Latin abyssimus through French abisme , hence the poetic form "abysm", with examples dating to 1616 and earlier to rhyme with "time"...

which exists prior to creation (the god of Tiamat

Tiamat

In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is a chaos monster, a primordial goddess of the ocean, mating with Abzû to produce younger gods. It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is 'creatrix', through a "Sacred marriage" between salt and fresh water,...

in the Enûma Eliš, təhôm, the "deep

Deep

-In film and television:* The Deep , a 1970 unfinished film directed by Orson Welles* The Deep , a 1977 film directed by Peter Yates, based on the novel by Peter Benchley...

", a linguistic cognate of tiamat. In both, the firmament

Firmament

The firmament is the vault or expanse of the sky. According to Genesis, God created the firmament to separate the oceans from other waters above.-Etymology:...

, conceived as a solid inverted bowl

Bowl (vessel)

A bowl is a common open-top container used in many cultures to serve food, and is also used for drinking and storing other items. They are typically small and shallow, although some, such as punch bowls and salad bowls, are larger and often intended to serve many people.Bowls have existed for...

, is created in the midst of the primeval waters to separate the sky

Sky

The sky is the part of the atmosphere or outer space visible from the surface of any astronomical object. It is difficult to define precisely for several reasons. During daylight, the sky of Earth has the appearance of a pale blue surface because the air scatters the sunlight. The sky is sometimes...

or heights from the earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

(Genesis 1:6–7, Enûma Eliš 4:137–40). Day

Day

A day is a unit of time, commonly defined as an interval equal to 24 hours. It also can mean that portion of the full day during which a location is illuminated by the light of the sun...

and night

Night

Night or nighttime is the period of time when the sun is below the horizon. This occurs after dusk. The opposite of night is day...

precede the creation of the luminous bodies (Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, and 14ff.; Enûma Eliš 1:38), whose function is to yield light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

and regulate time (Gen. 1:14; Enûma Eliš 5:12–13). In Enûma Eliš, the gods consult before creating man (6:4), while Genesis has: "Let us make man in our own image..." (Genesis 1:26) – and in both, the creation of man is followed by divine rest.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Gen:1,1)

When Skies above (heaven) were not yet named, Nor earth below pronounced by name... (Enuma Elish, Tablet 1)

The ordering of the universe

Universe

The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

by the command of the creator god is a basic theme in both the Babylonian and Biblical accounts.

And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.' And it was so. - (Gen:1, 14-15)

He Fashioned stands for the great gods. As for the stars, he set up constellations corresponding to them. He designated the year and marked out its divisions, Apportioned three stars each to twelve months. When he had made plans of the days of the year… - (Enuma Elish,Tablet V)

The days of the week and their ritual

Ritual

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....

implications from Genesis 1, 5-2, 3 can be easily compared to the Babylonian myth the Atrahasis. This myth which focuses on mankind’s creation also describes the evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

of the weekly calendar

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...

as prescribed by the creator god Enki

Enki

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...

. Similar to Genesis the seventh day

Shabbat

Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...

is seen as the end of the week which consists of six regular days. For Babylonians the first, seventh and fifteenth of the month were sacred

Sacred

Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...

days and each month lasted for five seven day weeks.

Dating of the stories

The written story of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq , placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of...

possibly finds its roots as far back as 3,700 years ago but the oral story seems to have appeared circa 2100 B.C. This is in stark contrast to the age of the main story in the Book of Exodus where Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

leads the Hebrews

Hebrews

Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...

out of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. The commonly accepted dates for this story would be circa 1300-200B.C. If we were to accept these dates as being true this would make the tales told about Gilgamesh some eight hundred to nine hundred years older than any possible oral telling of the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

stories in the Book of Exodus.

The Serpent

Both narratives have a snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

that is associated with a plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

holding the key to a kind of immortality. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a snake steals a magical plant that can restore youthful vigor. In the Eden

Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...

narrative, a snake convinces Eve

Eve

Eve is the first woman created by God in the Book of Genesis.Eve may also refer to:-People:*Eve , a common given name and surname*Eve , American recording artist and actress-Places:...

to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Contradicting the divine warning, the serpent tells her that she will not die but will become like a god (Genesis 3:4-5). The end result, however, is the same. The snake's involvement leads to a loss of immortality as Adam and Eve are cut off from the tree of life.

Loss of Innocence

In the beginning both Enkidu

Enkidu

Enkidu is a central figure in the Ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Enkidu was first created by Anu, the sky god, to rid Gilgamesh of his arrogance. In the story he is a wild-man raised by animals and ignorant of human society until he is bedded by Shamhat...

and the Edenic couple are in harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

with nature

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

. They live naked among the trees and wildlife

Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....

and have a naive innocence

Innocence

Innocence is a term used to indicate a lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence refers to the lack of legal guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime.-Symbolism:...

. However, that innocence is lost once they each participate in an act that puts them out of harmony with nature.

Once Enkidu has sex with Shamhat, the animals no longer respond to him as they did before. Shamhat

Shamhat

Shamhat is the name of a female character who appears in Tablets I/and II of the Epic of Gilgamesh-." Shamhat plays the integral role in Tablet I, of taming the wild man Enkidu, who was created by the gods as the rival to the mighty Gilgamesh...

proclaims that Enkidu has become "wise" and "like a god". She fashions clothing for him and introduces him to a human diet. In the final stage of his civilization

Civilization

Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...

, Enkidu journeys to the great city of Uruk

Uruk

Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...

where new pleasures and experiences await. Similarly, once Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they fall out of sync with nature.

In contrast to the story of Enkidu, however, the Genesis tale presents this transition in a negative way. Rather than leaving the wild to become human and join civilized society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

, the couple from Eden experience tragic loss. The serpent's promise of wisdom

Wisdom

Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...

and godlike status is misleading. Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...

clothe themselves out of shame. The new food they eat is forbidden, resulting in divine

Divine Judgment

Divine judgment means the judgment of God or other supreme beings within a religion. The concept is prominent in Abrahamic religions, most significantly in the Last judgment.-Objective and subjective judgment:...

punishment

Punishment

Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....

, and the new realm they enter is one of hardship and toil.

Adapa

Adapa

Adapa was a Babylonian mythical figure who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality. The story is first attested in the Kassite period .-Roles:...

(cognate with Adam) was a Babylonian mythical figure who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality. The story is first attested in the Kassite period (14th century BC). Mario Liverani

Mario Liverani

Mario Liverani was born in Rome in 1939. He is Professor of Ancient Near East History at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is a member of many institutions, such as the American Oriental Society, Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, and doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Copenhagen and...

points to multiple parallels between the story of Adapa, who obtains wisdom but who is forbidden the 'food of immortality' whilst in heaven, and the story of Adam in Eden.

Parallels to Noah's flood

The eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh contains the Gilgamesh flood myth

Gilgamesh flood myth

The Gilgamesh flood myth is a deluge story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many scholars believe that the flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who utilized the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis...

and has a number of parallels to the story of Noah and the Flood in Genesis 6-9. According to Alan Millard

Alan Millard

Alan Ralph Millard is Rankin Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages, and Honorary Senior Fellow , at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology in the University of Liverpool....

, "No Babylonian text provides so close a parallel to Genesis as does the flood story of Gilgamesh XI". Michael Coogan mentions the following:

Both stories have divine anger
The heroes are warned by a god that a great Flood is going to happen
The hero is given specific instructions on how the god wants him to build the boat
The hero takes both his family and animals on the boat with him
The hero releases three birds to find out if the Flood is beginning to subside
When the Flood begins to subside, the boats are sitting on top of a mountain

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, our hero encounters Utnapishtim and his wife who are the survivors of the Great Flood in his quest for immortality.

Babylonian myth tells us that the god

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

Enlil

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

was disturbed so much by the noise of mankind

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

that he decided to destroy them with a flood

Flood

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water...

. The god Ea had pity on them, however, and chose to help Utnapishtim and his family to survive the great cataclysm. This recalls the story of the Flood in the Bible where God decided to punish mankind for its wickedness by cleansing the earth with the Great Flood. In both stories there is a warning of forthcoming disaster

Disaster

A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...

given to someone who is seen as worthy of being spared during the destruction of mankind.

Both stories had the righteous person, his family and animals saved from the wrath that mankind faced:

“All the living beings that I had I loaded on it, I had all my kith and kin go up into the boat, all the beasts and animals of the field…” (Tablet XI 84-85).

”...and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.” (Genesis 18-19)

Both were given specific instructions on how to spare themselves and carry out certain wishes of the gods:

“O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu: Tear down the house and build a boat! The boat which you are to build, its dimensions must measure equal to each other: its length must correspond to its width. Roof it over like the Apsu.” (Tablet XI 24 and 28-30).

“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch...“ (Genesis 14-16)

Utnapishtim and his family then build a huge ark, and both families brought a host of animals on board for the journey. Also, in both stories it is a bird that found land after many long days and nights of rain. And both arks come to rest on mountain tops. In the Babylonian myth, the survivors land on Mount Nisir while the biblical survivors land on Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat is a snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone in Turkey. It has two peaks: Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat .The Ararat massif is about in diameter...

.

They both also seemed to have the same idea to determine when it was safe to leave the safety of their boats and return to land:

“And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground... (Genesis 7-11)

“When a seventh day arrived I sent forth a dove and released it. The dove went off, but came back to me; no perch was visible so it circled back to me. I sent forth a swallow and released it.“ (Tablet XI 145-154)

There is a difference at the end though. Utnapishtim and his wife gained immortality from the gods after their ordeal and were allowed to live in a distant Paradise. Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

, on the other hand, received the Covenant of the Rainbow

Rainbow

A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines on to droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. It takes the form of a multicoloured arc...

- God's promise not to send another Flood.

Mesopotamian deity and the Genesis God

The ancient Sumerian chief deity

Deity

A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....

was Enlil, the Lord of the Wind. Enlil owed nominal loyalty to his father Anu

Anu

In Sumerian mythology, Anu was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, Consort of Antu, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as...

/Heaven

Heaven

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...

but outside of southern Mesopotamia he gradually became more important evolving to the status of king of the gods. In Canaan

Canaan

Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...

Enlil was known as El, the father of an entire pantheon of gods that included Yahweh

Yahweh

Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...

.

In the Atrahasis the chief of the gods, Enlil (known as Ellil in Akkadian) had been confronted by a revolt of the lesser gods, which caused him to create humans as servants. However after some centuries pass the humans become a nuisance. Finally Enlil release a devastating flood to reduce the human population.

In the second verse of Genesis God, who is called Elohim in the Hebrew, is said to hover over the waters. This description of God and the use of the name Elohim further reveals this Babylonian god’s influence.

Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. - (Gen: 1,2)

This image of God moving over the waters compares directly with the mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

of Enlil who was made visible by traces of his passing such as ripples on the water.

Ningishzida

Ningishzida

Ningishzida is a Mesopotamian deity of the underworld. His name in Sumerian is translated as "lord of the good tree" by Thorkild Jacobsen....

was a Mesopotamian serpent deity associated with the underworld. He was often depicted protectively wrapped around a tree as a guardian. Thorkild Jacobsen

Thorkild Jacobsen

Thorkild Jacobsen was a renowned historian specializing in Assyriology and Sumerian literature.He was one of the foremost scholars on the ancient Near East.-Biography:...

interprets his name in Sumerian to mean "lord of the good tree."

Despite apparent similarities between Genesis and the Enûma Eliš, there are also significant differences. The most notable is the absence from Genesis of the "divine combat" (the gods' battle with Tiamat) which secures Marduk's position as king of the world, but even this has an echo in the claims of Yahweh's kingship over creation in such places as and , where he is pictured as sitting enthroned over the floods and . "In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword; his fierce, great and powerful sword; Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea." Thus this creation account may be seen as either a borrowing or historicizing of Babylonian myth or, in contrast, may be seen as a repudiation of Babylonian ideas about origins and humanity.

External links

The Development, Heyday, and Demise of Panbabylonism by Gary D. Thompson
Comparison of Genesis with creation stories in the Near East by Dr. David Livingston

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