Did Genesis Copy Sunmerian, Babylonian, and Egyption Creation Accounts?

Some of the laws came from the Code of Hammurabi, written much earlier.

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Not being an expert of ANE culture, I can only rephrase what I have understood from the writings of others. Based on that (especially the books by John Walton), the genesis story follows a style of writing that was common at that time but is not used anymore. Similar type of structure and elements than in comparable ANE texts but the key message different: one God creating everything instead of gods being created from the original chaos; sun, moon and stars being something created by the one God instead of being deities; etc.
It is likely that the writer knew other creation (or temple) stories and utilized the common thinking among ANE people to deliver the key message. Maybe it could be called some sort of contextualization.

Abram (later renamed Abraham) came from a polytheistic culture in Babylon (born in the city of Ur). He must have known the basic stories from that area. Assuming that the creation story was written after the birth of Abram and was based on spoken tradition, there was a connection between the stories of those cultures. The years in Egypt made also the Egyptian versions familiar to Moses.

Who wrote the first version of the spoken tradition is not known but it is likely that the first written version has not been preserved and will never be found. Maybe the version we have was written during the Exile but it was based on old spoken tradition and possibly an earlier written version.

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Hmmm thatā€™s an odd statementā€¦given the distances involved, did Moses get it off the internet or from his local library?

I think you are ignoring verbal traditionā€¦and that dates back well before Jeromeā€™s date for Moses of about 1500bc

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All good stuff. I especially like that you said Yahweh owned the other gods which is another level above having preeminence over them.

Until fairly recently I also adamantly rejected that idea that the Bible had anything remotely in common with other ANE cosmologies despite the fact that it obviously did. I couldnā€™t make a case for the scriptures having nothing to do with other accounts, but nonetheless maintained my dogmatic belief. Once I saw Genesis as a polemic against the other ANE mythologies it was like the proverbial light bulb going off in my brain. It made the story go from a grainy black and white to a brilliant technicolor (or whatever the latest color technology is). What better way for Yahweh to dis the other gods than to use their own story but turning it inside out!

Do you have the source for the Hebrew scholars you mentioned? Iā€™d be interested to delve into that, particularly about the six days.

I think you are right about that. But unless Iā€™m mistaken (a distinct possibility), the Tower of Babe account predates them all. To be sure, Iā€™m not saying Genesis was written before any of them, but it does say that the Tower of Babel incident in Gen 11 occured before the others were written, thus opening the possibility that all other accounts arose from that unified culture of ā€œone speech.ā€

How many US history books are there? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Would anyone dare suggest that only one of them is original and all the others simply copies and therefore deserved no consideration? I donā€™t think so. They all draw from the same common events and that is how I see all the ANE cosmoligies, including Israelā€™s in Genesis. They all drew from the unified culture that existed before the Tower of Babel. Even after that, the cultures were still quite similar. If fact, I think Itā€™d be odd if there were huge differences between Genesis and Gilgamesh and the others.

The bottom line though is that Genesis, though similar, distanced itself from the others in a rather spectacular way, Yahweh being outside of nature instead as part of it perhaps being the most spectacular.

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Until recently, Iā€™d have been on the side of your professor. The fact that he gave you an A- despite apparently being adamantly against your thesis speaks to his good character. Iā€™m glad to be among those who contributed to your having fun.

Iā€™ve not really delved into the flood, but you sure have given me a place to start. Thanks!

Like yourself, Iā€™m not an expert in ANE culture, only knowing what other who are experts have said. With that in mind, Iā€™ve been wondering if the basic ANE cosmology ultimately came from Adam. I wouldnā€™t take it to the bank at this point, but I do see it as a possibility. It would certainly explain the similarities between the different ANE cultures.

I wonder where the Code of Hammurabi came from. Iā€™d be surprised if it arose on its own, not incorporating still older oral (or perhaps undiscovered written) traditions.

There are tens of thousands of US history books. Iā€™d be loathe to think only one is the ā€œoriginalā€ and the others merely plagiarized from that one, thus deserving little or no consideration. In fact they all draw from the same common pool of historic facts (mostly factual in any case).

Iā€™d think there were commonly accepted rules of societal conduct in existence long before either the Code of Hammurabi or the Pentateuch. They, and all the other law codes of the ANE, drew from an antecedent code of conduct, established long before any were set down in written form.

Interesting idea. It leads to the question: when did Adam live?

As you probably know, many think that Adam in the creation story represents the humankind. Rather than being a person created xxxxx years ago, he could be a symbolic figure. That interpretation would fit better to the long history of humankind and the even longer history of the genus. This is of course just one interpretation, as is the interpretation of Adam being an actual person that is the father of all humanity.

I had that in mind when I used Adam as the possible ultimate source of ANE culture. Itā€™s difficult (impossible?) to know how the original audience to whom God actually communicated understood Adam. Probably not like mainstream Christianity does today. Might have to wait for Jesus to return and ask him about it!

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I think the rules evolved as humans went from living in family groups, to tribes, and then to towns. As humans worked out the division of labor needed to support city life accepted rules would be needed. All of this would have been done pre-writing and so would leave no trace behind. Anthropology might provide the answer. Have you heard of Gƶbekli Tepe?

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Iā€™ve not heard of the Gƶbekli Tepe. Youā€™ve just dumped more research work on me :grinning:! It never ends. Iā€™m trying to understand how Genesis dating fits with archeology. If only I had a 4,000 year old Ancient Near Easterner mind Iā€™d be all set. Iā€™m certainly open to any meaningful ideas.

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The only ā€œdatingā€ available in Genesis 1-11 would be to take the genealogies at face value, but then you run into the problem that humans have been around for more than 6,000 years. Genesis does present a broad picture of human development, cities, agriculture, metal working, etc., but certainly doesnā€™t provide enough detail that you could map it to actual history. But then again that isnā€™t the reason it was written.

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Oh, the Hebrews were very familiar with Babylon. Very, very familiar.

Probably from earlier codes cobbled together with new laws that addressed new situations that came up. You can learn more in this short video by scholar Dan McClellan. One of the things that sets the Law of Moses apart from earlier codes of law is that there is one law for both elites and commoners. In these earlier codes of law the commoners often faced more severe punishment for the same infraction. (Alas, in the laws governing slavery, The Law of Moses was based on race.)

It doesnā€™t. But there are plenty of people who try to make it fit.

That is an odd response. What distance? Abraham is stated to have come from the area, and there was always extensive trade between the Levant and Mesopotamia. There are Old Testament references throughout. Distance would have presented no barrier to the influence of the code of Hammurabi.

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An interesting thing to consider is that each of the candidates left such an impression that it got passed down and was still being told when the next one hit, thus reinforcing the idea that God or the gods used floods to punish people.

IIRC the order of events in the Genesis version matches the order in the (primary) Egyptian version precisely, which is either a fascinating coincidence or deliberate by someone who knew the Egyptian version, This is one reason I think the ā€œfirst draftā€ of the Genesis version was by Moses; it speaks perfectly to the situation of refugees fleeing Egypt.

The Egyptian version was likely known to the Israelites just from living among Egytians; that would make following the Egyptian order of events an effective approach.

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The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Maimonides. He was a superb scholar except when it came to anything in the Tanakh that sounded friendly to Christian views.

ā€œWhen did Adam live?ā€ was my first thought!

Have you encountered the suggestion/proposal that Adam and Eve were the first humans with actual spirits? It accounts for there being enough people for Cain to establish a city (which could have been as small as five hundred people back then) plus the issue of wives for the first sons. The proposal includes the idea that all offspring descended from Adam and Eveā€™s progeny also had spirits, and that they were just enough better than the existing humans to rise to high positions and spread their heritage broadly so that in not too many generations all humans would have had spirits.
It certainly gives a different perspective to the phrase ā€œlife-giving spiritā€.