| Is Genesis a Plagiarism of Ancient Mesopotamian Mythology?
The Mesopotamian epic of creation begins with
"When on high the heaven had not been named
Firm ground below had not been called by name
... Their waters commingling as a single body
Then it was the gods were formed within them"
as compared to Genesis
"... And the earth was without form and void
And darkness was upon the face of the deep
And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters"
The parallels are quite obvious there.
In addition, the figure "Tiamat" is associated with the waters of primeval chaos in the Mesopotamian epic, and coincidentally the Hebrew word for the watery deep in the opening of Genesis is etymologically-related to the name Tiamat.
The hero-god "Marduk", saves the earth from Tiamat by introducing a flood storm, and subsequently divides her carcass like a shellfish into two parts, creating the heavens and the earth and assigns the lesser gods (angels?) their roles.
What is to be said of the similarities in context between these two narratives, both apparently "divined", but separated by 3500 years? |