A comparison of the genesis and enuma elish two creation stories

His name is actually written with only the consonants YHWH. In the Hebrew writing the vowels are, if at all written, marked with diacritics additional signswhich is never or only rarely done with YHWH. The reason may be that according to old tradition his name should not be pronounced.

David Livingston One Viewpoint Many professors in colleges, universities and seminaries today agree with the following ideas and teach them to their students.

This is one reason young people who have had a strong religious faith lose it when they go to college. This extreme view has now been abandoned by all but fundamentalists. The abandonment of the Genesis Creation Story as a factual account has become so prevalent that some denominations now treat it as "myth" in their Sunday School material.

However, the fundamentalist view is not "extreme". It is based on fact. The latter were written for a completely different purpose. They are not really about the creation of the universe at all. Each myth is different with its local adaptations. The Biblical history has unity, never changing, as the myths do with each succeeding king.

The first account of Creation Genesis 1: God is here named "Elohim". The second account Genesis 2: He did not, however, eliminate certain contradictory details in the order of creation. Their opinions are that the Creation stories were made up quite late, precluding any Mosaic authorship.

They claim without proof other than some seeming similarities that they were borrowed from the literature of other nations.

Even though competent scholars have demonstrated that the Pentateuch Torah is much older than these men claim, the critics, nevertheless, continue to press their viewpoint.

That their contentions hold sway even among church educators can be seen in a sample from a publication for the instruction of laymen. Out of these sources Genesis through Numbers they formed what is called the "Priestly History.

The community had been destroyed and the people scattered. How should they plan for the future?

The Seven Tablets of Creation: Introduction

The priests turned to the past for their guidelines. Looking at it this way, religion could be used as an " opiate. In the latter, the Tabernacle is described, the priestly order is laid out, the sacrificial system and feast days are all instituted.

The above authors claim that these Old Testament books the Tanakh were written for the same purpose as all other Ancient Near Eastern documents were written - to control men through religion.

This key event, by which the exilic priests interpreted the meaning of history, was the central event to which Israel had looked for centuries. They were trying to present the theological meaning of creation. They never borrowed the mythological materials unchanged, but always transformed them into ways of describing the actions of the one God of the world.

So we do not read this creation story for accurate information about the process of creation. In answer to the question "Did it happen exactly this way?

The growth of civilization, for example, depicted in chapter 4 is patently nonhistorical. We hope the reader will discern the error in their interpretation.Join PhoeniciaOrg Twitter for alerts on new articles: Visit our Facebook Page for additional, new studies: The God-Idea of the Ancients.

The name of one of the oldest deities of which we have any record is Set (Phoenician) or Seth (Hebrew). Enuma Elish and Genesis have the strongest connection in their first lines--"In the beginning" vs. "When on high." "When on high." Some say that Genesis is written as a polemic against Enuma Elish.

, Life on Earth regresses during a new glacial period. , Climate warms again. The Anunnaki (the biblical Nefilim), to Enlil’s growing annoyance, marry the daughters of Man. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, he presented a summary of the Enuma Elish fragments known by that time.

Next year he published the first book about the Enuma Elish text, The Chaldean Account of initiativeblog.com book is richly illustrated, and specifies already on the title page that it contains: “The description of the creation, the fall of man, the deluge, the tower of Babel, the times of. * Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts, Simon & Schuster.

Genesis - With thanks to page sponsor Suffolk Christian Church, Suffolk, Virginia Rev. Michael D. Halley, Pastor. Reading the Text: NRSV (with link to.