Creation Story

EGYPTIAN AND BABYLONIAN ORIGINS OF GENESIS
It is well understood in scholarly circles that there are many similar themes in the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Genesis stories of creation. It is necessary to understand that these similarities exist before delving into the spiritual meaning of Genesis.

To help understand those similarities, this page includes three articles that discuss them in some detail. It will be helpful for readers to notice words and phrases in bold type that identify Babylonian and Egyptian creation myth concepts that also appear in the Genesis narrative.

This link summarizes the similarities like this:

In all the stories one god creates man and explains how all things on earth come to being. They also set up their calendars and show examples of evil within each story to set up moral rules for man to live by. How do these elements compare between each of these stories?

In the Babylonian myth the God Marduk creates man from the blood of another god Kingu. “Blood will I compose, bring a skeleton into being, Produce a lowly, primitive creature, ‘Man’ shall be his name.” In Egyptian myth the God Rae creates man and takes this form. In the Genesis story there is only one God, he creates man in the image of himself. In the Babylonian and Egyptian stories, the major difference is they have many Gods. Also, in the Genesis story God creates man in his likeness, this might be the case with the Babylonian story, but that is not clear. The major similarity is that all three of the stories only have one God that creates mankind.

All the stories show how things came onto the Earth and how it was made; they also set up their calendars at the same time. 

Egyptian and Babylonian similarities to the Genesis story are confirmed in the following abstract of a paper by Kirsten Theuma in the following article titled Compare and contrast the models of creation found in the myths of Mesopotamia, the Levant, and ancient Egypt.

The term ‘myth’ deals with stories and suppositions which are not true or which can exist only through one’s capability of imagination. In spite of this fanciful theme, myths are extremely popular worldwide and they are inherited by means of oral speech from one generation to another….

Such myths may be found preserved in the archaeological records through written sources like clay tablets, which are believed to have emerged from the deities themselves. Such myths may relate to several different subjects, but through this essay, creation myths specifically from the Levant, Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt will be tackled thoroughly…

Myths dealing with creation can take several different forms. Creation myths are very broad and more than that, they are split into sections, depending from what creation emerged from. Such may include the creation from a cosmic egg, creation from chaos or simply creation from nothing as in the case for the creation of the world in the book of Genesis. When something is created out of nothing, it is called ex nihilo. This term can be used for Genesis  and also for other myths for which the world was believed to have been created out of nothing….

The book of Genesis  especially the first two chapters, were written based on mythical creation models from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. This similarity can be noticed from the very first sentence of the book of Genesis which reads; “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…”  In fact, this sentence shares a similarity of words with the Babylonian myth  Enuma Elish which  begins with “when on high”.…..

It has been argued that since this Babylonian epic is much older than the creation story for Genesis, Moses could have used the Babylonian myth in order to write his own creation account. More than that, due to the several similarities which exist between these two stories, and since they are both Near Eastern creation accounts, Genesis is also taken in consideration to be a myth….
Moving further into the texts of both creation myths, one can observe that in the beginning primeval chaos is implied and that water is split into lower and upper waters. Another two similarities which suggest a strong link between Genesis and Enuma Elish can be seen through numbers. For Genesis, man is created on the 6th day while for the Babylonian epic, the creation of man occurs in the 6th tablet. In addition, Enuma Elish is written on seven clay tablets while the world according to Genesis was created in a period of seven days. As aforementioned, due to the several similarities which these two myths have in common, they are taken into consideration to have materialized “within a similar conceptual world”….
The similarity which exists between the Genesis 
which is a Hebraic work and other Babylonian works is not something which has been discovered recently. From the time of the historian Titus Flavius Josephus who lived in the 1st
century A.D and possibly even earlier, this similarity in the creation accounts was already noted. In the meantime, Josephus is thought to have depended on another writer and priest from Babylon named Berossus….
Although there is a difference for Genesis  in regards to the number of gods, the notion of water is also present for the Biblical story. In fact, in the Bible there is the line as follows: 
“ the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” This suggests that in the very beginning when God created the world from a watery chaos is very similar to the way in which Enuma Elish begins. The mentioned notion of having salt water separated from soft water is to some extent similar also for another Egyptian myth, namely that from Hermopolis. For this myth (Hermopolis), the primeval waters serve a very important part of the creation process as is the case for Enuma Elish. Furthermore, the deities which represent these waters can be taken in consideration to be the creator gods….

Comparisons of Egyptian and Genesis creation stories are also discussed in this extract of Egyptian Mythology Creation Story:

The ancient Egyptians had a vivid imagination that led to a number of complex versions of how the ancient Egyptians were created. They believed at the moment of creating a world order was created which contained the basic principles of life, nature, and society that were governed by the gods at the moment of creation. All the pyramids texts from the old kingdom (2780-2250 BC) located on the pyramid walls, tombs, temples, and the legendary book of the dead showcases all the information related to the creation myth….

Before the invention of time, the universe was full of endless dark waters and swirling chaos that appeared in the shape of an infinite expanse of straying invisible dark waters called Nun. In the darkness was a primordial hill known as the ben-ben on which rose a great god Ra (Atum) who created himself out of the Nun, who felt lonely and decided to create life using his magic known as Heka….

It is believed that the creator god Amun came from the Nun as the Bennu Bird then went to the sun city of Heliopolis where he constructed a nest called Pyramidion where the bennu was miraculously brought to life from the breath of fire. The Bennu became a symbol of immortality and rebirth….

He gave life to two children Shu (god of air) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture), they rapidly began creating the principles of life and order. They started building the world while leaving their father Ra on the Ben-Ben in the middle of chaos and sadness so he sent his eyes in search for them and when they returned with his eyes, in a moment of absolute happiness, he shed tears of joy that fertilized the earth of the Ben-Ben and gave birth to men and women….

It took a long time to create the heavens at the same time where the ancient Egyptian gods lived in the earth which was seen as a sacred landscape and a true reflection of the heavens, it was divided into kingdoms built on the basis of justice….

After the creation of humans, Shu and Tefnut created Geb (the earth) and Nut (the sky). Despite Geb and Nut being brother and sister, they fell in love which angered Ra, so he ordered Shu to separate them for eternity, but it was too late as Nut was pregnant with Geb’s children. In anger, Ra ordered Nut not to give birth in any month of any year so the god of knowledge “Thoth” gambled the moon and was able to add five extra days to the official calendar of 360 days where Nut was able to give birth to Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the elder….

Osiris has shown himself to be a judicious and thoughtful god who was given the rule of the world. At the end of days, Ra will wipe the world out and return to the primeval mound, everything will be gone except for Osiris the Ruler of the Underworld. There is a possibility for a new creation to replace the old world with a new one….

From these reviews of Babylonian and Egyptian creation myths, it should be easy for anyone, including Jews and Christians, to see that Genesis contains many concepts found in Babylonian and Egyptian myths. To appreciate this relationship, it is also helpful to know the following:

      • Genesis was written around 1400 BCE.
      • The  Enuma Elish was written between 1900–1600 BCE.
      • The Egyptian Creation Myth was written around 3100–2686 BCE

The significance of these historical facts is that the Babylonian and Egyptian myths predate Genesis by at least several hundred years. This is important to know because ancient Israel lived in the social, religious and political context of both Babylon and Egypt and would have been very familiar with both religions and their respective myths.

This information is useful, however, only to disabuse people — especially Jews and Christians — from the belief that Genesis is an original, unique, factual, historical, report of the beginning of the universe and world. The truth is that the authors of  Genesis borrowed some of the imagery (see words and phrases in bold in articles above) found in the Egyptian and Babylonian creation myths when they wrote Genesis. This was a reasonable thing to do because Israelites were familiar with those myths and because those images were similar to the dreamlike visions they saw when they heard God’s voice speak to them about creation.

It is critical to acknowledge that Genesis is not just a myth modeled after themes found in Egyptian and Babylonian creation myths. While Genesis does contain some of the imagery found in those earlier myths, it should not be interpreted as just another pagan religious myth. It must be interpreted with respect to the biblical symbolism found elsewhere in the bible.

It is impossible to learn about God and his ways without understanding that symbolism. The complicated truth about the miracle of creation is found in that symbolism.

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