Does it bother Christians that their 'Creation' story in Genesis is stolen from the Babylonians?

Question

Chapter one is the story of the God EL creating everything.

Chapter two (approx.) is a rewrite which makes editorial changes to the order of events and substitutes the name of the God YHVH, to make it match the Hebrew mythology.

I think it's pretty sad that group claiming to have the 'Truth' is using a hand me down cosmology, and we have the crib notes showing exactly where the story was taken from and what changes were made to it.

Sort of blows a hole in your story, doesn't it?

Lori K, don't you mean that prophets of all religions made stuff up, and when they had the chance to steal a better story from someone else, they always took it.

mad_mav70, those 'many cultures' were all in the same region and simply copied and modified each others stories. Once you move beyond Asia Minor and the Middle East, the stories change.

HannahJPaul, You are cutting and pasting from an apologetics source/

I can cut and paste the opinions of Mormon scholars which claim to have proof that Native Americans are the Lost Tribes of Israel and that the Garden of Eden is in Missouri.

Of course, it's all lies.

PaulCyp, the Old Testament refers to bats as birds.

Answer 1

It doesn't surprise me. C.S. Lewis said it didn't surprise him either. God has put in every man knowlege of Him.

Answer 2

Long before the many civilization of man, there is only one religion, that of the True God mentioned in the bible.

Notice the similarities of the story of the Global Flood in other religions...this happened before the Tower of Babel incident (root of Babylon). So all the people basically knew the flood story, even creation and the Nephilims and all that happened before they were scattered around the earth because of language differences. The one who inititiated the Tower of Babel project was Nimrod, a man who does not believe in God...he opposed God and created an empire that is exactly the opposite of what God stated his followers should do.

Many of these teachings you will still see in CHRISTENDOM (and not Christanity) ...teachings of hellfire, immortal soul, veneration of a mother (Ishtar and Mary), saints...etc. So you do have a point that there are things that religions today copied from the Babylonians...note that it is not Christianity but Christendom.

It might be that the Babylonians did wrote a book regarding creation first than Moses did....this all the more proves that the creation story is not a myth....might be that the Babylonians changed the name of God and was not the Israelites who did....

Answer 3

Ok- so the Babylonians recorded their stories before Moses wrote the book of Genesis?

So - its all about who wrote it down first?


Do you not realize that Adam and Eve and then Noah and his family of 7 were the forefathers of ALL of mankind?

Hence, as these national groups developed after the confusing of the languages at the Tower of Babel (which BTW became Babylon) they ALL took the creation account with them.

Sure - the story was changed over time by some of those groups - and the farther away they went in time and distance the more was lost and changed - but ALL the creation stories in every nation have their basis and start in the Garden of Eden.




Reasoning on it kind of blows a hole in your theory, doesn't it?

Answer 4

Every group of people has some creation story.
The fact that the stories are often similar to one another, or to the stories the ancient ones told doesn't make the Christian's story any less "true"

Albert Einstein:

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Alfred North Whitehead:

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Anais Nin:

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Anais Nin:

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

Answer 5

The earlier one didn't happen you fool, the Devil planted it to confuse people away from Christianity. EDIT It seems as if you'll just have to assume that I'm being entirely serious.

Answer 6

The Bible Compared to Other Ancient Religious Books

In the 10th chapter of the book of Genesis we are told that the sons of Noah founded all of the races of mankind that exist on earth today. This marks a common starting point of the understanding of the history of man up to that point in time. Unless an infallible method of record keeping existed to pass this historical knowledge along to future generations the record would become distorted over time. To add to this probability of a distorted record, in Genesis 11 we have the story of God confusing the common language of mankind and dispersing humanity over the face of the earth. While the stories of the creation, the fall of mankind, and of the great flood might be passed along to future generations, without some unifying force to keep them intact they would inevitably degenerate over time. If the stories that the Bible tells up to the time of the dispersion of Babel had failed to have similar counterparts in other cultures then there would be good reason to believe that these stories were made up by Jewish writers at some later date.

Answer 7

"Some persons seek to associate the Biblical account of creation with mythological pagan accounts, such as the well-known Babylonian Creation Epic. Actually, there were various creation stories in ancient Babylon, but the one that has become well known is a myth having to do with Marduk, Babylon’s national god. Briefly, the story tells of the existence of the goddess Tiamat and the god Apsu, who became the parents of other deities. The activities of these gods became so distressing to Apsu that he determined to destroy them. However, Apsu was killed by one of these gods, Ea, and when Tiamat sought to avenge Apsu, she was killed by Ea’s son Marduk, who then split her body, using half of it to form the sky and using the other half in connection with the earth’s establishment. Marduk’s subsequent acts included creating mankind (with Ea’s aid), using the blood of another god, Kingu, the director of Tiamat’s hosts.

"In his book, P. J. Wiseman points out that, when the Babylonian creation tablets were first discovered, some scholars expected further discovery and research to show that there was a correspondency between them and the Genesis account of creation. Some thought that it would become apparent that the Genesis account was borrowed from the Babylonian. However, further discovery and research have merely made apparent the great gulf between the two accounts. They do not parallel each other. Wiseman quotes The Babylonian Legends of the Creation and the Fight Between Bel and the Dragon, issued by the Trustees of the British Museum, who hold that “the fundamental conceptions of the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts are essentially different.” He himself observes: “It is more than a pity that many theologians, instead of keeping abreast of modern archaeological research, continue to repeat the now disproved theory of Hebrew ‘borrowings’ from Babylonian sources.”—Creation Revealed in Six Days, London, 1949, p. 58.

"While some have pointed to what seemed to them to have been similarities between the Babylonian epic and the Genesis account of creation, it is readily apparent from the preceding consideration of the Biblical creation narrative and the foregoing epitome of the Babylonian myth that they are not really similar. Therefore, a detailed analysis of them side by side is unnecessary. However, in considering seeming similarities and differences (such as the order of events) in these accounts, Professor George A. Barton observed: “A more important difference lies in the religious conceptions of the two. The Babylonian poem is mythological and polytheistic. Its conception of deity is by no means exalted. Its gods love and hate, they scheme and plot, fight and destroy. Marduk, the champion, conquers only after a fierce struggle, which taxes his powers to the utmost. Genesis, on the other hand, reflects the most exalted monotheism. God is so thoroughly the master of all the elements of the universe, that they obey his slightest word. He controls all without effort. He speaks and it is done. Granting, as most scholars do, that there is a connection between the two narratives, there is no better measure of the inspiration of the Biblical account than to put it side by side with the Babylonian. As we read the chapter in Genesis today, it still reveals to us the majesty and power of the one God, and creates in the modern man, as it did in the ancient Hebrew, a worshipful attitude toward the Creator.”—Archaeology and the Bible, 1949, pp. 297, 298."

The above is a full quote from the Bible Encyclopedia sourced below.

Hannah J Paul

Answer 8

Liar liar friar in fire.

The fact that the Babylonians had a story does not indicate this. In fact you are repeating defunct material.

A P.J. Wiseman, in this source "Creation Revealed in Six Days", London, 1949, p. 58. shows what you say to be untrue.

Because the material is copyrighted, I do not want to post it here. But contact me and I'll send it to you.

Answer 9

Quite honestly no... the Bible, exactly as it stands today, has hugely transformed my selfish life into a very positive life.

People can argue statistics, dates and ages- I'll leave that to them- if they think that makes them into better human beings.
Or if they think that denigrating or trying to belittle the belief of others will make Earth a more wonderful place to live... I leave such things to them.

As for me, I know I'd be divorced, likely in some dead-end loser job, addicted to one or more soul-destroying activities and without friends or self-respect... without the Bible's powerful effect on my life.

Thanks 4 listening.

Answer 10

Not at all, pretty much confirms the truth. If many different cultures have similar historical traditions then that would validate the fact that we all had the same starting point.

Answer 11

I don't think that "blows a hole" in the story! So somebody else was on the right track... how does that affect the Bible? Besides, the Babylonians knew God too... you don't think He provides insight to those who ask?

So I'm not "bothered" but instead I am thankful that God provides us with so many ways to understand Him!

Be blessed!