Babylonians vs. Hebrews.

Babylonians vs. Hebrews The Hebrew creation story, found in Genesis from the Hebrew Bible, was based upon the story of one creator, God, the order of how things were created and the lives of the first man and woman. The Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, instead of having one god, had two god in the beginning, Tiamat and Apsu, and was the story of how several gods were born, thus creating different elements of earth, as well as the creation of the different features of the world after the battle between Tiamat and Marduk. Though, at first glance, these two different creation stories are dynamically different, closer inspection leads us to know that there are several similarities between these two accounts of the formation of the earth: the way the story was told, how many celestial beings were in each myth, how the earth was created, how humans were created, and the reason for humans to exist. In the Bible, Eve had eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil thus banishing both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. As punishment, God told Eve, “…thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” (Leeming 28) This shows that the Hebrew was a patriarchal society, and this story had an innuendo of justification of why men must control women. In the Enuma Elish, humans are not as prominent as the Hebrew Bible, but the creation of humans was more of an afterthought, but it does teach us about what is really important to the Babylonians and that is to serve the gods. Enuma Elish explained how man was created to serve the gods. In both myths there is a presence of the ability to make things appear with speaking. In the Hebrew Bible, God was able to create the heavens, earth, and everything within them by just simply speaking (minus humans). In the Enuma Elish, Marduk to prove to the other gods that he is different than they are made a cloth disappear and reappear by simply speaking. The close proximity between the two cultures, there

Cited: --- Brown, Diane. Enuma Elish excerpts Excerpted from Seven Tablets of Creation L.W. King, …..….trans. London: np., 1902. Quoted in Sacred Texts. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Handout. Valencia ……. College. 30 Jan. 2012 ---Leeming, David Adams. The World of Myth: An Anthology. Oxford, NY: Oxford University ……..Press. 1990. Print.