INTRODUCTION
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) Then, there is a description of the creation of the earth and the different forms of life during a period of six days (yom). The Hebrew word yom have different references; 12 hours, 24 hours, and longer time periods.
A common view among many theologians is that the creation account of the Bible is based on Babylonian accounts, and therefore is mythological. I have taught Akkadian into students for more than a decade, and I have translated Babylonian and Sumerian creation accounts to Norwegian and English.
There is an enormous quality difference between the biblical and Mesopotamian (Sumerian/Akkadian) accounts. The Mesopotamian accounts are polytheistic and contain much mythology, while the biblical account is monotheistic and it accords with the geological finds that have been made.
I will first give a thematic overview of some Mesopotamian accounts showing their mythological nature. Then I make a comparison between the biblical and the Mesopotamian accounts. The Hebrew and Akkadian texts are translated by me.
THE BABYLONIAN CREATION ACCOUNTS
I will not give some excerpts from the Babylonian creation accounts:
THE CREATION OF THE GODS
Tiamat (saltwater) and Apsu (freshwater) mixed their waters together, and the gods were created:
When above, heaven was not named, and the earth below had not been called by name—Apsu, the preeminent one, their begetter, and Tiamat, who bore them all—they mixed their waters together. . . .Then the gods were created in the midst of heaven; Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth…
THE EARTH IS FORMED
Tiamat was not only saltwater but she was also a goddess. She was split into two parts, and of one of the parts, mountains, rivers, and clouds were made:
He split her [Tiamat] in half like a shellfish; half of her he set up and made the heaven as a roof. He stretched out the skin and assigned guards, so that her waters should not escape.
The spittle of Tiamat. . . . Marduk created. . . . He collected it and formed clouds; he raised the wind and let rain fall.
He set her head in place and piled up. . . . He opened up the springs, and the water flowed. He lay open Euphrates and Tigris from her eyes. He closed her nostrils. . . . From her breast he heaped up the lofty mountains. He drilled water holes, so the water could flow. He twisted her tail, and he bound it with the cosmic rope. . . Her upper thigh was placed heavenward . . . he covered and firmly established the earth.
STRANGE CREATURES EXISTED IN THE WATER OF THE EARTH
One account says that “all the lands were ocean” and another account describe the life in the ocean:
It [Oannes, the fishgod] says that there was a time when everything was darkness and water and in this water strange beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men were born with two wings and some with four wings and two faces; these had one body and two heads, and they were both masculine and feminine, and they had two sets of sexual organs, male and female. Other men were also born, some with the legs and horns of goats, and some with the feet of horses and the foreparts of men. They were hippo-centaurs in form
THE HUMANS WERE CREATED
One account says that the Sumerian god We-ila was killed, and the Babylonian goddess Nintu created humans from his flesh and blood. Another account says that the Babylonian god Kingu, who was the consort of the goddess Tiamat, was killed, and the humans were created from his blood.
They slaughtered We-ila, who had a spirit, in their assembly. Nintu mixed clay with flesh and blood. In the following days the drum was heard. From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.
Kingu is the one who started the war; who made Tiamat rebel against us and set battle in motion.” They bound him and put him before Ea (the god of wisdom and medicine). They let him bear the penalty and severed his blood-vessels. From his blood he [Ea] created mankind, on whom he imposed the toil of the gods, and set the gods free.
GEMSTONES GROW ON TREES
Because of the similarity between different kinds of fruits and berries, the belief was that gemstones grew on trees:
Carnelian it bore as its fruits; in clusters they hang down, lovely for the eyes. Lapis-lazuli was its foliage and its fruit; they looked delicious.
THE PLANETS AND STARS WERE GODS
No other nation in ancient times had so much knowledge of the planets and the stars as the Babylonians. They could, for example, calculate the position of the moon or a planet several years into the future. Astrology played an important role for the Babylonians, and the planets and stars were gods:
He fixed the positions for the great gods; he set up the likeness of the shining stars, the constellations; he fixed the year and drew the boundary lines; he set up three shining stars for each of the 12 months.
THE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS
The creation account in the Bible tells about God’s creation during a period of six days, and a comparison of the order of the creation with the order of the fossils in the sedimentary rocks, will be a test of the veracity of the creation account in the Bible. I have for several years worked with this issue, and the result is the book Can We Trust the Bible? — With Focus on the Creation Account, the Worldwide Flood and the Prophecies. The book is based on 180 published geological works and on my own fieldwork. It has 1,500 pages and 1,100 photographs. The E-pub version can be bought from gramma.dk.
The book shows that the order of the created life forms in the Bible is the same as the order of the fossils that we find in the sedimentary rocks. There is one discrepancy though, between geological textbooks and the biblical accounts. According to the Bible, plants on land (terrestrial plants) were created before terrestrial animals. But geological textbooks suggest the opposite. My book contains 9 pages of evidence of plants from the Cambrian (500 million years ago according to geological textbooks) and Pre-Cambrian periods, long before the Silurian (420 million years ago) when it is believed that animals started to colonize the land. So, the account of the Bible corroborates the order of the fossils in the sedimentary rocks.
A COMPARISON BETWEEN CREATION ACCOUNTS IN THE BIBLE AND MESOPOTAMIA
The comparison shows that the Bible has a continuous creation account. But no Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet has such an account. We find different small accounts on different cuneiform tablets. When we put these together, a great part of what the Bible mentions in its created account is not found on any Mesopotamian tablet.
| The Genesis Creation Account | The Mesopotamian Creation Accounts |
| 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was formless and desolate, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said,[2] “Let there be light,” and light came to be. 4 And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And evening came, and morning came, the first day. | E: When above, heaven was not named, and the earth below had not been called by name—Apsu, the preeminent one, their begetter, and Tiamat, who bore them all—they mixed their waters together. . . . Then the gods were created in the midst of heaven; Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth.[3] |
| 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water causing a separation between water and water.” 7 And God made the expanse and caused the separation of the water under the expanse from the water over the expanse. And it came to be so. 8 And God called the expanse “heaven.” And evening came and morning came, the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the heaven be gathered to one place, and let dry land become visible.” And it came to be so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the reservoir of water he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. | E: He split her [Tiamat] in half like a shellfish; half of her he set up and made the heaven as a roof. He stretched out the skin and assigned guards, so that her waters should not escape.[4]
B: A woman named Omorka. . . . ruled over all the creatures. In Chaldean her name was Thalath, which translated into Greek means Thalassa (i.e., “Sea”). When all had been gathered together (into a chaotic mass), Bel rose up and split the woman in two. One half of her he made earth and the other sky; and he destroyed the creatures in her.[5] E: The spittle of Tiamat. . . . Marduk created. . . . He collected it and formed clouds; he raised the wind and let rain fall.[6] He set her head in place and piled up. . . . He opened up the springs, and the water flowed. He lay open Euphrates and Tigris from her eyes. He closed her nostrils. . . . From her breast he heaped up the lofty mountains. He drilled water holes, so the water could flow. He twisted her tail, and he bound it with the cosmic rope. . . Her upper thigh was placed heavenward . . . he covered and firmly established the earth.[7] |
| 11 Then God said, “Let the earth cause vegetation to sprout: green plants yielding seed, and trees with fruit, yielding fruit with seed in it, after its kind.[8] 12 And the earth caused vegetation to go out: green plants yielding seed, after its kind, and trees yielding fruit with seed in it, after its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And evening came, and morning came, the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day from the night: and let them serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years, 15 and let them be luminaries in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth.” And it came to be so. 16 And God made two great luminaries, the greater luminary to have dominion over the day and the lesser to have dominion over the night, and also the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And evening came, and morning came, the fourth day. |
CT: All the lands were sea. . . . Marduk wove a raft on the face of the waters. He created dirt and poured it on the raft. . . .The lord and god Marduk filled in landfill by the edge of the sea. Ea established the sea, the reed thicket, and the dry land.[9]
G: Carnelian it bore as its fruits; in clusters they hang down, lovely for the eyes. Lapis-lazuli was its foliage and its fruit; they looked delicious.[10] E: He fixed the positions for the great gods; he set up the likeness of the shining stars, the constellations; he fixed the year and drew the boundary lines; he set up three shining stars for each of the 12 months.[11] |
| 20 And God said, “Let the water swarm with living souls that move, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heaven.” 21 And God created the great creatures of the sea and all the living souls that crawl and swarm in the water, and every winged flying creature after its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and become many and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds become many on the earth.” 23 And evening came, and morning came, the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the earth cause living souls to come forth after their kinds: animals, creeping creatures, and beasts[12] of the earth, after their kinds. And it came to be so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth after their kinds, and the animals after their kinds, and every creeping creature on the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good. |
CT: . . . are present; the viper, sea-serpent, great dragon, scorpi[on-man], gazelle, zebu, water buffalo, [p]anther, bull-m[an], . . . [l]ion, wolf, red-deer, hyen[a], [monk]ey, female-monkey, ibex, ostrich, cat, chameleon, [. . .] beasts which Marduk created on top of the res[tl]ess Sea.[13] |
| 26 And God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the heaven, over all the animals, and over all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth. 27 And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many; fill the earth and subdue it. And rule over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the heavens, and over every beast that is moving on the earth.” | E: “Kingu is the one who started the war; who made Tiamat rebel against us and set battle in motion.” They bound him and put him before Ea. They let him bear the penalty and severed his blood-vessels. From his blood he [Ea] created mankind, on whom he imposed the toil of the gods, and set the gods free.[14]
H: Let them slay a god, and let the gods . . . . With his flesh and his blood, let Ninhursag mix clay. God and man united (?) in the clay.[15] A: They slaughtered We-ila, who had a spirit, in their assembly. Nintu mixed clay with flesh and blood. In the following days the drum was heard. From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.[16] H: (Then) Anu, Enlil, Shamash, (and) Ea, the great gods. . . . The Anunnaki, who fix the destinies. Both (groups) of them, made an answer to Enlil: “In Uzumua, the bond of heaven and earth, let us slay (two) Lamga gods. With their blood let us create mankind.”[17] H: Skilled worker to produce for skilled worker, and unskilled worker for unskilled worker, springing up by themselves like grain from the ground.”[18] B: It [sc. Oannes] says that there was a time when everything was darkness and water and in this water strange beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men were born with two wings and some with four wings and two faces; these had one body and two heads, and they were both masculine and feminine, and they had two sets of sexual organs, male and female. Other men were also born, some with the legs and horns of goats, and some with the feet of horses and the foreparts of men. They were hippo-centaurs in form.[19] |
[1]. Mesopotamia is the region of southwest Asia between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, where Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia were located.
[2]. In the first 28 verses of Genesis chapter 1, there are 44 examples of the verb form called waw consecutive or imperfect consecutive. These forms express actions that are continuing. In English, there is no form that matches the nuances of imperfect consecutive exactly, and therefore I have rendered the forms with simple past, instead of using different means to try to make the continuing actions visible in the English text. This means that I use the rendering “God said” instead of “God proceeded to say” or “God was saying,” which are more correct.
For a discussion of the continuing actions of these forms, see Furuli, A New Understanding of the Verbal System of Classical Hebrew: An Attempt to Distinguish Between Semantic and Pragmatic Factors, chapter 6.
[3]. Enuma Elish I:1–10. The Hebrew account says that the eternal God, Jehova, created matter, whereas the Babylonian view was that matter was eternal. This is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus (II, 30). See Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 89.
[4]. Enuma Elish IV:137–140.
[5]. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus, 2–3a.
[6]. Enuma Elish V:47–50.
[7]. Ibid., V:53–58.
[8]. The word dæshæ, which is translated as “vegetation,” can refer to anything that sprouts, to grass and vegetation. The word ‘œsæb, which is translated as “green plant,” can refer to grass and other green plants. The word ‘ēts, which is translated as “tree,” can refer to trees of different kinds and to plants such as flax.
[9]. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 129–132.
[10]. The Gilgamesh Epic IX:170–175. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 102, says: “The idea that gems ‘grew on trees’ in distant lands might have been strengthened by perceived similarities between the shape and color of certain gemstones and fruits.”
[11]. Enuma Elish V:1–4.
[12]. The word behēmā , which is translated as “animal,” can refer to animals in general, to beasts, and to domestic animals. The word hayya, which is translated as “beast,” can refer to all kinds of animals, including wild ones. Because both words have many references, they are both given a general rendering.
[13]. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, The Babylonian Map of the World, 20–25. Horowitz translated the text.
[14]. Enuma Elish VI:29–34.
[15]. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 67.
[16]. Atrahasis I:224–228.
[17]. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 69.
[18]. Ibid., 71. The view of this text seems to be that man grows up from the earth like a plant.
[19]. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus, 2:1, 14.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
There is an enormous quality difference between the Mesopotamian accounts of creation and what the Bible says. The creation account in the Bible is sublime and accords with the laws of nature and the fossils of the sedimentary rocks. The Mesopotamian accounts are polytheistic and mythological and give us no reasonable explanation of the creation of the earth and the life on it.
On the basis of the comparison between the two, it is in no way reasonable to claim that the author of the creation account in the Bible borrowed from the Mesopotamian creation accounts. Because the biblical account is consistent with all our scientific knowledge, we can view it as a true, historical account. However, no human was present when the creation occurred, and therefore, the creation account in the Bible must have been given to its author by inspiration from God.
