Creation Myths

Pretty much every civilization or groups of people have come up with some idea on how the world was formed. It is such an essential question that is always asked and creation myths are made in response. Most cultures do not share the same story, but there are similarities between many creation myths. In the case of the Babylonian myth and the Genesis myth, a few parallels can be drawn, not only in content but also in structure. First, I will tackle the structural similarities. In the Babylonian myth, it was originally written on 7 tablets, each containing roughly 150 lines. In Genesis, God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Genesis could have had more days for the world to be built or less days, but it went with 7, the same number as the amount of tablets. Maybe its coincidence, maybe its the supernatural, or maybe its theft. Another similarity between the two stories is that certain parts are repeated throughout at different points. In the case of Genesis, the line "God saw how good it was" is written in all but one of the days, the second. Also, at the end of each day the line "Evening came, and morning followed" precedes the writing of the number of the day. As you can see, repetition was prominent and noticeable in Genesis, and it was also there in the Babylonian story. The repetition here is much longer than that in Genesis, so I won't post the whole thing. This quote though is part of the much longer repetition.

"She has made the Worm
the Dragon
the Female Monster
the Great Lion
the Mad Dog
the Man Scorpion
the Howling Storm
Kulili
Kusariqu "

The full repeating verse is seen in the story three times, and not too far from each other, and it occurs while Tiamat is still living.

The other similarities between the two myths are from the content. In Genesis, God is the sole creator of the world, and nobody else. In the Babylonian"s myth, Marduk is the creator of the world. Even though there were other gods, Marduk was the strongest and he was responsible for the creation of the world. Another parallel is the creation of man. In the Babylonian version, man was created from the blood of Kingu. So in a sense, man holds relation to Kingu. In Genesis God said "Let us make man in our image"(I am guessing the plural infers the Holy Trinity), so man is also alike to God. Therefore, in both stories man is somehow in connection to the gods, whether it be from their blood or their image. There is another similarity withing a difference. In Genesis, its just starts off by saying the creator was there and doesnt go into background of how that creator came to be."In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,. For the Babylonians, they tell how Marduk, the creator, came to be from other gods. However, they fail to tell how those gods came to be. So in both myths, there is just something there to start with, but neither explain how that came to be.

What I find more interesting than the similarities are the differences. The two major differences are that the Babylonians had multiple Gods and violence was a central theme throughout the myth. For the Babylonians, Marduk thought "what to create from the dead carcass" and decided on creating the world. These differences could just be differences just based on how things happened. Or, perhaps they could be lessons learned. Genesis was written well after the Babylonian creation myth was written. Perhaps writers pick and chose what aspect the wanted to keep and what they wanted new. They kept subtleties like repetiton, the number 7, and other basic concept. However, many aspects were changed, like polytheistic to monotheistic and violence to peace. The change to monotheism could have been in order to simplify things in order to gain more backing. Also, peace could be used to promote the religion over violent stories and get away from savageness.