Creation

Have you ever heard the Mesopotamian creation narrative called, Enuma Elish?

Well, it is a creation narrative that was around back before Moses' day. It was also supposedly a story that was from the same general geographical area. What is interesting is that there are a few ties between it and the Creation Narratives found in Genesis 1 and 2.

Although a few similarities are present, many differences exist.

In the Enuma Elish, there are primarily three gods that get the most air time. Apsu is the father god, Tiamat is the Mother and Marduk is a god who is born a little later. Anyway, the story begins with Apsu and Tiamut having a bunch of god children. After a while Apsu begins to get annoyed with the noisiness and playfulness of the children. Apsu goes to Tiamat and presents a plan to kill the kids so they can have some peace and quiet. Tiamat rejects this plan; however, two of the siblings overhear the conversation and share this with all of their other siblings.

Granted you would probably be ticked too if you dad was talking to your mother about doing you in. Well, the children rise up against Apsu and kill him. Tiamat is infuriated. She creates monsters to attack and destroy the children. During the bloody battles Marduk rises up and defeats the monsters and pursues Tiamat.

He kills Tiamat and slices her in half. Her top half becomes the sky (clouds, sun, moon, stars...) Her bottom half creates planet earth.

All of the children gods, begin a great celebration. But then a problem arises--no one wants to serve the gods. Every wants to party without responsibility.

Marduk comes up with this grand idea, let's create humans to be our slaves. They will serve the gods and we can just live the high life.

Well, as you can tell this is a pretty ugly, bloody battle that creates planet earth. Secondly, human kind has no real value; they are just slaves; that is their whole purpose.

Now just imagine with me... if you were the leaders of tribe that was bordering on becoming a 'great' nation, and you wanted to get stubborn people to do your work for you to build the buildings and so forth... what would you do... How about create a religion that objectifies humankind and makes them worthless, except as slaves to be traded.

Well you can imagine what kind of nation Babylon was.

Well, tune in later for part two to hear about how the Genesis Creation Narratives differ...