GOD and RELIGION….Part 2
The ‘Enuma Elish’ is a lengthy Babylonian creation story. A written version dating to the 12th century BCE was found in Nineveh about two hundred and fifty kilometres north of Babylon. Nineveh had been the capital of Assyrian. Babylon no longer exists, but at that time it was about eighty-five kilometres south of modern-day Bagdad, in Iraq.
Famous stories such as the ‘Fall of Man’ and the ‘Great Flood’ were originally written down in Sumer. They were then translated and modified later in Babylon, and reworked by the Assyrians before they were used by the Hebrew scribes for the versions which appear in the Bible. Scholars have been able to establish that the Genesis account borrowed from this myth and made significant changes to it. Both Genesis and Enuma Elsih are religious texts which detail and celebrate cultural origins. Enuma Elish recounts the origin and founding of Babylon under the leadership of the god Marduk: Genesis describes the origin and founding of the Jewish people under the guidance of the Lord (Elohim in Genesis 1 or Yhwh in Genesis 2).
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