Similarities with the Creation Story and the Flood Account

(a) Moses’ Polemical Style

Since in the ANE there existed several ancient creation stories prior to the writing of Genesis 1-2, some scholars have claimed that the biblical creation account was influenced by, e.g., Babylonian mythology. Moses wrote the true creation account under divine inspiration to correct the distortions found in the mythological accounts of creation. Moses obviously avoided certain terms (bigger and lesser light instead of sun and moon) that could convey wrong conceptions (the terms for sun and moon would refer also to a god of the sun and a god of the moon). Further, in the biblical account, everything was created out of nothing rather than from defeated enemies. There is no struggle or war among the gods. The biblical creation account presents one God. It is a polemic against mythological stories and it is unique.

(b) Enuma Elish

The Enuma Elish creation account pointing out that creation out of a primordial conflict was a common motif in the ANE. Yet the Genesis creation account stands in stark contrast to it. Although such elements as the heavens, the earth, the sea/deep, and the sea “monsters” are mentioned, they do not represent fighting deities or a source of chaos.

(c) The Epic of Athrahasis

While there are some basic similarities between the biblical creation and flood account and the epic of Athrahasis, there are nevertheless many differences. Thus the biblical account does not present heaven, water, and earth as gods; humanity is not created from the blood of the rebellious leader of the junior gods. Further, the flood did not occur because the human population disturbed the rest of the deities but because of their wickedness and sinfulness. No, emphatically, Moses did not borrow ideas or concepts from this epic.

(d) The Epic of Gilgamesh

The storyline of the Gilgamesh epic and its tone is totally different from the biblical flood story. The account in Gen 6:11-13 plays with the word shachat (corrupt, destroy), explaining that the flood was God’s reaction against human society’s total corruption and violence rather than a capricious act of an angry deity. The biblical writers did not live in isolation. They knew the literature of their time and they used extra-biblical material to communicate competently. They used contemporary structures, styles, concepts, and language for the same purpose. Yet the biblical writers did not give credit to the original sources or authors because that was not customary in ancient times.

Truth found truth shared. CM

As we (believers) always claim, read the bible carefully and pay attention to the context, let the bible explain itself and don’t believe anyone who cannot support his claims when you ask him to prove them from the bible, while reading the bible, so that you could not be deceived. Don’t believe anyone without checking everything you are told first and verifying every claim, the bible clearly warns us against deceivers (In this article, I put only two warnings out of dozens, I bet that you all are aware of many more):

2 Timothy 4:3-4: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

Acts 20:28-30: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.

Now, lets look at what the bible says about the creation of mankind:

Genesis 1:26-27: “Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it”

Does it mean that Eve didn’t exist yet? Lets see:

Genesis 2:18: “The Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

It seems to be so, but can it be?

Remember, we must assume the bible is consistent because it was inspired by God and God never lies and never changes (read Numbers 23:19), therefore, we must conclude that we misunderstood, but then, what and why?

Lets continue to read and let the bible explain:

Genesis 2:19-20: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.”

As we all know, the word “make” and the word “create” do not mean the same thing.

We all can make things happen, but in the biblical context, only God can create, but in this case God didn’t use the word “create”, why?

The bible answers:

Genesis 2:21: “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. “

You must ask “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense! This is creation as this is supernatural! we cannot do that! What does that mean?” , but don’t worry, keep on reading and it will make things clearer:

Genesis 2:22: “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

This makes less sense than the previous verse, doesn’t it? Lets continue to read and try to understand:

Genesis 2:23: “The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

Was that why the woman was called “woman”? In order to understand that, please keep in mind that the old testament was originally written in Hebrew, not English, as English didn’t even exist at that time, and each noun in Hebrew (and any other Semitic language) has a gender, therefore, it is not possible to understand the context of the last verse without knowing the Hebrew words for “man” and “woman”, so here they are: “Ish” for “Man” and “Isha” for “Woman”, I have to tell you, that for animals that are not hermaphrodites (such as slugs) or without a gender (such as jellyfish), the feminine form of the Hebrew name of that animal ends with the suffix “a” or “et”, while the masculine form (of the same animal) never does, therefore, simply put, “Isha” is the feminine form of “Ish”, so we have to understand the reasoning at the end of the verse as a metaphor, that we could understand from the next verse:

Genesis 2:24: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Do they? As we all know only conjoined twins share their own flesh (one flesh, two people, could you think of any other option?), this is proof that whatever doesn’t make sense literally has to be a metaphor, an allegory or a parable. In this case, one flesh resembles marriage, which is a form of unity between a man and a woman (explained in the first part of the same verse), therefore that verse only makes sense as a metaphor.

Lets try again to understand Genesis 2:22, now that we know that it didn’t literally mean something nonsensical that couldn’t be true, it has to be a metaphor as well, but a metaphor of what?

In order to understand that, we have to go back to Genesis 2:18, that makes clear what the metaphor means, it is not good for the man to be alone! We all know that God never lies, this is a fact!

This is so easy to prove, even to people who want a proof from real life, because they don’t believe in God or that the bible was inspired by him, so lets give an example from real life to show them what happens to people who think they know better than God or refuse to learn from his word.

Look at China, for example: too many men who can’t find women are a social disaster!

The shortage in women causes a social unrest, crime, moral destruction, prostitution, fornication, slavery, violence, abuse of men by women because we all know what happens when one side’s options are way better than the others because of an imbalance created by the worst sin of all, murder! The shortage in women in China wasn’t a given, parents who wanted a son but had a daughter murdered their daughter in order to try to have a son in the next attempt, because they were not allowed to have more than one child. When you disobey God you bear the consequences, sooner or later, and everything happens for a reason, whether we recognize it or not.

God didn’t command us to get married, but he did tell us that it is not good for the man to be alone! He did command us not to murder in Exodus 20:13, therefore we all should learn from God’s words and obey his commandments. It is okay not to get married, but it can be harmful (unfortunately all of us do some things that are harmful for us, some of them were not prohibited by God because he knew in advance that we have many weaknesses and we could never be as perfect as him, as we are human beings with a sinful nature, and his commandments were given to us in order to prosper us, not to harm us, As written in Jeremiah 29:11, therefore, he didn’t forbid us everything that could harm us, as the harm from disobeying him is way more significant than any harm we could do to ourselves, but allowing us to harm others would not allow mankind to survive and therefore destroy some of the main purposes of the creation, which is why deliberately harming others, assuming they were innocent, is never allowed). Murder is prohibited and the consequences are eternal.

Any (straight) man who is without a woman (alone in that verse’s context) feel like a part of him is missing (metaphorically), God deliberately made men need women, otherwise they could not multiply and they would have extincted very quickly. We have to understand that we were naturally made this way for a reason, and God told us the reason.

We still need to understand the meaning of Genesis 2:21 , that is a metaphor as well, so lets dig into it in order to understand, while we sleep we dream, we tend not to remember most of our dreams, some of the dreams we do remember make no sense at all, from that we understand that sleep resembles a state of unawareness to what happens around us and the way that sometimes our interpretations are based on our imagination and not on facts.

Taking the rib resembles making men understand that something will always be missing for them as long as they don’t have women, men need women whether they recognize this fact or not, we know this is true, God said so. We always miss something that was taken away from us more than something we never had and we usually want something that was taken away from us more than something we never had, but for straight men, wanting (and needing) women is always significant, regardless of whether they just came into puberty or lost a woman they loved, which is why even a (straight) man that never had a woman (in a relationship with commitment to each other) wants and needs a woman just as much as a (straight) man who lost a woman. Closing up the place with flesh resembles “mending” him in a way that would not let him forget what he’s missing when he regains his awareness. Now this verse makes sense.

You may ask, why did God bother to tell us Genesis 2:19-20 ? Would any sane person think that a man could be satisfied with animals only? Of course not! Yet, some try that and say “My dog is enough for me” or “My cat is enough for me”, but this is a lie, no (straight) man can ever be satisfied without a woman, as this is unnatural, God made it so. God wanted to make it clear that men need women and they could not be substituted by animals, it could never work in any other way. God planned it to be this way and made it so.

Lets get back to Genesis 2:15, I asked, did Eve exist at that time or not?

Well, of course she did!

God created her at the same time he created Adam, as described in Genesis 1:26-27, but where was she at that time?

We don’t know, but what we do know is that for the time referred to in Genesis 2:15 only the man was put in the garden of Eden, so he didn’t meet the woman yet. The first time he met her was Genesis 2:23 . Lets not lie to ourselves and say things we don’t know. Jesus told us that some things will only be revealed once he returns again.

Don’t take my word for it, please read John 16:12. It was not time to tell us that secret (among many others) yet.

I know that I made gay people very angry whenever I mentioned that some claims referred to straight people only, not to them and they may say that God made them the way they are, they didn’t choose being the way they are and so on, but as that is not the subject of this article, I will regard that subject in another one. I can assure you that the answers for most (not all, read the previous paragraph, especially John 16:12) of their questions can be found in the bible.

If you want to know more, please read the bible.