Originally Posted by mg01

... SNIP ...

With regard to the Enuma Elish as source material, I'd agree with spin that it's not appropriate to think of it in a direct sort of way. Instead it's better to regard Gen 1 as representive of the same tradition that also inspired the Enuma Elish. The difference though is the fact that while yes they are likely to be as many as 14 or 15 centuries apart, the Hebrew version is simply recasting the same outline with their God as the responsible agent. In that sense it's not so much copying. It's a shame we don't have any other semitic creation accounts, such as from Ugarit, to get an idea of what the tradition was like in and around Judah. Still, as P, Gen 1 is 4th or 5th century and as partly inspired as inclusion by Babylonina tradition which we know within that time the story was still well known as it's discussec by the Greek Berossus in the 3rd century.

Originally Posted by Adamu

I'd like to take this further and speculate on the Enuma Elish being an astronomical text, one describing not the creation of the universe, but more specifically the creation of our solar system and the formation of Earth.

Consider:

Apsu - Sun
Tiamat - Earth and asteroid belt
Kingu - Moon
Mummu - Mercury
Lahamu - Venus
Lahmu - Mars
Kishar - Jupiter
Anshar - Saturn
Anu - Uranus
EA - Neptune
Gaga - pluto

Marduk - ? (planet? with moons? star? with planets?)


If anyone has explored this idea I'd like to hear about it, if you've not, please read the text linked in the OP with the above nomenclature in mind.

Originally Posted by Adamu

I don't dispute the uniqueness of the Hebrew version but it seems clear that Genesis is a condensed edited version of at least the Enuma Elish, Atra Hasis, and Epic of Gilgamesh texts; these are the sources, the material from which the Genesis stories are drawn.

Originally Posted by Casper

I'm skeptical of anything that old acknowledging the planets beyond saturn. Other astronomical entities, perhaps?

Originally Posted by Adamu

My own opinion is that this text, as well as other mesopotamian texts, are indeed the source material for the authors of Genesis.
Please opine.

Originally Posted by Adamu

There are intersting parallels between Uranus and Anu, EA(water god) and Neptune, Pluto and Gaga(emissary) and more, of which I intend to elaborate but I'm presently pressed for time and would rather start at the beginning "when in the heights heaven had yet been named."

Originally Posted by mg01

Also keep in mind that where today when we here the word "planet" we think of it as another orbiting "world" like the earth, where as originally it was nothing more than a "wandering star". There was no connection to the "planets" as actually other "worlds" like earth until Galileo.

Originally Posted by Adamu

Whatever their identity I think we can work with the assumption that it is an astronomical text of sorts.

Originally Posted by Casper

Not that I disagree, but surely the moon was not thought of as a wandering star?
And the Sun as a star, I wonder at what point that thought began to be pondered?