WAT003 – The Creation Story in Sumerian “Myth” and the Bible

While preparing this blog post today I was reminded that I am writing a blog (not a book) and sharing my THOUGHTS (not writing a dissertation). I say this because I was searching desperately the other night trying to cite my sources for various things I remember studying twenty years ago and having trouble locating the source material. Then I remembered that this is just a blog of my thoughts and opinions on the subject matter. It is also a review and commentary of another writer’s book on the subject of the Watchers. In reality I do not expect anyone to look to my BLOG for proof of anything or even to change their opinion on the matter. Thus, perhaps I can cut myself a little slack if I can’t find the source material every time I remember something and just allow myself to move on with my thoughts on the book I’m reviewing. Having said that, I want to point out that if something I said would significantly change your viewpoint if it were true, and if you want to verify it yourself, I’d be happy to try and find the source material for you to do your own research.

Now, according to most historians, the first major civilization on earth was the Sumerian civilization that sprung up in the Mesopotamian valley around 3,500 BCE and 3,000 BCE . They were the first to develop the written language and the first to write down the history, or “myths” of the creation (as some like to call them). In addition, they were the first to write down their version of a great flood in a work titled “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. Both of these Sumerian tales, which bear striking resemblance to the ones recorded in our modern Bibles, were written many thousands of years before the ones recorded in the Bible and thus one might consider that the Hebrew version is merely a RE-TELLING of the older Sumerian creation and flood stories. As an aside it still bugs me that the older (and perhaps “original”) story is often called a “myth” while the more recent (and logically “borrowed” re-telling of the original story) is labeled “history” and treated as fact by many Christians.

What is important to understand for this discussion is that the Sumerian civilization PREDATED the Hebrew nation by thousands of years and that the Hebrew nation spent considerable time in captivity to both the Assyrians and the Babylonians (two Sumerian sub-cultures) long before they wrote their books of the Bible. This means to me that a logical person must pay attention when the Hebrews write about subjects that Sumerians had been writing about for thousands of years prior. It seems logical to me that the older version of the story is more likely to be the “original” source and the later versions of the story are copies or re-tellings of the original stories. At a MINIMUM, the Hebrews were certainly aware of the older Sumerian stories.

Similarities between Sumerian Creation “Myths” and the Book of Genesis

Both creation stories (the Sumerian Enuma Elish and the Hebrew Book of Genesis) start with the depiction of earth being formless and void. In both stories, creation took place in exactly six days. In both stories the seventh day is a day of “rest”. While the names of the deities and figures involved in the story are considerably different, both the Enuma Elish and the Book of Genesis record that the “gods” had created a great garden located specifically at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates river where they created man. In other words, BOTH agree that the “gods” created the garden and that the garden was located in the same place the Bible says the Garden of Eden was located and that God (or the gods) created man and place him in the garden.

Differences between the Sumerian Creation “Myths” and the Book of Genesis

Don’t get me wrong, there a dozens of significant differences between the Sumerian creation stories and that of the Bible but the one I want to focus on today is the creation and original purpose of man. As I understand it, the Sumerian tales viewed primitive man as little more than the most advanced “beast of the field” (i.e. just a more evolved animal) when the “gods” created them. One of the “Sumerian” gods, a figure known in both Sumerian and the Hebrew Bible as Marduk, helped genetically modify man to become a better and smarter animal for the purpose of being a slave or servant for the gods. In fact, the word “worship” apparently originally carried the meaning in Sumerian to “cease to work”. In other words, I would argue that man was created to “worship” the gods by letting the new “man” do the work for for the gods so they could rest and cease their own work. This new worker was created on the sixth day of creation and the gods were finally able to rest on the seventh day. Therefore the purpose of man was merely to work the gardens and in some way this would reduce the work that the gods needed to do.

As I understand it, the Sumerian view of man is quite different than how most of Christianity views man today. I believe most of Christendom views man as God’s special creation, intended from the beginning to have dominion over all other forms of life on earth and to have a special relationship with God, one day destined to live with God himself in heaven. It was only by disobedience (i.e. eating from the one tree God forbid them to eat from) that man lost his special and personal relationship with God. Salvation therefore, is about restoring the original “right” relationship we had with God at the beginning. In the Sumerian tales however, man was created as a servant for the gods, a primitive worker at best and not intended to be “like the gods”.

I remember being shocked when I found that in the Sumerian tales, the good and bad guy in the story is almost reversed. Here is how the story goes, as I understand it, in the Sumerian stories. Man was created to be a slave for the gods. One day one of the gods felt bad for the enslaved man and came to man to reveal to him a secret, that he is actually like the gods themselves having some of their same DNA so to speak and that they do not have to be servants. They can be like the gods. This enraged the other gods because now man had become rebellious and refused to serve (aka worship) the gods. In that sort of story you might be inclined to see the gods as “evil” (wanting dumb slave labor) and the one who “enlightened” man that he is like the gods is a good guy. The Biblical tale, however, reverses the roles and the one who informs man he can “be like god” is evil while God himself remains “good” and benevolent.

It seems to me the remnants of the older Sumerian tale are still captured in the Hebrew Bible when you consider the God first is depicted as parading the animals of earth before Adam to find a mate from and only after not finding a made did he make a woman. Also it appears God did not intend for man to know the difference between good and evil according to the Bible and was angry to find that they had become enlightened and realized they were naked. In other words, It seems even in the Bible as if God originally did not intended for man to be different than the other beasts of the field.

For the sake of this blog post it will suffice to end on this thought. The more I read and think about the ancient Sumerian and Hebrew (i.e. biblical) tales of creation, the more I am convinced that the real “sin” according to the ancients was that a dumb animal (i.e. humans) became enlightened and believing that they were “like” god. Prior to this, the stories seem to suggest, man was intended to be little more than an animal with no judgement over morality such as “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “evil”. However, once man was enlightened to these concepts he was now subject to judgement by these new rules of morality. This is important to the story of the watchers as I believe THAT story is all about the story of other worldly (or spiritual) beings intermingling with low level “beasts of the field” (or physical beings) which enraged the other gods (or spiritual beings).