RE: The Adam & Eve Myth - Origins
June 10, 2019 at 5:45 pm
(This post was last modified: June 10, 2019 at 5:46 pm by Get off my lawn.
Edit Reason: another spelling error
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(May 27, 2019 at 7:57 pm)Gwaithmir Wrote: I'm seeking information on whether or not the biblical Adam & Eve story was derived from earlier myths, such a Babylonian or Sumerian creation stories. Please include citations and or links. Thank you.
Well, there is a parallell in the sumerian myth of the creation of man:
"Man, according to both the Hebrews and the Sumerians, was conceived as having been fashioned of clay and imbued with the 'breath of life.' The purpose for which he was created was to serve the gods - or Jahweh alone, in the case of the Hebrews - with prayer, supplication, and sacrifices."
The sumerian literary myths predates the hebrew literary myths by about a thousand years:
"[T]he earliest parts of the Bible, it is generally agreed, were not written down in their present for much earlier than 1000 B.C., whereas most of the Sumerian literary documents were composed about 2000 B.C. or not long afterward. There is, therefore, no question of any contemporary borrowing from the Sumerian literary sources. Sumerian influence penetrated the Bible through the Canaanite, Hurrian, Hittite, and Akkadian literatures - particularly through the latter, since, as is well known, the Akkadian language was used all over Palestine and its environs in the second millenium B.C. as the common language of practically the entire literary world. Akkadian literary works must therefore have been well known to Palestinian men of letters, including the Hebrews"
Source: The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character by Noah Kramer.