Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaygal7 | Hacker News Reader

I can only assume you mean the evidence of a shared language family and some similar flood myths. I have read some ANE journal articles on this topic and most researchers admit the flow of information may have been bidirectional.

I tend to view the opening of genesis as being a take-down of prior creation myths from other cultures in the region, but I'm unaware of exactly the same story in any of them.

View on HN

The Genesis mythology is probably the syncretic fragments of poems and stories gathered over time. When the Egyptians ruled the Levant, the Hebrews were pantheistic nomadic wanderers. Then they became henotheistic pastoralists and settlers under the Akkadians. During Greeks reign, they became monotheistic urban citizens. So the mythos had to keep changing.

The accreation mythos went through multiple and severe editing during the Akkadian times under the reigning Akkadian priests so as to completely remove the Hebrews from the Egyptian pantheistic influence. This became the creation myth of the OT.. Parashah B'reshit.

The Canaanites(includes the Hebrews) managed to keep some parts of the Baal cycle mythos but mostly relied on the stories from Akkadian priests.

The Akkadian Mythology itself runs parallel to the Hittite and Chaldean creation myths. Their origins are lost suggesting that there were even older creation myths from which they derived their own narrative mythology.

For example..look at Tiamat (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiamat ), a salt water sea dragon/serpent who is sibling of Apsu (fresh water). Tiamat was later killed by Marduk who used her parts to create the other worlds. Marduk (storm god), the son of Enki(water god).

Genesis follows the same story structure up until the flood myth and the ark. So Hebrew creation mythos/Genesis was definitely derivative and also underwent multiple edits and rewritten over the centuries.

Ref: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ : The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

Criticism of religion as derivative is generally reserved for the abrahamic faiths you don't generally see it done to say Bhuddism. A sort of early modern bias creeps in, the idea that a religion is invalidated by showing that it arose among men at a certain time. of course, that this is exactly what religions generally claim. I'm struggling to think of any sects for whom this is actually a deal breaker... maybe some American fundamentalists?

it's common to interpret the structure of genesis as being a riff off of earlier myths, in a critical way. The structure is often parallel, but also often different as though to draw a comparison to the mind of the reader. We see a harmonious creation account rather than a violent one, and a creator God who is master over both earth and water.

Anyone who studied religion at an undergraduate level (or at a good highschool) knows this. The specific narrative you're weaving is , however, highly speculative.

It should not surprise Christians or jews that the ancient Israelites recognized other gods, this is covered extensively in the Bible. There are frequent references to the 'God's of the nations' in the old testament, particularly evident in the greek.

The existnece of miltiple lower case G 'gods' - is still held in even the New Testament 'principalities and powers' are 'gods over the nations'. I think, it is fair to say that modern jews and Christians alike still hold this to be true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com