I thought sin was introduced with Adam's disobedience... And of course the gods are alien, the myths agree on that.
I am not sure that you can have it both ways. Either God introduced sin to a perfect world through Adam, or aliens were involved in the evolutionary process.
If God chose Adam then other earthlings were alive. Enki chose Adapa and both him and Adam failed to partake from the food of life because of the serpent (Enki).
If you are going to mix your myths, the serpent would be Tiamat. Tiamat killed both Gods that came before her. Enki is a son of Tiamat and En. God of wisdom and creation. Not to be confused with the God who created all things, Anu/Apsu.
They had rules, they were to be fruitful, multiply, subdue the Earth, have dominion etc over the critters... But Adam didn't do that, he was taken to the Garden to work.
They had the natural rules that humans really have no control over to obey or disobey. Adam was no different, and you cannot take one myth and change the context of the other. God did not place Adam in the garden to work. The Garden was a naturally growing place, and God even gave Adam animals to name and fill the garden with more options than work.
We means our first anatomically modern ancestors... And the rule applied to both Adam and Eve and only them because they were in the Garden with the tree of knowledge.
Some would call them descendants of Adam, but only because of the change after loosing a perfect godlike position, not because they were animals who learned how to become human. The knowledge gained was good and evil, and the consequences of disobeying God. The Mesopotamian and other Eastern myths had humans created eons after the beginning. The first six days were just that, Days. It was not thousands of years of dark, and then thousands of years of daytime. It was a night and day cycle.
Apemen appear in other myths, the Sumerian version only refers to an existing creature roaming Enki's southern domain. Genesis shows the Adam in a more primitive state before the "knowledge" and his evolution into us.
So God made the Adam naked and unashamed and animal-like enough for the other animals to be considered possible helpmates. Or maybe I'm reading the text wrong, the narrator might not be suggesting a helpmate was sought from among the animals but was instead merely recognizing Adam was different and had no "kind" in the Garden .
I do not agree with the evolutionary prospect the Mesopotamian and eastern myths give. I don't think that the Genesis account was insinuating that God wanted Adam to do anything else but name the animals, as in carrying out a scientific endeavor. Perhaps even classify and study them. Some humans can do just fine, not having a mate. Evidently Adam was not one of them.
NNW, the 4 rivers become 1 and runs through the Garden... Thats the Persian Gulf during ice ages. Mesopotamian myth describes people coming from the sea to found the early cities. Archaeology supports this exodus, when the Gulf formed new settlements appeared along the shoreline. Would be nice to see surveys of the river system etc under the Gulf.
I'd like to know if this was the basis for their Flood myth or if an earlier (or later) event gave rise to the legend. Anybody living near a coast line would have seen their ocean level rise ~400 ft in a few millennium with many more localized floods like the Gulf and the Black Sea.
It seems everything was written after the Flood, and I am not sure the ones writing the myths even knew what the earth looked like before. I am even claiming that the Flood was the beginning of the continent dividing, because there is only one instance; after the Flood where they actually knew the continents were separating. I don't think that Genesis 10:25 just referred to the national divide, but there was a land divide that caused the people groups to be separated from each other. If people came back from the sea, they may have tried to get back to their original place, but it may have taken them some time to get back.
I dont know, but at some point in the story the 6th day ended and time proceeded. The only ending to the 6th day I see preceded the story about the Garden and Eve's creation.
As for the Adam, who was being fruitful and multiplying? The 6th day people... Adam may not have been one of them, he could have been a descendant. If he was the only man made on the 6th day and he was taken to the Garden to work how did the 6th day people replenish the Earth? Adam wasn't alone, there had to be other men alive and he was "chosen".
I would think that the placement was on the Sixth day. God put all humans all over the continent. The narrative about Adam was the same time, and his was the only detail we have. Other than later when Cain left (the Garden) he went to an already established place.
There was a limit to our existence prior to the Flood, 120 years. If that employs the Mesopotamian "sar" (3600) then God arrived ~445kya with the process of producing the Adam starting 40 sars later (144ky) or around 300kya.
I would tend to think that entropy started when Adam was not allowed to enter the Garden. There was no need to eat of either tree. The need to eat from the tree of life, was only after Adam took of the forbidden tree. Adam could have or could not have eaten of the tree of life, before that event, as there was only one tree that he could not eat from. There was no rule stating that he had to eat of the tree of life. It was just there to eat from.
We do not know how long Adam was in the Garden before Eve. How long would it take to name all the animals and classify them? How long before a happy carefree human would realize that he was not a happy carefree human, and needed another human to do things with? It never says that Adam had an age, until after he was put out of the Garden. He had Seth 130 years later.
Thats not in the Enuma Elish, the myth of the gods combining their blood with an existing creature appears in earlier Sumerian myth (SN Kramer - Mythologies of the Ancient World.
The term "apemen" comes from Zulu myth describing events long ago when their ancestors (the artificial ones) were at war with the apemen.
I imagine people were east of the Garden but I cant be sure, if we appeared 200kya and the Garden existed after that then people could have already migrated into Asia.
I agree, but they used the names of the great grandchildren of the gods. How did the Enuma Elish know that there were other gods before the ones that created ape-men? The Genesis account said that God, the first one, who created all things, created All Humans perfect, not like animals, or even half-animal. The earlier tales were about evolution and the evolution of the gods even. They were given human attributes as having offspring, but it was just the evolution of one god, and how that god became many gods.
The Garden story describes a being (Adam) modified by God and a Serpent (the tree) and the Nephilim were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of man. Where does it say Eve gave birth pain free?
The Bible says nothing of a modified Adam. It does say that Adam was cloned, but that is not being modified. The serpent was the form (a fallen) son of God took. If you read more of the Oral tradition, the Hebrews thought that the stars were teaming with the same humans that this world had at the beginning. Allegedly while Adam was naming all the animals, a third of the stars rebelled. Their leader who was the chief of all, was demoted and placed as ruler of the air/earth. I think that it got jumbled and it was Mummu from the myths who was the acting Chief. God confided in this being several times, and later he was called Satan. The myths state that the earth, a dragon like being killed God and this being, and created her own gods. Later it was Marduk/Nimrod who was the first Great leader and maybe even Gilgamesh, who reasoned with the sun god Shamash, and gained godlike status. It was this human who got credit for moving the earth to a different orbit, and caused the birth of the moon. But as you pointed out, that was in the Enuma Elish, which came much later. Because it says that the moon god (Sin) gave birth to Shamash. When Gilgemesh/Nimrod/Marduk went on his travels, it was an earlier myth.
Where does it say that Eve had pain, even though allegedly she was supposed to? If God says that she would have pain and then no one ever mentioned it, why talk about it to begin with?
How would an animal acquire right and wrong without "evolving" into us?
An animal would not nor still does, except for maybe some domesticated ones. Why is it necessary to be human to know right from wrong? This was more than just morals, because morals are probably hard wired, and I am not talking about modesty. Modesty comes from thinking there is a right and wrong. If there was no knowledge of modesty, then every human would go around naked and unashamed. It would ruin the fashion industry and the economy though. The whole point is that every one created with Adam were all the same, and the only rules were the hard wired rules.
I am not saying that Adam and humans did not change after they ate. Because there was a distinction from the sons of Adam, and all the other humans on the planet. Their offspring were not ordinary humans as we know of today. But they all died in the Flood. God says that they even lost immortality and could only live 120 years. It seems that some of that bloodline survived through one of the sons of Noah, who must have been married to one of them, because they were giants with long life spans.
It wasn't disobedience that caused our expulsion, it was God's fear of what we'd do or become if we partook from the tree of life.
Why would God fear that humans would live forever? God seemed to always be pointing out how humans were wicked, and it was Adam who brought that knowledge into the world. It does not seem that eating of the tree of life would hinder God's ability to wipe out humans and change their life span. Later it was written that all those humans were not destroyed, but remain in eternal darkness until such a time where they will be brought before God at the end of this universe as we know it. So not even the threat of death, is real as there seems to be life after this earthly experience. Even the myths tell of going into the center of the earth to this dark place. It is not even clear from the myths and other eastern writings that the original apsu and mummu were actually destroyed or that Marduk killed any gods off. They were re-born and re-used by all the ancients in different forms and ways. The whole bringing back to life is constant. Even evolution is more destructive and does not allow biological life forms to come back into existence, but kills them off as in a finite ability of genetic makeup.
If you look up the word in most dictionaries the Biblical usage is an archaic form, and does not mean re-fill. It has always meant just to fill. The modern meaning evolved into something different.
They acquired the ability to procreate in the Garden, but they didn't procreate until after expulsion.
That is not a given, as the different accounts overlap, and are not consecutive chronologically.
She became Heaven and Earth.
Tiamat became a lot off things to a lot of different people. More than likely the first thought of evolution that humans created in their thinking process.
Marduk is the creator and he appears in the story after Tiamat (the waters). In Genesis Tehom (the waters) precedes God too. Thats important, both documents are telling us a primordial world (and solar system) was already in existence before God created Heaven and Earth. Mummu was the sun's companion (Mercury).
It is still my opinion, that Marduk did not get full recognition as a god, until after Nimrod/Gilgamesh went on his epoch journey and met the sun/god. Any one can claim that Marduk came first. He was the chief god for quite some time in Babylon. Generation after generation were taught that he was the only god. Later the writer of the Enumi Elish said that Nimrod/Gilgamesh was actually Marduk, and wrote a creation story with him being the main attraction. There was probably at least 500 years between the creation of the two accounts, and the Enuma Elish came last.
The sun (Abzu) is the first to appear in the story, the one who was from before, the one who begat them all (olden gods). The Moon is "Kingu", leader of Tiamat's forces.
Nope, Apsu was primordial even before Tiamat. Nope, Sin/Suen/ is the moon god, and father of Uti/Nanni/Shamash the sun god. Kingu was the "unskilled Laborer" Who when Marduk killed him mixed his blood with the earth from whence he came and made ape-men. Sounds racist to me. This is then confused to mean that "Adam" was an ape-man, who evolved into humans? I don't think so, but modern evolutionary thinking may agree with the notion.
If Sitchin cant convince them yet, I sure wont. But the evidence wont be denied... I dont have a problem believing the Earth could have been pushed closer to the sun, my doubt involves how the Moon tagged along.
