Information Related to "Ancient Near-Eastern Concepts of Creation"
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Is the Genesis account only an ancient myth, no better than tales originating in other cultures over the millennia? Many people obviously think so. Notice what Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University and professed atheist, has to say about the biblical account:
"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants" (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1986, p. 316).
But is Professor Dawkins' assumption true? Is the Genesis record a fairy tale little different from those of other ancient cultures?
Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia left accounts of their creation myths inscribed on cuneiform tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of clouds and stars. They believed earth and sky were created by two gods: An, the male sky god, and Ki, the female earth god.
These two gave birth to a multitude of other gods, each with a particular power and responsibility over some aspect of the created realm (such as lightning, trees, mountains, illness, etc.). They lived in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the supreme god, surrounded by four subordinate creator gods. Below them were a council of seven gods and, finally, the 50 remaining minor gods.
All physical occurrences could be interpreted by the priests as the result of the particular mood or whim of one of these gods. They could be placated by offerings and sacrifices. Although these deities were considered immortal, their supposed conduct was anything but divine. They were depicted as often fighting among themselves, full of petty envies and lusts and subject to hunger and even death.
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