Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, part 13.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We saw in our study of Miller and Soden's book, in the beginning we misunderstood, that they rightly

discount the importance and influence of Mesopotamian myths upon the Genesis creation

story. They think that Egyptian myths are reflected in Genesis 1, but we've seen

that that case I think is overstated. I do want to say something today, however, about

Mesopotamian myths and why scholars think that these are not a significant influence

upon the Genesis creation story.

I think this is important not only for the sake of completeness, but also because one does frequently

still find, especially on the popular level, people saying that Genesis 1 is borrowing from

ancient Babylonian myths of creation, particularly the myth called the enuma eliche.

The words anuma eliche are simply the first words in Acadian of this Babylonian epic

poem. And this has been referred to in the past as the Babylonian Genesis because of its

creation account.

The story or the poem tells of the god Marduk, who becomes ascendant over the other gods, the head of the Babylonian pantheon by defeating and destroying the goddess Tiamat, who is sometimes portrayed

in the myth as a goddess or woman, other times apparently is a dragon.

Let me just read to you the opening lines of the anuma eliche.

When skies above were not yet named nor earth below pronounced by by name, Absu, the first one, their begetter and

maker Teumat, who bore them all, had mixed their waters together but had not formed pastures

nor discovered reed beds, when yet no gods were manifest, no names pronounced, nor

destinies decreed, then gods were born within them. Lamu and Lahamu emerged, their names pronounced.

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