There were many things that stuck out to me during our discussion of creation stories, including Genesis, Enuma Elish, and the Epic of Gilgamesh as discussed by Christine Hays in Lecture 4: Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources. Specifically, the stories of Genesis and Enuma Elish have very contrasting ways that the world came about. In Enuma Elish, many different gods clashed with each other in battle and combat. In Genesis, there is only one character, one god, in the beginning, which points to the monotheistic way of Christianity and Judaism.
Talking about the “genre” of the Genesis creation stories also made me think quite a bit. There are a few different repetitions used which give the stories almost a poetic structure—for example, “And God said”, “And God saw that it was good”, and “—the (blank) day.” Personally, this poetic and lyrical expression of the story causes me to think that it’s not meant to be taken literally, which is something that has been up for debate among many people. What is a “day” in this story? Is it a literal 24 hour day, or rather a representation of something else? This is a topic that I’ve thought about personally for a long time, ever since my visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky a few years ago, which I remember was mentioned in class.