In the Enuma Elish, one of the first things that stuck out to me was all of the different people to keep track of. Knowing the creation story for as long as I can remember, this story had me a little confused. I had to continually read and reread to try and better understand it, and to be honest, a lot of it still isn’t super clear. However, when reading the creation story I have known for so long, I put myself in the shoes of never reading it before to see how my perspective changed (if at all). I found it so much easier to understand and follow along with. I thought it was interesting how the Enuma Elish reminded me of Greek mythology.
In Christine Hayes Lecture, I thought it was interesting that Genesis 1 doesn’t literally mean that God created everything from nothing. Particularly in the first verse, often times we take it literally. When we are taught the creation story, we are often told that everything was created by God at the beginning of time. However, when you take a look at the Hebrew, it talks about when God created everything. This difference of creation at the beginning of time vs. using creation as a benchmark in time is very interesting to me. The timeline thought never really occurred to me. I also remember talking about how the story of Adam and Eve was just placed after creation because it made the most sense chronologically, but before taking this course I never really thought of the two stories as independent of each other. The discussions have really allowed me to dig deeper into the scriptures, and I really enjoy thinking through things from a different perspective.