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Something that stuck with me from our class meeting today was that the story of Enuma Elish and Genesis in the Bible. Both stories have a similar pattern to how Earth was created but have a different explanation to how the universe was created. In Genesis, God solely creates the universe as we know it, but in the Enuma Elish story the world is created by the battling gods.

In the video with Christine Hayes (Lecture 4, Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources) she talked about the ideological similarities between the Genesis stories and the tale of Gilgamesh. What was interesting to me was that Christine’s interpretation of the Genesis stories; she proposed the idea that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge granted Adam and Eve (and the rest of the human race) self-awareness and death. Her interpretation was that God did not want a human who was self-aware and immortal, causing God to close off the Tree of Life from the world. In the story of Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s death causes Gilgamesh to fear his own mortality, and thus he journeys to find immortality. Christine explains in the video that Gilgamesh does find the fruit of immortality, but a snake steals the fruit from him. She elaborates on the importance of snakes in the culture of ancient Arabic cultures that snakes were a symbol of beauty because they shed their skin (seeming to be eternally young). The two stories are connected in that humans are mortal and that our mortality is inescapable.

What helped me the most from the reading was comparing the Enuma Elish to the creation story in Genesis and finding similarities and differences and then getting to talk about these in class. There are a ton of characters in the Enuma Elish who all play a role in the creation story. The main two characters are Marduk, the greatest god and avenger, and Tiamat. Tiamat is an evil, seven-headed dragon who is meant to represent water in the Enuma Elish. Marduk defeats Tiamat and splits her body in half to form the sky and the sea. This relates to the Genesis creation story as God also creates the sky and sea from the water on the second day. However,  the story in Genesis is far less exciting and contains less battle.

In class on the first day we talked about creation, we compared two translations of the Bible and their similarities and differences in the creation story. While the main points stayed the same there were some strange wording differences that altered parts of the creation story. Using words like “dome” to represent the sky really changed the way I read Genesis 1, which I found surprising.

On the second day of lecture when we focused on the creation, we focused on Genesis 1-3. The wording in Genesis 1 is highly repetitive. Phrases like “and there was evening and there was morning” and “and God said” were repeated throughout the passage. These repetitive phrases call into question the genre of Genesis as talked about in previous lectures. Very often repetitive language like this is used in poetry more than in prose.

Also, very often in Hebrew writing uses parallelism as opposed to word rhyming to focus on ideas. An example within the Genesis creation story is the way the days of creation are laid out. The first three days, God formed things (like the day and night, the sky, and the dry land) and then He filled the things that were formed in the last three days. This is an interesting parallel that we talked about in class that I remember learning about at my Lutheran high school, but it was fun to revisit.

From this class discussion, I learned that there are many different genres in the Bible which will impact the way the text is read. For example, some of the text in the Bible is historical, whereas books like Psalms and Proverbs are not historical but more closely resemble poetry. If someone tries to read these books as historical they will be largely confused and miss the point of the story. Another thing to consider about the Bible is that the text we are reading is not the original text the way it was written. The Bible has been translated from the original Hebrew and there is a potential that some of the original writings have been lost in translation.

In The Backdoor Introduction to the Bible, Kaltner and Mckenzie support both of these points we talked about in class. They have a section in the article where they focus on determining the genre of the Bible. Overall they decide that the Bible is entirely varied in genre and cannot be put into one box. One thing that is important to remember is that “the Bible is really a collection of different works of literature rather than a single book” (9). This accentuates the point that in order to read the Bible you must determine the genre of the book you are reading.  Also, the authors focus on the fact that the Bible was written for ancient audiences using their languages. So, biblical scholars have produced resources such as user guides and reader’s notes for reading the Bible to ensure that you can comprehend as close to the original text as possible.

Michael W. Holmes is a reliable source in his writing the book, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. He has received a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in theological studies and currently works as a professor of Biblical Studies at Bethel University. It was very easy to find out who he was and see all of his published works with a simple google search of his name. This makes me trust that he is a reliable source as he has the academic background and necessary exposure to write on the subject of ‘The Biblical Canon’. Just because Dr. Holmes is experienced in theological studies does not mean he had no biases on the matter. Especially with his current job at Bethel University, a Christian college, he may have opinions on the Bible that other doctors in theological studies do not agree with.

This book was published by Oxford University Press in 2008. This gives me more confidence in the book, as it has a reputable publisher which makes me trust in the sanctity of the information. According to the Oxford University Press website, authors must develop high-quality work and go through rigorous proposals before having their work accepted for publishing. This again proves that the work we are dealing with for class is reputable.

During this lesson, I learned a lot about reliable sources and how to tell if something is unreliable. This will be helpful both finding sources for this class, but in all my other classes as well. I learned that just because someone is a professor, or because they have received their Ph.D. does not mean they are a reliable source of information. In order to use reliable sources, I must be willing to put in the work by researching the authors I am using in my sources in order to determine what their biases might be and if their opinions are extremely against the norm. I have learned to become a more critical information gatherer in order to use the best sources possible from the most informed authors on specific subjects.

There are some major differences in the Babylonian Epic of Creation and Genesis. Enuma elish has more of a story aspect to it since there are so many characters involved. There are multiple gods in this story. There is also an evil villain, Tiamut, who is killed and the remains of Tiamut are turned into the sky and sea. This is a similarity to Genesis since in Genesis the sky and the sea are one thing split into two. Genesis is a much easier story to follow since there is really only one character, God. It makes sense to me why more people are familiar with Genesis than with the Babylonian Epic of Creation since Genesis makes more sense and is easier to understand.

From the lecture, the biggest thing I took away were how there are differences and contradictions in the two creation stories and contradicting facts in the flood stories. In the first creation story, it is very structured and has a pretty distinct timeline, where the second creation story is not as structured. This is evidence that these two stories were most likely not written by the same author, and the importance in that is how, even as these two different stories are within the same couple chapters of the same book and the flood story is woven all into one, there still are multiple authors within the stories and different ways that the stories have been interpreted.

Something I took away from the reading is how human’s individuality brings us closer to God and how that is portrayed in different stories of the Bible, like the tower of Babel and the story of the midwives. When the people are trying to get closer to God by working as a unit, this upsets God and splits them farther apart by confusing everyone’s languages. By doing this, not only does it show how they should not attempt to reign at the same level of God, but it also shows how they need to grow closer to God by embracing individuality and choosing to fear like the midwives did when they disobeyed the Pharaoh. This shows individuality because they individually chose to save the baby boys because it was God’s will. Although our individuality has the potential to push people farther from God by rebelling, it also gives us the ability to choose God instead of corruption or rebellion.

This is not my first time reading the creations stories. I have read them for my FYS, my religion course I took last semester, and now this course. However, I still find them interesting to read every time due to the ability to dissect them so much.

A difference I noticed in the creation stories that I don’t think was mentioned in class is the breaking of the paragraphs. I feel as though this is significant because authors can really change the meaning and feeling of a story with different passages. I know when I am writing something I highly consider where and when I should break paragraphs up.

I wonder if a solution will ever be created when dealing with the problems of translations. It would be so cool if you could translate something completely accurate and for it to mean the same thing. However, I feel as though languages are too diverse to ever get a 100% accuracy level of translation.

In class we talked about Genesis. Genesis is the first book in the bible and one that many might think they know it. However after talking in class a few things came up that caught my attention. One of the topics being that of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden. The other being translations of the bible. In class we talked about how In Genesis 3 it never mentions an apple, however if you google “Adam and Eve” and click on images the first ten images will show that Adam and Eve are holding Apples. I think it is depicted as an apple to simplify it from a “forbidden fruit”. However this is also apart of the mandela effect as many people in class (me included) said “apple” when asked. Could this also be apart at one time a translation error? This gets into the second key point of class and that being things lost in translation or even changing the wording to make it grammatically correct. Could it have been changed from forbidden fruit to apple at some point in time? The reason I am saying this is because when we looked at the different types of bible we noticed that the idea and meaning was the same but the wording was different. If anyone would like to respond and give your idea it would be greatly appreciated.