Are creation stories more than just explanations of how the world came to be?

[Yelnoc]

Reading Genesis, it occurred to me that the authors were certainly aware that they were copying down two different creation stories (Gen 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-2:25). But rather than trying to reconcile them or simply deleting one, they copied them down and placed them back to back without comment.  That suggests to me that the exact content or the sequence of creation was not terribly relevant to the authors. Perhaps they felt the two traditions were equally valid and therefore worth preserving. Perhaps the traditions together served some other purpose than simply explaining the origins of everything. But what could that be?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Most writings of great cultural significance (whether religious or not) say much more than what a literal interpretation would suggest. Although I'm not very well-versed on the matter, I'm sure such is the case for the Genesis.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I mean, read Genesis 1 and then read the Enuma Elish. These are clearly societies that had very different ideas about the natural and moral order of the universe, even though they conceived of the technical process of creation in similar and indeed related ways.

[afleitch]

The motifs of the Enuma Elis flow much better, in part because they don’t suffer from the Hebrew inversions.

It states that in the beginning nothing existed except the ‘waters’ and how that was created is unknown and from that mass came two ‘orders’;  demons and gods. That’s quite a transparent admission. Not that anyone ‘created’, or ordered creation, but that from nothingness came orders of beings and that eventually the younger gods usurped the primeval gods, then Marduk fashions the universe from Tiamut’s body. The universe is essentially cannibalised from a god. More so, humans themselves are cannibalised from the blood of another god, Kingu. I love that. How unifying, despite being so macabre.

If one were to postulate now about the myth in the same way people postulate the Hebrew myth, then there's a stark difference from a god being 'first' and making you out of inanimate matter to god being formed and forming us out of the 'stuff' of other gods. I wonder what impact that would have had in human development.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In addition to the structural similarities to Genesis 1, parts of the Enuma Elish are also remarkably similar to the story of Uranus and Cronus. What's done to Tiamat also reminds one of Ymir in Norse mythology.