Sumerian accounts?

[spartanII]

So i've always wondered about the Sumerian accounts when compared to the Christian Bible. The land of Sumer literally just came about, that, and their language popped up out of nowhere and their writing form, cuneiform, was the first written language ever. The Sumerians would write about their land first, their people second, this was because they found their land randomly. I believe this was the land of Adam & Eve, near modern day Iraq. The thing is, their account of Adam and Eve was written 1,000 years before the Torah was written and has a lot of similarities to it, from "Adamu," to the account of the "gods," (And it even says in the Bible 'let us make man in our own image') making men in their own image. My friend says that he's looked into and has seen where they found a Abraham document older than the Sumerian accounts but i can't find it. Did the Bible plagiarize this story and just make their God (God of the Bible) sound better by putting attributes about Him, like all-powerful, and so forth? I know even as far as Australia and Alaska you have civilizations talking about God making man in His own image with mud but what makes the Biblical Adam and Eve story unique?

[B. W.]

So i've always wondered about the Sumerian accounts when compared to the Christian Bible. The land of Sumer literally just came about, that, and their language popped up out of nowhere and their writing form, cuneiform, was the first written language ever. The Sumerians would write about their land first, their people second, this was because they found their land randomly. I believe this was the land of Adam & Eve, near modern day Iraq. The thing is, their account of Adam and Eve was written 1,000 years before the Torah was written and has a lot of similarities to it, from "Adamu," to the account of the "gods," (And it even says in the Bible 'let us make man in our own image') making men in their own image. My friend says that he's looked into and has seen where they found a Abraham document older than the Sumerian accounts but i can't find it. Did the Bible plagiarize this story and just make their God (God of the Bible) sound better by putting attributes about Him, like all-powerful, and so forth? I know even as far as Australia and Alaska you have civilizations talking about God making man in His own image with mud but what makes the Biblical Adam and Eve story unique?

I would not be so apart in thinking these texts mirror the bible in any way. These accounts, no matter how old, happened after the fall of humanity – that is the first thing to note. Next, also ancient peoples would have verbal record of God’s existence but over the years, due to fading memory and sin nature, these records would become corrupted. This corruption is mirrored in theses texts. Gods copulating each other and the resulting human (as well as infant) sacrifices and odd perverted rites that ensued to enforce this Sumerian religious system is telling as well. Some of the accounts on link below:

http://creativeportfolioproductions.com ... merian.htm

[jlay]

Without links to these documents, I wouldn't venture a critique. BW makes a good point. Other people groups having similar concepts in their writings doesn't negate the truth of the bible.

In Hebrew, Adam means man. Of course Adam and Adamu are similar. But this is English. Obviously the Hebrew and Cuneiform words and writing do not resemble the English at all. It would be interesting to see if there are any similarities in the original writings and phonetics of these languages. Anyone here speak Cuneiform?

[narnia4]

In some cases I think similarity between multiple accounts can lend some veracity to an actual historical incident. Take the Flood and Noah with his Ark. Including of course the Epic of Gligamesh, there have been many different accounts in different cultures of such an event. More conservative Christrians tend to believe that Scripture is at least inspired by God and some believe it is inerrant, assuming inerrancy it seems likely that oral traditions throughout history could describe the same event but God gave the writers of the Bible the "right version".

[spartanII]

In some cases I think similarity between multiple accounts can lend some veracity to an actual historical incident. Take the Flood and Noah with his Ark. Including of course the Epic of Gligamesh, there have been many different accounts in different cultures of such an event. More conservative Christrians tend to believe that Scripture is at least inspired by God and some believe it is inerrant, assuming inerrancy it seems likely that oral traditions throughout history could describe the same event but God gave the writers of the Bible the "right version".

I keep thinking about this..The thing is, the sumerian accounts are 1000 years older than the OT account... 1000 years... It does seem like the OT account took what the Sumerian account said and changed it up, gave the human lineage to the Hebrews and the coming of the Messiah. Unless i'm wrong. Where were the sumerian account once the Hebrew people wrote about the Adam and Eve story? Even the sumerians created the story after the flood so i assume their documents were washed away (it's on tablets so it's not easy to break) and found later? From what I see in history, the Hebrew people were held captive for over 400 years in Egypt and started to learn the Hebrew language all over again (it was dead for 200 years then randomly came back) from reading books at the New Alexandria library.
Then again, look at how coincidental the story is to Native American accounts, Alaskan accounts, and even Australian accounts. They all say the same thing. Man is created, God created man from mud/dirt/dust, said it was good. Maybe all of mankind wasn't without hope of a coming Messiah, this Messiah being Christ?

I just get really pissed off at my friend, he thinks the Bible rips off other pagan stories. is this true? I'm trying to find out how it doesn't rip off the Sumerian account but haven't found adequate information

[Nomis]

I'm going to address reasons why there are close but not exact similarities of the Creation account across large time spans and cultures.

In regards to the Sumerian/Hebrew similarity, simply put, it's as the children's game of "Chinese whispers" - over a very long time. Nobody "ripped off" the story, and changed it slightly maliciously or on purpose. It was just written down at a different stages of the whisper game. Same of course could be applied to the other much more distant cultures, if you think that there is a connection between the first recounting of the story (presumably, you would think, by God to Adam/the first human?) who told it to everyone before they left to populate the earth.

Otherwise, I think the similarity across varied cultures could be explained by purely naturalistic means, because of behavioral characteristics that all humans have in common. The story would go something like this:

The concept of cause and effect became an important part of human survival (for example the effect of an indentation in the ground was caused by an animal worth hunting for food). This same mental process would have triggered other thoughts such as what cause effected humans to be there in the first place.

I'll assume that at this stage humans had the ability to create/design things from other things (Spears, axes, clothes ect.), also as a result of creative application of cause and effect. So the concept of things being created would have been around.

I don't think it would be a huge leap for them to imagine that everything that exists (including humans) needs to be created. Since humans are the only thing that they could see with the ability to create anything, and assuming they reasoned that humans couldn't have created themselves, it seems that the next logical step would be to assume that they couldn't see what created them (it was either invisible or not around anymore). Thus humans could have independently discovered the concept of a God that created stuff.

Having discovered this concept, the next step would have been to flesh out Gods attributes. Logically the most obvious ones are; it existed before humans, it cant be seen, and it creates stuff (the reason it was thought up in the first place). Following from this it must have made humans like itself, in that humans (and only humans) create stuff as well. Thus humans could have independently discovered the concept that God created humans in its image (well at least in the creative sense).

Now, when humans create things, they just don't materialize "out of thin air". Things are created from something else (spears from rocks and sticks, clothes from animals etc.) You could image that all these early humans thought the same of the creation of themselves. When we die and are left, we decompose and turn into dust/dirt/mud. It's not a huge leap to reason that primitive people searching for this answer concluded that humans where first created by a reversal of the process. Thus humans could have independently discovered the concept that we where made from dust/dirt/mud.

In conclusion there are two ways of explaining the similar, yet not identical nature of the creation story over vastly different cultures and geological dive. The first is that it came from the very same event, but as it the nature of stories (and indeed most things that replicate) changed slightly over time the more it was told. The second is that the story was created independently across many cultures, and is similar because of the universal reasoning skills (especially that of cause and effect) and environments of humans. Also it is consistent that both of these things happened concurrently, or after one another.

[jlay]

I always wonder how many people have actually studied this for themselves.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/gilgamesh.html