1.	When above the heaven had not (yet) been named.
2.	(And) below the earth had not (yet) been called by a name;
3.	(When) Apsu primeval, their begetter.
4.	Mummu (and Ti amat), she who give birth to them all,
5.	(Still) mingled their waters together.
6.	And no pasture land had been formed (and) not (even) a reed marsh was to been seen;
7.	When none of the (other) gods had been brought into being,
8.	(When) they had not (yet) been called by (their) name (s, and their) destinies had not (yet) been fixed.
9.	(At that time) were the gods created within them.
10.	Lahmu and Lahamu came into being; they were called by (their) names.
11.	Even before they had grown up (and) become tall,
12.	Anshar and Kishar were created; they surpassed them (in stature).
13.	They lived many days, adding years (to days).
14.	Anu was their heir presumptive, the rival of his fathers;
15.	Yea, Anu, his first-born, equaled Anshar.
16.	And Anu begot Nudimud, his likeness.
17.	Nudimud, the master of his father was he;
18.	He was broad of understanding, wise, mighty in strength.
19.	Much stronger than his grandfather, Anshar;
20.	He had no rival among the gods of his brothers.

    Another is recorded on a badly mutilated and weather-worn tablet of the First Babylonian Dynasty.²

1-2.	(Destroyed)
3.	“What is little he shall raise to abundance;

4.	The… of creation (?) man shall bear.
5.	The goddess they called, 111
6.	The help (?) of the gods, the wise Mami:
7.	“Thou art the mother-womb,”
8.	The creatress of mankind;
9.	Create Man that he may bear the yoke,
10.	That he may bear the yoke…
11.	The… of creation (?) man shall bear”
12.	Mintu opened her mouth
13.	And said to the great gods.
14.	“With me alone it is impossible to do;
15.	With his help there will be Man.
16.	He shall be the one who fears all the gods.
17.	Clay.. “
18.	Enki opened his mouth.
19.	And said to the great gods.
20.	“In the month of substitution (?) and help,
21.	Of the purification of the land (and) the judgment of its shepherd,
22.	Let them slay a god,
23.	And let the gods…
24.	With his flesh and his blood
25.	Let ninhursag miz clay.
26.	God and man
27.	… united (?) in the clay.

    A third is that which was related on a tablet discovered among the ruins of the city of Anshur and dating about 800 B.C.³

1.	When heaven had been separated from the earth, the distant trust twin,

2.	(And) the mother of the goddesses had been brought into being;
3.	When the earth had been brought forth (and) the earth had been fashioned;
4.	When the destinies of heaven and earth had been fixed;
5.	(When) trench and carnal had been given (their) right courses,
6.	(And) the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates had been established,
7.	(Then) Anu, Enlil, Shamash, (and) Ea.
8.	The great gods,
9.	(And) the anunnaki, the great gods
10.	Seated themselves in the exalted sanctuary.
11.	And recounted among themselves what had been created.
12.	“Now that the destinies of heaven and earth have been fixed,
13.	Trench and canal have been given their right courses.
14.	The banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates
15.	Have been established
16.	What (else) shall we do?
17.	What (else) shall we create?
18.	O Anunnaki, ye great gods,
19.	What (else) shall we do?
20.	What (else) shall we create?”
21.	The great gods who were present.
22.	The Anunnaki, who fix the destinies.
23.	Both (groups) of them, made answer to Enlil;
24.	“In Uzumua, the bond of heaven and earth,
25.	Let us slay (two) Lamga gods.
26.	With their blood let us create mankind.
27.	The service of the gods be their portion.
28.	For all times.

29.	To maintain the boundary ditch.

    The above are offered as typical examples of Babylonian accounts. The conclusion of Heidel regarding a comparison between these and the Biblical account is well stated:⁴

A comparison of the Babylonian creation story with the first chapter of Genesis makes the sublime character of the latter stand out in even bolder relief. Enuma elish refers to the multitude of divinities emanting from the elementary world matter; the universe has its origin in the generation of numerous gods and goddesses personifying cosmic spaces or forces in nature, and in the orderly and purposeful arrangement of pre-existent matter; the world is not created in the biblical sense of the term but fashioned after the manner of human craftsmen; as for man, he is created with the blood of a deity that might well be called a devil among the gods, the sphere of activity assigned to man is the service of the gods, the sphere of activity assigned to man is the service of the gods. In Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, on the other hand, there stands at the very beginning one God, who is not co-united and co-existent with an eternal world-matter and who does not first develop Himself into a series of separate deities but who creates matter our of nothing and exists independently of all cosmic matter and remains one God to the end. Here the world is created by the sovereign Word of God, without recourse to all sorts of external means. God speaks, and it is done; he commands, and it stands fast. Add to this doctrine that man was created in the image of a holy and righteous God to be the lord of the earth, the air, the sea, and we have a number of differences between Enuma elish and Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 that make all similarities shrink into utter insignificance. These exalted conceptions in the biblical account of creation give it a depth and dignity unparalleled in any cosmogony known to us from Babylonia or Assyria.

    Furthermore, if we keep in mind that throughout history two kinds of men existed, we shall be able to put these secular accounts of origins and flood stories into proper perspective. On the one hand, there is the secular man, and on the other, the man of God. The secular man is spoken about in Genesis 4 as the descendant of Cain. Later, he is referred to as the descendant of Ham and Japheth, of Ishmael, of Moab and Ammon, of Esau, etc. He never receives the full truth from the Holy Spirit because he will not acknowledge the God of the Bible. His records are subject to error. He surmises and guesses at the origins

of man. Because he is human and lives amongst the men of God, he occasionally gets very close to truth. The king’s lists belonging to the third millennium B.C. are typical in this sense. One list reads as follows.⁵

Name	City	Length of Reign
A-lu-lim	NUN	28,000 years
A-la-(1)-gar	NUN	36,000 years
En-me-en-lu-an-na	Bad-tabira	43,000 years
En-me-en-gal-an-na	Bad-tabira	28,800 years
Dumuzu 'the shepherd'	Bad-tabira	36,000 years
En-Sib-zi-an-na	Larak	28,800 years
En-me-en-dur-an-na	Sippar	21,000 years
(?) Che-du	Suruspak	18,600 years
Total: 8 kings, 5 cities, 241,200 years
The flood came.
After the flood came, kingship again was set down from on high.

    Note that eight kings are listed beginning with a first kind way back in antiquity and ending with the worldwide flood. This parallels the seven generations of Genesis 4 or the 10 generations of Genesis 5. It can be seen that this approaches Biblical truth, but it is altogether imperfect and untrustworthy. Obviously, as secular man’s records became more complete, his records became more trustworthy. But never can they approach the perfect accuracy of the Biblical account.

    In addition to secular man, there is the line of God’s men. These are the descendants of Seth, of Shem, and of Abraham. The record produced by them as recorded in God’s Word is the true and trustworthy record. It is on a much higher level than the secular record because God Himself was involved in its preparation. Thus, we can learn little or nothing from the early secular creation accounts for no one was able to guard the truth. The truth recorded in the Bible was guarded by God Himself.

Moses: A Man of Great Learning and Wisdom

    The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We often think of Moses as a rather primitive ancient who not have been qualified to understand the implications of what he wrote when he prepared in final form the first books of the Bible. Let us consider, however, the consummate care God took to prepare the author of the book of beginning of his great calling. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the martyr Stephen was led to declare, in Acts 7:20-22:

In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father’s house three months: And when he was cast out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

    Moses was indeed well prepared and qualified, under the moving of the Holy Spirit, to be author of the first books of the Bible. The Bible declares that he was instructed in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians, while the secular record shows us the advanced culture in which he was trained.

    A few quotations from Margaret Murray’s book, The Splendor That Was Egypt, should prove of interest at this point.

The education of the children, especially of the boys, was considered to be of great importance. They appear to have been sent to boarding school at the age of four, but food does not seem to have been supplied by the school, for the mothers went every day carrying bread and bear for their little sons. The subjects taught at school were chiefly reading, writing, and arithmetic. Great pains were taken that the boys would be well-trained as they were all being educated to be clerks in government offices, or priests, or artists; reading and writing were essential for these three professions, and for the government service arithmetic was of great practical value on the account of the complicated system of taxation.6 Though the prehistoric people erected little hovels of mud-and-brick, real building does not appear till the first dynasty. The great royal tombs of that period show that the knowledge of such building was well advanced. The bricks were made in moulds of what is now known as ‘English bond’ in a mortar of clay. The bricks

are as well and truly laid as any modern bricklayer could lay them, showing that the Egyptian builders had a complete mastery of material and method.7 The great conquests of Thothmes III brought into Egypt many craftsmen form foreign countries, and among others there seem to have been glassmakers. Glass beads, black, white, and blue, became increasingly common, but it was not until a century later that other colours were used in glassmaking.8 Spinning and weaving were practiced form the Badarian period, and by the time of the first dynasty the Egyptians were producing the finest linen of the ancient world.9 The sciences in which the Egyptians excelled were applied mathematics and medicine.10 In dealing with Egypt it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Nile, for the river is the only source of water in the whole country. Waterworks, therefore, always engaged the attention of the engineers. The great problem was how to conserve the excess water of the inundation and store it up for use in the dry season. The problem was solved in the XIIth dynasty, when that great system of dykes, canals, and sluices was instituted in the Fayum, a system which remained in use till the Roman occupation. Irrigation canals were made in other parts of Egypt, but nothing on the scale of Amonemhat III’s work in the Fayum.11 Astronomy again was one of the sciences which the Egyptians studied. In a country where clouds are the exception and not the rule, the study of the heavens is comparatively easy. The positions of the constellations and the courses of the planets were known.12 There is no record of any fear of eclipses for there are no religious services and no charms for averting the danger of the sun or moon. It would seem that the date of an eclipse was so accurately calculated that the populace knew what to expect.13 They undoubtedly knew a great deal of the properties of drugs, and many medical papyri are extant giving the names and uses of medicinal plants. Their medical knowledge was far in advance of medieval Europe, and their anatomical knowledge and treatises were the foundation of the Greek writings on the subject.14

    All of these quotations describe Egypt form its earliest beginnings, more than 1500 years before Moses, to the days of Moses.

He, therefore, was indeed a part of a highly developed civilization of long duration.

    Another significant point we might note is that Moses was quite aware of God’s promise concerning his people, the Israelites. This eventually led to a forty year exile for Moses, which gave him more than adequate time to be additionally prepared for God’s purpose for him. Centuries before Moses was born, God promised in Genesis 15:13-14:

And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not their, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nations, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substances.

    This statement must have had great personal meaning for Moses. Since the patriarch Jacob and his family had entered Egypt, 390 years had passed. Only ten years remained of the 400 years names in the prophecy. The only Israelite even remotely in a position of leadership was Moses. It is no wonder that we read in Acts 7:23-25:

And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.

    Moses’ conclusion that he was to be a deliverer was correct; but his timetable was erroneous. Thus, instead of becoming a deliverer, he became a fugitive. Moses was forced to run for his life, and God set him to work tending sheep in the wilderness. For the next 40 years, Moses had ample time to get to know God and His all-wise purposes, His goodness, His sovereignty, His dealing with Israel, and the eventual fulfillment of His promise to Abraham.

    Moses’ 40-year exile may have served another very useful purpose. Man had begun to use a written language some 15 centuries earlier. The Egyptians were renowned for their skills in this field. Many of the historical events of Genesis might well have been in written form hundreds of years before Moses was born. Be that as it may, Moses was a highly skilled Egyptian scholar and while in exile, it is possible that he was already putting together much of the information we now read in the Genesis record.

    Forty years in the wilderness in the company of his wise, God-fearing father-in-law, Jethro, gave Moses plenty of time to ponder, discuss, and examine all the implications of God’s earlier revelations to him. When he collated and finalized the first book of the Pentateuch, we may be sure that each word and each expression he used was carefully weighted to be certain it said exactly what it ought to say.

    Also, Moses knew how to describe flood conditions with accuracy. The first 40 years of his life were spent in Egypt, where the Nile overflowed its banks almost every year, and floods with their aftermath of destruction were major topics of conversation. He was, therefore, eminently qualified to describe with the utmost precision the universal flood recorded in Genesis. Above all, however, we know that ultimately God Himself guided the hand that wrote the Genesis record in order to keep the slightest human inaccuracy from marring the truth of His Word. Need more be said?

NOTES:

    ¹Alexander, Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, Second ed., The University of Chicago Press, 1951, pg. 18.

    ²Ibid., p. 67.

    ³Ibid., p. 68-69

    ⁴Ibid., pp. 139-140.

    ⁵Wooley, Sir Leonard, Excavations at Ur, Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, 1954, p. 249.

    ⁶The Splendor That Was Egypt, New York, Hawthorne Books, Inc., 1959, p. 105.

    ⁷Ibid., pp. 229-230.

    ⁸Ibid., p. 281.

    ⁹Ibid., p. 282.

    ¹⁰Ibid., p. 283.

    ¹¹Ibid., p. 284.

    ¹²Ibid., p. 285.

    ¹³Ibid., p. 286.

    ¹⁴Ibid., p. 286.