2. Comparison with Genesis 2.
This account of the creation has sometimes been compared with Genesis 2:4, ff., which describes a time when there was no grass or vegetation on the earth, and then goes on to describe the creation of man and animals, speaking of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
In this account of the creation it is stated (line 21) that the goddess Aruru with Marduk created mankind.
In another Babylonian poem, the Gilgamesh epic, which contains the Babylonian story of the flood, there is an account of the creation of man which accords much more closely with Gen. 2:7 than that which we are considering. It runs:
The goddess Aruru, when she heard this,
A man like Anu she formed in her heart.
Aruru washed her hands;
Clay she pinched off and spat upon it;
Eabani, a hero she created,
An exalted offspring, with the might of Ninib.
Here is clearly a tradition, similar to Genesis, that God formed man from the dust of the ground. The allusion to Aruru indicates that this formed a part of the early Babylonian tradition. There is considerable evidence that in an earlier form of the Babylonian account Marduk had no place. He was introduced into it later by the priests of Babylon. Aruru was in that earlier form the creator of man, and probably was said to have formed him from clay, as in the Gilgamesh epic.
While these points of likeness are evident, there are great differences between the two narratives. The Babylonian account speaks not only of grass and reeds as non-existent, but of cities and temples also, which, it tells us, were created later. It has no picture of Eden; its thought centers in well-known Babylonian cities. While Marduk appears as supreme in the Babylonian poem, the gods and Anunaki, or spirits of earth, are recognized, so that the polytheistic view is not entirely absent. In the Biblical picture, on the other hand, Jehovah is supreme. Opinions of scholars differ as to whether there was any real connection between the two narratives. Whatever opinion one may hold on this point, there can be no question but that the second chapter of Genesis is dominated by those religious conceptions which were so uniquely manifested in Israel, while they are absent from the Babylonian narrative.
(For a new Babylonian account of the creation of man, see [Appendix].)