The Strand Study Bible

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND WORLD HISTORY

* The Adapa Tablets This account of Creation was discovered on four cuneiform fragments, three from Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh (c. 650 BC) and the fourth from the archives of the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenhotep III and IV at Amarna in Egypt (c. 1400 BC) and refers to the Garden of Eden story (Genesis 3) ( Columbia, p. 66). It is so strikingly parallel to the Biblical story of Adam that he (Adapa) has been called the Babylonian Adam. Consider the similarity of the two stories:

Adapa, the seed of mankind, –the wise man of Eridu,–blameless, –then he offended the gods, – through knowledge, –then he became mortal, –food of life he ate not, –sickness he imposed on the people, –the gods said, “he shall not rest,” –they clothed him with a mourning garment.

* The Temptation Seal (dated c. 3500 BC) This seal was discovered among ancient Babylonian tablets and refers to the Creation story (Genesis 3). In the center is a tree. On the right is a man; on the left, a woman, plucking fruit. Behind the woman is a serpent, standing erect, as if whispering to her.

* The Adam and Eve Seal (dated c. 3500 BC) This seal was discovered twelve miles north of Nineveh. An inch in diameter and engraved on stone, it too is strongly suggestive of the Creation story (Gen 3). Walking as if utterly cast-down and broken-hearted, a naked man and a naked woman are followed by a serpent.

Classics of Creation, in diverse forms, have also been found in Persia, India, Greece, China, Mongolia and Egypt. The earliest Egyptian record recounts how the god Khnum took a lump of mud, and placing it upon his potter’s wheel, molded it into the physical form of the first man. Adam no doubt, told the original story of the Garden of Eden to Methuselah, and Methuselah to Noah, and Noah to his sons; and in the national cultures that followed due to the confusion of tongues at Babel it became variously and grossly modified. 4. Historians everywhere agree that EPICS OF THE FLOOD, also on tablets, which were in circulation before the time of Abraham (c. 1800 BC), were recovered in the Near East ( Columbia, p. 66,67,69,189). The Bible also agrees! Early Babylonian inscriptions abound in references to a universal “Flood” that once destroyed mankind. 6 For example: * The Gilgamesh Tablet (dated c. 2000 BC) Gilgamesh, the fifth king of the Erech dynasty, which was one of the first Dynasties after the Flood, records for us a conversation he had with a man by the name of Utnapishtim (no doubt a grossly modified name for Noah)

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