The Old Testament is a compilation, and like every compilation it has a
             wide variety of contributors who, in turn, have their individual influence
             upon the final work. It is no surprise, then, that there exist certain
             parallels between the Enuma Elish, the cosmogony of the Babylonians, and
             the Book of Genesis, the first part of the Pentateuch section of the Bible.
             In fact, arguments may be made that other Near Eastern texts, particularly
             Sumerian, have had their influences in Biblical texts. The extent of this
             'borrowing', as it were, is not limited to the Bible; the Enuma Elish has
             its own roots in Sumerian mythology, predating the Enuma Elish by nearly a
             thousand years. A superficial examination of this evidence would
             erroneously lead one to believe that the Bible is somewhat a collection of
             older mythology re-written specifically for the Semites. In fact, what
             develops is that the writers have addressed each myth as a separate issue,
             and what the writers say is that their God surpasses every other. Each
             myth or text that has a counterpart in the Bible only serves to further an
             important idea among the Hebrews: there is but one God, and He is
             omnipotent, omniscient, and other-worldly; He is not of this world, but
             outside it, apart from it. The idea of a monotheistic religion is first
             evinced in recorded history with Judaism, and it is vital to see that
             instead of being an example of plagiarism, the Book of Genesis is a
             meticulously composed document that will set apart the Hebrew God from the
             To get a clear picture of the way the Book of Genesis may have been formed
             (because we can only guess with some degree of certainty), we must place in
             somewhere in time, and then define the cultures in that time. The
             influences, possible and probable, must be illustrated, and then we may
             If we trace back to the first appearance of the Bible in written form, in
             its earliest translati...