In the ancient Israelite, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures there was a dynamic interaction between the neighbors, a kind of communication that resulted in similar views of the cultures' physical environments. When comparing Ancient Near Eastern creation stories, the ancient stories demonstrate that there was a commonly shared world view, cosmology and cosmogony in the Ancient Near East as reflected in the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Israelite creation stories. I will use a simple "comparative literature" method to argue in defense of this thesis.
             The first similarity that occurs is in the very opening lines of the book of Genesis, and the Enuma Elish. It is the use of a programmatic title as the stories' first words. In Genesis, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth," and in the EE, "When skies above were not yet named," parallels can be seen not only in the programmatic function, but in a linguistical one as well. It should be mentioned that when the Israelites wrote of the heavens and earth in this respect, they were not referring to the "places" that a modern day Christian would think, those of the heaven being a place of pure good attained after death and the earth being a planet. Rather, they are referring to merely the skies and the land, just as the Babylonians write. As for the Egyptian story, the creation story is part of a larger story, and while the creation story does not, the opening lines of the entire story do indeed function as a programmatic title. However, the early menti!
             on of "skies and land" is also seen in the second paragraph of the Egyptian creation story, thus marking the first connection by all three creation stories.
             Not long after the opening lines/titles, the next similarity is seen in the stories' opening scenes of chaos, out of which the god/s appear. The Israelites talk of the earth being formless ...