Many people refer to Enuma Elish as a creation story when the creation account is only a subplot to the major story – the elevation of the god Marduk as ruler over all other gods. The motive of this story is political, not moral as the account of the creation and fall of man as expressed in the OT. The God of Genesis is not the chief God of many trying to establish power, but the only God who already has power. Other surface similarities exist (creation by a supernatural entity, the order of creation, etc.), but these are only surface similarities. The major theological elements do not share any level of similarity.

The account of the flood is very similar in both of these accounts. I have often heard stories from non-Christians that the biblical accounts borrowed from other sources. I assume that this is an example of one of them. What I cannot understand, though, is why the Bible had to borrow from Gilgamesh and not the other way around. Although both accounts have supernatural elements, the Gilgamesh Epic seems far more legendary and legendary accounts are typically the ones that are said to have borrowed when another similar account exists that is not so legendary/mythological. Gilgamesh is on a quest to find immortality. On his quest he meets Utnaphistim who found immortality through surviving a flood that has some characteristics common with the flood Noah survived. This is a hero story, not a historical account. Noah, however, is presented not primarily heroically, but as a normal man (and a naked drunk on at least one occasion) called for a special time. In man’s sin nature he is quick to prefer anything to the Bible, but just because something seems to be similar to the Bible does not mean it came before the Bible. The existence of similar stories should actually act to strengthen, not diminish, the biblical account. Multiple sources point to the event as actually having happened.

Many similarities exist in the laws presented in both of these documents, but I am not really sure what that means. I would assume that some scholars in the liberal or critical camps might claim, as they would in number two above, that since there are similarities, the laws of Israel had to be borrowed from this and other documents, but I do not see how that has to follow. Granted, I am not a historian nor have I had sufficient training in this area to give an expert opinion, but I can give a logical one. If God created men, then all men are instilled with God’s moral code; a common ethic. If this is true, then one would expect that man would produce common laws in common situations. Many of the laws of this time look odd to us, but we must remember their context. I am sure that many of our laws would look odd to people who lived during the time these ancient documents were written. If two nations have similar laws, that does not mean they borrowed from each other, but that something specific in that time period required a specific law which was based upon the God-given morality that exists within the hearts of each nation.

The ancient Near Eastern setting of the Mosaic Law further justifies that the specifics of the law were for a specific people in a specific time. The parallels between the Mosaic Law and the other laws of the time period show that there were common things occurring in that society which required specific laws to address. Examples of these types of laws are those relating to the theft of animals. Animals are not a significant part of many of our lives today (with the possible exception of pets), but the animals during this time period were either the owner’s livelihood or next dinner. Both are directly related to survival. Therefore, the penalty for stealing animals is severe compared to the value we would place on animals today. Exodus 22:1-4 states:
[bibleblock]Exodus 22:1-4[/bibleblock]

Hammurabi’s Code states:

If a man steals an ox, a sheep, a donkey, a pig, or a boat — if it belongs either to the god or to the palace, he shall give thirtyfold; if it belongs to a commoner, he shall replace it tenfold; if the thief does not have anything to give, he shall be killed.

Both of these laws give a higher value to the animals than we would today. The specific penalties do not apply to us today, but there are still things that the Christian can learn from this. First, Christians are commanded by Jesus not to steal (cf. Matthew 19:19; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20) so the concept of stealing is still applicable to the life of the contemporary Christian even though the earthly punishment might be different.

Second, we know that the laws of the Old Testament do not apply to us today, but since God never changes and He is always the source of goodness and morality we can use the ancient Near Eastern setting to “peal away” the cultural factors involved with the law (in this case the value of animals) to get at the morality behind it.

It is important to remember, though, that this does not work under every circumstance so we should not read things into the text that are not there. In this case, though, once the incident is removed from its historical context by comparing it to the specific factors involved with the time period, we could have still come to the conclusion that stealing is wrong even if it was not specifically mentioned in the New Testament.

To prevent reading more into the Old Testament text when pealing back the cultural aspects of the laws and, even by accident, introduce rules and regulations that do not apply to the believer today, the best use of the method described above might be to find God’s unchanging nature through both the Old and New Testaments by finding laws that have remained throughout human history. This not only strengthens our faith through knowing that God does not change, but reveals the importance of these unchanging laws.

While reading non-Biblical ancient Near Eastern documents I could not help but to notice the apparent lack of multiple manuscript support as evidenced by the numerous gaps in the narrative accounts. These stories were not well preserved. A guess as to why might be that these stories were not accurate portrayals of history so they were not treated as history. The Old Testament, however, has at least enough copies in existence to show us the full story. I do not know how many copies that we have for each ancient Near Eastern text nor do I know how many copies we have of the Old Testament, but this argument does not depend on specific numbers. It depends on motivation. The Old Testament was preserved because it is true. The ancient Near Eastern documents were partially lost because they were not. I still have copies of important books I read many years ago because they are important to me in some way and helped to shape my life, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where my childhood copy of The Cat in the Hat is.