I only listened to part of the video but can make a comment or two.heimarmene wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 10:37 am What do you all think about this video?
https://youtu.be/-LVb9vysXwg?t=2243
According to the scholar John Mchugh, Jews based part of the creation story of Genesis on Sumerian astral lore while they were in Babylonian captivity (IIRC). I'm sympathetic to Gmirkin's theory but wouldn't this partially negate it? I'm thinking perhaps a proto-Genesis arose around the 6th century BCE and then later during the 3rd century BCE it was polished up in Alexandria by supplementing it with elements from The Timaeus.
The Genesis is rich in word play, like other parts of the Old Testament writings. There is nothing unusual about that. There may be similarities in some transliterations of Sumerian words and those in Hebrew, but if so, I would expect the same kinds of similarities in other languages like Akkadian and Aramaic as well.
I can't see any reason to link the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden to astrological lore as is indicated in the video sections I watched. Even if the Sumerians had a myth about a land that found its way into Genesis as Eden then I would think such an idea was inherited by the authors of Genesis from folklore or something similar. But I don't know of any evidence for that. The video links the Sumerian words for Serpent and Eden, and I can't say if that is accurate or not, but if it is the case then again I think it would relate only very indirectly to the Bible. We are talking of a gap of more than a thousand years even on your suggestion of a 6th century work.
You might be interested in a table I constructed to compare Gmirkin's analysis of the biblical Garden of Eden with Greek myths at https://vridar.org/2023/01/08/the-garde ... critias-7/
In another post I compared the Biblical Eden with Mesopotamian perspectives: https://vridar.org/2023/01/09/garden-of ... spectives/
P.S. --- there is no incompatibility with Gmirkin's thesis and the idea that Hebrew authors immersed in local traditions and stories used elements of those stories in a new narrative that additionally drew upon Greek literature.