Rather than resorting to a non-academic web site, you should have read the myth. After all, that's what sources are for, and that's why I provided it.semiopen wrote:The first one, Enki and Ninḫursaĝa, isn't that much like Genesis 2-3.
The quote seems to make more of the similarities than is there... a fox instead of the serpent? I think we can categorize the similarities as vague, we can also state that they are well known.Enki figures in a Sumerian myth which is a parallel to the Hebrew story of Adam and the Garden of Eden. In paradisal Dilmun, now identified with Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, the water god lived with Ninhursaga; it was a happy place, where animals did not harm one another, and neither sickness nor old age was known. The only thing wanting had been sweet water, and this Enki provided– his union with the earth mother turned the island into a fruitful garden. A quarrel arose when Enki devoured eight plants grown by Ninhursaga. She pronounced on him the curse of death. It was effective: sickness attacked eight parts of his body, to the dismay of the other gods. Enlil was powerless to arrest Enki's decline, the situation appeared hopeless. Then the fox spoke up. It offered to bring Ninhursaga back to Dilmun, providing there was suitable reward. This happened and the earth mother created eight deities to heal her consort's afflictions.
There are obvious similarities between this myth and the biblical picture of paradise. In Genesis‘ there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole ground,’ while the eating of forbidden plants is distinctly reminiscent of the tree of life in Eden. The very idea of a divine paradise, a garden of the gods, was of Sumerian origin. Eve, Adam's spouse, and ‘the lady of the rib,’ Ninti, the goddess created to heal Enki–s side, also have something in common. We know that there was ‘planted upon Abzu’ a sacred tree, kiskanu, which acted as the central point for rituals. Though the term ‘tree of life’ does not occur in any surviving Mesopotamian text, it can be deduced from pictorial representations of ritual observances that the tree played a significant role.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/sum/sum07.htm might be a more concise summary of your other examples.
In this myth, there are at least 18 similarities with Genesis 2-3 (and almost all of them occur in exactly the same sequential order in both versions). The first time these similarities were published was before WW II by people like Samuel Kramer.
One set of similarities represents a smoking gun:
1--Enki eats poisonous fruit
2--Enki comes down with an aching rib
3--A woman is created to heal his aching rib
4--That woman's name was "lady of the rib" and at the same time her name meant "lady of all mankind"
5--This woman was rewarded with being the progenitor of human beings (in the last line she was named "lady of the month", referring to the menstrual cycle)
(The reason why I didn't give you a representative for Genesis 1 is because we have never discovered any kind of cosmology written by the Sumerians. It has to be pieced together from many different sources, and many of them refer to Genesis 1, such as "when he divided the land from the waters..." or "when he divided the sun from the moon", etc.)
I forgot to give you the myth that tells how Enki formed man out of clay. If I find it you can have it.