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Modern Christian Mythology: The Garden of Eden
Modern Christian Mythology: the Garden of Eden
Who wouldn’t want there to exist an earthly paradise? Especially
one that not everyone knows about; keep the real estate
affordable.
Like other parts of the book of Genesis, the Eden story is
paralleled in Sumerian mythology, specifically the Epic of
Gilgamesh, which predates the compilation of the Hebrew sources
by over a thousand years:
The Sumerian poem “Enki and Ninhursag: A Paradise Myth” begins
with a eulogy of Dilmun, describing it as a place that is pure,
clean, and bright, where there is neither sickness nor death.
Similarly, the characterization of the serpent, the eating of
the fruit of the tree, and the deprivation of human immortality,
are all paralleled in the Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, in
which the legendary hero succeeds in obtaining the “plant of
life” only to have it stolen by a serpent, thus depriving him of
immortality.
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