English Literature

In Genesis, the story of creation is very simply stated. According to Genesis, God first created heaven and Earth, and then he created Light (Genesis 11-5). In Genesis, God alone created everything from nothing. This story of creation is very similar to the one in Metamorphoses in that God created the Earth and sky from chaos. But in Genesis, God continues to create the sun, moon and stars and finally man. But in metamorphoses, there is ambiguity as to who created man and according to Ovid, it could be either God or the newly formed Earth that made man (Metamorphoses, Book 1). These stories of creation are vastly different from the Babylonian account, Enuma Elish. According to Enuma Elish the creation was the result of mating of the make God Apsu and female God Tiamat. Tiamet gave birth to all the Gods and the Earth. One of these Gods, Marduk, the God of light, was chosen as the king of the Universe. Marduk created the four winds, the Heaven, stars and finally humans so that Gods would stop fighting among themselves for superiority and humans would serve all Gods (Smitha, 1998). The main difference between Enuma Elish and the other two is that here there are a number of Gods and the chaos is due to infighting between the Gods and Marduk ended this chaos by creating humans.
In Genesis, the fall of man is the result of direct disobedience to God and eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Later, the Earth becomes populated by wicked men and so God decided to end the world by flood. Metamorphoses explains the gradual process by which Earth became populated by wicked people and divides it into the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. In Gilgamesh, the fall was in the form of Gilgamesh and Enkidu becoming extremely audacious and killing the Bull from heaven which was avenged by Gods by killing Enkidu.

The flood myths of the three texts in question are very similar. In Genesis, God warns Noah, while in Gilgamesh, one of the Gods, Enlil brought about the flood while another God Ea warned Utnapishtim. In Metamorphoses, the flooding of Earth is decided by a council of Gods. There is no warning from the Gods in Metamorphoses. In Genesis, the flood lasts forty days, while in Gilgamesh it lasts seven days. Metamorphoses does not mention the length of the flood. However, in Metamorphoses, the raft stops at Mount Parnassus, in Gilgamesh it is Mount Nizir and in Genesis it is Mount Ararat. In all three, only one family survives the flood which then goes on to repopulate the Earth.