God’s Repurposed Paradise–Behind the Bushes of Mesopotamia

ChatGpt is my friend quite a bit these days. I know it has its faults and isn’t always correct, so I watch for that, trust me.

Recently on TikTok, a lot of people have been in my algorithm proposing that Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul taught polar opposite things. It seems to be an attempt to discredit Paul’s teaching. I’m not going to get into that debate now (I will in a later post), but it got me thinking about how people make things up. What is true and what is myth? What is reality, and what is fake news?

I thought to explore the story of Adam and Eve. It’s a safe one for me, I’ll admit. I’ll do more later. I’m pretty comfortable myself with the idea of Adam and Eve being a fictional story or myth that holds moral for us, or a real story. The older I get, the more of these Old Testament stories I see as myths with important life lessons. And I often wonder too that if people during these older periods of time had experiences with awareness, euphoria, and/or connection to God. Hearing from God, they thought more of themselves then they ought and made themselves into where every word and thought was “thus sayeth the Lord” so we have some cruel and messed up things we have today. I can see it because I’ve had to keep my own self in check with my own lofty notions. It’s interesting to think about.

In the meantime, as a practicing Christian mystic myself, let’s explore what I found about Adam and Eve that made my proverbial pants fall off.

I discovered that many scholars note that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis shared themes with older or contemporaneous myths from the Ancient Near East and surrounding cultures. It is something many Christians shrug off as just proof that Christianity got it right. These similarities don’t imply that the stories are identical or that one directly copied the other, but they do show that Genesis participates in a broader ancient mythic tradition. What was different back in that time, which is a challenge to wrap our heads around is that they were perfectly fine with stories being repurposed by others. There was no copyright or sense of untouchable sacred myth that couldn’t be retold in another way to get a different message across. And this is, to my own amazement, actually their often “best practice” so that across cultures people would understand the message rather than present a new story and confuse them with both.

There are a few civilizations that predate our Bible stories and I want to focus on two because they are in the same area and there is much to explore here:

Mesopotamia (Sumerian & Akkadian)

● Paradise in Dilmun (The Myth of Enki and Ninhursag) – Sumerian

Describes a pure, idyllic garden where no one grows old or sick.
A god breaks the divine rules of the garden, leading to consequences (disease, conflict among gods).
Although not the same plot, the idea of a primeval garden paradise, later disrupted, is similar.

● Atrahasis – Akkadian

Humanity is created from clay mixed with divine substance.
Primarily a flood myth, it contains early creation motifs similar to Genesis.

2. Mesopotamian “Sacred Tree” Imagery

Many earlier Mesopotamian artworks (third millennium BCE) show:

A sacred tree or “tree of life.”
A serpent or serpent-like figure near it.
A male and female figure flanking the tree.

These images differ in meaning from Genesis, but the combination of tree + humans + serpent in a sacred context is notable and predates the Hebrew Bible.

Several Ancient Near Eastern countries close to Israel shared myths that held these characteristics:

A being offers forbidden knowledge.
A human transgresses a divine command.
The result is loss of immortality or entrance into mortal life.

Genesis fits this pattern, but expresses it in its distinct theological framework.

General Ancient Near Eastern Themes

The Adam and Eve narrative fits into a larger pattern of stories involving:

A primeval couple
A sacred garden
A divine command
A transgression
Loss of eternal life
Entrance into a harsher human condition

These themes were widespread long before Genesis was written (likely between the 10th–6th century BCE, depending on scholarly perspective).

Alright, so enough of A.I. there for a moment. Let’s focus on who the Sumerian and Akkadian people were.

They made up the area we know today as Iraq, parts of Syria and Iran–called Mesopotamia. Jonah had a heck of a time with wanting to help the people in this area out of “Ninevah,” and God supposedly put him into the belly of a whale until he did what God commanded. This area was considered the earliest and most influential civilization in human history. The culture of the Ancient Near Eastern World View is shaped by them–including ideas not only seen in Babylonian traditions and others, but also Hebrew.

ChatGPT said:

The Sumerians and Akkadians were two of the earliest and most influential civilizations in human history. They lived in Mesopotamia (“the land between the rivers”—the Tigris and Euphrates), in what is today Iraq and parts of Syria and Iran. Their cultures form the foundation of much of the ancient Near Eastern worldview—including ideas later seen in Hebrew, Babylonian, and other traditions.

ChatGpt tells us this about these 2 cultures:

The Sumerians

were the earliest known urban civilization in the world, emerging around 4500–3000 BCE.

They spoke Sumerian, a language isolate (not related to any known language family).
They lived in the southern part of Mesopotamia.

Their cities were independent and often competed politically or militarily.

Contributions

The Sumerians created many “firsts” in human history:

Writing (cuneiform) – earliest known writing system
The first cities and urban planning
Ziggurats – temple-towers
The wheel, plows, and irrigation systems
The earliest schools and scribal classes
Early mythological literature:
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- Enki and Ninhursag (the Dilmun paradise myth)
- Creation stories involving divine clay
The sexagesimal (base-60) numbering system, still used today for time and angles

Religion

Sumerian religion had a pantheon of gods associated with natural forces

Many themes we later see in Biblical or later Mesopotamian myths originate in Sumerian stories.

The Akkadians

The Akkadians were a Semitic people (related to ancient Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians).
They emerged slightly after the Sumerians, speaking Akkadian, a Semitic language.
They established the Akkadian Empire around 2334 BCE under Sargon of Akkad—often considered the first empire in world history.

Where They Lived

They lived in central and northern Mesopotamia, though their empire expanded widely.

Contributions

Akkadians built on and absorbed Sumerian culture:

They adopted cuneiform, modifying it to write Semitic languages.
They produced major literary works:
- The Epic of Gilgamesh (in Akkadian version)
- Atrahasis (creation + flood narrative)
- Enuma Elish (Babylonian creation epic)
- Adapa and the South Wind (a human denied immortality)
They developed early empire administration, bureaucracy, and law systems.

Religion

Akkadians worshipped many of the same gods as the Sumerians but with Semitic names

By 2000–1800 BCE, the two cultures were deeply merged.

Sumerian remained a sacred/literary language, like Latin in medieval Europe.

Adam and Eve share parallels with several Mesopotamian stories, especially:

The Dilmun myth (Enki and Ninhursag) → primordial paradise
Adapa → human denied immortality
Sacred garden/tree imagery → widespread in Mesopotamian art
Creation from clay → Sumerian and Akkadian tradition

Genesis seems to reinterpret these common themes with a different theological message (monotheism, moral agency, covenant).

How Sumerian and Akkadian Myths Were Discovered and Deciphered

For thousands of years, the civilizations of Sumer and Akkad were forgotten. Their writing—cuneiform—was unreadable, and their cities were buried under desert sand and tell-mounds. In the mid-1800s, European explorers and archaeologists began excavating sites in modern Iraq.

The most important sites:

Nineveh (library of Ashurbanipal)-where Jonah is later said to wrestle with it’s people and God and end up in a belly of a whale
Nippur
Ur
Uruk
Lagash

In these places, they found tens of thousands of clay tablets covered in wedge-shaped markings.

At the time, nobody knew how to read them.

How cuneiform was deciphered

Deciphering cuneiform was similar to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone.

The breakthrough came from:

comparing trilingual inscriptions (Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian)
especially the Behistun Inscription, carved on a cliff in Iran in the 500s BCE

Scholars like Henry Rawlinson risked their lives climbing cliffs to copy the inscriptions.

By the late 1800s:

Akkadian was transliterated and translated
Sumerian was recognized as a separate, older language
Scholars realized they were reading the oldest literature in world history

So What? Who Cares?

Once these myths were able to be translated (like Gilgamesh, Adapa, and Enki and Ninhursag), scholars suddenly saw:

creation stories predating Genesis
flood narratives similar to Noah
Paradise myths resembling Eden
Divine garden imagery was already ancient before Israel existed

This reshaped our understanding of Near Eastern religion and the Bible’s cultural environment. It is important to understand that this insight didn’t come until the 19th and 20th centuries! Even with this new historical background, churches don’t teach it because they focus on the faith of God’s core message at best, and most deny it as anything substantive at all. In a very real sense, much like the Mesopotamian school of thought, the Seminarian school of thought has conveniently thrown out the historical background as necessary to teach the flock for the story, but set in a cultural brew that has taken these myths as literally true stories straight out of Israel’s playbook, exclusive to them if not straight off God’s printing press. It is a dangerous abdication that many Christians and Zionists have taken to extremes. Religious leaders have taken our innocence for stupidity and manipulated us but there is an awakening coming. In the meantime, it has resorted to a sort of Christian violence on the culture.

Pastors and priests and complicit in allowing their flocks to believe along these lines while they have known differently for the sake of the faith” in God. But at what cost? A people who are intolerant of other faiths and beliefs. Christian nationalism and racism backed up by “scripture”. This sense that the Bible can’t be flawed, or touched, because it came off God’s printing press and only to one set of people.

2. How Sumerian and Akkadian Culture Influenced Ancient Israel

Genesis didn’t appear in a vacuum. The ancient Israelites:

lived amid Mesopotamian-dominated empires
were exiled in Babylon (6th century BCE)
spoke a Semitic language related to Akkadian
inherited many cultural motifs circulating in the ancient Near East

Key channels of influence:

● Abraham’s origin

According to the Bible, Abraham comes from Ur of the Chaldeans (a major Sumerian/Akkadian city).
Whether literal or symbolic, it shows awareness of Mesopotamia as Israel’s cultural ancestor.

● Babylonian Exile

During the Babylonian Exile:

Israelite elites lived in Babylon
they encountered Babylonian literature and theology up close
many scholars believe Genesis was edited or compiled during or after this period

● Shared mythic themes

Mesopotamia provided the region’s “mythic vocabulary,” including:

creation from clay
divine gardens
sacred trees
serpents as symbols of wisdom or danger
humans losing immortality
divine councils
floods as resets of humanity

Genesis uses these themes but reshapes them into:

strict monotheism instead of polytheism
a moral God instead of capricious deities
humans with moral agency, not pawns of the gods

Here is a Side-by-Side Comparison: Adam & Eve vs Mesopotamian Myths generated by chatgpt

Theme	Adam & Eve (Genesis)	Mesopotamian Parallels
Creation of humans from clay	Adam formed from dust/clay	Sumerian: humans created from clay mixed with divine substance
Garden paradise	Eden: lush garden with rivers	Sumerian: Dilmun, a perfect, pure garden
Forbidden knowledge	Tree of knowledge of good & evil	Many Mesopotamian myths involve forbidden wisdom; Enki often gives wisdom illicitly
Serpent	A crafty serpent tempts the woman	Serpents associated with wisdom, immortality, and sacred trees in Mesopotamia
Loss of immortality	Humans barred from Tree of Life	Adapa myth: human loses immortality due to disobedience/misunderstanding
Humanity’s suffering explained	Pain, toil, exile from Eden	Pandora (Greek), but also Mesopotamian motifs of suffering as divine punishment
Naming of animals	Adam names all creatures	Kings and sages in Mesopotamian literature show authority by naming or cataloging animals
First couple	Adam and Eve	Various Mesopotamian traditions have primordial couples (Enki & Ninhursag; Lahar & Ashnan in the grain myth)

3. What Makes Genesis Unique Despite the Parallels

Even with shared cultural themes, are there ways that Genesis still stands apart? Yes. Breath, my fellow Christians. All is not lost. This doesn’t mean our belief is a complete lie. It is using these similar myths but for its own purposes, just as other cultures did for theirs. Don’t forget: While this might feel like you were lied to, cheated, or this was a form of unholy plagiarism, it wasn’t back then. Not at all. There is still a message and lessons Israel wanted to tell about their God and what they believed and experienced. Back then, this was the common mode of communication to do that. It makes their God no less true or the value of the morals taught to us less valuable.

1. One God instead of many

Mesopotamian myths involve dozens of gods arguing, scheming, and making mistakes.
Genesis presents a single, sovereign creator.

2. Humans have moral dignity

In Mesopotamia, humans are created to serve the gods.
In Genesis, humans are made in the image of God, with dignity and purpose.

3. Sin is moral, not cosmic

Mesopotamian myths describe divine taboos or mistakes.
Genesis frames the Fall as a moral and relational rupture.

4. The serpent is not a rival god

In Mesopotamia, serpents can be symbols of immortality, wisdom, or chaos monsters.
In Genesis, the serpent is a creature, not a deity.

In Part II, I will look more into how the Israelites adapted these Mesopotamian myths, deeper into why, and the bottom line for us today.