bowman said:
You seem to be confusing 'oldest' with original.
Its clear that the original is the Biblical account.
No, I'm not confused. The original creation/flood myth came from the Sumerian texts; it is also the oldest.
As I said before, the Genesis was just a borrowing of the Babylonian texts, and changed the story to suit the Hebrew audience. Instead of having one god (Enlil) destroying mankind and another god (Enki/Ea) saving the Flood hero, the Genesis had Hebrew god doing both, which is rather confusing. Why would a god save anyone when he meant to destroy mankind? Which is why the biblical version doesn't make sense.
The same reason why the creation story in Genesis 1 is confusing. God speak of "us" and "our" when he was creating the first man and woman in our "image" and "likeness". The original story must have been written with a number of gods instead of just the one.
The order of creation in Genesis bear striking similarity to that of Old Babylonian
Enuma Elish ("Epic of the Creation), written around 16th century BCE. Marduk, the new king of the gods, ordered Ea (Sumerian Enki) to create the world, first bringing "light", before firmament and land, then luminaries (sun, moon, stars), and lastly primitive men. The story in Enuma Elish is also centuries older than the Genesis.
It showed that the Genesis was following similar line of older Bronze Age myth, which the Israelites had adopted and changed to suit the monotheistic religion, except it didn't completely get rid of its polytheistic origin of the story.
It is just like early Christians had changed the Germanic Yule, a pagan Winter's Solstice festival, and turned into Christ's mass (Christmas). The giving out gifts to children, putting sweets in socks and putting decorations around the house and on the tree didn't come from the gospels, but from pagan tradition. When was the tree ever a Christian symbol? The tree was meant to represent Yggdrasil - the World Tree. The tree symbolize renewal of light and warmer season (hence Yule had fertility nature, like so common in many other cultures, where seasonal feasts were celebrated on specific time of the years), because the day begin to length at this solstice and the night grow shorter. The socks were originally filled with hay for Odin's horse. Food and drink were left for the 3 gods - Odin, Loki and Hoenir.
And because of silly Christians tends to forget that the scripture were written by Jews, and interpret wrongly in a number of areas, like the wrongful translation of the Morning Star to Lucifer in Isaiah. The prophecy, which is not a prophecy at all, speak of the Morning Star, as a metaphor for the King of Babylon, not the Christian Satan/Devil/Lucifer. The reason why the Morning Star symbolize Babylon and its king, is because before Marduk became prominent god in Babylon, Babylon was a cult centre of the goddess Ishtar (Sumerian Inana). Her symbol was the morning star. In many depictions of Ishtar (statues, bas-relief, seals, etc), she worn the star-shape on top of her head. It had nothing to do with Satan/Lucifer. It was Jerome who translated the Morning Star or Son of Morning to Lucifer, a Latin name for the planet Venus.