As we grow through the experiences of life in this world, it doesn’t take too long to discover the often-surprising level of confusion suffered by humans, lost in the darkness-shrouded sea of humanity.
The Bible is very clear that Our Creator – the God of Genesis – is Completely Set Apart from all the Pagan gods of other nations.
Psa 96:5 For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.
Isa 44:6 “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.”
If we’re honest, the level of confusion, deception and misinformation is especially troubling when we observe it among the even many sects of Bible-based religious faith. Christians, as a global group of diverse people in diverse cultures, are certainly not exempt from being disturbingly misguided in their beliefs. This is not an accusation to spotlight any minor flaws in individuals or specific groups. We’re all flawed in multiple ways – imperfect – and that’s why it’s fairly easy for anyone to conclude that they need help. We all need help. We all need salvation from the damaging pitfalls of life, not to mention the damage incurred by our own bad choices. Indeed, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, observed over 25 hundred years ago in ancient Israel, that because …
“…they do not regard the work of the LORD, nor consider the operation of His hands, therefore my people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge…” Isaiah 5:12-13
In today’s world ‘captivity’ can easily be seen in the darkness and agony of those trapped in human trafficking as well as those trapped in undeniably pain-filled evils of addictions and self-destructive behaviors of all kinds. But captivity is a reality by which even the most highly esteemed among us can be endangered. Afterall, we’re surrounded by a society, overwhelmed by a vast typhoon of voices. Many of those voices are deliberately mesmerizing us into endless temptations to fear men and what they can do to us, rather than to fear God and accept His mercy. Inevitably, all of us are in danger of captivity because we lack knowledge! …particularly the knowledge of God.
Unfortunately, many have become so damaged, so jaded, so disconnected from the true and living God of Creation, that they’ve become hopeless. Their hurt, often turned to scars by people and events often which were beyond their control, has sadly worsened into a burdening ‘callous’ of cynicism, bitterness, and vulgarity. They need the saving grace and perfect peace of The Savior as much as anybody does.
Here’s where the realities of the truths of the Bible need to be presented as an anvil that can withstand the blows of doubt and criticism that imperfect humans have leveled at it for centuries. And, as much as many of us would like to start with Jesus and His gospel of the kingdom of God, when it comes to the challenge of speaking truth into the lives of an unbelievably twisted and warped generation, it’s not a bad idea to begin… with the beginning – Genesis. And that’s just what the word “genesis” means… ‘beginning.’
What makes the book of Genesis stand apart?
When we read Genesis 1 today, we typically read it through the lens of modern science. We ask questions about biology, geology, and time. But to the original ancient audience, Genesis was not just a record of origins. It was, and is, a divinely powerful and definitive worldview message that methodically shredded the most powerful religions of the ancient world. When you put the whole extraordinary book together, it is so compelling that it leaves no room for sensible rebuttal.
While Israel’s neighbors, the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Canaanites, were absolutely terrified of their gods, Genesis presented a reality that changed everything. The archaeology of ancient myths reveals that the Biblical account was not just a story. It was a revolutionary document. Think about it.
The most ancient city and culture of Babel goes back over 4,000 years to the first settlers of the land of Shinar, the region of modern-day Iraq. Remember Nimrod, the grandson of Noah’s son Ham (Gen 10:8)? He was what you could call the world’s first ‘emperor.’ Genesis credits him with building cities like Babel, along the Euphrates River, south of modern-day Baghdad, and Nineveh in Asyria on the Tigris River, near modern-day Mosul, Iraq. In 1849, the archeologist, Austen Henry Layard, discovered King Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh with over 30,000 cuneiform tablets and fragments. One of those clay tablets was inscribed with an ancient ‘creation myth’ named Enuma Elish (meaning “when on high”).
The translation of this tablet initially led critical scholars to conclude that the creation account in Genesis 1 was dependent upon Enuma Elish. Only one problem. It has the preexistence of matter at the time of its mythical first creative act. Now what do I mean by that?
The Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish, depicts the world as a place where the chaotic waters, named as the god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat, are preexistent. They supposedly arise out of eternal matter. And then, their mythical offspring provoke a violent, bloody war between gods. The hero god, Marduk, murders the chaos monster Tiamat and slices her corpse in half to create the sky and the earth. The whole creation was supposedly born out of violence and trauma.
Marduk then creates the sun, moon, and stars and gives them the role of marking the seasons. Enuma Elish describes how Marduk became the chief god in the Babylonian line-up of ‘little’ gods. It’s not so much a story about the origin of the universe. It’s really a story of the origin of their pagan gods.
What about Genesis?
Yes, it is included in the five books of Moses, called the Pentateuch or the Torah, that Moses recorded somewhere around 1500 B.C. So, secular scholars insist that Genesis originated after the earliest versions of the myths that eventually were included in the Enuma Elish. However, Genesis makes a radical claim: there was no fight. There was no rival power God had to overcome. God simply speaks into the darkness, and the darkness obeys. By using the Hebrew word ‘tehom,’ which means the deep, the sea, or the abyss (in Genesis 1:2), it can be compared to the Babylonian word for the name Tiamat. It’s easy to see that the author of Genesis is essentially saying that the monster everyone else feared was just water, and it moved whenever the true Creator God told it to. But remember something…
This is history
Genesis 2:4 tells us…
“This is the history [the ‘toledoth,’ literally ‘generations’] of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens…”
This is the very first ‘book’ of the history of a generation, or a genealogical time period, used to define sub-sections of the entire book of Moses called Genesis. There were at least 11 more, beginning with the next one in Genesis 5:1, when God’s Word declares …
“This is the book of the genealogy (the ‘toledoth’) of Adam, in the day (time period) that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.” [See the others at: Genesis 6:9; 10:1; 10:32; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 36:9; 37:2].
So instead of crediting other historical ‘books’ that Moses apparently used in compiling the book we now have called Genesis, the pagan perversion of the truthful account of origins, continues when we consider the creations of God in the sky.
To the Egyptians, the Sun was the mighty god Ra. To the Mesopotamians, the Moon was the god Sin. To pagan cultures, celestial bodies were seen as powerful objects that were to be worshipped and feared. Isn’t it interesting how the book of Genesis handles the deities representing the sun and the moon with a sense of divine irony? The text doesn’t even give them their names. It simply calls them the greater light and the lesser light (Genesis 1:16). To the biblical author, the sun and the moon are not gods at all. The astronomical bodies were not created by our Creator for a priestly class of more informed, demonically guided leaders to promote appeasement and sacrifice from the uneducated peasants. They are merely light fixtures that the Creator God hung in the hallway of the universe to help us keep time. In one sentence, the Bible demoted the supreme gods of the ancient world to the status of household equipment.
Why were humans made?
Perhaps the most beautiful difference between the Genesis record and all the pagan myths about beginnings is found in why humans were made. In almost every ancient pagan myth, humans were an afterthought. They were alleged to have been created from the blood of a defeated rebel god to be slaves to the winners, doing the hard labor of irrigation and farming, so the mythic gods could relax in their sensuality. Genesis tells a completely different story that is holy – Set Apart – with a holy and awe-inspiring purpose. God did not create humans because He needed labor. He created humans for fellowship with Him. The human family is not the refuse of a cosmic war. We are the Image Bearers of the majestic and wholesome King of the entire universe. In the ancient world, only a King was called the Image of God, but Genesis declared that every human being is royalty in Gods eyes and designed for a personal relationship with their Creator.
The archaeological record shows us that ancient people lived in a world of impulsive gods, acting out the most unrighteous kinds of human behaviors imaginable. You never knew if the Nile would flood or if the Earth would quake because the gods were moody and temperamental. Genesis introduced the concept of a Created Order. Because God is logical and gave mankind fixed and predictable natural laws like gravity, the world is logical too. What a concept! This mindset is actually what laid the groundwork in a Christian society for the modern study of nature. If the world is not a battlefield of unpredictable moody spirit beings, but a designed system of a rational Creator, then we can observe it and steward it with confidence. Even more, we can learn about our Creator God by studying His world carefully.
What does Creator God want us to understand by observing His creation?
Paul declares in Romans 1:20… “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse…”
The whole passage tells us why ancient cultures degraded into the same reprobate behaviors as we see being displayed in our own generation of so-called ‘post-modern’ and ‘post-Christian’ society.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead…, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” Romans 1:18-23.
The Chief Purpose of Genesis?
Genesis was not written to satisfy modern scientific curiosity. It was written to answer the Who of the universe. It tells us that we live in a world designed by a God of love, not violence; a God of logic, not whim; and a God who views you not as a servant to be used, but as a person made specifically for fellowship with Him.
In ancient near east creation myths, the sun, moon, and stars were worshipped as gods.
In Genesis 1, God names the gathering of the waters, seas, and the dry land earth (Genesis 1:10), but he doesn’t name the sun (šemeš) or moon (yārēaḥ); they’re just called the “two great lights” – “the greater light” and the “lesser light” (Genesis 1:16). God is telling the Israelites (the original audience) who were slaves in the pagan nation of Egypt, that though they undoubtedly had heard that the sun, moon, and stars are gods (of Egypt) parading in the heavens, worshipping or fearing them is worthless religion. God not only warned the Israelites against idolatry, but He rejects and refutes pagan myths with truthful history for our generation. God’s Genesis record clearly shows that He placed the sun and moon in the heavens with purposeful benefit to mankind, “to give light on the earth” (Genesis 1:17). That rules out the idea that celestial objects are to be worshipped in any way.
Christians favoring an evolutionist view of creation tend to downplay God’s inspiration of Scripture. Genesis 1 not only gives us a true historical, chronological account of creation, but at the same time, it refutes all other ancient pagan myths regarding the creation of the world (i.e., Egyptian, Canaanite, Mesopotamian). This is particularly significant in that Moses, whom the Holy Spirit moved to write the Torah, “was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). Moses was familiar with Egypt’s literary traditions and therefore able to refute myth with true history.
Genesis 1 is the essential and pivotal introduction to all of God-breathed Holy Scripture as described in 2 Timothy 3:16. It’s of the utmost importance for us to see that it’s not just a pandering reflection of a shared worldview among the ancient cultures of Moses’ time. Genesis 1 is so absolutely unique because it was given by the One true eternal and sovereign God of the universe, giving credible first-person witness to His work in creation. Did you get that? The clear message of Genesis 1 sets it completely apart from the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Those who believe Genesis 1 somehow shares a worldview with other ancient pagan texts do so because of a prior assumption that Genesis 1 is not unique among ancient myths. That means that they believe it is not a God-breathed account of what actually took place at the beginning of history.
How does Genesis contrast with pagan creation myths?
If someone wants to believe that Genesis 1 was written after, and somewhat based on, the Enuma Elish, it’s vital to know that there is no scholarly consensus on the date of the pagan document. Enuma Elish is most likely a fictionalized per-version (or cultural memory) of the original event of creation that was passed down among the unbelieving nations after the tower of Babel, that was written by demonically inspired overlords, and revised over time (cf. Romans 1:21–23). Since the historic events of creation, the flood, and the dispersion at Babel are understood from the Bible’s text to have been presented as having actually occurred in history, we should not be surprised to find some reference to these events in and throughout the artifacts of the ancient near east.
It bears reiterating… Genesis 1 is written from the perspective of the only truly sovereign God bringing creation itself into existence. It’s not about the origin of the gods. What’s described in Genesis 1 is not the result of a cosmic battle. It’s the result of God’s powerful word (Genesis 1:3; Psalm 33:6), whereby he spoke things into existence in the space of six normal Earth days, just as God also confirmed in Exodus 20:11 when He spoke the Ten Commandments out loud, for every one of the Israelites to hear on the wide desert floor at the base of Mount Sinai, after they had been led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses. It’s a straightforward and candid narrative of what is report by first hand witnesses.
As the apostle Peter quoted the prophet Isaiah in 1st Peter 1:24-25
“The grass withers, the flower falls away, but the word of the LORD endures forever” (he’s quoting Isaiah 40:8).
Isaiah’s revelations of the absolute Holiness of Creator God
Let’s see what else the prophet Isaiah has to say about the Creator God that is totally different from all the pagan gods of the ancient nations of the world.
Isa 5:16 “But the LORD of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.” ESV
You know what ‘holy’ means. It means different, set apart, different from everything else.
Isa 40:18 “To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?” KNJV
Isa 40:21 “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?” NKJV
Isa 40:26 “Lift up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His might And the strength of His power; Not one is missing.”
Isa 40:26-29 “Lift up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His might And the strength of His power; Not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob, And speak, O Israel: “My way is hidden from the LORD, And my just claim is passed over by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.”
Isa 44:6 ““Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.”
No other God is even close to Creator God – The LORD
Isa 45:1, 5a, 6b, 7, 12, 18, 21, 22 “Thus says the LORD to His anointed,
To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held— … I am the LORD, and there is no other;
There is no God besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other;
7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.’ … I have made the earth, And created man on it.
I—My hands—stretched out the heavens, And all their host I have commanded. … For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it,
Who has established it,
Who did not create it in vain,
Who formed it to be inhabited:
“I am the LORD, and there is no other… “Look to Me, and be saved,
All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.
King David’s Psalm 96:5 is quoted in the narrative of Chronicles…
1 Chron 16:26 “For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
But the LORD made the heavens.”
Is there any question that the God of the Bible declares Himself, through His prophets, to be uniquely separate (holy) from all the gods of the nations? He’s the Creator God. The Only God in whom anyone has any hope of being ‘saved.’ That’s why …
Isa 43:11 “I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.”
The next time someone insists all religions of the world amount to the same thing, just ask if they’re open to looking at some of these Scriptures with you. Help them discover the Most High Creator God of Genesis.
Bonus Segment
Take a look at Abram’s dialog with Melchisedek in Genesis 14, where he said: “Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth.” Gen 14:19
You’ll see phrases throughout Scripture referring to ‘the most high God’ and ‘God most high.”
In the Canaanite culture and the Babylonian culture from which Abram came, each nation had a variety of gods which were empowered because of the fear of them among the people living in those nations. They were real spiritual entities, idolized by the societies that feared them. And those societies bowed down to the lifeless images that were made by humans to represent those unseen beings..
That’s why the invitation that Isaiah makes in chapter 55 is always so timely…
- “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;
- let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
- let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him,
- and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
- For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
- For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
- and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isa 55:6-9
“Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” 1 Tim 1:17
“To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.” Jude 1:25
