Fragmented Stories - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 127

esis as literature intended to promote monotheism is illuminating. Genesis lists the panthe-
istic gods and says that one true God created them all. It is an epic poem with a purpose.
Earth, sky, sun, moon, plants, and animals—they are not gods. According to Genesis, sea
monsters were created on the fifth day. 2 This explicitly refutes the Mesopotamian creation
story in which the patron god of Babylon subdued the forces of chaos, slaying the angry
goddess that ruled the cosmic sea to create the world and everything in it. Here, perhaps,
we find the original aim of the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible: refuting the account
of Creation posed by the polytheistic Mesopotamian culture.
The Babylonian flood story was even known to the ancient Greeks. The obscure historian
Alexander Polyhistor attributed an account of a great flood to the Babylonian priest Beros-
sus, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great several hundred years after the Jews were
exiled to Babylon. Writing in the first century BC , Polyhistor recounted how the god Kro-
nos ordered Xisuthros (likely a phonetic transliteration of Ziusudra, the original Sumerian
flood hero) to build a boat that could carry his family and friends through a flood sent to
destroy the rest of mankind. He was to stow provisions, animals, and birds on board and
then sail off as the flood rose. Later, as the flood receded, Xisuthros set the birds free, only
to have them return, unable to find land to rest on. The second time he sent them out, the
birds returned with muddy feet. The third time they did not return at all. Finally, the boat
ran aground. There, on a mountain, Xisuthros built an altar and offered a sacrifice to the
gods for delivering him through the ordeal. The similarities between Polyhistor's story and
both the Sumerian and biblical flood stories are clear.
The Greeks also had a flood story, although theirs evolved to parallel the Old Testament
story. In the ninth Olympian ode of Pindar, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, come down
from Mount Parnassus (the highest point in southern Greece) to populate the world after
Zeus drained the floodwaters, revealing the fertile lowlands where humanity might thrive.
In the fourth century BC , Plato taught that Deucalion's flood was a local affair that only
covered the plains, allowing those who fled to the hills to save themselves. In both tradi-
tions, Deucalion and Pyrrha were the ancestors of all Greeks.
The best-known version of Deucalion's story is found in Ovid's Metamorphoses , a Ro-
man elaboration of Greek myths in which Prometheus warned righteous Deucalion and