xts. The Benjamites were nomads on the frontier of its boundaries, and certainly came in contact with Babylonian ideas- culture, religion, ethics. The early tribes of Israel were nomadic, "taking with them the early traditions, and in varying latitudes have modified it"6 according to external influences. The message remained constant, but the context would subtly change. In addition to the Benjamites in Mesopotamia, there were tribes of Israel in Egypt during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period7, which certainly exposed these people to Egyptian culture as well as Babylonian culture as a result of trade between the two kingdoms. Having placed Abraham and certain early Semites in this time, we can now examine the culture they would have known. The Babylonian Dynasty had as one of its first leaders a man known as Hammurabi. In addition to being the world's first known lawgiver, he installed a national god for his people named Marduk 8. Marduk's story is related in the Enuma Elish: It begins with two primordial creatures, Apsu and Tiamat. They have children, who are gods. These children became too noisy and disruptive to Apsu, who wished to kill them. One of these gods, Ea, kills Apsu first. Tiamat becomes enraged, and increasingly threatening towards Ea and the remaining gods for killing her mate. One by one, the gods seek to quiet Tiamat, but each fails. However, one god, Marduk, agrees to stop Tiamat, but only if he is granted sole dominion over all other gods. They agree, and Marduk battles Tiamat, killing her and creating the world from her corpse. In addition, Marduk slays one of the gods who allied himself with Tiamat, and from this dead god's blood, Marduk creates man. 9 On the surface, it looks and sounds nothing like Genesis. However, we can begin to draw our parallels as we go into more detail. For example, Babylonian poetry has no rhyme, but it has meter and rhythm, like Hebrew 10. Notice the similarity in the next two passages: ...
