Is There a Historical Adam? Today's entry was written by Tremper
Longman. Please note the views expressed here are those of the
author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read
more about what BioLogos believes here. In my previous post, I
indicated that there is a lot of figurative language in Genesis
1. The same may be said for Genesis 2, the second creation
account in which there is a focus on Adam and Eve. Also, as we
saw in Genesis 1, there is an implicit polemic against ancient
Near Eastern mythological ideas. Listen to the description of
human beings in the Babylonian Atrahasis. The background to this
passage is a strike on the part of the lesser gods who are tired
of doing heavy labor on behalf of the major gods. They insist
that they be replaced. Belet-ili, the mother god, takes clay and
mixes it with the blood of the instigator of the strike, then
the text says: After she had mixed the clay, She summoned the
Anunna, the great gods, The Igigi, the great gods, spat upon the
clay. From