Why 7 days for Creation?

google "enuma elish" for the real answer.

Interesting. Thanks.

What is the timeline relationship between Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies. Were they contemporaneous? I'm not familiar with these points in history/geography. I suppose I could google it all, but maybe someone will know...

Earlier in this thread it appeared that the 7 astronomical objects most recognized in early history may have played a part in generating a 7 day creation story. But there are lots of similarities between the Elish and the Biblical myth. Did the Elish also derive it's basic story pattern (7 days) from astronomical sources?

Your position is that the number seven was selected by those who wrote the story of creation and not by the creator.

As if to entertain the idea of a creator might cause you to contract a toe fungus.

If I were a god creating stuff, I would do it all in an instant. Why drag it out.

A brain fever, more likely . . .

With a DVR you can fast forward through the commercials and be done with the playback of the creation in like 5 days. 4 days if you skip past the 7th day. Spoiler alert: God just plays farmville on Facebook all day and texts Jupiter.

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Correct. That's because I don't believe in magic.

the reason why the biblical story has 7 days for creation - with six days of making the world and one day of rest, is beacuse the sumerian poem/epic of enuma elish had exactly the same. since the old cannot be influenced by the recent, it follows that the story in the old testament was plagiarized from the more ancient Enuma Elish, where the sumerian gods Tiamat and Apsu "commissioned" another god called Marduk to make the world.

The same is the story of the biblical "flood myth" - this one was lifted from the Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh (google the name for more).

The 10 commandments meanwhile are lifted from the Egyptian book of the dead.

the so called "babylonian talmud" similarly borrows from much of Iranian/persian scripture and religion (for eg - the very notion of "Paradise" was alien to the hebrew people, who came to know about the concept of this heaven-on-earth kind of place full of streams and flowers from the iranians, whose wold for such a place was "firdous" - which is the real origin of the word paradise)

A nuclear bomb was magic for most of history. Are you saying you dont believe in anything that is not known and established ?

No, it is because of the 7 visible solar objects that the sumerians chose 7 days for creation. The objects are the origin.

Which in turn comes from the story of Ut-Naphishtim.

The 10 commandments are a summary of the book of laws. That summary is for your future life, I will tell no lies etc, whilst the book of the dead is for your past life when being judged...I have told no lies etc...the origins for either are not clear but they may have a common ancestor rather than one from the other.

The concept of the Garden of Eden is very ancient to the semites and comes with them when they migrated out of Arabia. The original eden was a hunting game reserve for the king.

why the sumerians chose 7 days or why does the biblical creation fable have 7 days to it - whcih was the question - the biblical story is clearly lifted from enuma elish and not just the number of days but in the order things were done.

can you provide a link to prove that the story of gilgamesh is itself taken from another? Gilgamesn was the king of the FIRST known human settlement/city - Uruk in today's iraq. so i have my doubts.

the lines of then commandments "eg - thou shall not steal" are lifted verbatim and almost in order from a certain section of the eqyptian book of the dead. i have checked them myself and can provide the original if you insist.

garden of eden is not paradise. the word paradise comes from the greek (european) version of the semetic version of the iranian word firdous and is similar in concept.

Nor do I

The question at the top of the page says why 7 days for creation. It is because there were 7 visible solar bodies. These were used in the Sumerian creation myth which was written into the Bible.

Certainly...as follows...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Dont bother, I am very familiar with it. For example, the Book of the Dead says I have not stolen...the 10 Commandments say You will not steal. The Book of the Dead is a declaration you make when you get your heart weighed against a feather to see if you have lived a good life before you pass to the next world. The 10 Commandments are a statement of how to live your life because God sees everything. It may be that the concept of selecting 10 only of all the commandments was influenced by the Book of the Dead, or it mat be they both had a common ancestor. It cant be proven either way but all the commandments from Mt Sinai are very lengthy. The idea of emphasising 10 came much later.

The Garden of Eden was the first paradise and was a familiar concept to the Jews when they adopted the idea of a paradise after they died. This after death paradise was borrowed whilst they were in exile from the Babylonians who had converted to Zarathustrianism, an Iranian religion.

Just because some people might have made the mistake of assuming a nuclear bomb was magic (before it was invented), doesn't mean that I have to make the same error in judgment.

I assume there will be technological and scientific discoveries, none of which will be magic.

How about 3, 7 and 9 having been numbers with religious meaning?

please provide a link that substantiates the claim that the sumerian myth had 7 days of creation because the sumerians (like everyone else) could see 7 solar bodies. and it was not WRITTEN INTO the bible. its where the bible was plagiarized from.

yes i read it. in particular where does it say that the gilgamesh epic was itself taken from another source.

it can indeed be proven and has been too. (it can be proven easily that the egyptians did not lift from the jewish books, as their - the egyptian, books were written before the decalogue. same applies for the enuma elish - it predates the bible, so the bible must be the copied version. every time the jews came in contact with a civilization, elements of THAT civilization's religious thought crept into the corpus of judaic literature. even so with Zoroastrian elements in judaism - surfaced only agter the iranians freed the jews from the Babilonian captivity.) http://edward.de.leau.net/the-10-commandments-are-a-copy-from-chapter-125-in-the-egyptian-book-of-the-dead-20070513.html

garden of eden was a sort of woods full of animals - a game reserve of sorts for the kings as you pointed out. firdous on the other hand was an artificial garden full of flowers and fed with man made water canals (the iranian civilization was set on a plateau and they had to master the art of transporting water through underground canals to survive. they soon did and amid the arid desert plateau, created such oasis-like places which they called firdous/parideza). the jews borrowed the word from the iranians (who used to rule today's iraq after Cyrus defeated the babylonians) and used it to describe their idea of "heaven". the talmud might never have been written but for the influence of the persian civilization on the jews in babylon, so much so that the babylonian talmud is considered more important than the jerusalem talmud (which was written by jews who returned to jerusalem from babylon, after the persians beat the babylonians in their own ground. the jews who stayed on in babylon meanwhile penned the babylonian version. Also Cyrus is the only non jew/gentile who is accorded the status of a messiah by the jews. pity these two people cant get along these days.

I have not said the Gilgamesh epic is taken in its entirety, but that the flood part is far older.
From my notes :
The earliest known full story of survival of the Great Flood is written in Akkadian and is incorporated into the epic of Gilgamesh . This epic was found on the Chaldean Flood Tablets from Ur which have been dated to around 650 BCE. The hero of this epic was called Ut-Naphishtim and his story is similar to other Akkadian flood survivor stories, such as Atrahasis that have also been found on ancient clay tablets. Part of the Great Flood story has been dated to earlier than this though, to about 2000 BCE when it was a separate story by itself but consisted of several versions with different details. The style used however is from an even earlier date for when we have archaeological evidence of flooding and suggests that a common basis for the variants lays in the Sumerian story of Ziusudra, King of Shuruppak.
Variations of a flood story occur in other ancient languages, but of all the flood stories floating around, the strongest similarities occur between two versions: the Hebrew/Noah World Deluge and the Sumerian/ Ziusudra Great Flood. There are several similarities and some relatively minor differences between the two versions.
More available here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziusudra

From my notes :
A calender was important to aid planning. Was the rain/flood late? Was the winter frost early? Experience showed what actions were necessary to maximise the crop in the bad years, but a calender was required. Enter stage left, the priests. Having noticed that the movement of the Gods in the heavens was related to the seasons, they invented the calender. The Sumerian calendar year consisted of 360 solar days that divided into 6 parts of 60 days, or 2 lunar months of 30 days. Emphasis was on the lunar cycle of a month with some years having 12 months and others 13 months to reset the lunar with the solar cycle (a solar year is 12.37 lunar months). We still use the system they invented to divide the heavens and circles into degrees, minutes and seconds. Because they measured the time via the heavens, they are also the reason why we have 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour. They also had the week, and we have essentially kept their system via the Romans , honouring their celestial Gods which started the week with the day dedicated to the sun and then the moon, followed by the five planets visible to the naked eye: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Creation occurred in seven days and nights as the solar system had seven bodies visible to the naked eye. Seven was therefore the heavenly number and was considered sacred because of its use by the Gods. This tradition was kept by the Semites. In addition to seven, all the Gods had their own number, for example An the God of the Heavens had the number 60.
More available here :
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/week.htm
It cant be proven. This is an assumption. It is quite possible there was a third older text or custom that both came from. If you want to say in the balance of probablity the Bible version came from the Book of the Dead, I can accept that but it is not fact.

I have not argued that they did not get the concept of paradise from the Zarathustrians. I have argued this was easier to incorporate into their beliefs because they previously had the concept of the Garden Of Eden.

You are confusing hindsight with ESP. All knowledge has a magic stage where naysayers live in denial. Then it becomes accepted knowledge and opens up further areas to be "magical". And so on. If you had of lived in the past, I see you as saying man will never fly, or build underwater vessels...you lack imagination if you cant see the possible and are stuck with the now.

That's funny, I've never confused those two things before

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that you think anything which is unknown is "magic" by default until it's proven. Are you implying that if we discover life on Mars that we have to assume it got there by magic until we can demonstrate another method?