The cosmogonies from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and in Genesis display common themes and patterns. All of these stories are based around the natural world and its elements, especially water in the beginning and floods later as a cleansing feature. Heliopolitan theology of Egypt says that Atum, the creator, emerges from the flood waters. Enuma elish, also known as the Epic of Creation, begins with Apsu and Tiamat mixing their fresh and salt waters together (Dalley, p. 235). In these creation myths, the God/gods create the world in divisions and parts along a timeline. In Genesis, God creates earth/heaven, light/dark, a dome separate from the waters (sky), land from sea, vegetation, living things, and humankind. This creates a seven-day timeline, where he rests on the seventh (Genesis, 1:1-31, 2:1-3). Greek and Egyptian myths focus around families in which siblings/children rule over different parts of the environment. As these families expand, the storyline and universe expand. Violence between family members, specifically fathers and their sons, is also a generally applied concept.
Another prominent motif is that gods create humanity with part of themselves, making humans part divine. Creating man as a part of the natural world is also closely correlated to this pattern since the gods created/rule over the
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Throughout these stories, humanity suffers at the hands of the gods. Floods, droughts, and disease occur in these stories as punishment for mankind or solution for the gods’ troubles. For example, later in Genesis, God punishes mankind for their evilness by flooding the Earth (Genesis, 6:5-7:24). In the story of Atrahasis, the humans are disturbing the gods by being too loud, so they attempt to diminish the race with drought, starvation, disease, and a flood (Dalley, p.