Aside from attempting to create a relatable, known allegory to portray the Abrahamic God; there also exist more material reasons for the incorporation of Babylonian thought into Genesis. Hermann Gunkel, the German old testament scholar, places the writing of Genesis in the period known to us from the Tell el-Amarna tablets (around 1450BC), when Babylonian culture exerted great influence on Western Asia and Europe. Gunkel continues to argue that the work of creation was explained by analogy from the rebirth of day after night; or spring after winter. Such distinct seasons, states Gunkel, would be most evident in Babylon, lending to the idea that Genesis was written on Babylonian soil. Thus, it would appear that the close similarities seen between Jewish and Babylonian creation are not merely coincidences, but instead a result of socio-political factors at the time of the Book’s writing.

Within the first section of Genesis, connection is evident. Prior to creation, the earth is described as ‘formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’. Babylonian myth dictates that the earth is a flat disc, resting upon a ‘great deep’, or sea of chaos (tehom); in the same way there existed a ‘watery chaos’ prior to the formation of the world above in the Septuagint. It is the Babylonian belief that within this watery chaos resides ‘Tiamat’, chaos monster, whom God incites and destroys. In Genesis, the description of the division of waters, as a ‘vault’ is created ‘between the waters to separate water from water’ is a probable reference to the vanquishing of Tiamat’s corpse in Babylonian belief. It is stated that the monster’s corpse is divided in two, with one half covering the sky, and another making the earth. In the same way, God called the first ‘vault ‘sky’’, and ensured that ‘the waters that were gathered together’, to create seas over dry land; therefore creating the earth in its physical form known today. It is important, however, not to overstate the Babylonian connection. Indeed, Genesis portrays God as existing prior to and continuously throughout creation, whereas Babylonian cosmology is of the view that the divine was created with the creation process. Furthermore, unlike in Babylonian tales, there is no conflict between the Tiamat and God in Genesis, and they can be seen to coexist as two parts of creation.

The parallels between the latter parts of Genesis and Babylonian thought are increasingly evident through the Hebrew explanation of the great flood, to the point that they can be explained only though Biblical dependence on Babylon. Described in the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, Babylonian creation refers to the God ‘Ea’ commanding the man Utnapistim to build a great ship, and take into it ‘the seed of life of every kind’, in the same way Noah had to take into his ark ‘two of all living creatures, male and female’. The Epic gives a vivid description of the storm and its ferocity, related to by Genesis, which depicts how it ‘will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made’. Noah is described, after forty days, sending out a raven that ‘kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth’. Utnapistim too sent out a raven, that did not return; yet a dove that did, in the same way the Biblical dove ‘returned to Noah in the ark’.