Similarities Between the God of the Fall and Deluge...

In the beginning; God created everything; and man, according to Genesis, in our image....both male and female (Gen. 1:26,27). This brings up some thorny problems: Not only why the two creation stories in Genesis 1-3 conflict, but the question of why God uses the plural, which includes woman in our image though God takes a singular male pronoun in Gen. 3:24; 8:21; et al.. There are more similarities between the God of the Fall and Deluge stories in Genesis, and the gods in Homers Odyssey than appear on the surface. Even though the stories are roughly contemporary, the God of Genesis represents one more move from polytheism to monotheism than the Greek gods of Homer. But prior to his promotion, the God of Genesis may have corresponded more to Zeus, or perhaps Zeus father Kronos (Homer 17.401-457) than the biblical accounts acknowledge, embedded in a pantheon of peer and subordinate deities. That there are two traditions blended into one narrative in Genesis can be seen by any reader in both Gen. 1-3 and 6-9. The dual accounts contradict each other in many places. The order of creation occurs on different days; God makes both Adam and Eve out of nothing in the first version (Gen. 1:27) but then makes Adam out of dust and Eve from his rib in the second (Gen. 2:23). Likewise there are two versions of the Deluge, discussed for centuries by the highest experts. What is important is that in either version, God shares the breath of life, investing the divine in man, and