Page 30-36: Enuma Elish

• How old is the Enuma Elish?
• What geographic reality does the mixing of waters explain, and what gods are responsible?
• How does the Lord (Marduk) create the cosmos? Be specific.
• Connect the second verse of Genesis to the main characters of the Enuma Elish.
• Give another example (besides Genesis 1) of the creative power of a deity's words.
• Explain the divine council and give an example that refers to it.
• How does Genesis replicate the series of births in the Enuma Elish?
• Why exactly might the authors of Genesis 1, which was completed during the Babylonian exile, have known the Enuma Elish?
• How is Genesis 1 a challenge to the Enuma Elish?
• Why, according to box 3.1, was the creation "myth" of Genesis chapter 1 not necessarily taken literally by its original Israelite audience?
• Where else in the bible is the ancient battle between a storm-god and the sea mentioned? Give an example.

Page 455-462: Wisdom Literature

• Who, according the Hebrews, is "hokmah" or wise?
• Who kept and maintained wisdom literature in the ancient near East? Why was it a "literature of the elite"?
• How old was the Egyptian "Instruction of Amenenope," and what does it have in common with Hebrew proverb literature?
• What were courtiers and scribes supposed to learn by copying proverbs?
• How do we know that proverb books like "The Words of Aliquar" had international appeal?
• Why do the authors think Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job were "concerned with the present" as opposed to the future or afterlife?
• What's something interesting (to you) about the "Strange" or "foreign" woman?
• How does the hymn to wisdom in Proverbs 8.22-30 "appropriate" common Near Eastern myths about God's consort?
• How is Wisdom like Maat, Asherah, or Ishtar? (be specific).