101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Myths of the Beginning 69
If Genesis had relied solely on the Egyptian legends, Osiris and Cain, the oldest
brother in each story, should correspond to each other, and there are some parallels.
Osiris symbolized the grain and Cain became a planter of crops. Osiris wandered the
world teaching skills to humanity and Cain wandered the world teaching skills to
humanity. Genesis describes some of Cain’s descendants as the founders of various
arts, such as metalworking, music, and cattle raising. And, according to their respective
stories, Osiris and Cain each built the first city.
But if Cain corresponded to Osiris then the Egyptian plot requires that Cain be
the brother that gets killed instead of the brother that does the killing. This suggests
that other influences caused changes to the story, confusing the identity of the victim.
The source materials appear to have been Sumerian legends about a shepherd named
Dumuzi. In post-Sumerian times, Mesopotamians changed Dumuzi’s name to Tammuz,
whose name corresponds to one of the months in the Hebrew calendar.
Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. Both sought God’s favor by presenting
samples of their produce to God. The Hebrew deity chose Abel’s gift over Cain’s
and the farmer was upset. Soon after, he killed Abel, although no specific reasons
are given.
In a story known as Dumuzi and Enkimdu, we find the theme of competition
between a shepherd (Dumuzi) and a farmer (Enkimdu). In this instance, both sought
the favor of the goddess Innana, and she made her decision based on the importance
of the respective produce. At first, Inanna preferred Enkimdu the farmer, but Dumuzi
the shepherd pleaded his case and she eventually chose him to be her husband. By way
of parallel, in both the Sumerian and biblical stories, the deity chose the shepherd over
the farmer, but in the Sumerian account no one is killed.
In a second story known as The Descent of Inanna, however, Dumuzi, like Abel,
dies a horrible death. The death of Dumuzi appears to have substituted for what
would have been the death of Cain, but because Dumuzi was a shepherd rather than
a farmer, the biblical editor, in order to conform to the Babylonian tradition, changed
the identity of the deceased brother from farmer to shepherd, from Cain to Abel.
In The Descent of Inanna, the goddess descended into the underworld in order to
take it over from her sister, but failed to do so. Before her sister would allow her to