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

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yth #13:
God gave man dominion over the creatures.
The Myth: Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth…. I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the
face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to
you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air,
and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every
green herb for meat:…. (Gen. 1:26, 29–30)
The Reality: Granting man dominion over life on earth derives from Egyptian
myths about the relationship between gods and humanity.
In the Genesis Creation story, God grants humanity dominion over the living
things on earth, creatures and plant life, to use and to eat. (Notice that in making this
gift, God allowed man to eat from every tree, free of the restrictions imposed in the
story of Adam and Eve.) These Genesis passages portray a mutually benevolent and
friendly relationship between God and humanity.
Such a view differs quite substantially from that in the Mesopotamian literature.
There, while occasionally one particular deity or another favors some particular
human, the gods have a generally negative opinion of mankind and see them mostly in
a servile role intended to make life for the deities more pleasant. In the Babylonian
flood myth, for example, the gods decree the destruction of mankind because they
make too much noise.
By way of contrast, Egyptian texts paint a most positive picture of the relationship
between the gods and mankind. The Instruction Book for Merikare provides a
good illustration.
Well tended is mankind—god’s cattle.
He made sky and earth for their sake
He subdued the water monster,