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The Egyptian text the Great Hymn to the Aten and Genesis describe creation as orderly, purposeful, and sustained by divine will. Both describe life as dependent on divine breath and highlight the diversity of creatures and nations as part of its design.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE

Great Hymn to the Aten

Ancient Near East, Egyptian
You who create seed in women, who make fluid into human beings, giving life to the child in the mother's womb, soothing him with what stills his tears, nurse even within the womb, giving breath to sustain all that you make! When the child comes from the womb to breathe on the day of birth, you open their mouth completely and supply their needs. When the chick in the egg speaks within the shell, you give it breath inside to sustain its life. When you have made it complete so that it breaks the shell, it comes out from the egg to chirp at its appointed time, and walks upon its two feet as soon as it comes out.
Date: 1353–1336 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)

Genesis 1:30

Hebrew Bible
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I now give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has living breath in it—I give every green plant for food.” It was so. 31 God saw all that he had made—and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References

#3708
"... A very different picture of creation and humanity’s place is found in Psalm 104, which celebrates creation’s biodiversity and commends it all for YHWH’s enjoyment. As the most extensive psalm of creation in the Psalter, Psalm 104 is a poetic revelry of praise to YHWH for having created the world in all of its diversity, a product of divine wisdom (verse 24). This cosmic liturgy proceeds from the meteorological to the zoological to the anthropological, all expressed in doxological fashion. Scholars often observe several parallels with the ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’, the sun-disk deity whose worship was mandated under the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty of Pharaoh Akhenaten (14th century BCE). Psalm 104 and this Egyptian hymn share such motifs as the ‘call of admiration’ to the deity, the diversity of creation, aquatic life, ships plying the sea, and divine provision, from food to springs of water. While the parallels are strong, direct literary dependence seems unlikely ... also well noted is the parallel movement shared in Genesis 1 and Psalm 104, so evident that one can easily delineate the psalm’s structure in terms of the ‘days’ of creation enumerated in Genesis ... but such synoptic comparison works well only for the first three days, those days that establish the creational domains of light, heaven, and land ..."
William P. Brown, “Creation in the Old Testament,” in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2022).

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