Yale professor Christine Hayes opens her Introduction to the Old Testament course's treatment of Genesis by setting it against Mesopotamian myth. She walks through the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, comparing its violent, polytheistic cosmogony with the two creation accounts in Genesis 1-4. Drawing on the work of biblical scholar Nahum Sarna, she argues that the biblical text presents a non-mythological, non-theogonic God, and traces how this shift changes ancient ideas about nature, magic, sin, ethics, and the possibility of a universal moral law. The lecture closes by tracking specific allusions and resonances between Near Eastern mythic themes and the biblical narrative. Recorded in Fall 2006 as part of Yale's RLST 145, the talk is lecture-hall in format, close reading of primary texts paired with historical and literary comparison, aimed at students encountering the Hebrew Bible as an ancient document rather than devotional text.