Myth #25:

There were other beings in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve.

The Myth: Let us make man in our image …And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us…. (Gen. 1:26,3:22)

The Reality: Genesis preserves traces of Atum’s conversations with Nun in the Heliopolitan Creation myth.

On two occasions in the second Creation story, God talks to one or more other beings of a non-human nature. Before he made Adam, he said,“let us make man in our image.” And later, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, he said,“man is become as one of us.” Who is this “us”?

Once again, we have an obvious indication of other deities in the Creation story. As the second Creation story draws upon the Heliopolitan myths, Coffin Text 80 provides a reasonably good clue as to whom God was speaking. In that text, Atum (the Heliopolitan Creator) and Nun (a personification of the primeval waters) carried on a conversation.

Then said Atum to the waters (i.e., Nun): “I am floating, very weary, the natives inert ….”
The Waters (i.e., Nun) said to Atum: “Kiss your daughter Order [i.e., Tefnut, who signified moral order .]”

The “us” in the Genesis story would originally have referred to Atum and Nun. As the Hebrew Creator replaced Atum in the Creation process, the story went through transformations. The retention of the “us” preserves a remnant of the polytheistic Heliopolitan source for the biblical account.