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I want to add a bit of logical rambling.
Historical linguists have a problem: they try to reconstruct as far back in time as they can, and rely on texts. Texts sometimes show new words or changes.
Take Russian, first attested just before 1100 AD, Old Church Slavic (a related tongue from the Balkans) first attested in the 900s AD, and Polish, really only first attested in the 1400s. And Lithuanian, from the 1600s.
First, no one language is older than another: all those languages can be traced back to one language that existed c. 1000 BC. Languages may have developed unique traits at some point, but there's seldom anything like discontinuity. We define Lithuanian as having probably existed longer than Russian, but it's our definition that's up for grabs--nobody 'created' Lithuanian, at some point it was just perceived to be different, i.e., non-Slavic, by its speakers.
Second, there are words attested in Russian that *had* to have traveled to Russian through Polish, even though the Russian word's attested centuries before the Polish word, and there are words in Russian that *had* to come from Church Slavic, even though the word's nowhere attested in the OCS texts we have. Attestation sometimes means squat.
Third, there are words (like the ones for 'carrot', 'cabbage', or 'peach') that occur all over Slavic. It's tempting to say that the words all come from an older, Slavic, word. But, no, we know that the monasteries spread cabbage, and how peaches and carrots were introduced in the area: all the languages borrowed the same words, tweaking them slightly in the process. The word followed the thing.
Linguists distinguish between inherited forms and innovations, things held in common (whether originally in common, or shared innovations) and differences.
The same goes for myths. If a myth is attested in Babylon, 2500 BC, and in the W Semitic OT from 800 BC (let's say), which myth is older? We can't say. We know one attestation is older, but since the OT says that the patriarch came from Babylon (the province), they're basically coeval as far as we can tell. Or, at least, we can't say that they're not coeval (which is, really, a different critter).
We know that myths can spread. A particularly useful myth--useful for cultural purposes, or showing greater insight--can travel from tribe to tribe, assuming there's contact. Sometimes by force, through conquest, sometimes through perceived cultural prestige or superiority.
At the same time, oral myths can change quickly, or be preserved for a long time. Horses are an important part of some Native American folklores, but some of those tribes only had horses for a couple hundred years before their folklore was written down by Europeans. Another anthropologist went to West Africa to check on how some tales that were written down in the 1920s were preserved, and found many of them, including creation myths and history of the tribes, altered, sometimes profoundly. Then you have the Zuni in the American SW who can transmit tales unaltered, even when the language changes to the point that they no longer understand what some of the texts mean.
In other words: there are likely to be some commonalities that are shared innovations at a distance. But some shared commonalities are likely borrowings; still others some result from how tribes merged and split. And just because a tribe doesn't share a myth doesn't mean that it didn't at one time: tribes can alter and lose myths just as they can borrow them.
When you compare the Babylonian and Hebrew and Canaan myths, don't just focus on similarities: those we can probably assume existed, since (1) the Semitic tribes that wound up in running Babylon displaced the earlier Sumerian tribes, of uncertain linguistic heritage, and presumably moved in from west of Babylon--so we assume there should be shared Semitic traditions. Also (2) Babylon was an important cultural and military center , and innovations there should spread. More important are the differences, shared innovations between Hebrew and Canaanite, Canaanite and Babylonian traditions, or unique properties in any of the three.
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