Before I respond, whatever your religious belief is (in your case I assume you are a Christian and believe the Bible is not mystical fiction), it doesn't necessarily reflect history, but in some small way it is part of history.
However, my disagreeing with atheists I will generally infer the possibility of a God or higher being existing, whether that specific God is active or part of "anything" is not relevant for the discussion with an atheist. Because, the atheist doesn't see a God existing, but cannot generally deny the possibility. There isn't much else to argue at that point, unless you want to purport theories from physicists concerning wormholes and time travel.
The attempt to compare Atheism and Polytheism as sub par to Monotheism is futile, all three "ism" have different definitions and one "ism" is not rendered conjectural without a proper study into each field. I have an issue with such discussions, where information is found "off the fly" and Bible verses are slammed in the discussion as "missiles" to refute secular philosophy.
You requested resources I believe or citation of sources, you can email (PM me for email) or you can get these yourself:
1)
https://www.amazon.com/Ark-Before-Noah-Decoding-Story/dp/0385537115
2)
https://www.amazon.com/His-Own-Image-Likeness-Monotheism/dp/9004129804
So let's get some defining authorities out of the way to approach this conundrum, it seems you have coupled epistemeology and philosophy alongside assyriology, archaeology, linguistics and it would be unreasonable to have a fused approach.
Bare in mind that epistemeology and philosophy aren't contemporaneous concepts in ancient near eastern cultures necessarily, epistemeology occurs etymologically by its very nature from the Greek, we will not see this concept in Sumer. Philosophy from the Greek philosophia occurs etymologically in the Greek as well. We really do not see these concepts in Sumer; they are theorized much later on. However, confusing as it may be, we do see a pattern of doctrines stemming from Sumer and on. Archaeology, assyriology, and linguistics are developed as time pressed on from Sumer, Gobekli Tepe, etc...
There is generally a two tiered approach to ancient cultures:
1) Research perspective
2) Religious perspective
For example in a research perspective:
Genesis 6:14–16 Make yourself an ark (tēvāh) of gopher wood [came the instruction]; make rooms (qinnīm) in the ark, and cover it (kāpar) inside and out with pitch (kopher). This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.
The biblical word tēvāh, which is used for the arks of Noah and Moses, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The flood and baby episodes are thus deliberately associated and linked in Hebrew just as the Atrahasis and Sargon Arks are linked associatively in Babylonia. Now for something extraordinary: no one knows what language tēvāh is or what it means. The word for the wood, gopher, is likewise used nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and no one knows what language or what kind of wood it is. This is a peculiar state of affairs for one of the most famous and influential paragraphs in all of the world’s writing!
The rsearch clearly show no ambiguity concerning the word tēvāh and its usage in Genesis 6:14-16, I would suggest a comparison in strong's concordance as well. BTW, Strong's concordance was constructed by James Strong, in an attempt to provide an index to the Bible.
Example of religious perspective:
We could conclude that the usage of tēvāh and it has no clear and distinct syntax in Biblical literature for example if we were to use strong's concordance for Genesis 6:14-16
"Make yourself an {tevah: to be startled or alarmed} (tēvāh) of gopher wood [came the instruction]"
Tēvāh in Strong:
Strong's Hebrew: 8429. תְּוַהּ (tevah) -- to be startled or alarmed
From a religious perspective this language fails in a Biblical sense to properly describe an ark to be built for a coming flood. It could even be concluded that the usage of the word tēvāh reflects a much older flood epic used from the Utnapishti’s Ark in the older Babylonian epic of the flood and that the Judeans perforce this word to fit an ark epic religiously. The religious perspective is that the ark epic is largely borrowed quite possibly from Babylon as well with descriptions from Akkadian flood epics and the original Sumerian epic of Ziusudra. Whereas the previous "research perspective" only indicates that the usage of the word tēvāh is largely unknown.
Let's say we wanted to analyze this with a set of epistemology eyes, it would be difficult to do so and rather unnecessary. The only "truth" we will find is that the usage of a word to describe a Biblical epic is lacking, whereas the belief and justification of these ancient cultures is rooted in their dealings with the world around them, which by large accounts we can only rely on certain sources concerning archaeology, even in linguistics, and assyriology as well (I would exclude neo Assyria from the fray, mostly).
The concept of epistemology in a Biblical sense; and is a hot debated topic among Atheists, Agnostics and Christians alike. This includes questions quite possibly such as, is the Bible true? Is there a God, so on and so forth? BTW these are two entirely different animals of the same color (Bible being true or not and is there a God), God in a large sense applies to a wide variety of beliefs, while whether or not the Bible is true and is the inerrant word of the Judeo-Christian God assumes that morals stem from Biblical literature and that the only way to Heaven is via Jesus in Christian mythologies.
A combination of research and religious perspectives can fit a larger pattern concerning the creation of mankind. BTW this still does not fit a pattern of epistemology exclusively, it really only shows in context the various patterns of Biblical monotheism as reflected in its own literature:
Divine image and representation as the creation of human life is an exception to the rule of creation by divine fiat, as signaled by the replacement of the simple ... Hebrew command (the jussive) with a personal, strongly expressed resolve, the cohortative. Whereas the earlier jussives expressed God’s will with a third person, nonagentive verb form, the cohortative is both first person and agentive. Unlike the jussives, too, the cohortative doesn’t itself create but prepares or introduces the creative act. With justification, then:
The man and the woman in Gen. I ... are ... created ... by God’s own personal decision (v. 26)—a decision unique in the Priestly document’s whole creation account.
Similarly, God participates more intimately and intensively in this than in the earlier works of creation. As the cohortative form suggests, P’s God anticipates a more active role, greater control, and stronger personal involvement in the human creation than in his previous seven creative acts. God’s involvement also runs deeper. As P tells the story, this last creative act coincides with an extraordinary divine event. When God initiates human creation, God takes the opportunity to identify himself, for the first time, in the self-referential first person. At the same time, God’s identity is invested in this human creature and is represented by two characteristics: a divine image and a divine likeness. Humanity resembles divinity through two inherent yet divine features. Of all God’s creations, only humanity is envisioned as comparable to divinity.
V. 27 will corroborate and will execute this vision. Its first clause names the creator, the human creature, and the divine image that God invests in human beings (v. 27aα ). Overlapping with the first, the second clause identifies the divine possessor of the image (v. 27aâ ). The third clause deletes reference to the image yet describes the human creature as a constituent pair (v. 27b). V. 27 therefore will reiterate the unique relationship between God and humanity, explains the relationship, and tracks it from its source to its individual heirs. So, the interpretive details of Gen :26–27 are unclear at best.
To be sure, the characteristics uniquely shared by creator and creature assert “the incomparable nature of human beings and their special relationship to God.”
But when its two nominal components—‘image’and ‘likeness’—are queried, the assertion of incomparability is quickly qualified.
For example, what does the ‘image’ of God signify, and how does the human race reflect it? Or, what is a divine ‘likeness’, how does it compare to the divine ‘image’, and how is the ‘likeness’ reflected in humankind? The responses are often unsatisfying. Very little distinction can be made between the two words. The two terms are used interchangeably and indiscriminately and one has to conclude that “image” and “likeness” are, like “prototype” and “original,” essentially equivalent expressions. They do not seek to describe two different sorts of relationship, but only a single one; the second member of the word-pair does not seek to do more than in some sense to define the first more closely and to reinforce it. That is to say, it seeks so to limit and to fix the likeness and accord between God and man that, in all circumstances, the uniqueness of God will be guarded. These statements, then, testify to the problem.
The ‘image’ is problematic in its own right. For in most of its occurrences, íìö ‘image’ is a concrete noun. And as such, it refers to a representation of form, figure, or physical appearance.
Thus if the human race is created in the ‘image of God’, there is an unavoidable logical implication: God must also be material, physical, corporeal, and, to a certain degree, humanoid. Problematic, too, is the intertextual implication of a concrete, human ‘image’. Indeed, the very existence of such an ‘image’ seems to violate the second commandment, which forbids idols and idolatry (Ex 20: – ; Dt : –10; see also Dt :15–19, and, within the Priestly tradition, Lev 19: , 26: ).
. This means I was being "tongue-in-cheek" about what I was saying, indicating that I was attempting some word play.
