Inuma ilu awilum: “When gods were men."

The ancients inform us that the gods were men who were said to have climbed ladders to the sky and became the spiritual beings of the heavens, but the brains of the modern scholars have been so seriously affected by the virus of faith that even when the information is provided in open language, they insist on their ridiculous excuses.
The opening verse of the Akkadian myth of Atrahasis reads: Inuma ilu awilum, meaning “When gods [were] men".
The following is an excerpt from a book by Esther J. Hamori, entitled “When Gods were Men" (pg 138).
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The Akkadian myth of Atrahasis opens with the words “When gods were men" (Inuma ilu awilum). This phrase has been analyzed and translated in numerous ways, but the essential meaning is clear from the context. The text goes on to describe how the lower gods (the Igigi) were initially required to do the labour necessary on earth, and then rebelled against the higher gods (the Anunnaki), eventually instigating the creation of humanity as a work force.
In other words the term “man" in the opening phrase defines a role, a function in the universe, rather than a separate species; when gods served that function, they too “were men." For this reason the term “awilum," literally “man"(sg), is perhaps best rendered in English as “men" (pl).
Lambert and Millard translate “When the gods like men" or “When the gods like man" understanding awilum as ending with the locative …um with the same meaning as the comparative …is. They note that this would be the first example of the comparative …um. This grammatical analysis of the phrase renders the same meaning as discussed above, only through a simile, rather than a metaphor.
As Foster observes, “The line is a metaphor… meaning “When gods were (like) men (in that they had to work)."
Later in the myth, the terms are used in their more common sense, as when Ea prepares to create humanity and says “Let man bear the load of the gods."
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Common sense demands to translate “Inuma ilu awilum" as “When gods were human"; justifying thus the word awilum being in the singular.
To claim that the expression is a metaphor because… gods were like men in that they had to work, the work they were doing should have been a god’s work; but it was not because when the Igigi gods revolted and destroyed their tools, the humans later used similar tools, meaning that the gods were not opening irrigation channels by pronouncing “Let there be irrigation channels”.
The usual renderings of “inuma ilu awilum" apart from the literal one: When gods [were] men, are:
When the gods instead of man,
When the gods, like man,
When gods instead of humans

It is to be noted that the phrase in question was used as the title of the epic in antiquity and it occurs as a colophon at the end of each tablet. It is also found in Akkadian catalogues and it is thus a well-known phrase.
Scholars dare not ask “What if the scribe was correct and gods were actually men?" because they will end up with a story that will completely ridicule the idea of God, and that they cannot bring themselves to do.