The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible. Which came first?

i dear god, i seriously hope this is not what you consider well written.let's tackel a few issues first:

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Welcome to NoahsArk-Naxuan.com - Karsilama Nuh'un Gemisi

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This site is dedicated to bringing information to light about the location and nature of Noah's Ark and the ancient city of Naxuan.

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this is the site it's on, a personal site for this david deal guy. keep this mind, this person has an agenda to sell. let's flip to the end of the paper, for a second. here's his "end"notes (footnotes?)

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End notes:
1 Ezekiel 8:14 “weeping for Tammuz” proscribed as an “abomination.”
2 Yah Yahweh. Psalm 68:4, Isaiah 12:2, 26:4 Read the Hebrew text not an English translation.
3 Mountains of the Kurds
4 Genesis 1:9
5 Jonah ( Nineveh the great city )
6 “Queen of Heaven” Alexander Hyslop, The Two Babylons, Jeremiah 7:18
7 Strong’s Exhausticve Concordance of the Bible, Hebrew Lexicon #225
8 Genesis promise of death to Adam and Eve
9 Hebrews 4
10 Uzengili was Nasar ( Nisir of the Babylonians )
11 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews.
12 Genesis
13 Dr. William Shea paper
14 Genesis 10:30
15 Ancient American magazine 1997
16 D. Deal, The Day Behemoth & Leviathan Died, Kheren La Yah Press, 1999, pp 298 ff.

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lots of bible references, general unspecificness, and he cites himself. generally bad form.

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Refrences:
D. Deal, Noah’s Ark and his Lost City of Naxuan, Ancient American magazine, Vol 3, issue no.21, Nov/Dec 1997
D. Deal, The Day Behemoth & Leviathan Died, Kheren La Yah Press, 1999
Gardner J. & Maier J., The Epic of Gilgamesh Alfred Knopf, New York, 1984
Green J., The Interlinear Hebrew-Aramaic Old Testament, Vols. I,II,III, Hendrickson Publications,
Peabody Mass 1976 -1984
Hyslop A., The Two Babylons ...
Kovacs M.G., The Epic of Gilgamesh Stanford University Press 1985
Sanders N. K., The Epic of Gilgamesh Penguin Books, Middlesex, England 1960
Shea Wm., ... paper on two anchor stones near Uzengili village.
Strong J. The New Strong’s Exhausticve Concordance of the Bible, Hebrew Lexicon
Whiston Wm. Josephus, Antiquities of The Jews, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids Mich 1960-1978

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ok, he actually references himself twice. really bad form. i also want to point out that he's using strong's concordance, an interlinear text, and two translations of gilgamesh. so don't trust him on any of the language issues, because he doesn't know akkadian or hebrew. anyways, on to the text. i'm not sure how far i can get into this tonight:

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The basic question that one who believes in the validity of the Bible must have is, Which is correct, the Bible or some Akkadian myth?

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all kinds of bad signs here. we're not talking about someone who's academically comparing texts, or analyzing and dating them based on anachronisms. we're dealing with some who "believes in the validity of the bible." which is correct, the Bible or some akkadian myth?how about neither, mr. deal? why does one have to be correct? why are you concerned with correctness? and "some akkadian myth" is a tad disdainful, don't you think? it's not just "some akkadian myth" it's "The world’s oldest written document."

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mountain “ziggurat,”

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mountains are natural objects. ziggurats are man-made.

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Are these myths to preferred over the Bible’s history?

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and there we go. there's the problem. he considers the book of genesis to be history. it reads exactly like gilgamesh, stylistically. why is one history, and the other myth? it is obvious that the author is not entering into this with an objective mindset -- gilgamesh is challenging his historical view of the bible, and he has a personal need to invalidate it somehow.

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There is Gilgamesh himself, the “King of Uruk” a large, handsome but despotic and cruel ruler, who is also called “Ninsun” in the text ( because of his relationship to the “goddess Ishtar” also called “Ninsun” who was, in fact, Queen Semerimis ). Gilgamesh appears to be none other than Nimrod’s several year, post-mortem son “Ninus,” also called by the Babylonians “Tammuz,” and was later deified by the same Babylonians as a “god” for whom the women wept each year for a prescribed number of days, which, obvious pagan practice, was later forbidden for Israelite women in the Book of Ezekiel.1

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ok, now, i haven't read gilgamesh in a long time, so frankly i didn't gt any of that. but it seems like it's jumping to a lot of conclusions about who's who, and it cites only source -- the reference from ezekiel. so lots of assertions about babylonian mythology, no references. passing reference to the bible that has nothing to do with anything, reference.bad, bad, bad. then it goes back to bare assertions.

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The Babylonian “gods” Enki & Enlil mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh are thinly disguised representations of the biblical angels ( subordinate deities ) Yah Yahweh2 and Satan.

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this is even worse. he's trying to compare the writings of two different cultures (which is fine, btw, lots of mythology DOES carry over) but makes what is a very wild statement. enki and enlil are "yah yahweh" and satan. which one is which? and what do you have for evidence?maybe if we were charging that esther and mordechai are ishtar and marduk, it might be ok. the names there are clearly similar sounding, and maybe there's some mythological similarity too. but this? no.and that reference? it's to a psalm, and isaiah. "yahweh" btw is ha-shem b'elohym. the name of god. "yah" is a derivative of that name. most english translations render this "lord god" since "yah" is commonly rendered "god" and yahweh "LORD." look above for the reference. "read the hebrew..." like he can.the psalm, btw, doesn't contain the phrase. it says, in english, that LORD bit is "yah" and it clearly identifies him as god and no other. here's the verse from isaiah i think he is grossly perverting the meaning of this text. he's confalting "yeshua" (salvation) with "yehoshua" (joshua/jesus) and asserting that "yah yahweh" is a lesser god -- christ. in other words, one of those gods he mentions in gilgamesh is christ. like i said, it's wild.but the clear meaning of this verse is that GOD, (el or elohym) in the beginning of the verse is salvation. and yahweh is that god.

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These angels were the prototypical opposing “sky gods” carried out into the world by later wandering peoples such as the Chinese Yin & Yang, or the Mexican Huitzilopohctli & Quetzalcoátl: good against evil, a common conceptual thread, spread throughout the world’s populations from the dispersion which followed the flood.

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el/elohym, btw, is a wind-god.

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In the Epic, the god Ea, the Sumurian or Akkadian form of Enki the good deity warns Utnapishtim, to tear down his house and build an ( elippu ) “ship” to save himself and his family from a coming flood. Ea seems to be a transliteration of the Shemitic or Hebrew name of the creator “Yah” ( Yahw Yahweh ) the mighty one of Abraham, Isaack, Jacob and Moses. [...]

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Comparing the good Akkadian-Sumurian deity Ea with Yah ( Yahweh ) of the Bible, forces the comparison of the hard, cruel opposing Akkadian- Sumerian deity Enlil with Satan.

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this may or may not be a good point. but poorly written. also, enki/ea is a water god, not a sky god. enlil/ellil is a wind god, like el/elohym. "oops."

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The ancient post-flood Babylonians saw Ea as a fish but then, so do many contemporary Christians.

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the fish is a symbol, because, well, not related. sorry.

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Many, such as moslems, refer to those post-flood times when the descendants of the flood survivors lived in the mountains of the Kurds3 as “pre-Sumurian,”

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they're called "muslims" now. and the reference for "mountainds of the kurds" is "mountains of the kurds." what?

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and this works out well from a biblical perspective, because the civilization of the Mesopotamian valley ( Akkadian-Sumurian ) did not exist until after Noah landed the ark in the mountains of Urartu ( hary Urartu ) exactly where the Kurds have lived since the flood.

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jumping to all kinds of conclusions. also, say it with me: ARaRaT. ah-rah-rat.and if you look for ararat in the bible, you find it in two verses. here's the other. "hari ararat" are the mountains in the kingdom of ararat. mountains, plural. so the fact that there is a mountain today with the same name in english is purely coincidence. so that whole bit about kurds and whatnot... probably wrong.

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In the Gilgamesh Epic, Shurupak - a post-flood city, is referred to as the place of the ark’s creation, but this is ethnocentric myth created by the Sumurian / Akkadian story tellers long after the fact.

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i hate to point this out, but genesis is strongly ethnocentric (it's concerned largely with the hebrew people) and reads like mythos (it's a collection of etiological tales). and it was most certainly written after the fact. even the extreme orthodox jews and the fundamentalist christians contend that moses wrote the torah -- not that noah wrote the flood story as it was happening. as such, the absolute earliest date for genesis 1250 bc or so, depending on when you like to guess that moses lived.

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The ark actually drifted in from the west possibly even from North America. For this there is much evidence. see: 黄瓜视频污app下载_黄瓜视频app下载安装黄_黄瓜视频超污app下载_黄瓜视频污app在线观看

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WHAT?!? ok, i quit.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 02:12 AM

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אָרַח

and a lot shorter.a fair comparison might be gilgamesh vs. genesis.

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אָרַח

ok, why not some more.

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Some are convinced that the Epic of Gilgamesh, being older than the Bible, must carry more weight and authority by dint of age, or that the Bible must have been copied from the Epic. The ancient origins of the Sumurian-Akkadian story, found in physical form, on much later Assyrian clay tablets, in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, may indeed be older that the pentatuch given by Yahweh to Moses in the 15th century B.C., but is less authoratative, and very obviously mythical, and at times to a point of humor.

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said the talking snake. listen, anyone reading the bible and gilgamesh one next to the other would never contend that the bible obviously sounds historical and gilgamesh obviously sounds mythical. faith, i think, made such a claim once -- so i posted comparable passages next to each other. they read exactly the same in parts of the flood story (which is being reported secondhand in the gilgamesh, i might add).and there's humor in the bible.

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The Bible actually deals with time and events long before the flood and even long before the earth was prepared and readied for man,

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so does scientology. xenu brought us all here and blews up with atomic bombs in volcanos 75 million years ago (BEFORE the dinosaur extinction and possibly causing it). the fact that a story talks about things that happened a long time ago doesn't mean it's older. you date a story based on the most recent anachronism, not what it talks about.gilgamesh simply doesn't cover creation. it talks about gilgamesh. i could find you other babylonian mythology that DOES cover creation, if you like, and sounds a lot like the bible too.

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after the dinosaur extinctions. It speaks of a worldwide flood before Adam’s creation. It mentions the dinosaurs that lived long before Adam in Job chapters 40 and 41.

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alright, that bit about before creation, frankly, is nothing but interpretation. and, as has been discussed here at length, job 40 and 41 do not talk about dinosaurs. behemoth appears to be describing an elephant (tail=penis. notice it's connection to virlity and "stones"?) and leviathan is lothan from babylonian myth, a 7-headed fire-breathing water dragon, and one of the sources for the image of satan in revelation. yes, that's right, he MISSED a correlation between the bible and babylonian myth in favor of a crazed-fundamentalist approach.

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The Bible, whose narrator personally witnessed all of these events, uniquely pointed the way to their discovery in this manner.

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well, as i stated, noah himself didn't write about the flood. some say moses did, but that's HIGHLY debatable (you know, with evidence). so clearly he means divine authorship.in which case, wasn't god a little more than a passive observer? and isn't it obvious that this is the position he's starting from? the bible = the word of god = 100% true.bias all the way, not a reasoned analysis and comparison of the texts.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 02:27 AM

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אָרַח

what is it about crackpots that you find so appealing randman?

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GILGAMESH
’— ( gl ) = to reveal ( the revealer of )
’ ( gm ) = even
( mesh ) = Mashu or Mesha, ( the mountains and city of Mashu and Noah )

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’—’

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now, hebrew spelling is a little flexible, i know. but i'm pretty sure that "gilgamesh" in hebrew would be גילגמש, GYLGaMeSH. double mem's, as far as i know, don't exist in any word without a vowel between them. and if you want to make an "ee" sound (as in gil) you have a yud and one of the e-sound vowel points below the gimel.while we're on it, the hebrew word for "reveal" is גלה, GaLaH. גל, GaL is the word for "pile" or "cover" especially at a burial.so that's not a good point.

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( an ) ship
( nu ) of us
( noach ) Noah
( ee ) possessive “ our” An-nu noaki

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אנחנו is the hebrew word for "we" so i dunno what he's getting on about. rearrange a few letters?also, the word for ship (at least the one he's thinking of) seems to be אניה, 'ONYaH. not An. "of us" doesn't even seem to be a word. biblical hebrew incorporates personage into verbs and objects. and that possesive "our" is like the yud at the end of "israeli." it makes the noun and adjective, and describes someone as being of that group.so not a good point here, either.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 03:43 AM

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אָרַח

well, that'd be like us saying "the euphrates, which is in iraq." it wasn't iraq then, but it's iraq now and a point of reference the audience can understand. it's simple a text explaining how things got to be the way they were contemporary to the authorship; where current (at the time) practices and names came from.of course, following that logic backwards, it means that genesis could not have been written prior to the birth of the assyrian empire.i don't know why the concept that books are generally written after the fact is lost on fundamentalists. i highly doubt it was noah's diary, and abraham's diary, and joseph's diary. they sure coulda written more about themselves.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 08:34 PM

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yet he's very quick to reference something -- anything -- from the bible, even in a passing and offtopic reference.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 08:37 PM

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אָרַח

here's some comparable passages (which i stole from an earlier post of mine that faith never answered)

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Gilgamesh
"For one day and then a second day, Mount Nisir held the ship fast.
A third day and a fourth -- still the ship couldn't move.
A fifth day and a sixth passed by with no motion.

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Genesis
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth [month], on the first [day] of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

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Gilgamesh
"On the seventh day I set a dove free in the air.
The dove flew away but then came back.
She couldn't see a perch, so she turned around.

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Genesis
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.

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Gilgamesh
Then I set a swallow free in the air.
The swallow flew away but then came back.
She couldn't see a perch, so she turned around

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Genesis
Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters [were] on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

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Gilgamesh
Next I set a raven free in the air.
The raven flew away and saw that the waters were going down.
He ate, he circled, he cawed, but he never returned to me.

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Genesis
And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth [was] an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

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And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.

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now, put aside religious belief for a second here, and tell me: what makes genesis history, but gilgamesh myth? if one is the 100% inerrant word of god, shouldn't it stand out a little better? the only differences i see are in lengths of time, and the kinds of birds. and one is told secondhand in first person, where as the other is told third person.

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אָרַח

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The ancient city of Nineveh, was mentioned in the biblical Book of Jonah ( ca. 843 B.C. ),5 but was unknown in modern times, until 1839

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ref for jonah, not for the history. please note, that references that "nineveh" appears in jonah, not why the book of jonah is dated to 843 bc. general knowledge, referenced. actual scholarly subjects, not referenced. fastest way to get accused of plagairism.it's disappointing, too. i'd actually be interested in something on why jonah is dated a certain date. but then again, i also wouldn't call 1839 "modern times." just shows the timeframe this guy's living in.

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Among the tablets, which proved to be the cuneiform clay tablet library of King Asshurbanipal, was one with the name “Sargon.” This ancient king had also been previously mentioned in the Bible, but nowhere else in history.

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this is of course wrong, not mention spelled incorrectly.

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Archaeology had actually begun proving the Bible true.

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huge logical fallacy here. the movie "jurassic park" features a dinosaur it calls "velociraptor." but it's more than twice a velociraptor's size, and has entirely the wrong skull. sometime after the movie was made, paleontologists dug up a dinosaur that exactly fit that description. had paleontology prooved "jurassic park" true?no, it's still fiction. a fiction can easily include real places and people -- the existance of those people and places does not the proove a text to be accurate.

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The question of the antiquity of Gilgamesh over the writings of Moses and the prophets of Israel, is largely nullified, by the simple, and elegant fact, that Asshurbanipal’s personal royal library in Nineveh, at least the city itself, in which the Epic was later unearthed, had been noted in the Bible and nowhere else, long before its discovery in modern times.

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two problems. first the logically fallacy.i put together a library this summer in my local university's math department. one of the books there is was published in 1898. now, the math dept library hasn't existed that long. i haven't been alive that long. the math dept. itself hasn't existed that long. the UNIVERSITY wasn't here in 1898. it's entirely possible for a book to be older than the collection it's in.if you really think about for a second, the library had to exist before it could be written about. so the fact that it's in the bible puts that part of the bible AFTER the library's construction. (duh)second, we know where utnapsihtim's story came from. the book i have on gilgamesh indicates that utnapishtim's story is taken from another akkadian myth.

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Nowadays, there is a new revisionist movement, trying hard again to discredit the Bible, based on modern archaeology, typified by Israel Finkelstein ( I almost wrote Frankenstein ).

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wow. just wow. how could you say this was elegantly written?

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So, form an honest secular view, the Bible should be running along quite nicely with the Epic of Gilgamesh insofar as authority is concerned. Then we come to Gilgamesh, to “scorpion men,”

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"from" not "form." so, yes, then we come to a talking snake.

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“the Bull of Heaven,” “Sin the moon goddess,” “Ishtar the love Goddess” the “Queen of Heaven” of Ancient Babylon,6 “garden of jeweled trees,” etc., and other myths which are represented in the Epic, however, discerning readers will recognize the myth when they see it and discriminate.

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so the fact that it talks about gods and goddesses makes it a myth? ok. how about "the sons of god," "satan," "lucifer," "azazel (scapegoat)," "ba'al," "beezelbub" and various spellings, "leviathan," "behemoth," "gog and magog," "the great red dragon," etc?sadly, he missed ANOTHER references. in ugaritic myth, el (as in elohym, god of the hebrews) is commonly typified by a bull. the association with the hebrew god and cows is well understood. when they make an idol of him, what is it? a golden calf. think about it.

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The serpent that steals the plant that gives eternal life, near the end of the story, is another biblical similitude, as well, and without any external evidence, a casual reader would not be able to discern which came first, the Genesis account or the Gilgamesh one.

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i don't what i can say to that. i guess he thinks mythological snakes are ok in gilgamesh, because they're ok in genesis. but scorpion men, no.

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Other factors will be needed to sort this out. Logic implies that the pre-flood story of creation in the Bible, predates the flood myth of Babylonian Gilgamesh. Even, so-called “Gilgamesh” himself, obviously, followed the flood by some years.

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what kind of logic is this guy using? what is he using to date these stories? they're BOTH recounted stories, not written during the event itself. common sense tells us that. like i said above, i know of other stories that go back even further.keeping on the utahraptor theme i started above, i have a book by dr. robert bakker called "raptop red" that takes place ~100 million years ago. that kind of beats the bible for timeframe of events.you can't use the chronology of a story to date it. period. you have to use the anachronisms, comparing to historical fact and archaeology. a story can talk about times and places long ago and in galaxies far far away, but that doesn't mean that's when and where it was written.

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What is of immediate concern to us, is the man “Utnapishtim,” as an historical figure. How does he compare to Noah, what little there is to be known of Noach, Yahweh’s single, righteous man in the entire world. To begin, let us look at the name of this hero of the flood story in the Epic, “Utnapishtim.” In Shemitic languages it becomes clear, but not everyone understands Shemitic speech. This perhaps odd name, to English speaking people, means: nephish tam in Hebrew, “a living being” ( nephish ) “that is upright” ( “righteous - tam ). The Hebrew word uth7 means “beacon, monument, prodigy or sign,” so then, ut nephish tam in Hebrew carries the meaning of: a “a living beacon of righteousness,” and thus, is a description exactly comparable to the biblical concept of Noah and his righteousness before Yahweh, a state of being that saved him ( and us, his descendants), from world wide watery destruction.

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for godssake, it's spelled semitic. he's just using that because it comes from "shem," the name of noah's son. but let's get this straight, for a second, from a strictly biblical perspective. Babylon, Uruk, and Akkad, according to the bible, are from HAM, not Shem. so akkadian would not be a "shem"itic language. and you can't just take a name from one language and transliterate into another language like that. i mean, look at how "yehoshua" becomes "iesous" in greek and then "jesus" in english, and "joshua" in english the other way. similar letters don't make similar sounds. for instance, king xerxes shows up in the bible as "ahasuerus"anyways. on to the hebrew, because that's wrong too. נפש does indeed mean "person" or "living being." but it's pronounced "nePHesh." he likes to add h's in english, but he forgot one. in every native hebrew word (excluding ones from other languages i mean), a FEH only has the hard "P" sound at the beginning of a word. you tack something on the beginning, it makes an "F" sound.but the word for righteous is צדיק (tsadiq). i don't know where this "tam" business comes from. the actual phrase used to describe noah is אִישׁ צַדִּיק, 'iSH TSaDYQ. righteous man.since he gave a reference for "uth" i could check it. here is the reference he gave. notice something? wrong word. the one he wants is the next one, "oth."so, "oth b'nephesh tsadiq." doesn't sound like "utnapishtim" to mean at all.

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Utnapishtim was the biblical Noah, and there is no reason to doubt it, therefore, what he uttered to Gilgamesh about immortality or lack of it, should comport with the Bible’s statements on the subject, because no prophet contradicts the other prophets, as they all have the same spirit of prophecy, and Noah (Utnapishtim) was certainly a prophet of Yahweh.

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utnapishtim was immortal. noah died. sorry, but immortality was the whole reason gilgamesh sought him out.

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Gilgamesh made a long, difficult trek to “Utnapishtim the faraway,” his forefather, seeking the secret of immortality, because he, and nearly everyone else in Mesopotamia, it seems, believed that Utnapishtim, living in the mythical land of “Dilmun,” was an immortal, that he had “joined the assembly of the gods.” He ( Noah ) indeed, did live 350 years after the flood, so for anyone not possessing such a long lifespan the antediluvian could easily have been considered an immortal god, hence the myth.

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why do i have to keep trotting this dead horse out for fundamentalists? shem lived 500 years after the flood. (600 total) his son lived about 500, too, as did his grandson and great grandson. you can find this all in genesis 11. if we are to believe the bible, this sort of age-limit was COMMON after the flood.

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When asked about death and immortality, “Utnapishtim the faraway” ( Noah ) stated “ There is no permanence.” Unbeknownst to Gilgamesh, Noah, his famous forefather, was including himself. All of his progenitors had died from Adam to Methuselah. Noah finally did die in his appropriate time, because he was also a mortal being, a long-lived one, but a mortal nephish indeed.

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the whole point of the story is immortality. you can't compare gilgamesh's plant at the bottom of sea with the tree of life (as he did above) and ignore the obvious meaning of the word "immortal."

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Academic translators of Gilgamesh texts indicate that the story claims Utnapishtim was an “immortal,” so they take at face value the plaintext version with little in-depth biblical analysis.

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what does biblical analysis have to do with gilgamesh? it's not the bible. we shouldn't have to check everything against the bible, either. and not everything requires a sense of apologistic interpretation -- gilgamesh says immortality. it's about the quest for immortality, not just long life.

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The Babylonians, indeed, believed him to be an immortal, although he clearly disclaimed that idea in the story. They fail to see the parabolic textual meaning.

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?

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The Babylonian myth has Enlil , after finding out that they ( Utnapishtim and his wife ) survived the flood, telling them at the ark landing site - after directing them back into the ark, that they would now possess immortality, but just as Satan deceived Eve about her own impending mortality, Enlil was the deceiver after all ( remember he is the opposing force to Enki the “good god” ), so his words carry little weight. Noah knew this, and he clearly told Nimsun ( Gilgamesh ) “There is no permanence.” No immortality for either of them, but there follows a hopeful allegorical promise, “a secret of the gods.”

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ea overruled enlil, and enlil blessed them with immortality as a form of apology, i think. utnapishtim indicated that there was no real way to be immortal, save it be granted by the gods -- and then tells his story of how he was granted immortality by the gods.

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Here, in the story Utnapishtim advises Gilgamesh he must remain awake for seven days and nights in order to learn this secret. Gilgamesh, exhausted from his journey of many days, immediately
falls asleep, just as Noah is about to reveal this secret to him regarding his quest, which one must constantly remember is the quest for immortality. Noah then prophetically says to his wife, “The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are. They are like a painted ( picture of ) death.” The connection begins, between death and sleep. One awakens from sleep does he not? It is important to remember, that the subject the story and of Gilgamesh’s quest was immortality. Since all men die, the hidden “secret of the gods” now is revealed by the prophet, as a promise of future resurrection ( awakening from the sheol death sleep), still hidden, as it had not yet been promised to Abraham.

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that's reading a lot into it, and drawing connections where there are none. the secret is that just as everyone must sleep, everyone must die too. utnapishtim is trying to tell gilgamesh that he cannot give him immortality.

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Then as Gilgamesh, who is tired beyond human endurance, nods off and sleeps for seven days. Noah’s wife makes a mark on the wall and a loaf of bread a day to count the passage of sleeptime - actually a prophetic deathtime because the Shemitic word yom meaning “day” also means “a thousand years” just as it did when Adam was told he would die in the same day he ate of the forbidden fruit - yet he lived for hundreds of years afterward, finally dying at 930 years - well within the yom (day) of Yahweh.

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יום means "day." period. it does not mean a thousand years. this is nothing but pure apologistic interpretation that thinks it can squirrel out of what the text actually means by redefining words. this particular bit of dishonesty or ignorance annoys me to no end.then he goes into a long bit of prophetic interpretation from something that's NOT prophecy. he regards the model for the hebrew week to be indicative of when the apocalypse is coming. he even gives an estimated timeframe: the year 6000.

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It so happens that 2005 is the 5,982nd year since Adam’s creation, using the Masoretic text of the Bible and correcting for the Jared anomaly. This figure should give a close, if not precise, idea of the overall timing involved.

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since i actually LIKE the bible, i've read it before, and it has something to say about this: also, my hebrew calendar says it's 5766.

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On the way home, while resting at a pool, a serpent steals it and Gilgamesh goes home empty-handed. Different, but similar to the Adam, Eve & serpent story of Genesis including the plant that gives life. The life and death thread is there in the text. The lack of immortality is the main theme, yet a hidden promise of awakening some quite distinct time in the future is evident, if one reads between the lines.

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again, how can adam and eve be about a loss of immortality, but the comparable story in gilgamesh NOT be? don't forget, i'm not making this comparison, he is.

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Back to the Genesis account, it is at this point in the Bible where death is promised to Adam and Eve ( and us, their descendants ).8 The promise of a messiah follows ( the seed of the woman ).

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i've seen this interpretation a thousand times, but it's still wrong. adam and eve were created mortal, from the simple fact that they needed a tree of life to stay alive. god's intention for them was clearly immortality, and they failed him, yes. but they were not created immortal is denying them the tree of life sentances them to death. so the story is not about a loss of immortality in that sense."seed of the woman" is us. all of us. it explains the animosity between us and snakes -- why they get under our skin and creep us out. why we like to kill them. it's part of the curse on the snake.the other part of the curse on the snake explains why the snake is a snake, with no legs. why it licks the ground. it is impossible that the story is referring to anything else, other than strictly allegorically. imo, the messianic context is not there, even if people choose to read it that way.

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Earlier in the Epic, when Gilgamesh is mourning for his dead friend Enkidu, he “mourns for six days and seven nights.” Here we find an interesting suggestion of a parallel to the six days of
work and the seventh day of rest prophesying the ( seventh )millennial kingdom to be ruled by Yahweh where the mourning would cease allegorically “on the seventh rest day.”

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six days and seven night ≠ six days and night, and one day and night.one is seven days, the other is 6 and a half.

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Generations upon generations have failed to see the hope of resurrection that this Epic story hints at and allegorizes, but does not plainly state, because it still was a “secret of the elohym,”
so to speak.

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"gods" in gilgamesh is plural. there are a bunch of them, all immortal. "elohym" in hebrew is singular, and there is only ONE god, yahweh. that's a rather important distinction. and most people don't see the "hope of immortality" because it isn't there. gilgamesh LOSES it.

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Utnapishtim’s gish magur is Noah’s Ark:
The great ship itself is a prophecy of the future Messiah. It was a man-made, wooden mechanical saviour of mankind

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haha jesus was a wooden robot! (seriously, badly written) i'll avoid the crackpot noah's-ark-ararat stuff for now.

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The great ship- Noah’s Ark, in the Epic of Gilgamesh has six decks and the Bible has three. Babylonians were prone to exaggeration. They multiplied the reigns of their past kings, as an example, by a factor of 60, so that a king who ruled for 20 years, was claimed to have ruled for 1,200 years. This is an obvious myth, yet consistent with their entire list of kings.

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clearly, the bible NEVER exagerates numbers.

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It only took a week for the completion of the ark in the Babylonian story, the “gish-magur” a ship (elippu) the size of one “field” or “iku” ( iku =means one acre in area ) and seven levels ( separated by six decks ) built in a week. That is to say a vessel the size of a U.S. Marine amphibious assault ship such as the Tarawa, or a WWII Jeep Carrier, ( 550 feet in length ) hand made from massive wooden timbers and covered with thick wood planks and sealed with bitumen. Finished and seaworthy and loaded with animals in a week. Impossible.

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so, incredulity towards gilgamesh is ok, but not towards the bible? now, the bible never specifically says how long it took noah to build the ark, but we can infer that it was less than 100 years.also, the ark in genesis was 300x50x30 cubits. the one in gilgamesh was 120 cubits, cubed. (because it was a cube...)

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The Bible, on the other hand, conversely and more reasonably, states that Noah had 120 years to complete the task, that is, “man shall only live for 120 years.”12 By that time, Yahweh intended to end all life on the planet except Noah and his family, and the animals of course.

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ok, i just said above it took noah less than a hundred years. that's because shem was born before god told noah to build the boat. shem was 98 (or so) when he got off the boat. so a good estimate is that noah had 98 years to build the boat.

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According to the Epic, “It is impossible to cross the waters of death without the stone things.” Inconveniently, Gilgamesh destroys them, in the story, and “punting poles” become the only method left to accomplish this voyage. The “stone things” were discovered by the late Ron Wyatt, one of his only actual discoveries, near a small village called “Kazan” nowadays, but on old (1941) army maps called “Arzap.”

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yup. ron wyatt with better pictures.

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Therefore, it was impossible to pass over the waters of
death ( the flood ), without the stone anchors.

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usually ships have anchors, as well as ballasts, yes.

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The Bible points out that the Ark was made of wood covered by bitumen ( kopher ). An early 17th-century mistranslation ( King James Version ) of a Hebrew (K) to (G) has caused the popular misunderstanding of nonexistent “gopher wood” instead of proper Hebrew “kopher wood” that is, wood covered by tar, any wood. There has never existed a class of tree called “gopherwood.” But that’s how the world works.

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may or may not be right. i'm unable to determine at this point. most of the rest of this has little to do with gilgamesh, and mostly about the ark. surprise, suprise.

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Hebrew words Noach-tsywn, meaning “Noah’s capital.” The Greeks had no equivalent for the strange conjunction created by the Hebrew “kh” ( keth ) and the “ts” ( tsade ) since they together formed a sound akin to an ( X ) they concocted “Noa-X-ywn” or “Naxuan.”

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that's a CHET at the end of noah, and it's called a TSADI. definitally doesn't know hebrew.

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Noah did not name his city “Naxuan,” after himself, instead he called it “Mesha,” as previously noted. In Shemitic languages, “Mesha” means, to be “drawn out of, and saved from water” and is spelled msa. Moses was called by a name msh, nearly identical however it is pronounced “Moshe” in his case. (Don’t worry too much about vowels in Hebrew, since they are not written in all early forms of the language it also could be pronounced Meshah ).

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mesha just means "drawn" as in from a well. the water bit may or may not be implied. and, yes, worry too much about the vowels in hebrew. although they're STILL not commonly written (except in published books), they do dictate parts of speech. "mosheh" does come from "mashah" as does "meshah," and they all have similar meanings -- but they're not all THE SAME.

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no no, my common sense doesn't spoil the mental gymnastics at all. just watch and wait until one responds.they don't like the idea that the bible was written by someone later on, it had to have been written by adam, and noah, and abraham, and isaac, and jacob... who all of course sound exactly the same and wrote so very little about themselves because they were "inspired."clearly anachronisms don't mean anything, because an omniscient god would have known they'd be called by those names later on, even though they're not now.

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now, maybe the "fundie" label is a tad derogattory, but thatis the definition of fundamentalism, ray. well, now we know where you get the whole "enraged" bit. no suprise here, i guess.but i would like to point out the obvious fact (you know, via archaeology). the oldest monotheistic religion was "idolatrous." they worshipped the sun god, amun (ra), in egypt. even taking the biblical account literally, the birth of the hebrew faith was a cohesive religion has sometime later, leaving egypt. compare the dates for akhenaten's religion, and the construction of the city of raamses, which the bible reports was constructed by hebrew slaves. gene scott's a pyramidologist, right? surely he knows all about amenhotep iv, and his son tutankhamen. how? jeremiah? does that mean you agree that it was written during the reign of josiah? what signs point to authorship by jeremiah?i'm legitimately curious about those last two points, btw. i'm not being a smartass here. i suspect you're not going to offer real answers, but i'd like to see some references anyways (non-gene-scott references that is). kind of an assumption, really. just because they didn't have tv doesn't mean that they lacked the ability to send messages on a large scale. it's been suggested, for instance, that the pyramids were painted in bright colors like egyptian sculpture.it's also clear that leaders did have the power to unify and control large expanses of territory. how do you suppose they did that without the internet? that's not true, at all. the evidence seems to point the other way. besides, one kingdom often oppressed others. do you think that the hebrews lived in egypt for a few hundred years without hearing about egyptian culture? or lived in babylon for 50 or so without picking up some of the legends?the big mistake here is that these texts exist only as text. this is almost certainly not the case. when something is arranged in poetic form, it's usually meant to be spoken, sung, or as my learned professor argued, rapped. this was the primary mode of communication, not the written word. only a few educated people could write, but it seems very unlikely that this would render the entire population clueless to their own traditions.it's sort of like contending that shakespeare couldn't possibly have read the greek's pyramis and thisbe. in reality, the play went through several italian and english intermediaries -- the names "romeus" and "giulletta" included quite early on, a hundred years before shakespeare was even born. and that line, btw, is strictly literature until we get to shakespeare, whose manuscripts we do not have.is it impossible that a travellor carried the story? or that it was heard spoken of in the streets of babylon during captivity? doesn't follow. if it does, i'll insist that you quoting my words in your next confirms my point. look, there it is again. corroboration, and fact.what dr. scott doesn't seem to understand about the bible is that it often directly mocks other mythology. it's not "borrowing" or "plagairizing" or "confirming." it's satirizing. do you honestly think that the story of babel was not meant to make fun of uncompleted towel in babylon, and their legend regarding why their gods stopped it? that should "christians" not "theists." theists are people who believe in ANY god. how big was the flood and the boat? but see, that's the thing. they're not all invented simultaneously. babylon's came before israel's. and it's not exactly the same, is it?and since early civilizations tended to grow up around water supplies like rivers, is it impossible that many different flood myths come from many exagerated flood events? what? what does that have to do with anything? i see moses taking down laws, and keeping records. do you think the book is claiming mosaic authorship, or that moses wrote the source for the book? or something else? what parts did moses write, and what parts were later additions?

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i'm going to go out on a limb here, and tentatively say that i disagree. i see some sharing of tradition (not sure who got what from whom, although there is a lot of stuff that seems to be the root of judaism in ugaritic religion). but i think that saying the torah stems somewhat directly from the ugarits might be a bit extreme.the languages share a lot of interesting cognates, and it's used very similarly, yes. what information do you have about the similarities of texts, and their respective ages?This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-06-2005 09:45 PM

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or even have both come from another source. probably not. from what i hear, the languages are so full of cognates and similarities in structure (parallelism, for example) that it really wouldn't matter.

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i think it's probably far more accurate to seem them as part of the same group of semitic religions. correlation is not causality.

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and from arabic.

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yes. did you forget how to quote, dear?

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