Not Influenced by Surrounding Nations

Hi Peg,
I agree that the Israelites had unique aspects. Some of them rather stark and surprising. On the other hand, every culture had its unique aspects and I don't think you can show that the Israelites were not influenced by their neighbours through highlighting the unique parts. While some may dispute some of your claims of uniqueness, since I don't think it important to establish the influences, I'll just jump right in with a little of my own evidence I gathered.

Creation of the world

Compared with Enuma Elish: In Enuma Elish, Marduk commands a wind that rushes over and into the waters (Tiamat) in order to slay her and from this he creates the world. Likewise Genesis 1 has the "wind of God" moving over the 'deep' and some suggest that the deep, tĕhowm is linked to the word Tiamat - but this is disputable. Various other passages in the Bible have a giant sea dragon monster including (Isaiah 51, Awake, awake! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? NIV) being subdued by God, but why would God need to subdue such monsters? It is a clear allusion to the Marduk story of the battle with Tiamat.Battle with Tiamat Let there be lights

Creation of Man

Loss of innocence, the fall

As we know, 'to know' is a euphemism for sex. Serpents are phallic symbols and themselves are often symbols of fertility (they shed their skin and so renew themselves and have 'eternal youth'). So eve was tempted by a...symbolic cock, perhaps?Sometimes 'eating' is seen as a sexual euphemism too, once the humans 'eat' of the tree of sex knowledge of good and evil they become as gods Where am I going with this?

Eternal Life

When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh confronts his own mortality and goes hunting for a way out. He eventually hears about a plant that will give him eternal youth...some kind of 'Tree of Life'. He finally acquires this wonderful plant but unfortunately, (And that's how the snake gained its eternal youth).Clearly the intended audience for the Genesis story was familiar with this story of the hunt for the plant of eternal life because

The flood

Just about everybody knows this stuff, but allow me to draw direct parallels After this: And Noah:

Cloud surfing

The Laws

I don't think I need to quote the Biblical equivalent here, given its fame. This is another case of 'same but different'. The Biblical equivalent is more 'equal rights' than the Code of Hammurabi, but it is clear that these forms influenced the format/structure of Israelite law making.

Lillith

Asherah

Asherah, a Canaanite goddess was worshipped by the Israelites too as a consort of Yahweh, "Queen of Heaven". William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona, writes that it seems to be the case that Monotheism was really only followed by the elite Israelites, whereas Joe the gleaner would be plenty into folk religions. . The OT even confirms this to have been the case: and

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Hopefully, that's a good enough start to at least present a fairly decent case that Israelite beliefs were influenced by their neighbours. There are other avenues of investigation, the forms of the Covenants and so on. But I'm happy with this as a start.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Since Peg hasn't turned up yet, allow me to disagree. 1 Kings 18 is about Elijah proving that Ba'al is not a god, not about Yahweh 'beating' another god at a competition. and Indeed - as far as I can tell, some scholars believe it was the likes of Elijah's policy of "Only Yahweh has power" that really gave birth to absolute monotheism. So although there is evidence that Ba'al/Hadad/Adad/Asherah was worshipped by the Israelites within the text - this is definitely not (in my opinion) one of the examples of 'don't worship those other real gods' but is one of the examples of 'the other gods are made up nonexistent fictions and only Yahweh is God'.

So you are conceding that the Israelistes were in fact influenced by surrounding nations (in that they worshipped Asherah/Ba'al/Hadad etc)?However, you are doing the very thing I criticised you for in your earlier post. You can't say 'all the writers' and then cite a few pro-monotheist positions. Nobody is in doubt that there are strict monotheistic passages in the OT. Yahweh here is said to be 'among the gods' implying there is more than one. And that's just the book of Exodus. I'm not saying this is concrete proof that the authors believed other gods existed, but it is evidence that it might have been implicitly assumed by them. By steadfastly ignoring these weak and passive statements about polytheism and only referencing those which are polemically absolute monotheism you don't give the impression of someone who is looking at this subject with an entirely objective eye.Now - I have conceded several of your points, indeed argued one point on your behalf, perhaps you'd do me the favour of commenting on the pile of evidence in Message 7? Cheers.

I know I agreed that this reference was disputable, but that was a pretty poor response Peg. You can't see the link between Marduk slaying a sea monster and Yahweh slaying a sea monster? Why not? I suppose you can't see the connection to calling Ba'al (or sometimes Hadad) the "Rider of Clouds" and the connection to calling Yahweh he who 'rides the clouds' The question is, is it figurative in Isaiah 51:9, the verse I referenced? Is it figurative in Psalm 74 when God is spoken of as destroying the sea monsters?

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For God [is] my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, [and] gavest him [to be] meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

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Or Isaiah 27:1

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In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that [is] in the sea.

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The fact is that Yahweh is pictured slaying a dragon or serpent that lives in the seas. Is it always a metaphor? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's a metaphor in the Babylonian world too. Either way there is clear evidence that imagery of deities smiting sea demons/dragons/serpents isn't entirely unique to Israelite culture.Just as when the Lillith crops up in both is also evidence that there is cultural overspill taking place. But we can agree that both Enuma Elish and Genesis are both agreed that the Creator of the World also created the moon which is a source of light? Seems the same but in fact different. Great argument there Peg. Very compelling. Either way, mankind is created by mixing clay and some kind of divine essence. I'd say that was more similar than it is dissimilar. More gainsaying, at least try and put up an argument Peg. Even I can argue against my position better than this! Agreed. However, that the two tales both have a 'flora of eternal life' motif is interesting. That the Tree of Life seems entirely extraneous in Genesis since it plays no role whatsoever in the story would seem to suggest that the audience are familiar with it (and I think it would be folly to argue that the Israelites were ignorant of the Babylonian and Canaanite myths, even the Bible disagrees with that position). I posit that the Tree of Life only made it in there because people already believed there was such a thing and they needed a story like Enuma Elish to explain why they couldn't get to it (ie., they needed an explanation for their mortality in terms of a plantish metaphor).Is it conclusive? No. Nothing is in this discussion, and to claim otherwise is silly. It is evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis. Right. And the ones near the Israelite's homelands were very similar accounts. That means that one group started telling the story and this story transmitted to many people (or common ancestry as we like to say ). That there are flood stories that predate Israelite's version is evidence that the beliefs of the Israelites were inherited from their neighbours. Even if those beliefs happen to be true. It isn't strange to find a universal concept of justice. However, if one group describes justice as being 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' and then a later group describes justice as being 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', this would count as evidence that the latter group was influenced by the former group's understanding of justice. If they practised these things they almost certainly believed them to be true. If they believed them to be true, they were almost certainly part of their religion. There might have been some kind of Priestly tribe, some kind of Aaronite grouping, that tried to impose one religion above all others - but that doesn't mean that the Israelites didn't have Asherah as part of their religion. Where did they get that idea?From the surrounding nations. Sometimes. Other times it writes about them almost as if they were implicitly assumed to be real, as I pointed out in my Exodus quotes.... I don't agree with this exactly, and I don't think everyone would agree with you that the writers had 'the same stand'. That view seems limited to Christians. It's not the topic though, so let's not get distracted on that point. Again, I disagree, and the texts I quote don't imply that Yahweh is the greatest amongst 'false' gods, but that the other gods are real entities among which Yahweh is the greatest. You don't have to agree that the interpretation is the best one, but I'm not enitrely sure you can just dismiss it.I didn't come here to prove completely and utterly, so compellingly that even a Christian would believe it to be true, that all Israelite beliefs were influenced by the beliefs of other Near Eastern cultures.I came here to say that there is evidence, including evidence from within the OT itself that the laiety of Israelite culture were influenced by other cultures and beliefs from surrounding nations, and that extending from this, that there is some evidence left over after the author(s) and redacter(s) that even the religious cultic leaders of Israelite culture were influenced by neighbouring nations.Nobody is disputing that there are unique aspects of Israelite religion. Because the ancient Hebrew language happens to follow the forms of English? Would this argument work if we were reading the OT in German?

Marduk is a proper noun, that means you capitalize the first letter. You seem to talking absolutes. I'm not sure how you think you can do that.I have never said the two are the same.I am showing that two neighbouring cultures have both used imagery of their deity engaged in physical combat with a sea monster. You said you couldn't see any link between the two. You clearly can and that is why you are trying to argue that the OT references are metaphorical. I was building a case, which means using lots of disparate pieces of supporting evidence. I am not trying to convince you that this means the Israelites were influenced by their neighbours, I suspect this is not possible. It could reference that, or it could be a reference to God dividing the waters in Genesis 1. I am not disputing that there are other alternative understandings of this scripture. Then again, with that interpretation the end of the verse,"[and] gavest him [to be] meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness."raise more questions.And there is also Isaiah 27.If we assume that these descriptions are supposed to be entirely unrelated to actual sea monsters, we still have to explain why the authors decided to use those particular metaphors. Could it be an attempt to demythologize that which was commonly believed by the Israelites?A case of "They believe that the chief god attacked a sea monster, that doesn't fit in with our view of Yahweh, so lets show that he did, but only a metaphorical sense."The same kind of process that religious people do today. "No no no! God didn't literally create the world and everything in it in six days", some people say, "that's just a story that has an important underlying meaning...that it is by God's divine will that everything exists". Scientific accuracy is irrelevant to this discussion, we're just establishing evidences of similarities and possible influences. So they both have the creator of the world also creating the moon and that both were sources of light. Do we agree that in both accounts man is made using Clay and some divine essence? So I wouldn't find that the verb 'know' is sometimes used as a sexual euphemism by the Israelite authors? I wouldn't find that snakes have been used as phallic or fertility symbols? I wouldn't find that eating has been used as a metaphor for sexual activity? Gilgamesh isn't in the flood story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, he's being told it by the 'Noah' character as a historical event. Objective point of view? Maybe you can't divorce yourself from your established personal interpretation of the text too easily? Have you attempted to take a step back from that interpretation and consider some other ideas? For instance: the concept that Genesis is completely free of the fantasy of other legends is one view. But from where I am standing, there is lots of the fantasy of other legends (and fables) going on in Genesis.So let's try and objectively look at these things, without assuming that the various books of the Bible are either true or false.Anyway, by an absolute divine decision that cannot be revoked, the earth and its inhabitants are destroyed by a flood. Also by divine decision, some inhabitants are chosen to survive by building a waterproof boat and putting lots of animals on it that eventually moors on a mountain, birds are sent out but cannot find land and a sacrifice is offered because it smells good to the divine. Nothing is necessarily the case in history, Peg, take off your absolutist hat for a while please. However, we aren't just talking about two different cultures coincidentally saying that a person should be punished like for like. They use the same examples! Not "An arm for an arm", not "injury for injury", but specifically:"If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out... If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken...If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out"Compared with"fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has injured someone, so shall it be done to him."I fail to see how you could not conclude that there was some kind of outside influence to the Leviticus quote here. If a teacher asked her pupils to write a set of laws, and two pupils wrote that then the teacher would conclude:1) that the pupils colluded with one another
2) that the pupils both copied from a common sourceI know the Christian apologetics response: The common source was God, but the authors of the Code of Hammurabi corrupted it and the Bible authors were truer to the original meaning (and Jesus subsequently clarified it further). However, denying outright that this is evidence that the Israelites may have been influenced by their neighbours is just that: outright denial! Erm, yes. The evidence is very much against the idea that the Americans completely independently developed the idea of capital punishment and that they inherited from the Europeans that they once were. Though I'm not suggesting that it couldn't be independently invented, its an obvious punishment to think of. However, if the Americans had decided to stone someone to death for the crime of sacrificing their child to a god or for being a wizard or to set fire to witches, I'd conclude it was likely that this was influenced from other cultures (or common perceptions thereof). Assuming the conclusion isn't the most clear thinking in the world, is it? Anyway it seems you have conceded that the claim you made, "that the Hebrews were not influenced by the beliefs of the nations around them. ", is hyperbole even by the standards of the craziest Christian apologetics. If this reasoning was valid - Islam would clearly be the true religion, because the Qur'an says that the writings were not merely divinely inspired, but dictated directly from God!In fact, if I bring up the Book of Enoch you will say that its not in your Old Testament therefore it doesn't count. But what can you say if I argue that it was inspired by God? What would you say if I argued that the Babylonian writings were inspired by Marduk, and that the Israelites just copied from the true Holy Works? I think you'll find that this line of reasoning doesn't settle the debate. So neither of us should be using it. Then again, because a lot of the text defines itself by what it doesn't believe in and how it is TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from those guys over there believe, one might conclude that in itself was evidence that they were in fact influenced by those guys over there.If they had defined themselves completely divorced from those things, there might be a better case to be made. If you are trying to be different from those guys over there, you are still being influenced by them. Once again, assuming that the Bible is a universal absolute book that is always in total agreement with itself won't get us anywhere. It is many books written by many people, some with differing views about Yahweh, el etc.You don't establish that Exodus doesn't weakly imply that there was an acceptance of the real existence of other deities by some of the Authors or editors of some parts of the OT by quoting 2nd Kings. We all know that there are other parts of the OT that are strongly monotheistic. This is not in debate. Ah. Well in German all Nouns begin with a capital Letter, so in the German Bible the Moon would be capitalised. Yes, and I'm not getting confused between Yahweh and other gods. It is quite clear. Yahweh is put in comparison to the other gods as being the greatest among them.

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I think we both agree that the Israelites were very definitely influenced by other powers. Indeed - much of their identity seems to be defined in the relationships to them. They often worshipped their gods, or went to battle because of them. So that's established.I still think that the fact that the human authors of the OT were surrounded by people who were influenced by their neighbours means that it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the OT authors were likewise influenced by their neighbours in their beliefs, practices and customs. It is clear that there are differences, just as every culture is unique, and that some of those differences are at times startling and interesting.I believe that there are a variety of clues that would indicate that the ideas of the OT authors was influenced by these sources.1. There are cultures that have the chief deity wrestling with a sea monster, splitting the waters in two, creating a firmament which holds back the waters.2. Other near eastern religions have a moment of divine will where the firmament is opened to cause a flood, though one man and his associates is chosen to be saved by building a boat that contains lots of animals, that the boat comes to rest on a mountain, that birds are used to scout for land and that a burnt sacrifice is offered at the conclusion because divinity likes the smell of burnt meat.3. Some of the laws are very closely worded to other near eastern laws.4. The creation of man is from clay and divine essence.There are others, detailed in Message 7 but I think these alone are strong enough to show the influences of other nations.Furthermore, being divinely inspired doesn't necessarily mean 'being completely divorced from the beliefs, ideas, customs and culture that one comes from'. Since there are no rules on being divinely inspired, it might be the case that being inspired means that your understanding of God, while a revelation, is still coloured by the biases and flaws inherent in the human condition.Even if we assume that nobody that was not divinely inspired didn't go back and tinker and get away with it.

I'm not talking about Ezekiel, that is clearly a simile. I was talking about the Psalm 74. There are certain things which are indisputable, but I don't think that we can say that any text can 'present its own meaning'. That simply doesn't make sense. Well, we can say that Muslims were influenced by the Christians and the Jews because they both believe in the God of Abraham and that Jesus was a real person who had important things to say about God.I'm not sure what the Occult is, so I can't say if Christianity was influenced by it. It is certainly derived from the real meaning of 'cult' which is to say 'religious practices' or 'attending to the gods'.I have no idea why we would conclude that all religions are one and the same. That is nothing to do with my argument at all.

The Israelites had many unique and startling and interesting features. They were not exactly the same, nor did they believe in exactly the same things as their neighbours

I've said it in just about every post, but I'm not sure it sank in. No you are just talking nonsense. You've already agreed that they are related, now you are saying they aren't? (and later you will present an argument that assumes that they are, so surely you must think they might be related?)How on earth is Gilgamesh one of the Nephilim? He has nothing to do with Noah. He goes to visit some person who he is not related to in any non-trivial fashion whose name was Utanapishtim. He does this because Utanapishtim was born mortal but became immortal and Gilgamesh, having lost his good friend Enkidu, wants to gain immortality.Utanapishtim tells him how he became immortal, and in so doing he tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood. How do you go from a guy called Utanapishtim who is analogous to Noah telling a story very much like Noah's to some other guy to the...peculiar conclusion that Gilgamesh is a Nephilim and one of Noah's grandsons?That's like me telling you the plot to the modern Battlestar Gallactica and how it is clealy influenced from Moses' story of his travelling out of Egypt to the promised land and then you concluding that must mean that Admiral Adama is Moses' grandson.No no, I get it, this kind of error can only come from someone who is unable to detach themselves from their committed opinion that what's in the Bible is as factual as the Presidency of George Bush. If you aren't capable of simply looking at the text as you would any other writing for even one thread, then we aren't going to be having a dialogue at all and there's no point continuing. Yes, and I'm sure they have. Yes, we've covered this. Alternatively, since the other flood accounts were written earlier, what happened is that Utanapishtim (or Zisundra) and his family spread out, the tale developed and took on a life of its own and then Gilgamesh met Utanapishtim heard the tale first hand, and had it inscribed (either by his own hand or through a scribe) and that Genesis account, being written down much later is in fact a corrupted copy of a much earlier story which being recorded by interviewing an eyewitness makes it more reliable.Or, the Zisundra story is a massively exaggerated story possibly based on a Near East flood that happened and how somebody survived it and it got blown out of all proportion first by the Sumerians, then the Babylonians and finally the Israelites.Either way, it doesn't change the fact that it is evidence that the Israelites were influenced by their neighbours. Neither thought it up themselves. Did you even read what I wrote about this? Fuck it, I'll repeat the whole thing and you can read it again. I'll bold the important bits.

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Nothing is necessarily the case in history, Peg, take off your absolutist hat for a while please. However, we aren't just talking about two different cultures coincidentally saying that a person should be punished like for like. They use the same examples! Not "An arm for an arm", not "injury for injury", but specifically:

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"If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out... If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken...If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out"

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Compared with

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"fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has injured someone, so shall it be done to him."

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I fail to see how you could not conclude that there was some kind of outside influence to the Leviticus quote here. If a teacher asked her pupils to write a set of laws, and two pupils wrote that then the teacher would conclude:

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1) that the pupils colluded with one another
2) that the pupils both copied from a common source

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I know the Christian apologetics response: The common source was God, but the authors of the Code of Hammurabi corrupted it and the Bible authors were truer to the original meaning (and Jesus subsequently clarified it further). However, denying outright that this is evidence that the Israelites may have been influenced by their neighbours is just that: outright denial!
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The evidence is very much against the idea that the Americans completely independently developed the idea of capital punishment and that they inherited from the Europeans that they once were. Though I'm not suggesting that it couldn't be independently invented, its an obvious punishment to think of. However, if the Americans had decided to stone someone to death for the crime of sacrificing their child to a god or for being a wizard or to set fire to witches, I'd conclude it was likely that this was influenced from other cultures (or common perceptions thereof).

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That was exactly my point. So stop assuming that the Bible is the inspired word of God and all the other Christian baggage you brought into this debate, OK? That fact was never under dispute. You made a claim that "the Hebrews were not influenced by the beliefs of the nations around them", you have since retreated to "The authors of the OT were not influenced by their neighbours" and you have even jumped all the way to the retreated position of "The religion had differences". Look down, your Christian baggage is showing again. I already posted the Exodus quotes in Message 21, have you forget what happened a dozen posts ago?I have already demonstrated, and you have agreed, that the bible agrees that many Israelites worshipped other deities, even if we concede that every single verse in the OT forbids it, so your claim that, "The Hebrews were wholly monotheistic, they worshiped 1 God only" is falsified even if we only look to the Biblical text.Finally, the baggage. You claimed that " if you are unable to show how the writers of the bible promoted polytheism, then your statement is inaccurate and very misleading. ", which would imply that that I claimed that bible promoted polytheism. In the section you quoted, I didn't even claim that the OT accepts other deities. I said "You don't establish that Exodus doesn't weakly imply that there was an acceptance of the real existence of other deities by some of the Authors or editors of some parts of the OT by quoting 2nd Kings."How is this statement "very misleading"? and what has it got to do with saying that the OT promotes polytheism? I suspect you need to turn down the sensitivity on your righteous indignation device there. I wouldn't laugh if I were you.

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If they practised these things they almost certainly believed them to be true. If they believed them to be true, they were almost certainly part of their religion. There might have been some kind of Priestly tribe, some kind of Aaronite grouping, that tried to impose one religion above all others - but that doesn't mean that the Israelites didn't have Asherah as part of their religion. Where did they get that idea?

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Yes they did get those ideas from the surrounding nations

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So which is it. Did they or didn't they? I'm getting confused. A lot of what we are talking about predates 'jews', but either way we are talking about a group of people called the Israelites, sometimes called the Hebrews (especially by Christians, presumably because of the NT book of the same name) who believed they descended from the twelve sons of a guy called Israel.We are talking about the religious beliefs they practised, and the religious ideas that the OT writers were trying to impose upon them, and how the OT writers were influenced by the myths, legends and the like that the laiety believed in even if they themselves rarely if ever believed in it. We are talking about the evidences that we can find that might indicate that some of the less monotheistic beliefs of Israelites, and the authors of the OT were also Israelites of course, may be fossilized in the text still. It might not be obvious, but there might be a clue here and there. Together, a collection of clues might mean we think, hey - there is some evidence that even the Authors of the canon books of the Old Testament were influenced by the beliefs, practices, customs and laws of the surrounding nations. Why? It's not the topic. I have not read a single religious text that promotes the worship of false gods (except maybe Discorianism and maybe some of the difficult to understand Far Eastern ideas). So the answer to the question is an obvious, trivial, no they didn't. Tricky to answer. In some cases: yes (Lev 19:34, the Book of Ruth) in some cases: no.(I'm sure you know some examples tere) For reasons highlighted above, obviously not.However, some of the Authors (why are we capitalising that anyway?) did write about Yahweh being greater than other gods.

Agreed. Yes, yes, I know. That is why I said "this kind of error can only come from someone who is unable to detach themselves from their committed opinion that what's in the Bible is as factual as the Presidency of George Bush. If you aren't capable of simply looking at the text as you would any other writing for even one thread, then we aren't going to be having a dialogue at all and there's no point continuing.".Your argument only works IF AND ONLY IF both the story of Utanapishtim and the story of Noah are true. All you have basically argued here is the rather obvious: If one story is completely true, then the other story is not completely true. It doesn't make it completely different. It is a singular difference. I have outlined an array of things that they share in common, where they are very similar. If you still believe this, tell me and I'll stop bothering to debate you. You are having clear problems discussing this topic. You apparently can't ever turn off 'Genesis is true' mode which is critically hampering our ability to compare it with other texts to see if there is any evidence that it was influenced from other sources. Several of our other communication difficulties stem from this kind of thinking, and it is just leading to a pointless dialogue.If this is the case I will collate the evidence so far, present a few more pieces and virtually 'walk away'.

That's absolutely right.On the other hand, if the story of Utanapishtim is true, then Moses was a descendant of Utanapishtim's and so on and so forth, or if the story of Zisundra is true, then Moses was a descendant of Zisundra etc etc The Gilgamesh problem is a problem Peg and I are having with discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh. When considering the Epic of Gilgamesh, Peg is trying to fit it into the context of the Genesis flood account also being true and is coming to crazy conclusions like Gilgamesh being a Nephilim, which leads to, "Therefore the genesis account cannot possibly be related to the gilgamesh account." While also saying that the flood accounts in the Epic of Gilgamesh may be corrupted versions of One True Flood Account^TMIf the flood account of another region was true, then the author(s) of Genesis might have heard a corrupted version (or they may have modified an earlier version) and so we would expect them to have a lot of things in common but with differences.Peg is swinging between saying that the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh might be a corrupted version of Noah's tale, to saying that that the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh is completely different and "cannot possibly be related".Have you read the flood account in the Epic of Gilgamesh? You can read it here. Do you agree that while they are obviously different, there are some startling similarities that needs an explanation?It is difficult to peg Peg down and it is making it impossible to have a coherent conversation. Trying to do it long posts has proven difficult, so I thought I'd get it cleared up in a single post dedicated to the Epic of Gilgamesh. If we can't get such a clear and simple issue straightened out, then more complex discussion is going to be hopeless, yes?

I'm not trying to get that settled - that fits into "more complex discussion".All I am trying to settle is that if the similarities highlighted are really there then the two accounts are not 'completely different' and that the similarities would require an explanation. Coincidence wouldn't suffice.Who influenced who, what do scholars say about the relative dates of the documents and stories, what are the best translations and so on are issues way down the road. If Peg and I can't get over the simple beginning hurdle, we aren't going to get anywhere near to being able to discuss those kinds of issues sensibly.And that's the problem

Hi Peg.
You aren't reading what I am saying. Why am I writing this? To explain to any other people that are reading why I'm stepping out.Firstly, I have said it so often that I am bored of repeating it, I am not claiming any certainty (though you periodically are). I have said the exact opposite over and over again.Second, you have not highlighted a dilemma above. The dilemma is that you are perfectly capable of grasping the possibility that that tale of Utanapishtim was influenced by the real tale of Noah. You are completely incapable of conceding the possibility that the tale of Noah was influenced by the real tale of Utanapishtim. You are also having difficulty conceding that both tales may be influenced by another tale, and that none of the tales may be true.You realize that this is inconsistent reasoning, but you also think that by accepting Noah's story may have been taken from Utanapishtim's will lead to a slippery slope of the Bible is lies therefore atheism. And that's why you are in a dilemma, I'd wager.Take Care,
Mod

Heh, yeah - I know what the occult is, I've even been involved in various occult practices before becoming an atheist: summoning forest spirits, spiritual healing, remote viewing, visiting the wise elders of the astral plane for advice, channelling the knowledge of Oghma and all the way 'up to' lesser and greater black magic.Peg was talking about something called the Occult which apparently involves worship of A deity. I assumed it was some kind of Pegcentric Christian conceptual idea far removed from what I would call the occult. Since Peg was talking about worshipping deities, I thought that maybe Peg was thinking of cultic practices so I tried answering the question with that assumption. I'll be blasted if I know what Peg meant though.But thanks for allowing me to clarify that point, however minor

Is that your final answer? Or do you think it is likely you will go to go back to, "Therefore the genesis account cannot possibly be related to the gilgamesh account. "?

Peg, don't take this personally, I'm sure you're a mighty fine person to know one-on-one, but this is a debate site so I'm compelled by the format to be something of a pain in the 'ass'.I appreciate that we can agree they are related in so far as they both contain references to a flood. Do you agree that the similarities that are apparently there, are so similar, that the one might be influenced by the other? Not just that Utnapishtim's tale may have been influenced by Noah's tale, but that Noah's tale may have been influenced by Utnapishtim's tale.

I'm completely at a loss how you can hold this opinion and the opinion voiced in Message 51 at the same time. Could you explain? And what about the similarities that I actually called similarities, not the differences that I never disputed were differences?

You quoted more than than though. Included in what you quoted was "One would assume that Abraham brought the story with him when he left Ur for Haran & later Canaan. The Gilgamesh story stayed in Mesopotamia. It would be over 1000 years before these stories were written down in their current fashion, and thus would be changed due to the evolution of each by the peoples who told them, each adding his own parts to the story." after which you said

quote:

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yes i agree with you there.

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And i guess if we cant prove one way or another which story is the original, we can be sure of at least one thing...that the flood left a strong impression on many people for a very very long time

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no one forgot it, even if they perhaps got their facts mixed up a little.

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Which seems to indicate that you agree that both Noah and Utnapishtim's tale could be both describing the same event. And now you are saying the only thing they share is the geographical proximity? And what about the more specific similarities I brought up? I haven't suggested that the author of Noah's tale copied it having read a copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh.