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

As I was browsing the web and researching various myths, legends, and biblical stories, I stumbled onto this elegantly written paper by a gentleman by the name of David Deal. Now I will say that although I believe him to have a number of strange theories, the following paper was very well written...and in my opinion, at least 75% of it is quite convincing. So I decided to go ahead and link the document to see if perhaps you feel the same way about it or not. So here we go:404The primary purpose of this thread is to discuss the authenticity of the bibilical pentatuch verses the Epic of Gilgamesh. Does it make more sense to conclude the Epic of Gilgamesh came first? or the Pentatuch? After reading, it is up for you to decide.Note: This thread is not designed for anyone to throw in variables of science, creation, and evolution. Stick to the topic from points of view derived from literary and ancient textual sources. Read the entire document meticulously before embarking on a crusade to dismiss various portions. There is no doubt that various portions can be dismissed. But the important question to be asked is, can the overall paper be dismissed as a whole? Or do too many interlocking points fit together for new food for thought? I'll leave that for you, the reader, to decide.LysimachusThis message has been edited by Lysimachus, 12-03-2005 12:02 PM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Well I read the paper and frankly, it is nothing but a collection of bare assertions without support combined with almost unlimited errors in logic. They begin on page one and continue in an almost uninterrupted stream through to the end of the paper.If anyone wishes to waste time we can begin with page one and cover them item by item.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

So far as I can tell the article has no value in any serious discussion.-->http://

well that was a fun little daydream.the written version of gilgamesh is older than the hebrew people. the bible says abraham came from babylon. guess what that means. he brought much older myths with him. the story originates from around 2100 BCE. abraham left babylon around 1900 BCE. while possibly about the same flood, which preceded by about 2500 years (long enough for a good van winkle), the bible's writer(s) certainly didn't get it on paper before then. it probably wasn't even a matter of popular discourse at the time. now, if you're like me and have the opinion that genesis and exodus were written during the exile to give these crazy kids an identity, then it sure as crap is taken from the mesopotamian tale which was already in an established library by 700 BCE... the exile was not until 600BCE or so.This message has been edited by brennakimi, 12-04-2005 12:49 AM

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i'm worldwide bitch, act like ya'll don't know.

I'm not sure that Gilgamesh epic is a fair comparison to the Bible, for instance the epic of Gilgamesh hasn't had inconvinient parts of it cut due to unpopularity (at least for the past few millenia). Additionally, and this is just a guess, but having millions of people emotionally dependent upon oh, say, the order of creation of birds and plants, may have an effect on our interpretations of the two documents, maybe one is considered a little more superior than the other by most observers (however, not by this one).Also, we have fairly specific Gilgamesh stories in their origional language. Let's face it, reading the bible (and, well, Gilgamesh too) in English is much like buying the edited CD's at Walmart. To really get to the core of it, read not only Hebrew and Greek versions, but also the "bonus tracks" of previously unreleased material that the clergic... RIAA don't want you to download. Oh, Intellectual Property you devil. Gilgamesh, in contrast, is somewhat more complete and less edited. And, we have fairly early dates for it's existence in the archaeologic record (Let's hear it for stone!). At the same time, though the Torah's age is largely inferred, it's earliest representation is in the Dead Sea Scrolls at 2,000 years ago. We don't know exactly how old it is, as either oral or written tradition.Basically, even though we have old, old texts, we don't necessarily make good comparisons. Imagine a post-apocalyptic world, then a couple thousand years later as a world struggling to understand it's past and manipulate it to compare to the present to build the idealised and unrealistic future they all... I'll end the analogy here. But, and for the purpose of debate, the future archaeologists, after spending 100 years of excavation and intense debate with fundamentalists who believe the world is only two thousand years old, have come up with the following documents:1. Ten Commandments from an Alabama Courthouse (in stone, right?)
2. Vietnam Memorial fragments
3. Wal-Mart sign
4. Gravestones, lots of gravestones...
5. New Deal Projects (Pre World War II America)
6. Funky WinkerbeenSo, though these all are preserved and from the same time, comparisons between the two may not be meaningful. In the article, the author goes at great length to compare the two documents. You could draw meanings between Gravestones and the Vietnam Memorial (meaningful), but at the same time draw inferences between the Walmart sign and gravestones (not meaningful... yet...). I'm not sure that the authors of this paper did a good job in relating the stories, they use too much of what they want to see, and not enough self criticism. For instance, is one giant flood in each story necessarily reflective of a specific historical event? Or could it be that all ancient civilizations had large population densities near rivers, and each could point to a "giant" flood that wiped out the world? The same world which, according to most accounts, was a great deal smaller then.The interpretations are possibly accurate. However, without criticising their own conclusions, they are probably not accurate. There is an old saying from the Tanakh that, and not only in the ironic sense, is worth mentioning in this context:"It is better to listen to the reproach of a wise man than to the praise of fools."Vale,
Theus

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Veri Omni Veritas

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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I haven't finished it but the author makes some interesting points on the meaning of the names and possibly deeper meanings of the words of "Noah" as parables, but you probably posted it to the wrong crowd here, if you want a fair hearing.

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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Maybe if the author is 12 years old, but if it was written by an adult then it is a very poorly written paperAs Jar has said, there is nothing of any real value in the entire paper, it is very poorly referenced, hardly anything is supported, and even the grammar is appalling.For example: This should be referenced, and/or some supporting evidence given. Who actually says it is the oldest written document, what does the author actually mean by 'document'? This type of error is repeated throughout, heavens the author makes claims about certain events and people in the Epic, yet he never gives verse references.As for the grammar, how is this wee beauty? Basic question?? There are two questions here Also, as far as grammar is concerned, why does the word 'Which' have a capital 'W'? It comes after a comma, not a full stop.I could go on, but this article is only good for one thing, i.e. demonstrating that fundies make very poor researchers.Brian.

Speaking of anachronisms, I still haven`t had a good reply from the anointed on Gen 2:14- 'Asshur/Assyria' being referred to in pre-Flood days.

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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