I’m really interested in the development of stories. When looking into some of the oldest stories I keep seeing it’s mentioned that the story of Manu is older than the story of Noah. I was wondering if anyone had any references to the earliest confirmed stories of Manu or other similar stories that potentially predate the ones of the Tanakh. Especially the stories of Genesis.
Adding one to your collection, are you aware of the story of Utnapishtim from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (~2100BC)? He was tasked by the gods to create a giant ship in preparation for a deadly flood that would cover the whole (read: known) world.
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I am. I was just looking for faiths that could be reasonably outside the influence of ancient Mesopotamia. Really curious of their is solid evidence of Manu and his story before they came in contact with Judaism and Christianity or was it after. Often I read debates about things like “ the crucified messiahs”’that share similar stories with Jesus with the claims these stories were told first but then the earliest solid evidence of the stories was centuries after coming in contact with Christians and so on.
Sort of like how they often say that native Americans had flood stories, but when studying it all the evidence points towards they did not until after the European conquests.
It could be that lots of cultures have flood stories because floods are memorable natural disasters that happen all around the globe for a variety of natural reasons. (Archaeologists recently found evidence of a legendary flood in China that happened in 1900 BC)
I agree. I’m mostly just asking due to work I keep
Seeing claimed by various blogs or articles on comparative religion such as Manu potentially meaning mankind and also having three sons whose names are similar. I see Hindus saying jews stole their story snd jews saying theirs was stolen. Also seen counter arguments to Joseph Campbell’s works and so on.
I’m not coming from the angle that a worldwide flood happened. I do t believe in it. I’m more curious if these genesis 1-11 style myths from other faiths arose independently and if it was god accommodating all cultures in various ways or if it’s the byproducts of meeting Mesopotamians.
To do that the first step for me is to determine when do we actually have written records of stories. If the story of Manu showed up a thousand years before the Jewish story and there was no overlap of Indians and Mesopotamians that can help nudge my thoughts in one direction versus if it showed up a thousand years after the Jewish version and after a known overlap of their cultures and so on.
It’s like before colonialism there is no reason to believe that native Americans believed in a world wide flood. All written records of it shows up afterwards leaning people more towards they simply appropriated or used that story from Christianity because of Europeans invading them.
Interesting observation. Do you have a source for this? Asking coz it’s interesting.
Sometime later on I can try to find them. I originally read it in a book as a teen by a author named Running Cloud or something like that. It was actually a Native American author writing a book about how to train your horse with taps and not reigns. It was just some random part I remember from it about how christianity has tried to reshape their stories. But I can’t find the book and I’ve tried a bunch.
But since then I’ve read it in links and I’ll look for them sometime soon snd post it here.
I just spent a few minutes trying to find it and can’t. I don’t remember what I was reading. But essentially it says when you trace back all the oldest definite evidence of flood stories similar to Noah from native Americans the oldest proof is post colonialism. Almost everything I look at says this is a belief they had of this or that First Nations flood story but when you trace it down there is just no evidence period .
This is the problem I run into.
I find a New York Times article stating flood myths that predate genesis.
But when I go to their link for the Aztec story the “proof” is this.
Native American Indian Flood Myths
Which is just someone’s writings. No citations.
For example when I click on the flood narrative of that link it sends me to something similar to ancestry testing.
One obvious issue is the fact that native Americans in general had no written language. That seems to be something we got them interested with and the Cherokee seems to have been one of the first. But I believe some indigenous tribes of central and South America may have had them and so I’ll try to look specifically at those tribes and what shows up.
The other issue I run into is this.
https://www.salon.com/2014/04/12/noah_wasnt_the_first_flood_story_partner/
Headliner claims “ Noah” was not the first and implies they have five other older tales and though some are obviously
Older as mentioned, one example is from the Quran which is obviously not older and neither is the enochisn stories.
Until I find the link one that thst would also be interesting, and ties into my question, is what’s the actually earliest record of a Native American flood story. Something that we can say they for sure believed this and taught this prior to Europeans coming over.
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