True, but what makes the Gilgamesh of note is that, besides the literary thematic connections, is that Israel is proximate to Mesopotamia. There was ongoing trade and influence. Furthermore…
Genesis 15:7
Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it."
which is smack dab in the region where the epic was found.
The origin of the nation record history that long predates judaism. Gods chosen people isnt even attributed to jews until after Egypt. The New Testament gospel is that gentiles are now also Gods chosen people. So here are the options i see:
I subscribe to the latter
Also, Abraham wasnt Jewish. Do we not call Judaism an “Abrahimic” religion? Isnt Islam also an Abrahimic religion?
Enkidu formed from clay - contradiction with Scripture. As a side note, in all the creation stories around the globe mankind has to be created from something, have all these stories been checked for similarities? Dust, clay, rocks, water, animal would easily make it into the top-10.
Enkidu naked and unaware - tablet states : but wore a garment
Woman provides sexual experience that civilizes Enkidu - Shamhat is a whore, Shamhat created before Enkidu?
I leave the rest untouched, in a nutshell, too farfetched.
The giant differences of Scripture outweigh the questionable similarities.
In Gen 3 the tone is set, sin and sin means death, the central issue of Scripture, all the way to the work of Christ on the cross shedding His blood.
In the epic everything goes, Eve a whore? How can she be called a whore anyway when there was no man created? Nothing about sin in the epic.
I will start reading Matthew’s next point.
It seem you are looking at it as if Genesis is a retelling of the EG rather than a new story modeled or revived from it, telling of a very different God and his relationship to creation. One would expect very different characteristics even with similarities.
The differences are striking because of the points of contact. In contrast to the soap operatic drama of the bickering gods of Mesopotamia and Egypt, indulging in outlandish magic, and mixing things up with weird chimeras blurring God, man, and beast, we have the elegant and simple themes of a transcendent God, man’s creation and estrangement, sovereignty over nature, and laying the foundation for meaning in the face of difficulty and mortality. I believe these were contrasts deliberately drawn.
I don’t think there is a relationship at all.
That’s fine. Perhaps it is just coincidence. As origin stories, they are likely to have some parallels, but when you consider the purpose, one purpose to the original audience would be to show God’s true nature in the midst of the pagan culture, so the parallels might well be intentional.
Borrowing from paganism meanwhile setting the record straight, maybe so.
But it’s a dangerous path, consider the absence of hell and the lake of fire in the OT, as closest we get Daniel 12:2 authored in the second century BC following the Wikipedia.
But then (suddenly) in the NT hell is introduced, notable by Jesus Himself. Also borrowed from paganism?
The lake of fire is first mentioned in the book of the Dead (~1200 BC), Also borrowed from paganism?
For those who take The Rich Man and Lazarus story in Luke 16 literal, thus not as a parable but real, the description of hell comes right out of the Greek myth of Hades.
Personally I see it as a parable to ridicule the Pharisees in return (see verse 14) as lovers of money and their false beliefs that slipped in during the absence of ~400 years prophets from God. False belief one, nobody who dies wakes up at the bosom of Abraham, the bosom of Abraham is nowhere in Scripture, secondly Jesus ridicules the Pharisees in return that lovers of money go to the place they had borrowed from paganism.
If you have ever seen the movie “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” and are aware of Homer’s epic poems you will be immediately aware that the movie was inspired by Homer’s work. For example, John Goodman’s character is a one eyed Bible salesman that beats the protagonists with a club, a clear reference to the cyclops in Homer’s “Odyssey”. The treasure of gold is a stand in for the Golden Fleece, and there are singing women (i.e. sirens) who pull the protagonists to a baptism in a river. The parallels are clear, and the obvious inspiration is true even if we are able to find differences between the movie and the classic poem.
I remember I made a start with the movie but turned it off because of the blasphemy.
Interesting! I haven’t read the “Odyssey” but now that you mention the literary parallels it does make sense. I enjoyed the music in “Oh brother” and bought the CD, although the culture of that time and place seems very foreign to me.
Okay, though I have some questions about what that means you will investigate the points.
Okay.
Enkidu isn’t supposed to be Adam, that wouldn’t make much sense since the Enkidu story was written down before Genesis 1 was.
Contextually, if you read on a little bit more you can see the Trapper talking to his father right after this and it seems that it was the Trapper who was fearful, not Enkidu. Enkidu is just innocent and uncivilized.
Shamhat is not supposed to be Eve. Again that wouldn’t make any sense though there are similarities to the two figures.
It’s not really clear, but probably? Or maybe?
It doesn’t explicitly say, but it can’t be a contradiction since The Epic of Gilgamesh is not trying to copy the details of the Bible as it existed before the text of Genesis.
Yes, mankind was created in the wilderness of some earthly stuff. If you were an ancient person, what word would you pick to describe what mankind is made out of?
The man is created from earthly stuff and lives with a bunch of animals - and then his first introduction to other humans is through a fully grown woman whom he has sex with. That sounds a lot like what Genesis 2 is describing at the end of Chapter 2. And then shortly after this, in both stories, the man loses his state of “innocence” ultimately through his interaction with the woman. The same thing happens when a 20-something-year-old today goes from playing video games with his friends to getting married.
I guess I don’t understand what these parallels or similar themes in the two creation stories is supposed to be convincing anyone (you?) of?
I am new to ANE and maybe I am misunderstanding something. I have the impression that however wrote Gen 1-3 used ANE stories as a base.
Is that the common belief here?
Awesome observation. “Hast hit upon it, friend Wiggle!”, to quote Prince Rillian to Puddleglum in “The Silver Chair.” I think that’s a great parallel. I am still puzzled by it, too–why didn’t God just up and teach us science, if He was going to teach us more important things, too? Couldn’t He foresee all this frustration and confusion it would give us?
Maybe it’s that He looks more at our heart and how we do things, rather than if we get the letter right.
Thanks.
The opening verses of Genesis record GD creating time, space, matter, and light.
Humans who obsess, lovingly, over GD’s Creation, call this the big bang.
Day Two places a forever supply of rain above the vault of the sky; Day Four places the rest of the visible universe within the vault of the sky; yet does the rain fall past the sun, moon, and stars? Or does Earth orbit the nearest star?
Day Three plucks up Earth from the vast depths of the remaining waters (as in verse 2). The remaining waters are the seas. Yet Earth is a ball with a thin crust of continents surrounded by films of water.
It should be clear to reverent readers of G*D’s Word that a verbatim reading leads to folly. Rather, Genesis is a deliberate re-telling of pagan myths with the primary purpose of placing a holy, righteous, intentional Creator of all that is, against the huge pantheon of pagan deities who are vulnerable to bodily death and appear to exhibit, even embellish, the most common of human failings.
Genesis is theology. Reading it as fact or science or history pales to nothing against the glory of What G*D Hath Wrought. The universe is so profoundly perfect that abiogenesis and evolution are both baked into the design.
Do we dare rebuke G*D for this choice?
read Enoch 1Jude 1:14 direct quote Enoch
9 And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones
To execute judgement upon all,
And to destroy all the ungodly:
4 But ye -ye have not been steadfast, nor done the commandments of the Lord,
But ye have turned away and spoken proud and hard words
With your impure mouths against His greatness.
Oh, ye hard-hearted, ye shall find no peace.
5 Therefore shall ye execrate your days,
And the years of your life shall perish,
And the years of your destruction shall be multiplied in eternal execration,
And ye shall find no mercy.
6a In those days ye shall make your names an eternal execration unto all the righteous,
b And by you shall all who curse, curse,
And all the sinners and godless shall imprecate by you,
7c And for you the godless there shall be a curse.
6d And all the . . . shall rejoice,
e And there shall be forgiveness of sins,
f And every mercy and peace and forbearance:
g There shall be salvation unto them, a goodly light.
I And for all of you sinners there shall be no salvation,
j But on you all shall abide a curse.
7a But for the elect there shall be light and joy and peace,
b And they shall inherit the earth.
8 And then there shall be bestowed upon the elect wisdom,
And they shall all live and never again sin,
Either through ungodliness or through pride:
But they who are wise shall be humble.
9 And they shall not again transgress,
Nor shall they sin all the days of their life,
Nor shall they die of (the divine) anger or wrath,
But they shall complete the number of the days of their life.
And their lives shall be increased in peace,
And the years of their joy shall be multiplied,
In eternal gladness and peace,
All the days of their life.
1,2 And I proceeded to where things were chaotic. And I saw there something horrible: I
saw neither 3 a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible.
And there I saw 4 seven stars of the heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and
burning with fire. Then 5 I said: ‘For what sin are they bound, and on what account have
they been cast in hither?’ Then said Uriel, one of the holy angels, who was with me, and
was chief over them, and said: ‘Enoch, why 6 dost thou ask, and why art thou eager for the
truth? These are of the number of the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the
commandment of the Lord, and are bound here till ten thousand years, 7 the time entailed
by their sins, are consummated.’ And from thence I went to another place, which was still
more horrible than the former, and I saw a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and
blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss, being full of great descending columns
of 8 fire: neither its extent or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture. Then I said:
‘How 9 fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!’ Then Uriel answered me, one of
the holy angels who was with me, and said unto me: ‘Enoch, why hast thou such fear and
affright?’ And 10 I answered: ‘Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of
the pain.’ And he said unto me: ‘This place is the prison of the angels, and here they will be
imprisoned for ever.’
Other creation stories from distant lands would have been unknown then, so it’s not exactly surprising that no references to them are made. Rather it is naturally in the more local story or stories one can see the similarities.
But whilst I think there are similarities, they are often contrasting. And that’s the point.
Yes, I agree. the one thing I have found with my limited reading the other ANE and greek writings is how disjointed and chaotic they seem. Characters are switching roles and doing illogical things for very selfish reasons. In contrast the bible narrative is very cohesive, orderly with recurring themes and characters, and logical plot lines and moral consistency.
From a strictly narrative sence Genesis makes narrative order out of the narrative chaos around it!
I thought of that after watching this video
One of my grad school professors made us wade through the thing in the original, and yes, that stuff is on the tablets.
Where did that notion come from???
What in the world does that have to do with Genesis? They’re totally different writings in totally different genres! Genesis doesn’t read like statutes and instructions, so there’s no connection.
Um, what? That’s a summary of items from the Epic!
The Genesis version would b a way of saying, “You guys got some details sort of right, but mostly you really screwed things up! So let me set you straight.”
Well, it’s a fact that the first Creation account follows the order and structure of the common Egyptian creation story, it just makes everything different (while turning it into two other literary genres at once – it’s a brilliant piece of writing!)
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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