Is it not possible that Ziusudra did really survive a bad flood, but has been conflated with Noah who survived a mcuh earlier and larger flood? Enmerkar’s date (3400-3200 BC) cannot be reconciled with a 2900 flood being the THE cataclysmic deluge of the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Ziusudra being listed as king before the flood does not rule out any theory of conflation.
I suppose anything is possible. Ziusudra is on the pre-flood king list and Enmerkar is on the post-flood king list. In accordance with Occam’s Razor, Ziusudra predates Enmerkar. What am I missing?
Ziusudra is on the pre-flood king list and Enmerkar is on the post-flood king list. In accordance with Occam’s Razor, Ziusudra predates Enmerkar. What am I missing?
Enmerkar can be confidently date to the Late Uruk Period (c.3400-3200). Enmerkar is a post-flood king, Ziusudra is a pre-flood king. It follows from these facts that Ziusudra predates 3400 BC, or he has been conflated with the flood hero of a much earlier age; I prefer the first proposition. If occam’s razor applies to everything, then we need to dismantle the way we understand a lot of things.
If you can address why you think Enmerkar is not dated to 3400 BC, then I would happily re-evaluate the Shurrupak flood.
I’m sure more people are interested in when Abraham lived. “Estimates as to the era in which Abraham lived can vary from 2100 BC to 1800 BC.” Now you are looking at a time period far earlier and about someone no one cares a lot about. My guess is that the flood may have been a smidgen later and/or maybe Enmerkar lived a tad bit earlier. All dates that are over 5,000 years ago I would consider rough approximations unless you have some radiometric evidence. Ziusudra is famous for surviving the flood and Enmerkar is famous for rebuilding a city damaged by the flood. So I would fit the dates around the facts, but I don’t think there are too many tearing their hair over it.
I would tend to think that even dates 5000 years ago are not off by 500 years. If Enmerkar lived around c.3400-3200 then the First Dynasty of Kish could have been as early as 3500 or 3600. Dates are certainly allowed to be a good ways off, but 700 years goes outside the margin of error. If we can add a 700 year margin of error to ancient dates, I might suppose the Shurrupak flood really occured in 2300 BC. Clearly neither of us are going to budge on this issue, so I think it best we move forwards.
I’m sure more people are interested in when Abraham lived.
Maybe so, I think our best guess is in the Isin-Larsa period.
Frankly, I admit I have some reluctance finding fault with those who actually fought off mosquitoes and did the grunt work, enduring the hot sun and digging in the sand, Langdon, Watelin, Woolley, and Mallowan. Estimated sedimentation rates is no way to accurately date the clay deposits, but they worked with what they had and with the available technology of almost 100 years ago. I didn’t get my hands dirty, and it is a consensus date agreed upon by others who didn’t get their hands dirty either.
I don’t disagree with their dating of the Shurrupak flood, but I also don’t disagree with Miguel Civil’s dating of the Jemdet Nasr tablet mentioning Enmerkar. I appreciate the work of all of these scholars immensly, for it is them that layed the groundwork from which I am able to work from; all this doesn’t mesan we have to agree on everything.
On a slightly different note I would like to know if you take the ages of the Patriarchs to be literal ages. This greatly affects how far back we are able to put Adam in Noah, meaning that if the ages are figurative we have to put more gaps.
I don’t think gaps are appropriate. The advertised ages although different going from Septuagint to Masoretic Text to Samaritan Pentateuch make the spread from the archaeological date for Eridu (4800 BC) to the flood (2900 BC). If you like a creation de nouveau for Adam then he was created with longevity part of the package. If you prefer to believe Adam had natural parents then he might have had a handy gene mutation.
There are some clues that longevity was legitimate. For one thing when Noah got off the boat at age 600 he had three sons. When he gave them marching orders he had great grand kids. There are a few other clues more subtle than that.
There are certainly other places in the Bible where gaps are obvious. Is it simply a coincidence that both the geneologies are sets of 10?
There are some clues that longevity was legitimate. For one thing when Noah got off the boat at age 600 he had three sons. When he gave them marching orders he had great grand kids. There are a few other clues more subtle than that.
I entirely agree that the longevity traditions are not figurative, however ages like 365 and 777 might be rounded up aproximations. Personally I find Genesis 47:9 to be the most convincing scripture:
“And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.’”
Did the rest of humanity have extended lives of just the patriarchs?
If Adam and his descendants enjoyed extraordinary longevity it does not follow that all of humanity would have it since humans go back millions of years and predate Adam who lived about 7,000 years ago. Enoch did not die, “Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Gen 5:24).
And Lamech would have perished in the flood had his years not been shortened.
There is no coincidence. The genealogies from Noah to Abraham contain 11 patriarchs. Cainan is omitted from the Masoretic text, probably a copying error. See Luke 3:36.
To help discern the motivations for constructing massive mud brick structures such as the Tower of Babel, hints can be found in the names, “House of the mountain of the universe” stood at Asshur. Borsippa hosted the “house of the seven guides of heaven and earth.” The “House of the king counselor of equity” was built at Ur, and the “Lofty house of Zababa and Innina whose head is as high as the heavens” was dedicated at Nippur. Larsa boasted the “House of the link between heaven and earth,” and Babylon was the location of the "House of the foundation of heaven and earth."1
The Hebrew balal means to confound or mix, and from Babel our English word “babble” is derived, defined as, "to utter meaningless or unintelligible sounds."2 These definitions followed the event; however, the name “Babel” quite likely was not chosen in anticipation of confusion.
The origin of “Babylon” is rooted in the Akkadian, bab-ilu , and “Babel” comes from the Hebrew bab-el - both meaning, “gate of God.” The ziggurat itself was literally the “House of the foundation of heaven and earth.” at the "gate of God.”
Between Beersheba and Haran, Jacob dreamed of a ladder, " set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it " (Gen. 28:12). He proclaimed that place “Beth-El,” " the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven " (Gen. 28:17).
Did Jacob’s grandfather Abraham describe to his son and grandson the tower at Babylon, or the one at Ur, in such vivid detail that it became a shadow-in-the-mist in Jacob’s dream?
Notes
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Andre Parrot, The Tower of Babel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), 64.
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Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1979.
Thirty Shekels
During the bloody reign of Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BC), Sargon’s grandson and the first Mesopotamian king to accept deification within his lifetime,1 independence-minded cities were forced into submission to Akkad. To guard against future uprisings, Naram-Sin ordered the fortress walls of Sumerian cities brought down! The city of Ur was one such city that became dependent on the military strength of the Semite king. Preying upon their resultant “divinely ordered” vulnerability, Gutians and Elamites attacked the city and destroyed it about 2000 BC, slaughtering and enslaving nearly half a million Sumerians.
A Sumerian scribe set down what is now called “Lamentations over the Destruction of Ur.” These are a few lines:
On its walls they lay prostrate. The people groan.
In its lofty gates where they were wont to promenade
dead bodies were lying about;
In its boulevards where the feasts were celebrated
they were viciously attacked.
In all its streets where they were wont to promenade
dead bodies were lying about;
In its places where the festivities of the land took place
the people were ruthlessly laid low.2
Naming the Gutians and Elamites as defilers of the temple, the scribe spat out his hatred against the “destroyers” who "made of it thirty shekels."3 To the Sumerians, “thirty shekels” signified degraded value, something of great size or worth treated trivially as if it had little weight or value. Gilgamesh put on a coat 50 minas in weight, but to the mighty king of Erech it was as “thirty shekels.”4
What irony that a Sumerian scribe would use a term to describe a horrible act of desecration - a term that reappears 2,000 years later. The life of a slave was set at “thirty shekels” in Exodus 21:32 indicating its meager value. As prophesied in Zechariah 5 and fulfilled in Matthew 26:15, a traitor named Judas was rewarded in similar measure as payment for the life of another “King.” What had been intended as an insult by the Pharisees, who knew only one meaning, was a bestowment of honor instead. He, who was treated as if He had little value, was of great value indeed!
Notes
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William W. Hallo, “Royal Inscriptions from the Mesopotamian Periphery,” Anatolian Studies, 30 (1980): 190.
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Samuel Noah Kramer, Lamentations over the Destruction of Ur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 39-41.
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Kramer, Lamentations , 45.
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Erica Reiner, “Thirty Pieces of Silver,” Essays in Memory of E. A. Speiser (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1968), 186-190.
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See Zechariah 11:12-13.
Sumerian political authority over the region ended with the capture of Ibi-Sin, the last of the third dynasty of Ur. For two hundred years thereafter, Mesopotamia struggled with small, protective, city-state kingdoms, such as Assur and Eshnunna in the north, and Isin and Larsa (biblical Ellasar) in Sumer,1 (see Gen. 14:1, 9). As for the Sumerian people:
In matters of culture and religion, however, they continued to play a leading role for many centuries, while as an ethnic group they were slowly absorbed into their Semitic environment. We do not know when this process of absorption was completed.2
Notes
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C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, Ancient Civilizations: The Near East and Mesoamerica (Menlo Park: The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc., 1979), 167.
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H. H. Rowley, Atlas of Mesopotamia (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1962), 45.
After the confusing incident at Babel, Abram’s father, Terah, traveled to Ur. “Terah was 70 years old, had three sons, and the oldest was Abram. Terah’s third son, Haran, died where he was born, in Ur of the Chaldees" (Gen. 11:26-28).
In a Sumerian city plagued by polytheism and idolatry, Abram was a patriarch chosen by God and promised eventually to be a founder of nations. Babylonian priest, Berossus, recorded a mention of Abraham reported by Josephus:1
“In the tenth generation after the flood there was a man among the Chaldeans who was just, great and knowledgeable about heavenly phenomena.”2
Notes
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Josephus, The Complete Works , 91.
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Stanley Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1978), 21.
Writing before the time of Christ, Babylonian priest Berossus identified the place where Abraham lived as, “the city of Babylonia, called Camarina which, by some, is called the city Urie (Ur), and which signifies a city of the Chaldeans,” and followed with this description:
“… a man named Abraham, a man of noble race and superior to all others in wisdom. Of him they relate that he was the inventor of astrology and the Chaldean magic, and that on account of his eminent piety he was esteemed by God. It is further said that under the directions of God he removed and lived in Phenicia (sic), and there taught the Phenicians the motions of the sun and moon, and all other things; for which reason he was held in great reverence by their king.”1
The “king” would have been Abimelech (Gen. 20-26) king of Gerar.2
Josephus described Abraham in greater detail:
He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding all things, and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his inferences. So he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and determined to alter and change the opinion all men then had concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to declare that there was but one God, the Creator of the Universe; and that of other things whatever contributed anything to the happiness of men, as only according to his appointment, and not by its own power.3
Notes
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Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East (New York: Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, Inc., 1917), 26.
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Horne, The Sacred Books , 26.
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Josephus, The Complete Works , 91.
How does any of this relate to the gospel?
Good question.
A conciliatory interpretation of Genesis, subservient to human rationale, may incline its readers to subrogate the entire Bible to the whims of human understanding. By denying historical accuracy, well-meaning apologists have unleashed a dragon bent on devouring the Old Testament with negative implications toward the integrity of the New Testament as well - a beast that munches on Matthew, and nibbles on the rest of the New Testament. If the opening passages of Genesis are not historically accurate, at what chapter, or starting with which Book of the Bible, should we regard the Scriptures any differently?
How does rationality oppose[, deny, refute, devour[, munch, nibble]] the [orthogonal] gospel [Himself]?
Human rationality (or so-called wholesale denials of biblical historicity) may be a beast indeed, but not one that exists only in “liberal” play pens. Truth can also be quite the impartial and unrelenting judge. It seems plausible - even probable - to me that the beast truly making a feast of all biblical hermeneutics is the modern insistence on historicity in everything, and above and before all else. Once that beast is unleashed, people will travel to the ends of the earth to attempt to appease it. One has only to look at its children to know whether or not it is worth appeasing.
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