Craigart14

The other day I had a student in an online class tell me that Wellhausen's work has been disproved. Since he died in 1918, I'm not terribly concerned about that, but she was speaking in reference to the idea that Gilgamesh (and its flood story) is older than Genesis, which she claims is based solely on Wellhausen. Her husband is a minister and, she said, showed him the truth in a reference book.

So what's the latest on the age of Gilgamesh? I don't know what source the husband was using, but all the apologetics I've read insist that the difference in the names of God and authorial styles mean nothing. As a lit teacher, I look more to the obviously increased complexity and sophistication of Genesis and its emphasis on sin and corruption for evidence of cultural influence. Apologists often rely on authority and seem to enjoy attacking long dead scholars, whose work hasn't been on the cutting edge for generations, rather than studying their work and how it has been expanded or refined by more recent studies. (Look at Ray Comfort's attack on Darwin, for example.) So the claim is that the age of Gilgamesh is predicated on Wellhausen only.

Point me to a good source?

Craig

ApostateAbe

The theory that the Genesis flood story is derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh certainly does not rest on Wellhausen. We have much more evidence than we did at the time of Wellhausen about the evolution of the flood myth. I think the footnotes on this Wikipedia article has some pretty good leads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth

The earliest evidence of a Middle-Eastern flood myth roughly resembling that of Genesis is found on a tablet dated to the 17th century BCE, hundreds of years, probably over a thousand years, before the first writing of Genesis. The deluge story in the Epic of Gilgamesh is only a late iteration of the myth, but it is hypothesized to be the source of the Genesis flood story because it has the most similarities and the respective dates match.

Loomis

These people are idiots. Why bother interacting with them?

Toto

This is not a very helpful attitude for anyone, even aside from the fact that an instructor cannot avoid interacting with students. Some creationists are actually quite intelligent, but have committed themselves to a particular ideology and use their mental abilities to justify their beliefs. Luckily, creationism is so full of problems that some of them reason their way out of creationism.

As a start, you could ask for the name of the reference book and/or the details of its proofs. It might be related to Jonathan Safarti on Gilgamesh which cites Did Moses Really Write Genesis by Russell M. Grigg

There is a useful summary of the Documentary Hypothesis here, although it does not specifically address Gilgamesh.

spin

Two sources are threaded through the biblical flood story, a Yahwist version and a priestly version. If you can access JSTOR, look at "The Yahwist on the Flood" as a starter. The sources go back to Mesopotamian materials.

Incidentally Gilgamesh is just one of the Mesopotamian traditions and it records the flood and the figure who survived it was called Utnapishtim. You'll find an Assyrian version which regards Atrahasis and earlier there was a Sumerian version about Ziusudra. Check out Stephanie Dalley's "Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (or via: amazon.co.uk)" for Mesopotamian texts with some commentary.

Gilgamesh changes nothing about the amalgamation of sources found in the pentateuch or specifically the flood story.


spin

Loomis

Okay. Fine. I’ll try to be more helpful.

It looks to me like the character called ‘Noah’ is a composite character. It looks like he may have begun life as some sort of agricultural hero. Look at Genesis 3 where Yahweh puts a curse on the ground:

Genesis 3:17-19
But to Adam he (Yahweh) said, “Because you listen to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

Then in Genesis 5:28-29 Lamech (the father of Noah) says that Noah will discover the 'vine-culture' which will bring comfort derived from the ground:

Genesis 5:28-29
When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. He named him Noah, saying, “Here is the one who will give us, in the midst of our toil and the laboring of our hands, a consolation derived from the ground that Yahweh cursed.”

Finally in Genesis 9:20 Noah actually produces the 'consolation derived from the ground' that Lamech talked about:

Genesis 9:20
Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

Do you see what I’m saying? There is some sort of secondary sub-plot going on here - it has nothing to do with a flood. It looks to me like these are artifacts from an earlier story.

Now look at Genesis 6:18 (before the flood) where Noah’s sons are depicted as adults with wives.

Genesis 6:18
You will enter the ark – you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.

Compare that with Genesis 9:21-22 (after the flood) where Noah’s sons are depicted as children who live with him in a tent:

Genesis 9:21-22
When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside.

See? They were kids. They lived at home with their dad in a tent.

Finally, get a load of 2 Peter 2:5 where ‘Noah’ is described as a preacher of righteousness:

2 Peter 2:5
… if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness…

Where does the OT say anything about Noah being a preacher of righteousness?

There is obviously a lot of hanky-panky going on here. The character called ‘Noah’ was a cesspool. His name was grafted on to earlier stories.

Loomis

How’s that?

Better?

Also note that Genesis 9:22 says that Ham was a son of Noah, and the father of Canaan. (That would make Canaan Noah’s grandson.)

But in verse 25 Noah curses Canaan because it was Canaan (and not Ham) who saw his nakedness, and describes him as a son (and not a grandson).

It’s all garbage.

It’s all just redacted garbage.

Who knows for sure what the original stories were? Who knows for sure what redactions were made, who made them, or why they made them?

But it’s clearly garbage.

Loomis

Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward …

More proof that the flood story was injected later.

ApostateAbe

We can estimate what the original stories were because we have variations of the Mesopotamian deluge myth from much earlier times. I don't follow your argument that Noah is a composite character, nor do I think he was some sort of agricultural hero. Noah never gave anyone "consolation derived from the ground that Yahweh cursed," and the planting of the first vineyard (after the flood) seems meant to set up the part about Noah getting drunk. Noah's sons were not children at the time--they had wives when the flood occurred (Genesis 7:13). I am not sure which tradition that verse belongs in, and perhaps it is a different tradition than the passages about Noah's sons living in a tent with their father, but the ancient Israelites would see such a thing as normal--they were tribal nomads, and grown adults shared tents with their parents.

Loomis

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I’m sure that deep in your heart you are confident that you are on a level playing field with the rest of us, and that your opinions deserve respect.