h8uz0za1h

I like that the only types of expressions apparently are "artistic" and "religious". And also that not burying (possibly cremation?) is seen as a sign of low intelligence.

But something that makes the "great" flood debate interesting is the Greek Mythology of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Though I find both to be just good stories; the greek mythology actually seems more logical than a bunch of animals (basic or not) crammed into one arc.

mongrel

I seem to recall that cremation was in fact practised, possibly using rafts or canoes, but I'm not absolutely sure. I need to learn so much more...

Don't forget the fish! Surely, if it rained enough to flood the entire world, the water would not have been salty enough to sustain those countless marine species*, so tanks would've had to have been constructed on that bloody great raft to hold them all. I wonder how they handled the architeuthis...

But yeah, the Greek mythology seems at least as plausible.

*That's just a bit of a guess, but recent floods near here, which fed too much fresh water into some estuaries and wiped out the stocks of some oyster farms entirely, made me think the same would happen on a much larger scale if the biblical flood had really happened.

JGreen

Read a reply to the Telegraph's article written by a 'scientific' Creationist. A lot of rot about how the Media continues to "attack" Christianity, etc.


"Attacking" it with the facts, I suppose...God forbid we allow evidence to decide the issue...

The Evil One

That telegraph article sounds suspiciously sympathetic to the creationists.

Such as
No, how about the story of Noah's ark is a "great myth", devoid of any scientific or historical credibility, according to the EVIDENCE?

I dunno... it's just... the Telegraph goes out of its way to put all the "blame" for the anti-Creationist statements on the BBC. Which, in the mind of a Telegraph reader (NB to Americans: the Telegraph is a paper strongly associated with the traditional elements of the Conservative Party), is a hotbed of Godless leftwing subversive activism. The Telegraph writer seems very reluctant to be seen as endorsing any of the claims, even thought they are supported by scientific evidence which the BBC is going to show us.

I can't really see why - the creationist community here is tiny and resoundingly mocked, so it's not like they could have offended a large segment of their readership.

Hmm. Very odd.

JGreen

You're quite right about the Telegraph's political orientation...but the article, it seems to me, follows the same line as 99% of current newspaper articles. That is to say, it reports solely what is said by two (or more) different parties, under the pretense of objectivity. Even when, as in this case, the different statements amount to a disagreement about whether or not the sky is blue or whether the Earth is flat or round. A convenient sort of objectivity, that; no need for analysis or -- even worse -- self-examination.


A bit off-topic, perhaps...but perhaps not, given that religious people develop mental habits of eschewing facts in favor of 'faith'...

SkinWalker

Bah... the Biblical account of Noah is almost a word-for-word plagerism of Gilgamesh.

I can give a detailed comparisson with references if anyone is interested, otherwise I'll just assume everyone already discussed this at some point.

MadMez

Me! I'd like to see that! That would be handy in a chat I'm having with a fundy here at work..

Sven

I'm also interested in this. I read two novels which rewrote the Gilgamesh epos in a more understandable form (one by Robert Silverberg, the other by possibly by Thomas R. P. Mielke (I've forgotten the author)). Both included some parallels to the bible flood myths, but I think it's far from a "word-for-word plagerism " - which, of course, could be the results of the rewriting of these two authors. Thus a comparison of the "original" text with the bible would be most welcomed.

Tristan Scott

I wouldn't call it a plagerism, maybe just a retelling of the same myth with a Hebrew spin...check
here

SkinWalker

Taking into consideration the norm of the time, which was to adopt and adapt orally transmitted stories (writing was very new), I'd agree that plagiarism is a bit harsh as a description. However, to the degree that religious fundamentalists lay claim to the inerrancy of Biblical scripture and the idea that every word is transmitted from God, I'd say plagiarism is a closer truth than divine inspiration.

By the standards of the time (second and third millennium B.C.E. perhaps), the borrowing of literature from other cultures, adapting it to one's own culture and adding the heroes of the new culture, then re-telling the story as original was acceptable and even expected. By today's standards, however, it would be plagiarism. If I were to rewrite the latest John Grisham novel, change some of the details and names, perhaps a few quantities and units of time, embellish it some, then call it my own.. . I would have something to answer for. Particularly if the work was half the best-seller of the KJV Bible.

I'll include passages from both Genesis and Gilgamesh here in a line-numbered format to compare:

2. At the end of forty days
3. Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and released a raven,
4. Which flew back and forth as it waited for the waters to dry up on the earth
5. Then he released a dove to see whether the waters were receding from the earth
6. But the dove, finding nowhere to perch, returned to the ark, for there was water over the whole surface of the earth. Putting his hand out, he took hold of it and brought it back into the ark with him.
7. After waiting seven more days, he again released the dove from the ark.
8. In the evening the dove came back to him and there in his beak was a freshly-picked olive leaf! So Noah realized that the waters were receding from the earth.
9. After waiting seven more days, he released the dove and now it returned no more.

Genesis 8:6-12

Now Gilgamesh:

2. When the seventh day arrived,
3. I sent forth and set free a dove.
4. The dove went forth but came back since no resting place was visible, she turned around.
5. Then I set forth a swallow
6. The swallow went forth but came back, since no resting place for it was visible, she turned around.
7. .
8. .
9. I then set free a raven. The raven went forth and, seeing that the waters had diminished, he eats, circles, caws, and turns not around.

Gligamesh XI, 145-54

In the Gilgamesh passage, I left two blank lines to maintain the correlation between the two and show the parallels. The Genesis passage shows clear embellishments (again, a common literary device of the period) I took the Gilgamesh passage from Pritchard (1955, pp 94-95).

But we must also consider that Gilgamesh itself is not original with its flood story. A Sumerian myth was recorded in the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. on a cuneiform tablet that described the destruction of the "seed of mankind" by the gods. This story is referred to as The Deluge and describes how Ziusudra, a particularly pious man, attentive to divine revelations, was chosen by the gods to survive the flood and who built a "huge boat."

The flood of The Deluge sweeps the land for 7 days and 7 nights until Utu, the Sun god, appears, at which point Ziusudra sacrifices an ox and is rewarded for his obedience with eternal life. "Ziusudra," by the way, means "life of long days."

The Deluge is then incorporated into the Akkadian Atrahasis epic, some details are added (i.e. the survivor's family is among the boat's passengers) and this is later incorporated into the Gilgamesh epic, which is a story that spread throughout the Near East.

Until recently, Biblical readers of Gen. 8:6-12 only had the Biblical account of the flood to go by until archaeological and linguistic recovery of the ancient languages occurred. It's now obvious that the Genesis author was drawing on an older oral tradition for the details of the flood and that it wasn't divinely influenced at all.

Key Elements

1. Deciding to send a flood to wipe out life on earth
2. Selecting a worthy man to survive
3. Building a boat
4. Riding out the storm on the boat
5. Offering a sacrifice on dry land at the end.

** The details of the birds are absent from The Deluge and Antrahasis epics, making Gilgamesh the biblical source.

The parallels of Biblical creation mythology to earlier Near Eastern mythology is also interesting.. .



Pritchard, James (1955). Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.