EGGO

My girlfriend is right now doing a comparative paper on Gilgamesh and Noah. She thinks that Noah paraphrases Gilgamesh because, "The Christians don't even believe in Noah, why would the take it?" which brings her to the denial that it is plagarism. She says many cultures have a flood story, thereby having Noah being related to every-single-flood-story. I call lies on this, but she is denying it.

She says that it's also paraphrasing because the elements in Noah's story differ from Gilgamesh's (40 days instead of 7, if I remember, for example). To me, modifying a detail (a minor detail as it is) will still make it plagarism.

Is Noah pretty much copying Gilgamesh's story? How do we know these two stories are connected?

To me, even IF Noah was paraphrasing Gilgamesh's story, that still means Noah's Flood is NOT originally the Christian's.

beowulf_king

I think http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm provides a good comparison of the two myths.

Basically, the Noah story is a direct derivation of the Gilgamesh epic. The similarities that stand out for me, and are also discussed in the link I provided are:

1) Ordered to build a covered arc. Most other flood stories I have read use open boats.
2) Design of the arc: single door, single window, internal compartments filled with pairs of each animal.
3) Once landed on a mountain, the noble man sends out birds to determine if the water was resided.
4) The noble man sacrifices to the god(s) who feel sorry for what they did, and makes a covenant to never forget this day(Biblical=rainbow, Babylonian='great jewel necklace').

There are only minor differences, which include the arc dimensions, deluge duration, and other specifics mentioned in the link.

As to plagarism, I would say that the Noah story borrowed from the Gilgamesh story, but a major portion of the biblical story is unique. It is obvious though that whoever wrote the Noah story had in mind the Gilgamesh epic as he was writing the biblical version. I'm not an expert of this time period, but I believe oral tradition still occurred (even though they had writing), so traders would have brought their stories to foreign lands and these foreign lands would have digested these myths into their own culture.

spin

There is no real way of ever knowing, and there is at least one other explanation, ie that both cultures received the story and developed them separately, allowing for numerous similarities and differences.



They have enough in common to make it difficult to think of other possibilities.

Umm, Noah's flood was written by Jews, not xians. They just inherited it as illegitimate children.

The Gilgamesh version is relatively late and depends itself on the Sumerian account of Ziusudra's flood. The Hebrews may have 1) an independent version, 2) a version from the precedessors gained as the writers of Gilgamesh got theirs, or 3) a version borrowed even later from the Gilgamesh story. We do find it too easy to claim that one had precedence over another, but we need evidence to make any conclusions.


spin

Doctor X

EGGO:

How badly do you want to breakup with your girlfriend?

Seriously, the biblical flood myth are two stories combined. You may consider refering her to Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? because it nicely compares the two versions. Unfortunately, he does not give a theory about "how" the authors got their stories, but probably no one knows exactly. She cannot help but score points with a discussion of, "well, of course the J author intends to blah . . . blah . . . blah." There are also smaller "flood myths" in the texts, but that might be going too far.

Though you may wish to consider buying flowers with it.

--J.D.

EGGO

Too bad Valentine's Day passed already ;D

Thanks so much for the replies.

DrJim

I find the notion of "borrowing", plagiarizing or paraphrasing tenuous, to say the least. Flood myths were an integral part of ANE religious literature for millenia.

Any one version is only a "snapshot" of one writer's version of the motif. There are many versions of the epic of Gilgamesh extant, and a number of other versions of the ANE flood motif: Atrahasis, Zuisudra, etc. Even Enuma Elish, which does not include a flood perse, has Marduk secure the heavens from a deluge by the Tiamat. The Hebrew Bible, too, has other allusions to flood mythology: e.g., the crossing of the "Yam Sof" (Sea of Reeds) during the exodus.

A paper on the relationship between Genesis and ANE flood mythology would probably be better designed to illustrate common motifs but then the differences between the two in terms of the religious conceptions of the respective cultures and the different contexts in which each flood myth occurs. For instance, in Gilgamesh, the flood is told to reinforce the impossibility of winning immortality. Presumably certain aspects of the basic story were adapted to suit that context. In Genesis, two accounts (or one account and a lenthy series of asides and retellings by a redactor) serve the purposes of linking the cosmogony and early "History" of primal humanity with the writers' contemporay understandings of human life not to mention a lot of other stuff.

In short, looking for the "original" is pointless and claiming "plagiarism" or "paraphrase" of one version or another is as well. Instead of "original" one should perhaps one should imagine a set of "ancestoral" narratives about floods, divine displeasure with humanity etc, which spawned a miriade of subsequent versions, allusions, poetic metaphors etc. for a wide diversity of peoples through history. There is no "pure" version: at least none that can be demonstrated by the available evidence. The ancestors of the Hebrew may have had their Noah as early as the Mesopotamians had Ziusudra and Atrahasis. While greater continuity can be demonstrated with the Mesopotamian verions, this cannot prove the secondariness of the biblical account. I think it better to regard all as the products of the transmission and adaptation of tradition to new situations. This means, of course, that seeking the real "meaning" of the basic flood motif is also pointless. Meaning is relative: determined by the cultureal and specific literary contexts in each retelling.

Anyway, that's what I figure.

JRL