compare the flood in The Epic of Gilgamesh with the flood story in
Genesis.
1. what might account for the similarities and the differences in the
two accounts?
2. there are other details in both texts that are remarkably similar.
why are they? what might account for their differences? in your
opinion, why do you suppose these stories were told?

* please briefly answer these two question.

Hi there,

I have kept my answers brief, and following them are some additional
resources and ideas that might be useful to you.


1) What might account for the similarities and the differences in the
two accounts?

Firstly it must be pointed out that there are differences to be found
just within the Genesis account, concerning the numbers of each saved
animal, and how long the flood lasted. This lends credence to the idea
that the Bible is a compendium that sometimes contains conflicting
versions of the same true story (it also contains three differing
versions of the resurrection of Jesus). Based on that, Genesis could
not be the original source.

For anyone not trying to prove a greater agenda, the similarities can
easily be explained - they are both accounts of the same story. The
differences can be understood by anyone who has ever played "Chinese
Whispers". With time, stories change. When the stories are being
retold in different cultures, cultural differences will obviously
affect the story. Witness the different looks and skin color of Jesus,
depending on where in the world he is depicted - he was unlikely to
have had pale skin and blonde hair!

2a) There are other details in both texts that are remarkably similar.
Why are they? What might account for their differences?

We know that the earliest known written version of the Bible is much
more recent than the earliest known written version of the Epic of
Gilgamesh. The Bible credits Moses as the author of four books of the
Pentateuch, but not Genesis. The implication is that Genesis was
copied or translated by Moses from elsewhere. The differences could be
the result of multiple translations, editing by church leaders, poetic
license or just the ravages of time. We will never know if a source
for Genesis is the Epic of Gilgamesh that survived thousands of years,
or a different version that did not.

2b) In your opinion, why do you suppose these stories were told?

In my opinion, there are two types of ancient stories, which
unfortunately both get given the name "myth". Many, especially those
involving gods with incredible powers, are made up stories used as a
device for teaching morals. However, many other "myths", such as flood
myths, are true accounts that have been preserved as a warning - if
such a tragic flood happened in the past, it could easily happen
again.



THOUGHTS AND LINKS
==================

I guess there could be three ways of looking at these similar stories,
due to the differing agendas of Creationists, Catastrophists and
Mythologists.

A Creationist probably believes that the Genesis story is the
original, and the Epic of Gilgamesh has either been plagiarised by the
Mesopotamians for their own purposes, or they have retold the same
story but it has become corrupted over time (while the Biblical
account stayed perfect throughout time).

A Mythologist could suggest that it was only a local flood, and the
Gilgamesh tale is the more true, with the Genesis version being a
copy.

A Catastrophist probably believes that there really was a global
flood, and there are dozens more very similar stories around the
globe, such as Tezpi in Central America (as mentioned in Graham
Hancock's book "Fingerprints of the Gods", page 204 in the paperback
edition).

Here are the contradictions in Genesis:

--------------

"Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to
Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of
every living thing, as God had commanded Noah."

However:

"Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its
mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate..."

---------------

"...rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights"

Yet:

"The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days."

Then:

"At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and
on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on
the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the
tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the
mountains became visible."

And:

"By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was
completely dry.

----------------

The above quotes were taken from the New International Version at
Bible Gateway
http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=GEN+8&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on

A table outlining the similarities is at a Creationist site:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-285.htm

Robert Best has a website (and book) covering this topic. This page
has "story elements and phrases that are common to three or more of
the six Ancient Near East flood myths indicate a common origin."
http://www.flood-myth.com/parallels.htm

Comparison of the Babylonian and Noahic Flood Stories
http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm

Two different accounts of the flood story within Genesis
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jepd_gen1.htm

Non-flood similarities between Gilgamesh and Genesis
http://www.albany.edu/projren/9697/teama/prgen.html

Chinese Whispers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A764309

Lost in Translation - what happens if you over-translate:
http://www.albany.edu/projren/9697/teama/prgen.html

Search strategy:

A lot of personal knowledge, and a Google search

Gilgamesh Genesis comparison 
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=Gilgamesh+Genesis+comparison+

I hope this answers your question. If any portion of my answer is
unclear, please ask for clarification.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

Answerer is clearly experienced in Genesis research, but I do not
understand all his claims.

For instance, I am not entirely sure I understand why most of the
examples adduced represent "contradictions in Genesis"; there is no
specific source cited for the claim that these are contradictions.

For example, listed as contradictions are:

-----------begin quotation----------------

"...rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights" 
 
Yet: 
 
"The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days." 
------------end quotation-------------------

I don't quite see why this would be considered this to be a
contradiction nor what source claims this a contradiction. It seems
like the natural reading of the lines might suggest that that the
waters rained for forty days, but the floods remained for 150.
Similarly for the other examples.

A more sophisticated answer might focus on why the details of the two
versions are different.  A literary approach to the Bible takes it as
seriously as any literature.  (Knowing that Shakespeare got his
stories from earlier sources doesn't get you off the hook from trying
to understand why he told them the way he did.)

In the case of the flood, here's an excerpt from an insightful essay
<http://listserv.biu.ac.il/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=lookjed&P=R1010> by
a Jewish day school teacher, Dr. Joel Wolowelsky.  (I changed a word
or two where he used Hebrew.)  He's talking about how to teach the
Noah story in the Torah (Hebrew Bible) in light of the Gilgamesh
story, in light of the assumption that the Torah's readers would have
already heard the Gilgamesh version.  (Everything that follows is from
his essay.)


In any presentation, the following will certainly emerge.  The Torah
wishes to uproot any hint that the Flood lacked a moral quality.  In
the Sumero-Akkadian versions, the Flood is brought for capricious
reasons --in one, because the noise made by human beings kept the gods
from sleeping. Their hero was saved not because he was, like Noah, a
righteous man, but because he had "good connections" with one of the
gods.  An ancient Jew who knew the Torah's version certainly had
better tools to sense more intensely the immorality of the pagan
version he or she was certain to hear.  We should not deprive our
students of that opportunity.

The Torah's willingness to correct even minor details reflects this
anti-pagan polemic.  Utnapishtim (one of the names of the pagan heros
saved from the Flood) relates that, when he thought the waters had
receded,

"I sent forth and set free a dove.  The dove went forth but came back;
since no resting-place for it was visible, she turned round.  Then I
set forth and set free a swallow.  The swallow went forth, but came
back; since no resting-place for it was visible, she turned round. 
Then I set forth and set free a raven.  The raven went forth and,
seeing that the waters had diminished, he eats, circles, caws, and
turns not round."

The Torah's version (Gen. 8:6-12) not only takes pain to point out
that redemption comes incrementally --the dove first comes back with a
plucked-off olive branch-- but reminds us that redemption comes not
from the carnivorous raven but from the peaceful dove.

Not only changed details drive home the Torah's message, but omitted
ones do too.  We are often struck by the anthropomorphic quality of
God having a sense of smell that is mentioned in the Torah's version:

"Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking of every clean
animal  and of every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the
alter.  The Lord smelled the pleasing odor, and the Lord said to
Himself: 'Never again will I doom the world because of man, since the
devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again
destroy every living being, as I have done'" (Gen. 8:20-21).

But ancient Jews hearing this rendition would have understood this as
part of an anti-anthropomorphic polemic, because they knew the
following version from their neighbors:

"Then I let out to the four winds and offered a sacrifice.  I poured
out a libation on the top of the mountain.  Seven and seven
cult-vessels I set up; upon their pot-stands I heaped cane, cedarwood,
and myrtle.  The gods smelled the savor.  The gods smelled the sweet
savor.  The gods crowded like flies about the sacrifice."

Nowadays, we cannot fully understand v. 21 without this pagan text as
background.  Pagan gods smell the sacrifice and crowd around like
flies.  God, so to speak, smells the sacrifice and --far removed from
any physical reaction-- makes a moral judgment.  This informs the way
we appreciate the phrase "sweet savor (rei-ah nihoah)" when it appears
subsequently in the Torah in connection with various sacrifices.

When we read the biblical Flood story as a contrast to the existing
parallel ancient Near-Eastern literature, we hear things somewhat
differently than had we read it as part of "the revealed history of
the world."  We not only see things that we had missed, but begin to
notice the relative importance or tangental quality of various
details.