You can say these two stories have a few similarities, but its a huge leap to say the Genesis author had the Epic of Gilgamesh in front of him and used the Epic of Gilgamesh while writing Genesis.
If you read Gilgamesh and Genesis, the Genesis story is hardly a word for word borrowing. The ark’s dimensions in Genesis are different; it’s bigger, being 300 cubits in length while Gilgamesh’s is only 120 cubits.
The differences between the Revised Standard Version of the Bible Genesis Noah (Genesis 6-11) and the Penguin Classics 1960, reprinted 1974 version I have are numerous. There is much more detail in Genesis about Noah and his family. The two texts only in a couple of details resemble each other.
O.K., in Gilgamesh a “boat” is built; nothing about 40 days and 40nights, no Ishtar crying out like a woman in labor, no gods of heaven and hell weeping, the Gilgamesh guy burns wood; Noah burns the clean animals.
Noah sends forth a raven and then later a dove on the seventh day; the Gilgamesh guy looses a dove on the seventh day, and then a swallow, and then a raven;
“With the first light of dawn a black cloud came from the horizon; it thundered within where Adad, lord of the storm was riding. In front over hill and plain Shullat and Hanish, heralds of the storms, led on. Then the gods of the abyss rose up; Nergal pulled out the dams of the nether waters, Ninurta the war-lord threw down the dykes, and the seven judges of hell, the Annunaki, raised their torches, lighting up the land with their livid flame” (Epic of Gilgamesh, The Story of the Flood)
Where is that in Genesis? And the Gilgamesh text goes on like that. Utunumsint said the Genesis writer just changed the text to say “God” for when the text said gods.
How about a little friendly criticism and maybe checking your facts twice before you post a thread like this?
The stories end differently; there’s no “Covenant” made in Gilgamesh between the gods and man. In Gilgamesh the guy is mad immortal and moved to a different location to live.
The Genesis story is a much more detailed account of Noah and his three sons.
The link someone provided to Tablet 11 seems to have a little more text in their translation, especially dealing with a named mountain, than my Penguin Classic edition from 1974. It’s conceivable more tablets from the story have been found and translated, but I don’t know where the translator got all that extra text.
So there are a few similarities. But so what? That doesn’t necessarily prove that Genesis author used Gigamesh Tablet 11 in writing the story.
There could be dozens of versions of Noah’s story on papyrus paper or stone tablets that could be buried in the desert or simply did not survive.
There could be dozens of other Gilgamesh type stories with the names of other heroes that haven’t been found or do not survive.
If anything you could say the Gilgamesh story bolsters Genesis. There are other, older stories of a flood and a hero favored by supernatural creatures. There definitely was some sort of common oral tradition.
But all of this just pure speculation. Literary analysis is not science. The number “seven” to ancient Semitic peoples represented perfection.
As Catholics, we believe that the Bible is the “Word of the Lord” and was written under the spiritual guidance of the Holy Spirit. We only accept the Bible as God’s word. Ancient pagan religions may have contained some sort of spiritual Truth, but not the Full Truth that Catholic Christianity provides and reveals.
Some one here will groan “its the same story” and give all sorts of modern historical inquiry analysis and archeological evidence, but there missing the concept of Faith.
One isn’t necessarily Catholic because all the historical evidence and literary texts and scientific methods match up and add up100% like a jigsaw puzzle.
But one is Catholic because they have Faith. Jesus, I trust in you.
So to me it is not a matter of historical inquiry, archeology, and scientific method, but also, and more so, a matter of Faith.
And if you leave Faith out of it and don’t respect Faith, you’ll never understand Christianity.
Secular humanists know the majority of Christians don’t know the Bible because they got the ACLU and a Freemasonic run U.S. Supreme Court in the 1930’s and 40’s to throw it out of America’s public schools.
Since Christians are Bible illiterate, they can then say Genesis is a rip off of Gilgamesh. And the Christian is unable to refute it because of their illiteracy. This Gilgamesh epic makes its appearance once and a while on Liberal run U.S. government agencies like National Public Radio and PBS. And on NPR and PBS they never have an orthodox theologian, Protestant , Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or Jewish on their programs.
It’s always a single liberal minded individual when social issues are involved.
