The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible

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Various themes, plot elements, and characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh have counterparts in the Hebrew Bible—notably, the accounts of the Garden of Eden, the advice from Ecclesiastes, and the Genesis flood narrative.

Is there any reason to believe it’s possible this work influenced the Bible writers?
 
If it did would that make the Bible less valuable in your mind?
 
I would say both the Jews and the Mesopotamians had the same distant ancestors who passed on the oral history and legends to both people. The Mesopotamians were the first to develop a written language, so they wrote the legends down first, in the Epic. The Hebrews wrote their version later in the OT.

There are good similarities between the Epic and the OT regarding the flood accounts and some of the sayings from Ecclesiastes, which to me, points to a common heritage with the Hebrews.
 
Abraham was native more to Mesopotamia (southern Iraq if I recall); not the area we know as Israel or Caanan.

so, there’s your commonality.
 
It’s the other way around. Remember that the people of the world split up after the Tower of Babble incident. It is natural that there would be a sort of “cultural” memory taken with the pagans when they made their civilizations. That’s why you see Flood narratives in almost all cultures.
 
Catholic Biblical scholars DO accept the possibility that the Epic influenced the Biblical tradition. The Holy Spirit inspired those who compiled the Old Testament as we know it, but it is clear that they drew from many sources and many traditions - both written and oral. God works through natural processes… its actually very incarnational when you think of it. The Bible, like Christ Himself, and like the Church, is both divine and human in its origins.
 
No it’s interesting. I wasn’t starting this form to question the authenticity of the Bible. Actually I view it as almost an affirmation of the Biblical stories it parallels. If the flood story and the garden of Eden were even somewhat referred to by pagans in Mesopotamia, who knows how many other cultures may have had the same story? The Epic of Gilgamesh is noteworthy in that it is basically the oldest written story I believe anyone has ever come across. I believe there’s been fragments of smaller poetic pieces or the Code of Hammurabi but the Epic shows that it was not just the Isrealites who knew the story.

With that said, does anyone know if the Epic was considered a true story by ancient Mesopotamia or was it just a work of fiction? I find it quite powerful if they used the Epic as scripture in some form.
 
We were taught in our (rather bad) Bible study course in Catholic high school that some of the OT stories, such as the creation story and the flood story, were present in many cultures.

I find it fascinating that multiple cultures would all have, for example, the story of some great flood on the earth and to me that makes it more likely that the historic event mentioned (the great flood) actually did occur.
 
Could have anything to do with the fact that most if not all the early civilizations developed along rivers and flood plains?

As to the Gilgamesh account, that was originally Sumerian, and the Sumerian had a language unrelated to any other spoken language, whereas if Abraham existed at all and the account of his origins is to be believed, then he’d likely have been an Akkadian or related Semitic group that entered Mesopotamia some time afterwards.
 
I read Warren Carroll’s first volume of “A history of Christendom” a while back and he did talk about the Epic. What stuck in my memory was when he quoted part of the end when the main character in the Epic got back to his friend. Carroll described it, if i remember right, as one of the best examples of the effect of Original Sin. He then brought up the idea that maybe that’s why Abraham came from the Mesopotamian region, that that civilization was closer to the truth than the other civilizations around them. That part was really enlightening for me personally.
 
I can’t answer definitively, but I recommend the Jewish Publication Society’s (expensive) series of commentaries. there is some discussion of it there, but there is a strand of tradition in Judaism that the Torah was composed by God thousands of years before the creation, and it was the plan of creation, as a matter of fact. So that would rule out the influence of the E of G.

One Christian commentary observes that the Torah is attributed to Moses. And he was educated in the philosophy of Egypt, which described the creation of the universe as such: a giant egg was flying around, and hatched which produced the universe.

So Moses inspiration is to be contrasted with that, and with those nearby faiths which worshiped animal gods, and such. The Jewish commentary emphasizes the uniqueness of the monotheistic revelation.

But the commentary discusses other theories, such as the documentary hypothesis. It bypasses the significant point that Eve uses the holy name of God YHWH around chap 3 or 4 of genesis, before the Name is revealed to Moses. It’s out of place but the commentary is silent on this point.
 
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over the centuries, the Jewish sages speculated on all the mysteries in genesis with a strategy that could be described as harmonization. this resulted in the Talmud, which itself is considered inspired (talmud is short for talmud torah, the study of the torah, God’s instruction).
 
Wasn’t Moses always the traditional author of the Torah or Penteteuch? I always thought it was a weird presumption seeing as the author records Moses’ death and if read it seems more likely Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges were written by the same author.
 
reply to jas84173: yes, a historical critical approach would discount Moses as the actual writer pf the Torah. Catholic scholarship points to the Holy Spirit as the divine author, whether through one agent or more.
 
Hi edwest211,
Were you posting to the OP or did you mean for this to go in the other thread on Catholicism adopting pagan traditions? I don’t think you meant to address that to me and my science article.
 
Yah. However in a way isn’t every book in the Bible written by man through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?
 
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