Apart from the obvious similarities in the tales, the god of the Gilgamesh myth had different motivations to the god of the Bible. The god Ea manipulates language and misleads people into doing his will because it serves his self-interest. Modern parallels are legion! This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By continuing to use our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.
Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Editor's Blog. By James Felton 21 Jan , Some of those differences include:. Perhaps the biggest difference between the flood narratives in Gilgamesh and Genesis is the moral of the two stories. In both traditions, a divine power decides to kill off humanity, but in each tale, mankind survives for different reasons.
Noah is preserved because he is the most morally clean and obedient. Utanapishtim, on the other hand, is saved quite literally by wisdom, by obtaining divine knowledge. Pryke says that while the Hebrew version of the flood story hinges on morality — the destruction of the wicked and the saving of the righteous — the authors of Genesis display a "wary engagement with wisdom" elsewhere. Think of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve are punished for eating its fruit and trying to obtain divine wisdom and become like God.
In Gilgamesh, the flood story is meant to be instructive for young King Gilgamesh in order to learn his place in the cosmic order. All signs point to yes, that the authors of Genesis were clearly aware of the divine deluge described in the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh.
It looks like Gilgamesh was something that was in broad circulation at the time. Since both the Bible and Gilgamesh were passed along as oral traditions long before they were written down, it's possible that the Mesopotamian flood narrative first entered Hebrew culture as a type of "contest literature" similar to Arabian Nights.
While the flood story is the greatest example of Mesopotamian influence on Hebrew culture, there are some other crossovers. Found among the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, is the apocryphal book of 1 Enoch that includes the " Book of Giants ," an account of the supersized beings who walked the Earth before the flood. One of those giants, not coincidentally, is named Gilgamesh, and another shares the name of a monster that Gilgamesh destroyed in his epic tale.
There's also a remarkable similarity between some sagely advice first given in Gilgamesh and later in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible. Here's the text from Gilgamesh:. However, the similarity in these texts may simply mean that these were common sayings of the time. Good advice seems to have a certain timeless quality, particularly when it is expressed in broad terms that may be applicable to a range of situations and periods," Pyrke wrote on the website The Bible and Interpretation.
Irving Finkel is a modern-day heir to George Smith. Finkel also works at the British Museum and in discovered yet another ancient flood narrative written in cuneiform on a fragment of tablet recovered in Iraq. This account, believed to be even older than Gilgamesh, features a Noah-like character named Atrahasis whom the gods command to build a circular boat in preparation for a devastating deluge.
So, the natural question is, does the existence of multiple ancient flood narratives amount to proof of a real flood that came close to wiping out all of humanity? Finkel told the London Telegraph that it's very possible there was a massive flood that struck the Tigris and Euphrates Valley between 5, and 7, years ago and persisted in the collective Mesopotamian memory. Pryke agrees that "it's a reasonable thing to assume that there was [a flood].
Pryke says that there's a passage in the Epic of Gilgamesh that may have been inspired by another major environmental disaster. This seems to be a reference to the historical deforestation of that area that happened 1, years before Gilgamesh was written down. Sign up for our Newsletter! However, as human beings multiplied in number, so their noise increased, and this disturbed the sleep of the chief god, Enlil. In consequence, Enlil brought first a plague, then a drought, next a famine, and finally a flood to destroy human beings and their noise.
The flood came and lasted seven days and nights. When it ended, Atrahasis offered sacrifice, and the gods gathered round like flies to savor the smell. Following the deluge, a new order of human society was instigated by Enki. This new order allowed humanity to continue in existence, but various constraints were placed on human reproduction in order to prevent numbers getting out of control again. Several reasons suggest that the Genesis flood story depends on Atrahasis rather than the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh.
In contrast, the flood story in the Gilgamesh epic, tablet 11, is a first-person narrative recounted by the flood hero Utanapishti to Gilgamesh. It is generally accepted that the Gilgamesh flood story is based on an earlier version recounted in Atrahasis.
It is simpler to assume that Genesis was dependent on Atrahasis. In the Gilgamesh epic, however, the flood story has been wrenched from its original context and is narrated in order to show how it was that the flood hero eventually gained immortality.
So again, it would seem more natural to assume that Genesis was dependent on the Atrahasis epic rather than on Gilgamesh. Similarly, in the Atrahasis epic 3. He [Enki] announced to him [Atrahasis] the coming of the flood for the seventh night. Now in the Gilgamesh epic, although the flood does indeed begin after seven days Gilgamesh It is difficult to believe that the Gilgamesh epic, having changed the announcement from seven days before to the day before the flood, should be followed by J, knowing only Gilgamesh, altering the divine announcement to seven days in advance again.
It would be more natural to assume that J was familiar with a version of Atrahasis. But the wild anim[als of the st]eppe [ … Two by two the boat did [they enter] …[……]. We may compare Genesis, where in P all animals come into the ark two by two Gen 6. In contrast, the Gilgamesh epic says nothing about the number of animals entering the ark.
And in P, God in Genesis 9 similarly promises that there will never again be another worldwide flood Gen ; cf. Now, there is nothing comparable to this at the end of the flood story in the Gilgamesh epic. However, toward the end of the Atrahasis epic, in a Neo-Babylonian fragment, the god Ea declares [18] :.
As Tikva Frymer-Kensky, among others, has noted, [19] this sounds suspiciously like a polemic against the Atrahasis epic, where rather than receiving a divine command to multiply, humanity is destined to have its future growth limited by divine decree Atrahasis 3. One apparent argument in favor of the Utanapishti story from Gilgamesh as the origin of the biblical accounts is that it provides more parallels with the biblical flood story than Atrahasis.
However, parallels need to be weighed, not merely counted, and this is what I have attempted to do here. Take, for example, the threefold sending out of birds from the ark in Genesis — As noted above, this has striking similarities to the account in Gilgamesh.
Nevertheless, while we currently have no such parallel in Atrahasis, this is probably because the Atrahasis epic is broken at precisely this point.
In fact there are as many as approximately 55 missing lines between where the Atrahasis epic breaks off during the course of the flood in tablet 3, column 4, and where we read of Atrahasis's offering sacrifice after the flood in tablet 3, column 5, [21] which is more than enough space to record the sending out of the birds which takes up only ten lines in Gilgamesh and much else.
As the Gilgamesh version of the flood is largely based on the Atrahasis epic, it is likely that the sending out of the birds was in Atrahasis too, and that the biblical account got it from there. In short, probably the reason we have more parallels between Utanapishti and Noah than Atrahasis and Noah is because the Gilgamesh epic is more fully preserved. The biblical sources, J and P, reworked the Mesopotamian tradition in various ways, but both attempted to make it fit with the Israelite worldview.
The story has also been ethicized, insofar as the flood is now a punishment for human sin, not a counter to human overpopulation and noise, as in Atrahasis or a mere whim of the god Enlil, as in Gilgamesh. P, a sixth century source, doubtless picked up flood traditions in the Babylonian exile. But the Utanapishti story in the epic of Gilgamesh is probably not the source for the Yahwistic and Priestly flood stories.
Rather, as I have attempted to show, both J and P were likely indebted to the Atrahasis epic, just like Gilgamesh tablet Please support us. Lambert and Alan R. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh , 2 nd ed. See W. A more recent translation may be found in Benjamin R. For evidence of dependence, see Jeffrey H. It is not known where or when exactly this Ark tablet was excavated. See Finkel, The Ark before Noah ,
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