http://www.mythome.org/gilgamesh11.html

If read carefully, it is very similar to Noah's account. To see that other civilizations had Flood stories, that's proof that it did happen.

Man, there are about a dozen threads on this subject, at least one of which IS STILL ACTIVE. In fact, at the moment, it's currently directly underneath this thread!

--Jaylemurph

Gilgamesh is named in the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 'Book of Watchers' as a giant/Nephillim, oppsring of both an angel and a mortal woman. He survived the flood (which was bropught down in order to destroy ALL Nephillim) and searched for immortality because he knew his fate.

Ridiculous. The Hebrews were in bondage in Babylonia for, what, centuries? The Gilgamesh story is Babylonian. Yet you think that the similarity to the Noah flood tale proves it must be true?


This is even worse. You should feel better Cynocephalus. At least you didn't write this bunk.

As Cynocephalus reccomended, why not actually read the epic before you comment? If you did, you'd see that it wasn't Gilgamesh that "survived the flood" at all. The story was told to Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim, who was the Babylonian equivalent of Noah.

Here's a link to the tablet where this part of the epic appears. I didn't check it so it might be a dead link. If so, learn to use Google for God's sake, before you bring the rains down on us all for your ignorance.

Harte

Ha!


--Jaylemurph

It's only proof that floods have always happened.

If you dig around,you might be able to find that flood tales from different areas come from different periods in time.

I don't think anyone is going to say a flood didn't happen, I think most people just don't believe God made it rain for fourty days and night's...If you look close you'll see each culture has some type of tale about a flood.....

The point was to show that other civlizations believed in a Great Flood.

Even the Greeks and ROmans did with their Mythology. It was called Deucalion's Flood.

Well i think the point was made, I'n not sure i understand what you wanted to get across here sense no one is saying a great flood didn't happen... There are to many account's of a global flood in almost every culture's to even dismiss it.

I'll say it: there was never one single flood that covered the entire planet. Again, there are entire active threads already dedicated to this discussion....


--Jaylemurph

Plus, we should probably consider cultures borrow stories...

Jaylemurph,
You took the words right out of my mouth. Most cultures do not have such a flood myth.

Floods happen, people. Just because some population recalls when the Indus River (for example) flooded really bad one year, that doesn't relate to the Tigris/Euphrates flood that the flood story from Gilgamesh is based on.

A few years back, the Mississippi flooded areas where it hadn't flooded in two centuries. Because this is the information age, nobody is going to recall that as some global flood 200 years from now. But if it happened in 200 AD, that might not be the case.

Harte

Yes, but isn't it a coincidence that most every primitive civilization had a flood-that-covered-the-earth story?

it shouldnt be a coincidence that a lot of ancient cultures shared flood stories because think about the impact a big flood could have in any old society. a large flood that wiped out everything could easily be attributed to the wrath of "god" by any culture. stories about the incedent would be passed down and eventually preserved. That would be incredible if there was a global flood that all people of that time had to endure

The problem here is that you, Cynocephalus, don't understand the problem with mistranslating. A LOT of stories from A LOT of cultures have been mistranslated. For the most part, we have figured out that the Noah story was about a specific section of the red sea or something flooding. I can't remember the details but I saw it on a recent 2005 documentary about the truth of noah's flood. It has been so grossly mistranslated it makes it seem like it occurred over the WORLD when really, in hebrew, the word for city, town, state, country, and world ARE THE SAME> When you know this about Hebrew, suddenly the Bible doesn't seem so right anymore. I believe the stories in the bible are meant to teach us lessons created by the dudes who had the power to create the bible and the power to sway peoples minds into their belief. We will probably never know the true word of Jesus because it was suppressed. The only thing we have are the gnostic gospels, mary;s gospel, judas' gospel. Maybe Jesus had a gospel and we haven't found it yet. Anyways, you get the point

No more remarkable than the fact that every major culture has grown up on or near significant bodies of water. That makes it even /less/ remarkable that disperate cultures have flood stories, not more so.
And I still think looking for a literal Flood is completely beside the point of flood myths...


--Jaylemurph

When the last big Ice Age ended the seas rose and flooded all the coastal land around the world, maybe that is why there are all those food stories around the world.

I believe if you look into it, you'll find that this statement is wildly false.


It's possible that some fairly quick flooding occured at certain times during the last big thaw. But the vast, vast majority of sea level rise associated with the end of the last Ice Age comes to inches per year, hardly fast enough to be of any major consequence.

Harte

there was no flood that covered the whole of the world while man has been around and no proof of one before that.

if there had been a world wide flood it would be shown world wide in a band of mass extinction just as the world wide band exists for the extinction of dinosaurs. the melting of the ice age would account for alot of flooding but not the world. Nor are these stories happining at the same time.


Almost every culture on Earth includes an ancient flood story. Details vary, but the basic plot is the same: Deluge kills all but a lucky few.
• The story most familiar to many people is the biblical account of Noah and his ark. Genesis tells how “God saw that the wickedness of man was great” and decided to destroy all of creation. Only Noah, “who found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” his family, and the animals aboard the ark survived to repopulate the planet.

• Older than Genesis is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, a king who embarked on a journey to find the secret of immortality. Along the way, he met Utnapishtim, survivor of a great flood sent by the gods. Warned by Enki, the water god, Utnapishtim built a boat and saved his family and friends, along with artisans, animals, and precious metals.

• Ancient Greeks and Romans grew up with the story of Deucalion and Pyhrra, who saved their children and a collection of animals by boarding a vessel shaped like a giant box.

• Irish legends talk about Queen Cesair and her court, who sailed for seven years to avoid drowning when the oceans overwhelmed Ireland.

• European explorers in the Americas were startled by Indian legends that sounded similar to the story of Noah. Some Spanish priests feared the devil had planted such stories in the Indians’ minds to confuse them.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm

If New Orleans had been a late stone age or bronze age community in 2005 then you'd have had another 'global flood' story to add to the list - one which would, coincidently, resemble many aspect of the Gilgamesh story .....

Good point, but where does the water go? We are apparnatly in a warming cycle, so you would think the levels would still be high. But they are not. Our water does not evaporate and escape our planet, so where did it go?

Most of it is up at the poles and scientists warn that with the warming cycle it is melting again, and will inundate low coastal areas. In fifty years some scientists predict quite a disaster, like in Indonesia. To give you an idea of how fast the ice deposites, airplanes that landed on the ice during WWII are now under 100 feet of it.

Just for you moondog, the same Enki who warned the Sumerian Noah of the flood, is the same "Great Serpent-Dragon" who guarded the sacred tree of life, and offered Adam eternal life on behalf of the high God in heaven. Both of these stories departed with Abrahams Semetic Shepherds, but over years of oral tradition they corrupted into the stories we know in Genesis. So why do Christians believe the much changed, corrupted versions finally written down by the Hebrews 1500 years after the fact, when archaeology has discovered the obviously more accurate, earlier versions preserved for 4,000 years on cunieform tablets? Who is so foolish to deny these are the origin of the much garbled versions, changed from centuries of retelling by illiterate shepherds? Wouldn't Christians herald the oldest New Testament scriptures if they were found? So why should the oldest Genesis stories be ignored. They really make a lot more sense and corroborate the rest of the Bible. For example, Adam was not "magically created as the first man". He was just a baker in a known stone age city, outside of which lay the Eden garden. Thats why Cain could flee to other people. In the "real Genesis story", there were already people populating the earth when Adam was offered eternal life. And the Great Serpent Dragon, Enki, worked for the great God, not against Him.

The serpent dragon became evil, because shepherds hate snakes, and eve was implicated so the shepherds could justify treating their women like cattle. Eve is not even mentioned in the "real" Eden story. And yes, it is the same garden of Eden, by that very name, sacred tree, talking serpent dragon, it is the same story, only the original version.

And back to topic, this was a localized flood, only the man's domestic animals were collected on the raft, and archaeology has found proof of this localized flood around 6000 years ago. So Christians need not keep looking for a non-existent world flood, or a gigantic Noah's ark on top of a mountain, these things are not even part of the original story, just fanciful additions by bored, illiterate shepherds.

That's nice! We believe every word you say on the matter.

Yeah, but the people who died in New Orleans were /poor/ not /evil/; the two are only the same if you're a Repub...
Umm, a big meanie. Yeah. A big meanie.


--Jaylemurph

The atmosphere holds a great deal of the evaporated water. Warm air holds much more moisture than cold. Also, in the interglacial periods, vegetation (and animal life) is much more prolific across the globe than during the glacial periods. The plant and animal organisms take a lot of the water out of the system - temporarily of course but for snapshot measurements this would be significant.

As you should, Moondog, as you should.

For whether or not we assign any truth to the more supernatural aspect of these stories, such as creator Gods and their talking dragon servants, the science of archaeology proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the eden and flood stories of the Bible, are distorted versions of these far older Sumerian stories, stories that talk of the same Garden called Eden, placing animals on a vessel, etc. And save for the talking serpent-dragons in both stories, the Sumerian one is far more realistic, and compatible with science.

That is debatable certainly, but there needs to be some more mainstream sumerian texts available for people to study and compare. Are there any?

Did you ever check out Bibleorigins as I suggested?

I will look again, but what I was interested in are books to buy on the subject, I hate reading off a PC.

Would you mind telling me about this "Bibleorigins"? The topic is interesting to me.

Well, regarding the flood, I linked you to the entire epic of Gilgamesh somewhere in this thread.

All of the other Babylonian texts are available (the Gilgamesh story is Babylonian, not Sumerian.) As far as I'm aware, you should be able to find any Sumerian stuff online that you want. Most of what survives is stuff you wouldn't want anyway. It's stuff like receipts, tax forms, accounting inventories, etc.

For texts, Babylonian, Sumerian, Akkadian, or any other try This site.

Edited to insert a better sacred texts link: Here

Harte

Google that word and it will come up first. But a warning -- if you are a Christian prepare to have your beliefs seriously challenged.

lol no christian here. I was just interested in the "original" new testament, I wanna see how much it differs from the one in the bible.

There is not as much on the New Testament, because it is so new and it is pretty obvious that it is a mixture of Zoroastrian, Greek and Judaic ideas, whether or not one is to accept Jesus as a divinity. Particularly the Satan stuff in the NT, expecially Revelation is taken almost verbatime from Zoroastrian mythology. Only the angels and dragons names were changed, everything else is the same, except Ahriman is imprisioned in the abyss for a bit longer time.

The key thing about Bibleorigins is that it essentially proves the earliest Hebrew beliefs and bible stories had a Sumerian origin. This does not neccesarily mean there may be not truth there, but Christians simply do not want to believe these stories existed before the much changed versions they accept as the "gospel truth" of their largely non-biblical "sunday school mythology".

Try Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others for an orthodox translations of the various texts.