2 Versions of the Flood Story
The flood story recurs in many anc
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The flood story recurs in many ancient civilizations, even in distant parts of the world, though the nature of the story may be very different in some cultures. There do seem to be links between the flood story as told in the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh and the flood story of Noah as told in Genesis, in fact the older Sumerian tale may have served as the basis for the biblical account. There is recent evidence that there may have been a great flood in the area of the Black Sea which may have become a continuing tribal memory that was eventually embodied in The Epic of Gilgamesh and reshaped to fit the theology of the Israelites for the tale told in Genesis. The two versions of the flood story have many points of agreement, suggesting that they are somehow connected, and in the Noah story, the role of God differs from the role of the gods in Gilgamesh. In literature, the ultimate expression of a society constantly under siege may be seen in The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a cycle of poems preserved on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets found at Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The tablets were found in the nineteenth century and date from the seventh century B.C. The time of the tale is one in which human beings felt close to the gods and believed that the gods intervened in their lives. Gilgamesh is a ruler who is seen as too devoted to war, and the gods hear the lament of the people and
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a divider of epochs, while in Gilgamesh, it explains how immortality was once granted to a mortal. The Atrahasis Epic begins with the creation of humankind because the labor-class gods are tired of the heavy tasks imposed on them by the management-class gods. Because of their objection, the mother goddess Mami created procreating people as a substitute for the laboring gods. However, in 1200 years the people had multiplied so much that they made a great "noise," to the annoyance of Enlil, who tries first to exterminate them with a famine, then 1200 years later with a drought, and another 1200 years later with a flood. Three times Enlil's this plan is foiled by Enki and his faithful worshipper Atrahasis. Enlil calls a divine assembly to discuss the problem, and a compromise is reached to limit the expanding population. The Genesis version parallels the Atrahasis Epic but comes to precisely the opposite conclusion. The Atrahasis Epic suggests birth control as a means to curb the human population, while Genesis suggests dispersion as a means of accommodating the expanding population (Freedman 1124-1125).
Sir Henry Layard conducted excavations on the sites of Nineveh and Nimrud between 1845 and 1854 and brought back several
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Approximate Word count = 2015
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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