How does the Epic of Gilgamesh discredit the story of Noah’s flood?

[joelr]

There is no consensus that Moses is a myth.

Thankyou again! HA! See, this is what you will do when I post the evidence from Ehrman and whomever else I find. Brilliant response, I was hoping you would do that again.

 

[firedragon]

Thankyou again! HA! See, this is what you will do when I post the evidence from Ehrman and whomever else I find. Brilliant response, I was hoping you would do that again.

Ehrman does not say "there is scholarly consensus that Moses is a myth".

 

[Brian2]

Oh there are some possible large local floods, And a person on a barge or boat could have been caught up in it. But the Noah story is ridiculous. He had a hundred years to build his boat. In reality any flood could have been walked away from before it started if one knew of it. There was never a near extinction event for human begins. One would have to change the story so much that it would be unrecognizable.

And no, it has nothing to do with "people wanting the Bible to be false". That is a false claim that you cannot justify. People merely want to know what really happened. The story as told in the Bible is an obvious fairy tale. Now it might work as a tale like on of Aesop's fables. As a fable or other story with a message it still fits 2 Timothy 3 16-17. That verse does not say that the Bible is literally true. Only that it needs to be useful in education etc.

Yes it probably is not about people wanting the Bible to be false, it is about people having been deceived into thinking that science has shown the Bible to be false in places where it has not.
There are other understandings of the flood and Exodus which have been shown to be plausible in the light of science and history.
The Bible does not have to be about a near extinction event, it looks like a large local flood to get rid of the people in that land imo.
God wanted Noah to stay there and save the animals of the area and be a witness to the people about what God was going to do, just in case some believed and repented imo.
Anyway Noah would not have been doing what God wanted Him to do if He did not stay.

 

[Brian2]

What scientific evidence has been found against a world wide flood? Well for one thing, we would find a world wide layer of silt. And its not there.

So, lack of scientific evidence. On top of that, you have the internal problems of the story itself. How is the ark going to house and feed the 900,000 different insect species? There is the problem where one verse in Genesis says there was one pair of each of the clean animals, and another verse that says seven pairs.

You could write a whole book on the evidence against a global flood and the Noah story.

I don't know if the Noah story has been debunked even if the flood was local and from what I read the story can be read with that in mind, the flood wiping out the people in the whole land and covering the high hills there.

 

[Brian2]

No scholar outside of fundamentalist believe any myths are true. The vast majority of historians consider Moses to be a myth, I know of none who believe stories about Gods are real. The last several post have been evidence that the consensus on Moses is myth.

The truth is not really decided according to a vote. Evidence has been found of Israel in Egypt and of the Conquest.

No you will stick with stories about a creator. There is no evidence of any such being. According to this line of thinking any story about a creator must be true because you think the universe is a creation. All myths about Gods start out with an explanation about how they created everything and created people. The Yahweh myth is no different, is known to borrow from older myths and about as likely as any other.

To believe in a creator does not mean that all the creation stories are true. The question of which is true is another question.
Science does not decide if a creator exists. It is not in it's area of study.
Historians and anthropologists also use the naturalistic methodology and because of that end up with stories of what happened which have to contradict the Bible.
The creation story and the flood story were no doubt passed down in cultures of the day and were corrupted in the journey, that does not mean that the stories in the Bible were borrowed from anywhere.

The evidence of this religion being true is zero. The evidence that it's a copycat myth (like all others) is 100%. Just because the universe has order and life does that mean Krishna is real? Or Zeus? Nope. Yahweh is exactly as mythical. Or Yahweh really liked Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths. Then during 2nd Temple Judaism he really dug the Persian and Hellenistic myths. Even though both cultures invaded Israel and occupied and subjugated the Israelites?
Wow it's almost like Judaism was influenced by Persian and Hellenism?

As I said the conclusions reached by many historians are based on the assumptions that the Bible is false and that the stories were written hundreds of years after they purport to have been recorded in the Bible.

This always baffles me, the fact that people feel like since there is a universe they have to pick a mythology and believe it's real?

Were you in Egypt 3000 years ago you would be all "You say chance but I say Horus!"

Even weirder is you also have to ignore the fact that the scientific knowledge of self-replicating compounds is growing every year?
The evidence likely points where it points for you because you already believe in a story and are confirmation biasing the heck out of all available data.
Of course when the process of RNA is discovered religious people will be all "yeah but God started the universe and he knew life (specifically us) would arise".
And then you have to also ignore the fact that the universe actually is governed by probability? It's in quantum mechanics?
That would be chance?
If a disease has a 45% mortality rate in the US then if you look at enough data it always kills 45% of the people who are inflicted.
Always. No deity alters that? We already know probability governs everything but suddenly it's a problem?

Self replicating compounds can form a primative RNA. It happened. So it's possible and we almost understand the basics of it. Given the ridiculous size of the universe and hundreds of billions of planets this happening on at least one over billions of years is reasonably probable? You are not even correct about the chance thing?

Believing in a creator is pretty basic to humanity even if in the past other Gods were assigned the role.
It is those who want to say that chance and time produced all this that are the odd ones out and looking to science to show that you are correct is not in the purview of science.
Belief in a God is common and so common sense and science does not tell us otherwise.
Producing the raw materials with certain properties and supplying the right conditions would guarantee that the life forms we see would be produced imo,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but only with a designer there to nudge in the right direction and to give life to dead matter.
If people want to hold a naturalistic view of the universe that is their prerogative, but there is no evidence for it in science or anywhere else imo.
At least with the Bible there is evidence in fulfilled prophecy.

 

[Brian2]

Except every culture has a mythic history that includes a flood myth. And scholars know Genesis was not written as history but was borrowing myths. A local flood may be the inspiration for some flood myths. But not the God speaking part, or collecting every animal or the endless obvious fiction. No flood happened since the Israelites emerged from Canaanite society.
Why do religious people always say to investigate the history of the Bible then when you find out it's widely considered fiction in historicity then you "don't want it to be true"?

It's hard to check out the history of the Bible when there is so much rubbish written about the Bible imo. It is stuff that is written based on the naturalistic methodology and the supernatural elements are seen as lies. (not put that crudely of course).
The anti Bible literature no doubt floods the market and drowns out the other stuff.

Hmm, could that be because you already believe in a religion? Funny no scientist ever wrote a paper saying they feel the need for a God to be part of the natural laws of nature?

Some scientists these days do suggest that science needs to rethink it's assumptions.
These days however with science as it is, no scientists suggests in a science journal that there is a need for a God even if those scientists might be theists.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes it probably is not about people wanting the Bible to be false, it is about people having been deceived into thinking that science has shown the Bible to be false in places where it has not.
There are other understandings of the flood and Exodus which have been shown to be plausible in the light of science and history.
The Bible does not have to be about a near extinction event, it looks like a large local flood to get rid of the people in that land imo.
God wanted Noah to stay there and save the animals of the area and be a witness to the people about what God was going to do, just in case some believed and repented imo.
Anyway Noah would not have been doing what God wanted Him to do if He did not stay.

.
That is an interesting reinterpretation. Why would God want the animals of the region saved? There seems to be no point to it. And why did God want only those people killed? Not everyone on the face of the Earth except for Noah and his family as the Bible states? Your version is not only not literal it raises its own questions that seem to be unanswerable.

 

[Brian2]

.
That is an interesting reinterpretation. Why would God want the animals of the region saved? There seems to be no point to it. And why did God want only those people killed? Not everyone on the face of the Earth except for Noah and his family as the Bible states? Your version is not only not literal it raises its own questions that seem to be unanswerable.

It is a literal belief when the alternative translation is used.
The story in the Bible is about that region at that point and God was getting rid of evil in that area.
There also could have been other large floods in other areas at the same time. That seems to have happened at the end of the ice age. It seems that God considered all of humanity as having gone to the dark side too much and so a culling all over the world could have taken place. God did not kill all the people everywhere, we know that because God saved Noah and family. It could have been the same in other places also, God saving some and getting rid of others.
God no doubt wanted animals for food for Noah and descendants and other animals to keep the ecosystems ticking over as designed.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It is a literal belief when the alternative translation is used.
The story in the Bible is about that region at that point and God was getting rid of evil in that area.
There also could have been other large floods in other areas at the same time. That seems to have happened at the end of the ice age. It seems that God considered all of humanity as having gone to the dark side too much and so a culling all over the world could have taken place. God did not kill all the people everywhere, we know that because God saved Noah and family. It could have been the same in other places also, God saving some and getting rid of others.
God no doubt wanted animals for food for Noah and descendants and other animals to keep the ecosystems ticking over as designed.

Sorry you are making a bogus version simply because the literal translation is clearly wrong.

You might want to learn a bit of geology. Yes, there were some floods around the Earth following the ice age, but catastrophic ones were very rare. They would not have done the job of culling humanity either.

Any attempt to interpret that myth literally is doomed to failure.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I don't know if the Noah story has been debunked even if the flood was local and from what I read the story can be read with that in mind, the flood wiping out the people in the whole land and covering the high hills there.

Well, we surmise that there was a local flood that is at the origin of the legend.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well, we surmise that there was a local flood that is at the origin of the legend.

And that is not unreasonable. Though the big boat may have been just a person that owned a barge that was caught in that flood. Stories grow with the telling. This was just one of them.

 

[Oberon12]

Re 'Flood Myths', no one would need to steal or plagiarize any other peoples' myths, nor would there be anything 'illogical' about the survivors being posited as having built a large ship in order to re-populate 'the Earth', as they knew it, it would just logically follow why there were any survivors and animal survivors as well.

Why would flood myths sort of be a universal cultural story? sea fossils are found way above sea level on mountainsides all over Asia, including up the sides of the Himalayas. Mount Ararat has them far up its sides, hence ancient peoples would naturally assume there was indeed some great flood in the past that 'covered the whole world' as they knew it, and would develop explanations for what they saw with their own eyes. It's very simple and direct, no big giant mystery as to where the stories and allegories developed in that regard.

There is also no requirement that a middle eastern tribe like the Jewish tribes are somehow obligated to have a different historical literature than the rest oft the local tribes or it would make theirs invalid or something, kind of a ridiculous assertion when examined logically; they would all have similar histories and similar origins, of course.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Re 'Flood Myths', no one would need to steal or plagiarize any other peoples' myths, nor would there be anything 'illogical' about the survivors being posited as having built a large ship in order to re-populate 'the Earth', as they knew it, it would just logically follow why there were any survivors and animal survivors as well.

Why would flood myths sort of be a universal cultural story? sea fossils are found way above sea level on mountainsides all over Asia, including up the sides of the Himalayas. Mount Ararat has them far up its sides, hence ancient peoples would naturally assume there was indeed some great flood in the past that 'covered the whole world' as they knew it, and would develop explanations for what they saw with their own eyes. It's very simple and direct, no big giant mystery as to where the stories and allegories developed in that regard.

There is also no requirement that a middle eastern tribe like the Jewish tribes are somehow obligated to have a different historical literature than the rest oft the local tribes or it would make theirs invalid or something, kind of a ridiculous assertion when examined logically; they would all have similar histories and similar origins, of course.

There was no "need" for the ancient Hebrews to borrow the myths of others, but that is what it looks like they did.

 

[rational experiences]

Theisms knowing God did not act as a human theist said.

O earth as stone owned it's own Ch arose gases.

Believing in theme God from nothing is instantly dismissive. As God earth O owned the Christ gases as gases.

So you should place life human where it belongs the theist. A God never theoried about creation humans did.

Humans own bones so stone existed first as God. Relative scientific advice versus scientific destroyers.

The bible is not how you false preach it. Scientists Satanists lie.

Satan in theory was a star wandering. But first was God owning ice water frozen on it as the saviour.

The stars historic advice wandering once I was a God.

Then I was a holy Satan star releasing cold gases. Theists knowing Satan and gases caused eternal human life equals a dead human whose bio body no longer decomposes. As blood changed.

Eternal life in science is for human blood to be sacrificed changed to give it to humans. Outcome theoried caused. Eternal life body of a human. Humans life body decompose.

Blood changed said Jesus attack.

Satanists theists did confess as you know their beliefs.

Now Satan is evil burning. Russia blasting an evidence. Shroud 1000 year returned attack before it.

Science says it wants eternal wisdom but wants electricity which is not the eternal.

What coercive theism lying means.

Electricity science of man notified is only from burning converting pre existing burnt mass.

Equals evil Satan wandering star mass.

As below. Lots of channelled sink holes new experiments of I want.

Add up all the new space below into equals as above equals one point one burning mass atmosphere channel. Direct to one machine wanted.

As the UFO does not accumulate a space hole as cold gases shut it out.

Inventing means to cause it. The Satan body asteroid mass.

The flood was science explained earths atmosphere causes flooding ice melts saviour lost of saving life. Ice body. God not listened to as scientific advised.

Taught. Notice origin saviour ice gone.

Flooding then has to save life as earth cools it's burning heavens gases.

Science statement it cooled burnt spirit I sacrificed and flooded forty days. The flood scientific stated.

All over the earth said science UFO the ark travelled UFO causes above our head burning. Those below died. Flood saved life as floods were caused everywhere flooding one moment instant evaporation the next.

Science is the only human destroyer.

 

[rational experiences]

Humans then have to ask what would change heavenly ark UFO removal.

To make a UFO remain in?

An asteroid would.

 

[joelr]

Ehrman does not say "there is scholarly consensus that Moses is a myth".

Already proven my point with Denver. If you were interested in an honest discussion I would take the time to find it. Failing to provide evidence and choosing to troll shows you are a waste of time puts you on ignore. Bubye.

 

[Brian2]

Sorry you are making a bogus version simply because the literal translation is clearly wrong.

You might want to learn a bit of geology. Yes, there were some floods around the Earth following the ice age, but catastrophic ones were very rare. They would not have done the job of culling humanity either.

Any attempt to interpret that myth literally is doomed to failure.

Personally I think a large local flood is interpreting it literally even if no other floods happened.
A problem is knowing just when the flood happened.
It has been decided that mega floods did occur at the end of the last ice age and swept across vast areas of land.
It probably should be remembered that the population distribution would have been different at the end of an ice age and also when the sea levels were low.

 

[rational experiences]

Science said mt Ararat landed an ark. You forget temples of wood and stone buildings were transmitting atop mountains. UFO ark hit as radiation mass converts by squaring in Phi science status. Proof ballast.

Attack stopped as two by two anti eradication.

Life animal.and human holy two only. Sex produces two babies.

Holy two versus science Phi 2x2.

A monkey is a healthy life body as the monkey.

A human is a healthy human life body as the human.

Human DNA genesis exodus travelled back in time mutated. The evidence science lifted water off earths face by half exposed water loss. Water creatures forced to land when bones as stone of God mutated.

Philosophers stone old temple pyramid science conversions.

I was given a warning when sharks try to land on the shore life is near its destruction. A huge shark attack constant currently occurring.

I gained that vision about ten years ago.

 

[rational experiences]

Personally I think a large local flood is interpreting it literally even if no other floods happened.
A problem is knowing just when the flood happened.
It has been decided that mega floods did occur at the end of the last ice age and swept across vast areas of land.
It probably should be remembered that the population distribution would have been different at the end of an ice age and also when the sea levels were low.

Underground volcanos erupted sea went inside earth sealed it off.

Ice melted not by UFO by volcanic causes.

A UFO did not invent new bio animal and human life as nature the garden still existed. Ice melting saved it.

We did not come out of a satanic act.

 

[firedragon]

Already proven my point with Denver.

Not at all.