The Sumerian Flood Story

[Rakhel]

Jews have never said entire world flooding. Hell it took the rabbis 100 years to decide if a turkey was edible. I think that kinda proves we never said "world-wide"

 

[Copernicus]

Who said covering the world? אָ֫רֶץ was the word used in the Bible, earth or land/ a very large parcel.

Archer, did you read the rest of the story? You are focusing on one word, but there was the business about destroying all of mankind and packing the boats with animals so that life could be replenished. Now, seriously, this was really a fairy tale that nobody with an ounce of sense should ever have taken seriously. Regardless of how you try to spin it, the tale was about the destruction of all life in the world except what made it onto the boat. Had you been alive anywhere in the world back then, you would not have wanted to miss that boat.

Jews have never said entire world flooding. Hell it took the rabbis 100 years to decide if a turkey was edible. I think that kinda proves we never said "world-wide"

Actually, the interpretation that it was a worldwide flood is the one that Christians and Jews have held for generations. It is only in the context of quibbling with critics of the story that we get these tortured arguments in defense of the idea that the story was anything but apocryphal.

 

[Rakhel]

If you have to insist that I am wrong than more power to ya.

 

[Copernicus]

If you have to insist that I am wrong than more power to ya.

Thanks for the extra power. I will extend some to you if you can come up with a reasoned response.

 

[Rakhel]

Have it your way, you insist that Jews are wrong in their interpretations by using a Christian understanding. But, of course, I am wrong and you are always right.
So I leave you on your mountain.

Good day sir.

 

[Copernicus]

Have it your way, you insist that Jews are wrong in their interpretations by using a Christian understanding. But, of course, I am wrong and you are always right.
So I leave you on your mountain.

Since you bring that up, that is where Noah ended up. And you are entitled to your interpretation, but you do not speak for all Jews. For example, have a look at the so-called Jewish Encyclopedia:

—Biblical Data: Son of Lamech and the ninth in descent from Adam. In the midst ofabounding corruption he alone was "righteous and blameless in his generations" and "walked with God" (Gen. vi. 9). Hence, when all his contemporaries were doomed to perish by the divine judgment in punishment for their sins, he "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (ib. vi. 8). When he was about five hundred years old his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were born (ib. v. 32). One hundred years after this the command came to him from God to make a great vessel or ark, three hundred cubits in length, in which he and his family were to find safety from the waters of a great flood. This deluge was to destroy all living things except such as should be brought into the ark before the coming of the waters. Hence, besides his wife, and his sons and their wives, eight persons in all, a pair of every species of living thing was taken into the ark (ib. vi. 13-21). Another account (ib. vii. 1-3) states that of the clean animals seven of each kind were thus preserved.
Noah fulfilled the command, and on the tenth day of the second month of the six hundredth year of his life he and his family and the living creatures entered into the vessel. Seven days thereafter "all the fountains of the abyss were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened" (ib. vii. 6-11, 13-16). For forty days the rain fell; the ark floated and drifted in fifteen cubits of water; the high mountains were covered; and every living thing not sheltered in the vessel perished from the earth. For one hundred and fifty days the waters prevailed (ib. vii. 17-24). At the end of that period the vessel rested upon the "mountains of Ararat" (ib. viii. 3, 4).

It seems reasonable to me to conclude that the flood was worldwide if it destroyed all life. If it did not, then what was the point of packing the ark with all those living creatures? The story makes no sense if you try to spin it the way you and Archer have. (Actually, it makes very little sense any way that you try to spin it except as a fairy tale.)

 

[Archer]

Archer, did you read the rest of the story? You are focusing on one word, but there was the business about destroying all of mankind and packing the boats with animals so that life could be replenished. Now, seriously, this was really a fairy tale that nobody with an ounce of sense should ever have taken seriously. Regardless of how you try to spin it, the tale was about the destruction of all life in the world except what made it onto the boat. Had you been alive anywhere in the world back then, you would not have wanted to miss that boat.

All of Adams line was killed save one family.

Just as Cain went out and found a wife so did the grand children of Noah.

You are wrong. The story was to show the dissatisfaction of God with his creation. Nobody with an ounce of sense should discount the truth of this story either. As I said it is based in fact the details may be or have been spectacularized by men after the fact which is many times the case but it is something that can not be dismissed as easily as you would like. This can neither be proven or disproved but my faith in the truth of it makes the message real.

 

[Archer]

Since you bring that up, that is where Noah ended up. And you are entitled to your interpretation, but you do not speak for all Jews. For example, have a look at the so-called Jewish Encyclopedia:

It seems reasonable to me to conclude that the flood was worldwide if it destroyed all life. If it did not, then what was the point of packing the ark with all those living creatures? The story makes no sense if you try to spin it the way you and Archer have. (Actually, it makes very little sense any way that you try to spin it except as a fairy tale.)

Have you ever been in a flood where people and animals alike were killed? I have. It makes perfect sense.

 

[Copernicus]

All of Adams line was killed save one family.

Just as Cain went out and found a wife so did the grand children of Noah.

If you start from the position that the story is real and not just part of Semitic folklore, then you would probably infer this. However, it is inconsistent with the parts of the story that suggest the only survivors of the flood were on the ark. You see the inconsistencies, so you try to rationalize them by cherry-picking the parts of the story that you think make the most sense. I take the position that such inconsistencies are characteristic of myths. They don't have to make perfect sense.

You are wrong. The story was to show the dissatisfaction of God with his creation. Nobody with an ounce of sense should discount the truth of this story either. As I said it is based in fact the details may be or have been spectacularized by men after the fact which is many times the case but it is something that can not be dismissed as easily as you would like. This can neither be proven or disproved but my faith in the truth of it makes the message real.

Your faith in the truth of it makes you attempt to rationalize the inconsistencies, which are clearly there. I suspect that the myth did have some factual basis in a real disastrous flood, but the story has been changed many times over. There were a lot of different Semitic versions of the Gilgamesh flood, which suggests that the story got passed around quite a lot. The most reasonable interpretation of the Noah story is not that it was the only reasonably accurate account, but that it was no more accurate than any of the other flood myths.

Have you ever been in a flood where people and animals alike were killed? I have. It makes perfect sense.

No, I have not been in such a disaster, but I fail to see how that licenses your faith in the flood story in the Bible. Floods kill a lot of people and other living things. Such events can be horrific, but that does not lend credence to a very common story that got passed around in the Bronze Age era.

 

[darkendless]

All of Adams line was killed save one family.

Just as Cain went out and found a wife so did the grand children of Noah.

You are wrong. The story was to show the dissatisfaction of God with his creation. Nobody with an ounce of sense should discount the truth of this story either. As I said it is based in fact the details may be or have been spectacularized by men after the fact which is many times the case but it is something that can not be dismissed as easily as you would like. This can neither be proven or disproved but my faith in the truth of it makes the message real.

Your God is a sad character indeed.

Question: Do you believe that God protected a giant wooden ship that would otherwise splinter?

 

[gnostic]

As far as my point. I have studied the accuracy of oral histories and the ability on technologically backward peoples to accurately repeat histories, literature and the ability to recite sacred teachings. What I have found is that it is the same as with written language. As the story moves away from the source region or the language evolves through interaction with other languages, as well as dialect differences, the names and some of the events have slight changes.

In a study of aboriginal cultures (esp. AU) the capacity for story telling is amazing as they can be as or more accurate than copied text.

This was independent study as well as college study.

I don't get it.
Why are people so willing to accept writings on a tablet about a mythological flood, yet not willing to accept a written oral story about a flood that may have as much potential of happening?

I actually understand and can accept oral tradition can be just as accurate as the writing. And I do think that ancient Israelites did have a strong oral tradition, before anything was committed to writing.

However, it doesn't change the fact that tablet about the Gilgamesh was found in Megiddo, Canaan (badly fragmented as they made be), such was the popularity of the Gilgamesh epic. So if the ancient Canaanites knew of the Flood story (via the Gilgamesh epic) from Middle Babylonian literature, then it is highly likely that the Israelites had learned from the same sources.

I am not saying that the ancient Hebrews learned them directly from the Sumerians, because Sumerian writing had died out centuries earlier (c 17th century BCE), but they must have and surely learned it from the Babylonians, whose sources were from the Sumerians.

I have already mentioned that in Babylonia, apprentices in scribe schools having been using the Epic of Gilgamesh as exercises to learning to write, for centuries. Some of these exercises have been found, and some were definitely written by their masters.

You, Archer, said that oral tradition can be accurate in recording their history or tradition or story.

Well, I've already mention that are various versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Some of these are better preserved than others.

The best version of the epic, particularly that of narrative of Utnapishtim and the Flood (Tablet 11), was found in Library of Nineveh, possibly written during the reign of Ashurbanipal (668 – ca. 627 BCE). This is called the Standard Version.

However, this (7th century version from Nineveh) is only a copy of original standard version from Babylon. The original was edited and written by Sin-liqe-uninni of the 12th century BCE. Sin-liqe-uninni used the title, "He Who Saw The Deep", and the epic was written in the late Middle Babylonian period.

This Standard Version does have missing parts or writings that have worn away until it is no legible. But despite this problem, translators have been able to reconstruct missing parts, from older versions.

My point is that translators have been using Old Babylonian versions to use to reconstruct the missing parts of the Standard Version. Couple of tablets kept at University Museum of Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania tablet, correspond to the Standard Version, tablet 2 and tablet 3. While the other Old Babylonian tablet was kept at Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut (hence known as the Yale tablet). Both version had the title - "Surpassing All Other Kings".

Despite a thousand of years between the one found in Nineveh and the Old Babylonian tablets, many parts of the tablets were shown be quite accurate, word for word. This would suggest that very little had changed in the stories.

However, there are huge difference between the Sumerian poems and the Babylonian versions of Gilgamesh. The death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh's friend, found in the Sumerian poem, is completely different to that of the Babylonian version. And there are differences too in the tablet about the Bull of Heaven, or their adventure with Humbaba (Sumerian Huwawa).

The thing is, the Babylonian managed to expand and refine the original Sumerian story, if not change it completely.

 

[Archer]

Gen 7:4 ForH3588 yetH5750 sevenH7651 days,H3117 and IH595 will cause it to rainH4305 uponH5921 the earthH776 fortyH705 daysH3117 and fortyH705 nights;H3915 and(H853) everyH3605 living substanceH3351 thatH834 I have madeH6213 will I destroyH4229 from offH4480 H5921 the faceH6440 of the earth.H127

H127
אדמה
'ădâmâh
ad-aw-maw'
From H119; soil (from its general redness): - country, earth, ground, husband [-man] (-ry), land.

H776
ארץ
'erets
eh'-rets
From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land): - X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world.

I have already explained where 776 meant globe and it was in Genesis 1 and considering 127 is not only the definition I supplied but also Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon you assumptions go out the window.

The Father works within nature.

You assume that some of us "try to rationalize them by cherry-picking the parts of the story that you think make the most sense" but the fact is you are wrong. I am not saying it may not have happened another way but I am saying the Bible is just as credible as any other source.

 

[outhouse]

All I can say is it is very very ignorant to believe the fiction of these old fables.

you have been shown reality and you still continue to LIE to yourself and others

Its not worth a reply really and you fall under this catagory below beside delusional.

 

[budhabee]

I was half listening to a television when I heard this rendition of the flood. It seems and I do not know how long the interval is when this happens but I think it might be 12,000 years. So we'll use that. Every 12,000 years the earth tilts because of such and such of allingment of the planets. The shift is a whole quarter shift which makes the oceans flow like a huge waterfall inland until it equalizes its mass.

I also saw a science story that said there was a glacial thing that turned huge pockets of flowing water inside the glacier until it couldnt hold it anymore and cracked through the outer wall to flood many places everywhere. That one has a scientific name. Probably it could be found on internet under Glacier affects.

 

[Archer]

All I can say is it is very very ignorant to believe the fiction of these old fables.

you have been shown reality and you still continue to LIE to yourself and others

Its not worth a reply really and you fall under this catagory below beside delusional.

Thank you and I will take my delusions over your ignorance any day.

 

[Archer]

I was half listening to a television when I heard this rendition of the flood. It seems and I do not know how long the interval is when this happens but I think it might be 12,000 years. So we'll use that. Every 12,000 years the earth tilts because of such and such of allingment of the planets. The shift is a whole quarter shift which makes the oceans flow like a huge waterfall inland until it equalizes its mass.

I also saw a science story that said there was a glacial thing that turned huge pockets of flowing water inside the glacier until it couldnt hold it anymore and cracked through the outer wall to flood many places everywhere. That one has a scientific name. Probably it could be found on internet under Glacier affects.

Check out Ballards theory: National Geographic: Noah’s Flood/Black Sea Expedition

 

[outhouse]

Thank you and I will take my delusions over your ignorance any day.

you have proven yourself uneducated and ignorant to the bible and science.

why do you continue to blatantly lie?

 

[gnostic]

I feel the same way. You have no base one way or the other for your view. I do because that was the cycle in the fertile crescent. There were some catastrophic floods.

I cant remember but in Gilgamesh was the flood global? It was not in the Hebrew text.

To me, I am not interest in global or regional flood.

My main interest is in that the hero, Noah, built an ark before the coming flood, just like the Babylonian version before the Genesis, and the Akkadian version before that, and the Sumerian before all others. All the Hebrews did was changed the name of the hero, and combine the 2 gods Enlil and Enki/Ea into one god. Enlil was in favor of destroying mankind, while Enki (or the Babylonian Ea) wanted to save man, particularly his favorite.

As to your question of being global.

What do you think of when God say this in Genesis 6:11-13:

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

1. The "earth was corrupt" (6:11),
2. "how corrupt the earth had become" (6"12),
3. and "for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways" (6:12).

In just 2 lines, it state earth become corrupt, and "all the people on earth" being corrupted.

Does that not mean all people on earth would mean mankind? Wouldn't that suggest global flood?

And then, there's the flooding even the highest mountains, already mentioned by Outhouse and Copernicus.

The Genesis also stated quite clearly that the Ark lay to rest on the top of Mount Ararat.

and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Ararat may not be the highest mountain in the world, but the highest peak is still over 5 kilometres high (compare with Everest 8.8 kilometres). For the water reach that high (at Ararat), then it would be "global", because much of the habitable land masses are well below 2000 metres above sea level.

And water reaching the peak of such mountain as Ararat, scientifically the water wouldn't simply disappear within a single year in the Ark. You have to also consider fact, that nothing could be grown for years, and what do you think would most of predatory animals eat, while the animals were supposed to repopulate the earth?

As to your question about Gilgamesh's flood being global or not.

I have read both Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths (not all of them, of course), but the Sumerians and Babylonians see the land of Mesopotamia as being the entire world, just as the Egyptians think Egypt was their entire world. The Egyptians thought they were the first people, and the Sumerians and Babylonians have similar thoughts.

So I would have to answer your question that the flood would regional, not global.

 

[Archer]

you have proven yourself uneducated and ignorant to the bible and science.

why do you continue to blatantly lie?

No I think you are completely off base. I can provide information but I can't provide you a Brain.

 

[Archer]

To me, I am not interest in global or regional flood.

My main interest is in that the hero, Noah, built an ark before the coming flood, just like the Babylonian version before the Genesis, and the Akkadian version before that, and the Sumerian before all others. All the Hebrews did was changed the name of the hero, and combine the 2 gods Enlil and Enki/Ea into one god. Enlil was in favor of destroying mankind, while Enki (or the Babylonian Ea) wanted to save man, particularly his favorite.

As to your question of being global.

What do you think of when God say this in Genesis 6:11-13:

1. The "earth was corrupt" (6:11),
2. "how corrupt the earth had become" (6"12),
3. and "for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways" (6:12).

In just 2 lines, it state earth become corrupt, and "all the people on earth" being corrupted.

Does that not mean all people on earth would mean mankind? Wouldn't that suggest global flood?

And then, there's the flooding even the highest mountains, already mentioned by Outhouse and Copernicus.

The Genesis also stated quite clearly that the Ark lay to rest on the top of Mount Ararat.



Ararat may not be the highest mountain in the world, but the highest peak is still over 5 kilometres high (compare with Everest 8.8 kilometres). For the water reach that high (at Ararat), then it would be "global", because much of the habitable land masses are well below 2000 metres above sea level.

And water reaching the peak of such mountain as Ararat, scientifically the water wouldn't simply disappear within a single year in the Ark. You have to also consider fact, that nothing could be grown for years, and what do you think would most of predatory animals eat, while the animals were supposed to repopulate the earth?

As to your question about Gilgamesh's flood being global or not.

I have read both Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths (not all of them, of course), but the Sumerians and Babylonians see the land of Mesopotamia as being the entire world, just as the Egyptians think Egypt was their entire world. The Egyptians thought they were the first people, and the Sumerians and Babylonians have similar thoughts.

So I would have to answer your question that the flood would regional, not global.

I have already covered that. Read the thread you will find it. The Genesis flood was regional.