The Sumerian Flood Story

[outhouse]

It was a small world back then

not as small as you think, they just didnt have allot of writing for us to know how much was out there past from 1000BC back.

we know from history there were many ancient cultures all over that area from egyptions and sumarians and many others.

as far as i know they were not isolated and also were along trade routes

if im wrong in that aspect please correct me

 

[Archer]

not as small as you think, they just didnt have allot of writing for us to know how much was out there past from 1000BC back.

we know from history there were many ancient cultures all over that area from egyptions and sumarians and many others.

as far as i know they were not isolated and also were along trade routes

if im wrong in that aspect please correct me

I think time frame has a lot to do with this. I am thinking the original legend, if you will, got started 5-7000BC and at that time there was not a lot of trade or movement outside of the fertile crescent. People were out there but they were not moving from their homes.

If you consider the original agricultural areas were separated by vast distances and people had no big need to move into unknown territory over hostile land.

Also consider the time frame I am talking about is before the wheel and before the domestication of working animals (horse, oxen) so travel would have been limited to gathering what was not grown and hunting what they did not have.

 

[Jeremy Mason]

Thank you Madhuri, gnostic, Copernius for their well referenced knowledge of Gilgamesh and other flood stories.

I have to say, the borrowing of information *e'hem* is evident. Sorry Moses.

I also see the Gilgamesh story to embody more of a spiritual message.

 

[slowbreath]

sure....why not accept the sumerian version, but someone said it was a corrupted version....i guess if someone thinks something is corrupt, it must be...or not.

 

[Archer]

Why not accept the fact that bad things get attributed to God because the people of the times had no understanding of the why of things. They made stories about the why and attributed them to their failure or success.

Lessons are in these ancient stories and truths revealed.

 

[Copernicus]

I also see the Gilgamesh story to embody more of a spiritual message.

Bilgamesh (Sumerian)/Gilgamesh (Semitic Akkadian) was essentially about human mortality. All living things struggle to survive and reproduce. Gilgamesh laments the loss of life and goes to seek the secret of immortality, which Utnapishtim (biblical Noah) gives him. Alas, he loses it in ensuing events. So the struggle to survive and its ultimate futility is the age-old theme that we find in Gilgamesh.

The Hebrew version of that story comes centuries later, and it still revolves around our mortality. Only this time, Yaweh has deprived us of our immortality, kicking us out of paradise. So there is still the idea that a god has deprived us of immortality. Only this time, instead of being an aid to humanity as he was in the Gilgamesh epic, the serpent (and the duplicity of a woman) is part of the reason we got deprived of paradise and had to suffer and die.

The more recent Christian version of the story has our immortality restored in an idealized afterlife, which we get into after being properly redeemed for the sin that originally caused God to punish us.

As always, death is a curse that humans can circumvent in principle. Realistically speaking, though, it's not looking so good.

 

[gnostic]

I think time frame has a lot to do with this. I am thinking the original legend, if you will, got started 5-7000BC and at that time there was not a lot of trade or movement outside of the fertile crescent. People were out there but they were not moving from their homes.

If you consider the original agricultural areas were separated by vast distances and people had no big need to move into unknown territory over hostile land.

Also consider the time frame I am talking about is before the wheel and before the domestication of working animals (horse, oxen) so travel would have been limited to gathering what was not grown and hunting what they did not have.

I'd still say that oral traditions from either 7000 BCE or 5600 BCE (the proposed times of the BSD occurring) to survive to the time of the composition of the Genesis (whether it to be Moses' time or later), to be extremely far-fetched.

Languages in the Neolithic period were hardly standardised, and would change frequently from generation to generation. The only chances for languages to remain fairly static for any amount of period, would require urbanization of the settlements. The more people that speak the one language in the Neolithic settlement, the most likely it could survive by the Bronze Age.

Given that floods occur frequently, it is quite possible that the Mesopotamian and Hebrew oral traditions relate to a flood closer to their own times than several thousand of years before the compositions of their respective flood myths.

And in any case, there are no evidences that the oral traditions relates to that of the occurrences of the Black Sea Deluge.

 

[outhouse]

there are no evidences that the oral traditions relates to that of the occurrences of the Black Sea Deluge

whats funny though is that with the sumarian story 2900BC predates the hebrew version BUT since the sumarians had writing and recorded the story, imagine that! its plausable it survived the 1900 years to meet up with the hebrew version

As to where the BSD predates writing by thousands of years and is only a hypothisis, the flood in 2900BC is a fact.

 

[waitasec]

oceanographers have seen land ridges connecting isolated land areas. The Mid-Atlantic is one such ridge and there could be many more ridges undiscovered yet where animals could have migrated before such ridges sank below the surface of the ocean. There is evidence of a huge South Pacific continent that took in Australia and many of the South Sea isles. If true, then, of course, the animals had no difficulty in migrating to these lands.

ok but what about after the flood....?
why is it, for instance kangaroos are only in australia?

and since they were drifting for a long period of time, how is it they didn't drift off to another region?

 

[gnostic]

There would be or should be trails of fossils or bone remains of kangaroos, from Mount Ararat, Turkey, to all the way to Australia, if you seriously believe in a biblical, global flood, pegg. There should be remains in Central Asia, possibly in South Asia (Indian subcontinent) and continental South-East Asia. There are none.

In fact, evidences of all animal migrations, large and small, should originate from Mount Ararat. According to the Genesis, Noah's Ark landed on the peak on one of Ararat mountains, presumably the highest peak, if you take the Genesis literally. But every little remains are found at this attitude.

And the supposed flood (of the bible) supposed to take place between 2340 BCE and 2104 BCE. There are no evidences of flood of the magnitude anywhere between those time, because many of the Sumerian/Akkadian and Egyptian civilisations were still flourishing, historically and archaeology.

If the flood happened in the 2nd half of 3rd millennium BCE, then archaeologically you would find devastation of the flood at that POINT OF TIME, in the Bronze Age cities and towns, and geological strata. No such devastation can be found.