Noah vs. Utnapishtim (Bible and Gilgamesh)

there were a lot of CAPITALS in your last post
I'm worried about you Syracuse
the Bible will do that to a person you know
try to stay away from God for a little while and you'll feel better

Originally posted by syracuse
Point-by-point the Hebrews _refute, deny and challenge_ the Mesopotamian creation-of-man myths.

I liked your post and i looked past the obvious "my god is better than your god" insinuation...

But your last line seems to be just thrown in for the fun of it. Nothing you say refutes /deny (and most of all) challenge the Sumerian Myth?

How do you "challange / refute / deny" a myth?
Most likely the Hebrews rewrote it to fit their ideals.

i liked the bit where he said that the mesopotamians understood that man was just a slave and the Hebrews took the opposite view
thats so different from whats being claimed for YHWH
1500bce slaves in egypt
500bce slaves in babylon

seems the only thing YHWH likes of his people is that theyre slaves for someone
maybe that way he finds them less demanding

Originally posted by syracuse
The earliest allusion to the Mesopotamian Flood found in the Epics of Atrahasis and Gilgamesh is circa 1600 BC. This date is interesting as some Conservative Bible scholars understand Moses wrote Genesis and the Flood account and he is understood to have done this during teh Exodus dated by Catholics at circa 1512 BC and Protestants at 1446 BC (a hundred years or less than the earliest Mesopotamian account of ca. 1600 BC).

Most of the poems of this epic were already written down in the first centuries of the second millenium BCE, but probably existed in much the same form many centuries earlier.

The Sumerian king list established a Gilgamesh as fifth in line of the First Dynasty of kingship of Uruk following the great flood recorded in the epic, placing him approximately in the latter half of the third millennium.

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Added LINK

[edit on 27/11/06 by masqua]

re: Questions -

Originally posted by Shane

1: Where is the Ark?
Under our feet.

2: Who was on it?
A better question may be, "What was in it?" It contained the planetary genes and archetypal ideas that the earth alone was capable of holding.

3: Where did they Go?
When the "ark" rested in dense matter (Mount Ararat ("the mount of descent"); Mount Nisir (Babylonian "ark"); Mount Himalaya (Hindu "ark"); Mount Parnassus (Greek "ark); etc.) so did everything that was contained within. This was the point in the myth that the earth was created and divided into Involution and Evolution and its respective "planes".
That's why post-deluge we no longer find the "saintly" Noah who "walked with God" but the naked, drunken, son-cursing Noah; the naked earth. This is the classic blueprint for all creation mythology, except the deceptive priestcraft of the Jews personified the true nature of Causation and named it "racial history" asserting that the human race sprang from the Jews... and a credulous humanity, not knowing any better, accepts it as such.

4: Who did Shems decendants become?
"Ham" represents the etheric element and "Ham" is the father of "Canaan" (the mythic name for "matter" or the earth itself). Since mythically suns transmute the etheric into the chemical, "Shem" is the next step down into matter (or a sun becoming an earth) - Shem or Chem.
The numerous descendants of "Noah's sons" were not "races" the divisions of the earth itself. Josephus, as credulous as he was, asserts a literal belief that three Jews, "Ham, Shem and Japheth," spread throughout the continents and fathered the entire (post-deluge) human race.

5: Where did Abraham Live?
Abraham never "lived". "Abraham", like Adam and Noah, is just another personification of the Creative Principle. Many Jewish scholars admit that the stories of Adam, Cain, and Noah are mythology yet claim that when we get to the story of Abraham we begin the "historical" part of their "racial history". How does a book of mythology suddenly become history? It doesn't. The bible itself Joshua (chp 24 v2,3) shows us that "Abraham" was BEFORE "Noah". Verse 3 says that Abraham was taken from the other side of the flood (prephysical planes) and led throughout the land of Canaan (the physical). This places Abraham in the realm of mythology.
Esoterically, Abraham is Noah.

5: Where did Abraham Live?
He didn't (see above).

6: What was he?
A personification of the Creative Principle (just like Noah).

Originally posted by syracuse
The "capricious reason" was that the Sumerian god Enlil (Akkadian Ellil) at Nippur objected to mankind's noise...

The descrepency between the Mesopotamian account (which rightfully accuses the "gods") and the Hebrew account (which wrongfully accuses humanity), is that the "Mesopotamian" account is a purer form of creation mythology employed in order to enlighten ancient humanity while the "Hebrew" account is a perverted plagerism of a common creation myth that has been used to by their priestcraft to control humankind (or at least the believers).

It is a case of the Hebrew plagerists either not understanding the myths they were plagerizing or a case of intentional deception and misrepresentation for more diabolic purposes.

The descrepency between the Mesopotamian account (which rightfully accuses the "gods") and the Hebrew account (which wrongfully accuses humanity), is that the "Mesopotamian" account is a purer form of creation mythology

actually the version from which the Hebrew story is derived specifically is the Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh: -
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.

Genesis 7
8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth

Gilgamesh
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.

Genesis 7
7 And he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth

the Akkadian version accuses humanity of being noisy
whereas the Hebrew version accuses mankind of being sinful
in both cases neccesitating a flood to wash them away
iirc the Sumerian version has a flood because mankind has become too numerous

in any case
the Akkadian epic of Giglamesh is a pastich of earlier stories all blended together into one narrative
it was never designed as a holy text

whatever the case the fact that the Hebrews decided that the first book of the Bible shoul contain extracts from Enlils nefarious flood leads to only one conclusion
that YWHW and Jehova after him are both based on a "pagan" God who ceased to be worshipped with the advent of the Babylonian civilisation

Enlil wasn't very popular with Babylonians for the very reason that he once tried to wash away mankind
for this reason he was a natural choice for the Hebrews who weren't exactly enamoured of their captors when they were enslaved wholesale during the babylonian captivity during which period the Hebrew Bible was actually collated from texts freely available to them at the library of Nineveh
ce la vie

Marduk, shame on you.

Telling the Christians that their faith is based upon substantiated historical fact? (You know they hate it when you do that.)

I didn' tell them that
I proved that Christianity and the religion it is based on namely Judaism is based on what the Catholics themselves named paganism
and that the God they worship and indeed any god who was said to have sent a great deluge is in fact Enlil the flood God of ole mesopotamia

Originally posted by Marduk
I didn' tell them that
I proved that Christianity and the religion it is based on namely Judaism is based on what the Catholics themselves named paganism
and that the God they worship and indeed any god who was said to have sent a great deluge is in fact Enlil the flood God of ole mesopotamia

As I said, they hate it when you do that.

I like it most when you point out that the "Great Flood" covered a much, much smaller area than the "entire earth". All riled up. Good times. Good times.

say...............

didnt Ashurbanipal supposedly claim to be able to read pre-flood writings?

too bad we cant ask him about all this, eh.

nope he didnt
heres what he actually said

"I Ashurbanipal acquired the wisdom of Nabu, learned all the knowledge of writing of all the scribes, as many as there were, and learned how to shoot with the bow, to ride on horses and in chariots and to hold the reins"

what you seem to have heard is a version of that statement that appears on creationist websites which normally runs

'I Ashur-bani-pal, within the palace, learned the wisdom of Nebo, the entire art of writing on clay tablets of every kind. I made myself master of the various kinds of writing. . .I read the beautiful clay tablets from Sumer and the Akkadian writing, which is hard to master. I had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from the time before the flood.’

of course they have added the claim that he could read tablets from before the flood because according to them these tablets can date from no older than around 3000bce which is the date they have for Noah

the british museum catalogue states that on most of the more important tablets at the library of Nineveh which Ashurbanipal created appears the following text

'The palace of Ashur-Ban-l-Pal, King of Hosts, King of Assyria, who putteth his trust in the gods Ashur and Belit, on whom Nabu and Tashmetu have bestowed ears which hear and eyes which see. I have inscribed upon tablets the noble products of the scribe, which none of the kings who have gone before me had learned, together with the wisdom of Nabu so far as it existeth '."

so basically hes claiming that he could read Sumerian
there is in fact no evidence of this at all and in fact lots to the contrary
as he was the worlds first library director he employed semitic scribes who's job it was to translate ancient tablets into Assyrian and Babylonian so that there were three copies of each tablet in the library
thesedays when we can read sumerian perfectly its very apparent that most of the translation done by these scribes were way off
this explains many of the religious mistakes where early Judaism collated its book from these tablets
the old testament is a plaguirised version of many of these stories
and not just that
its very badly copied as well

Originally posted by EdenKaia
Noah's Ark was built over a long, realistic period of time, Utnapishtim's Ark was built in a matter of days. Noah's Ark was built logically to withstand the pressure and force of viscious waves for a long period of time. Viewing the dimensions, Utnapishtim's Ark would have been cubed shaped,

Hmmm, not sure how 'logical' the boat (practical) it was when the claim states that a sample of all the animal species were on board. (minus the fish )

So, maybe its a parable...a deeper teaching, much like Judaism says about the bible.
P.R.D.S. (The different levels of understanding)

Even Jesus used parables, a common thing in Judaism/original Christianity.

Now this is my thought on the matter, but in light of all the talk of demons/angels - u.f.o./aliens, creation myths and alien seeding, etc. --- I would tend to think that perhaps, as a 'parable' the idea of the cubed shape ark of Utnapishtims makes sense.

It was a place of 'storage'. Probably not much unlike what the guys in Norway (i believe) are currently doing. They are building a 'seed bank' for all the varieties of food on earth in the case of a cataclysmic event.

Now take this and think of having a dna/genetic database to 'clone' and restart the earth...makes more sense then carrying animals...lot more space in tiny place.

So their ark may not seem practical if a boat...but looking at the collective thought of the beginning, it makes sense. Again, many may think that man was not intelligent...but if 'aliens'/watcher/angels, whatever, lived here seeded the planet...well, I have said what I had to say - you all can come to your own conclusions.

[edit on 2-3-2007 by dAlen]

So their ark may not seem practical if a boat...but looking at the collective thought of the beginning, it makes sense. Again, many may think that man was not intelligent...but if 'aliens'/watcher/angels, whatever, lived here seeded the planet...well, I have said what I had to say - you all can come to your own conclusions

I have come to my own conclusion
and anyone who has come to any other is missing one simple fact
the ark of Upnapishtim wasn't the first in recorded history
this was the ark of Ziusudra
the earliest flood hero written about from Mesopotamia
Upnapishtim was Akkadian from around 2000bce
Noah was Hebrew from around 600bce
if you don't know what the Ark of Ziusudra was made from which dates from pre 3000bce then your speculation is likely to be completely wrong
Enki on being ordered not to warn mankind makes use of the lamest loophole in the history of warnings
he goes over to Ziusudras house and tells the wall about the oncoming danger

Wall, listen constantly to me!
Reed hut, make sure you attend to all my words!
Dismantle the house, build a boat . . .

so the earliest Ark was made from a house made of reeds
there are no measurements given for this Ark
it is described as a huge boat in the translation but the original text actually doesnt say that

ĝišma2 gur4-gur4 a gal-la im-ḫul tuku4-tuku4-a-ta

this is the relevant line
it actually translates directly as

boat thick water big destructive storm shook

and is usually transliterated as:-
"the big thick boat (huge) went out in the destructive storm"

when its original meaning was
"the boat went out in the deep water into the big destructive storm"

it has been translated into a judao christian viewpoint
translators were expecting it to be a huge ship so translated it as one
when in fact
it was little more than a raft which as the text states quite clearly was made from the walls of a reed hut
the next story along has a ship
the one after that has the huge ark of Noah
this is quite normal in stories that are told and retold over millenia

so its a raft made out of the walls of a reed hut
theres no advanced technology so no dna storage facility
theres no huge ship so no two of every animal
theres just a story
which got exaggerated until all the elements were different
the flood hero started off as a sumerian and ended upo as a hebrew
the god who sent the flood was the head of a pantheon which contained hundreds of gods and ended up as the only god in a monotheitic religion
and the boat that survived the flood changed from a raft into something which quite clearly is impossible. a plank built ark claimed in a time when no one knew what a plank built ship was
but what did you expect
the story of Noah is a religious text supposed to teach you a moral story
you're not supposed to take it literally word for word
if you don't believe that
then go ask a Rabbi
he'll tell you the same thing
its the lesson thats important
not the details

clearly
you other theorists have forgotten the lesson
and are now making it up as you go along





[edit on 2-3-2007 by Marduk]

Hmmm, not sure how 'logical' the boat (practical) it was when the claim states that a sample of all the animal species were on board. (minus the fish

) Now this is my thought on the matter, but in light of all the talk of demons/angels - u.f.o./aliens, creation myths and alien seeding, etc. --- I would tend to think that perhaps, as a 'parable' the idea of the cubed shape ark of Utnapishtims makes sense.

First off, you are taking that all out of context. The purpose of that post was to demonstrate the seaworthiness of the two arks of Noah and Utnapishtim. I never once claimed the story had to have happened that way, or that it is logical at all to assume that two of each animal would be able to fit. Go back and read the dimensions offered in Genesis, and then those offered in the epic. You will come to similar conclusions. A cubed shaped boat of that size would not have been able to withstand the turbulant waves of an ocean storm, without throwing everyone within around like a rag doll. The Ark of Noah, however, would have been much more seaworthy.

This is not to say that Noah's story is the one we should believe, but rather that those who told it would have taken into account the Ark of the Sumerian tale not being all that believable, and adjusted accordingly.

Originally posted by EdenKaia
The purpose of that post was to demonstrate the seaworthiness of the two arks of Noah and Utnapishtim.

A cubed shaped boat of that size would not have been able to withstand the turbulent waves of an ocean storm,...

Ah, but my point was why there may be such an odd description of a boat. (i.e. being a 'cube')

My point was that perhaps, the older text, in its parable format, was closer to describing an aspect of the truth than the latter tale...or again, it gave more 'hints' as to the true nature.

Kind of like what Norway is doing with the arctic vault for a doomsday scenario



Arctic - ark-tic
vault - box - cube shaped

could the 'ark' be in the 'Arctic' and had a similar purpose to the one in the link above.
It would make sense as to how to get all 'samples' of each animal of earth 'onboard' if its tubes of 'dna'/'genetic' info vs. the full size crocodile.

Peace

dAlen

[edit on 4-3-2007 by dAlen]

did you actually read my entirely factual post or are were you too busy watching the sci fi channel

reply to post by Prot0n


Amen

I think both the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and the Hebrews inherited the Flood story or knowledge of the Flood from the Phoenicians and Scythians, and the story had very little or, more likely, nothing at all to do with the people, societies or nations that made the story popular.

As the Phoenicians and Scythians are the most ancient of all the earths inhabitants and the Phoenicians are the only verifiable sea-faring people (spending a year at sea takes a lot more knowledge than simply building a boat), even into the modern age, it is not even likely that any Sumerian, a land and river based society, had direct knowledge of the events and they most likely probably stole the story and passed it off as their own.

The best option would be to look for an Phoenician or Scythian version of the story. You can probably find one buried in the deepest, darkest corner of the Vatican library or similiar facility.

That would be pretty hard as the Sumerians date from the end of the 4th to beginning of the 3rd millenium BC while the Phoenicians and Scythians are both 2nd millenium BC based.

cormac