Topic: Epic of Gilgamesh
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Wed 12/10/08 04:08 PM
whose read it?

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Wed 12/10/08 04:09 PM
what

Moondark's photo
Wed 12/10/08 04:10 PM
Keep meaning to get myself a copy of that.

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Wed 12/10/08 04:33 PM
the epic of gilgamesh is the first book ever recorded in history. it was written by the mesopotamians and what it is about is it is the earliest recorded version of religion, specifically the story of Noah. its about these two gods, one of them who wants to kill off the human race because they are annoying and another who wants to save them because he thinks the other god is being irrational.

so the god who wants to save the humans tells gilgamesh that the god is going to kill off the humans with a flood so he should build a boat. on this boat he should put two animal of every kind, and his kin. everyone else is going to die. it then rains for six days, and the boat ends up on top of a mountain, he sends out three birds to find land, and they all come back except for the last one.


basically it undermines the story of noah, showing that religion is fake.

keepthehope's photo
Thu 12/11/08 02:27 AM

the epic of gilgamesh is the first book ever recorded in history. it was written by the mesopotamians and what it is about is it is the earliest recorded version of religion, specifically the story of Noah. its about these two gods, one of them who wants to kill off the human race because they are annoying and another who wants to save them because he thinks the other god is being irrational.

so the god who wants to save the humans tells gilgamesh that the god is going to kill off the humans with a flood so he should build a boat. on this boat he should put two animal of every kind, and his kin. everyone else is going to die. it then rains for six days, and the boat ends up on top of a mountain, he sends out three birds to find land, and they all come back except for the last one.


basically it undermines the story of noah, showing that religion is fake.



Or proving that it's not, because all the stories like that are based on some sort of fact, and seems to me that backs up the fact of a flood, and a large boat, that ended up on a mountain, the birds, etc. Most religions even have similar stories, based off a real event then just changed the story to make it fit the way they wanted to believe.

Eljay's photo
Thu 12/11/08 09:46 AM

the epic of gilgamesh is the first book ever recorded in history. it was written by the mesopotamians and what it is about is it is the earliest recorded version of religion, specifically the story of Noah. its about these two gods, one of them who wants to kill off the human race because they are annoying and another who wants to save them because he thinks the other god is being irrational.

so the god who wants to save the humans tells gilgamesh that the god is going to kill off the humans with a flood so he should build a boat. on this boat he should put two animal of every kind, and his kin. everyone else is going to die. it then rains for six days, and the boat ends up on top of a mountain, he sends out three birds to find land, and they all come back except for the last one.


basically it undermines the story of noah, showing that religion is fake.


That's a stretch. It doesn't "undermine the story of Noah - it merely borrows from it. Do you think the movie "West Side Story" undermined that of the play "Romeo and Juliet", proving it never existed?

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Thu 12/11/08 09:49 AM
yep it IS a stretch. be careful not to read preconceptions into things

it undermines Noah no more than Hammurabi undermines the Magna Carta

Britty's photo
Thu 12/11/08 04:47 PM
I have read the story of Gilgamesh.

In December 1853, Hormuzd Rassam, assistant to Henry Layard who had begun the dig at Nimrud in 1845, excavated the palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh and did not realize what he had found until they were translated by a George Smith at the British museum.

There is also another story that contains details about a flood – the Atrahasis Epic. There is debate over which story came first, the Atrahasis Epic or Gilgamesh. In either case it is recognized that the Atrahasis epic is probably the version edited from various materials. So it appears there is an older version from which both accounts derived.

One thing I noticed in the Gilgamesh flood story –the boat seems to be a cube which seems a bit odd for a seaworthy vessel.



no photo
Fri 12/12/08 12:07 PM
the epic of gilgamesh was written before noah. noah borrowed from the epic of gilgamesh, not the other way around.

in the epic of gilgamesh, there are multiple gods. in the story of noah, there is only one. how did it go from there being multiple gods, to there being only one?