AUTHOR CLAIMS:
The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh dates back nearly 5,000 years and is thought to be perhaps the oldest written tale on the planet. In it, there is an account of the great sage Utnapishtim, who is warned of an imminent flood to be unleashed by wrathful gods. He builds a vast circular-shaped boat, reinforced with tar and pitch, that carries his relatives, grains and animals. After enduring days of storms, Utnapishtim, like Noah in Genesis, releases a bird in search of dry land.
IMPLICATION: The story of Genesis BORROWED from Gilgamesh.
Two flood stories.
Okay. So, that makes one of them untrue?
I think anyone that actually understands the bible knows that the stories in Genesis predate the book itself by many, many years.
I also see the stories of a great flood in other cultures as supporting evidence of the truth of the great flood story.
it doesn’t. all the flood stories are passed down from the REAL flood event described in the bible.
Don’t you just love the way that “Time” lumps complaints from Christians with “I kill you where you stand” threats from Muslims and outright “bans” of screenings in Muslim countries?
Last night I was dreaming of Mount Everest. Turned out I had to get up and take a dump.
Christians and Muslims - but no mention of the Jewish... Hmmm...
Anything to discount the Bible or marginalize it.
I hear this crap at least once a month from the people struggling with their relationship with God, The Creator.
Well, that seals it for me. Not only is the movie “the least biblical film ever made”, Noah is portrayed as the world’s “first environmentalist.” Why was the manbearpig not cast in the leading role?
Friends of mine walked out in 20 minutes after enduring the constant violence depicted.
God's directive, before and after is not presented. Nor the fact that it took 100 years for him to build it (instead of using fallen angels as in the movie).
The movie is disgusting.
This is a lie, the Biblical account is the oldest (even if Moses wasn’t the first to write it down).
http://creation.com/noahs-flood-and-the-gilgamesh-epic
“It makes more sense that Genesis was the original and the pagan myths arose as distortions of that original account. While Moses lived long after the event, he probably acted as the editor of far older sources.9 For example, Genesis 10:19 gives matter-of-fact directions, ‘as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim’. These were the cities of the plain God destroyed for their extreme wickedness 500 years before Moses. Yet Genesis gives directions at a time when they were well-known landmarks, not buried under the Dead Sea.
It is common to make legends out of historical events, but not history from legends. The liberals also commonly assert that monotheism is a late evolutionary religious development. The Bible teaches that mankind was originally monotheistic. Archaeological evidence suggests the same, indicating that only later did mankind degenerate into idolatrous pantheism.10
For instance, in Genesis, God’s judgment is just, he is patient with mankind for 120 years (Genesis 6:3), shows mercy to Noah, and is sovereign. Conversely, the gods in the Gilgamesh Epic are capricious and squabbling, cower at the Flood and are famished without humans to feed them sacrifices. That is, the human writers of the Gilgamesh Epic rewrote the true account, and made their gods in their own image.
The whole Gilgamesh-derivation theory is based on the discredited Documentary Hypothesis.9 This assumes that the Pentateuch was compiled by priests during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC. But the internal evidence shows no sign of this, and every sign of being written for people who had just come out of Egypt. The Eurocentric inventors of the Documentary Hypothesis, such as Julius Wellhausen, thought that writing hadn’t been invented by Moses’ time. But many archaeological discoveries of ancient writing show that this is ludicrous.”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html
“The stories below are flood stories from the world’s folklore. I have included stories here if (1) they are stories; (2) they are folklore, not historical accounts or fiction by a known author; and (3) they involve a flood. In most borderline cases, I included the story here anyway. For example, one story (Hopi) tells of a flood which was avoided and never occurred.
My method for collecting these stories is simply to collect every flood story I find. I have omitted a few extremely fragmentary accounts, such as sources that say “These people have a legend of a flood in which most people were killed” and little or nothing more. The stories are summarized both to save space and to avoid copyright infringements, but I have attempted to preserve all the motifs and all the names that were given in the cited account. However, where the story gives intricate account of events before and/or after the flood (such as in the Zhuang story of Bubo vs. the Thunder God), some of the details peripheral to the flood itself may have been summarized out of existence. In a few cases, two or more overlapping and non-contradictory fragments from the same culture were combined into one summary. Complete references are given at the end; consult them for more details.
Within each continent or region, stories are grouped by language family. See Language Grouping for Flood Stories for elaboration of the language groups which, as best I can determine, the stories belong to.”
(It looks like LOTS of cultures have residual memories of The Flood. Well over 100 people groups listed here. Some had better methods of writing them down and preserving them. )
Manu, in the Hindu Vedas, is taught as the primordial Noah.
Personally, I believe all of the religions are talking about the same event, and probably the same people.
The Mayan civilization, on the other side of the planet, had a flood story as well.
From what I can tell, the most recent flood story is the story in Genesis. Perhaps it is correcting all of the others?
The other flood stories have squabbling gods and mankind is delivered by his own strength and cunning. In the Genesis story, mankind is delivered by God.
Forget flood myths, here in New Mexico mere rain is a myth.
A lot of very interesting info in the posts. Thanks.
In all fairness, trying to create a timeline for Noah is pretty ridiculous. Even the most established timeline, that of the ancient Egypt, from around 3150 BC to the early ADs, has lots of gaps. It is not unusual to have hundred year periods rewritten based on new information.
Before Egypt, all history is pretty nebulous. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh account is for around 2700 BC, long after Egypt was founded; but inexplicably it is suggested that it predates Noah, when even at face value, it may have been based on Noah.
What is known is that about 7500 years ago, 5,500 BC, an ice age was ending and the seas were rising. Suddenly the Mediterranean crossed a threshold, and a vast amount of water began pouring into the Sea of Marmara, and thence, into the Black Sea, right by what today is Istanbul.
Much of the world’s population lived around the Black Sea, and its water level grew so fast that what had been dry land one year was under a hundred meters of water the next, though whether it took days or months is unknown.
Anyone who thought they could escape the rising waters on what to them was high ground would have been sorely mistaken.
It would make sense that the story of Noah could have taken place around 5,500 BC, but this pushes Biblical history far back in time, as well as moving its early geography far north.
Just know this: you're all wrong. All of you.