Posted on 04/08/2010 8:15:01 PM PDT by truthfinder9
Maybe the Epic of Gilgamesh was a modified retelling of the actual account of the flood
In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within a short space:
Gen. 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;...These were seven days of intense light, generated by some major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:Gen. 7:10 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth."
"...Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days..."
Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".
It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. It may not say so directly, but the ages given in Genesis 5 along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:
Gen. 5:25 ->"And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.
<i.e. he lived 969 - 187 = 782 years after Lamech's birth>
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son. And he called his name Noah...
<182 + 600 = 782 also...>
Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; seven days prior to the flood...
Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT.
From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:
...however, Lekah, Gen. 7.4) BR 3.6 (in the week of mourning for Methuselah, God caused the primordial light to shine).... God did not wish Methuselah to die at the same time as the sinners...
The reference is, again, to Gen. 7.4, which reads:
"For yet seven days, and I shall cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights..."
The note that "God did not wish Methusaleh to die at the same time as the sinners" indicates that Methusaleh died at pretty nearly precisely the beginning of the week prior to the flood. The week of "God causing the primordial lights to shine" was the week of intense light before the flood.
What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.
The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc. Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the memory of the seven days prior to the flood.
If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the storyteller (isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the population, and never included in the OT story directly.
Greek and Roman authors, particularly Hesiod and ovid, Chinese authors and others, note that small groups of men and animals survived the flood on high places and on anything which could float for a year. I do not see an essential contradiction between this and the biblical account. Noah's descendants were probably unaware of anybody else surviving and wrote the story that way.
About 4,800 years ago, a large asteroid or comet impacted in the Indian Ocean, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high. This may be the origin of the stories of both Gilgamesh and Noah.
Did you read the article?
The article is saying the Bible is true.
Now we await trial by fire.
Genesis and Gilgamesh provide accounts of the same event. That there are similarities should be expected when describing the same event. Just because Gilgamesh predates Genesis doesn’t mean the Genesis account was copied from Gilgamesh.
It’s the other way around.
The story itself is true; the standard religious interpretation of it being a divine punishment against the entire world you could take or leave, my own choice is to leave it.
The flood happened 11,500 years ago.
You seem pretty confident on that dating.
Point is Satan lied and mankind died. Nothing has changed under the sun. We must serve God not Satan.
I think the Noahic flood was the second of God’s such judgements on the earth. “ And darkness was on the face of the deep”. Deep what? Deep water? Is that when the dinosaurs perished, perhaps?
Does that explain why those fossils are on this planet yet were not living creatures included on the ark?
I’m not the first to subscribe.
Greater Biblical scholars contemplated this before us.
When God gave the rainbow as the sign He would not destroy the earth with water again, did it mean He had only done it once before? Check it out and read slowly.
Or possibly a glacial ice dam breaking up ???
Check this out:
http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/
Yup... (the actual account being described in the Bible).
Myself, I believe the original tale goes much further back, and describes the flooding of the Mediterranean basin when the Gibraltar land bridge broke.
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