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Gilgamesh And Genesis Religious Comparision Essay, Research Gilgamesh And Genesis Religious Comparision In our society, which is overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian, students often find it difficult to compare the Bible stories with tales from other cultures, because our own belief system is wrapped up in the former, and it is hard for many of us to achieve enough distance from these stories to evaluate them objectively. Yet ina comparison of the Biblical book of Genesis with the ancient Sumerian text Epic Gilgamesh, many parallels suggest that the same type of spiritual searching inspired the composition of both works. In addition, it would seem that both cultures shared a concern for the nature of human life, and how its brevity affects the way life should be lived. However, the conclusions each culture derived from their observations are very different, and this led them to develop very different philosophies of life.
Gilgamesh is an interesting document because it contains several episodes in common with the Judeo-Christian Bible. For example, John Nossnotes that The original flood story was Sumerian and came out of grim experiences of the overflowing of the two rivers [the Tigris and the Euphrates]. Several of the later versions of the tale, mostly fragmentary, have come down tous. The finest of these forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, into which it was inserted as an interesting interpolation. According to this narrative, the gods decided in anger to punish man s sins by a flood. their secret decision was revealed to one man.
The good god Ea felt kindly toward Utnapishtim[Gilgamesh s ancestor] and told him about it. The man proceeded immediately to build an ark (Noss, 38). Marietta Moskin agrees that many of the earliest Hebrew stories derived from the Sumerian. She writes that, The authors of Genesis surely must have looked around to see what other people thought about creation. And there was quite a lot. there were the Sumerian Seven Tablets of Creation; there was the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic... (Moskin, 30).
Thus the similarities should no surprise us right down to the reason God was supposed to have decided to destroy the earth by water. In the Biblical book of Genesis, the author tells us that: The earth was corrupt in god s sight, and the earth was filled with violence (Genesis 6: 11). Part of this, the Genesis author comments, was largely due to the fact that the human beings on the earthward become extremely sinful; The Lord saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and it grieved him to his heart (Genesis 6: 5). So he determined to kill all the people of the earth, saving only one family which had steadfastly maintained their righteousness. This, of course, was the family of Noah. The parallels between this story and that of Gilgamesh are too obvious to belabor.
However, several interesting points can be made here about the characteristics of Sumerian religion. For one, it is clear that, like most primitive peoples, the Sumerians took everyday happenings they observed occurring around them devastating floods, for example and elevated them into myth. the Hebrews did too. Secondly, the Sumerians plainly believed that their behavior as a society directly impacted their fate in other words, if they behaved badly the gods would punish them. Again, this belief underlies Mosaic law as well. And finally, like the Hebrews, Sumerians believed their gods had direct contact with man, in a manner specific enough to be able to impart instructions for building an ark.
This type of contact is made explicit in the passage where Gilgameshencounters the goddess Siduri-Sabitu at the cave by the sea that surrounds the world. Gilgamesh seeks entrance and is initially refused, but when he explains the nature of his quest she lets him in, only to explain why he was being foolish. In a beautiful passage she tells him to stop concentrating on death go homeland live. Thou, o Gilgamesh, let thy belly be filled! / Day and night be merry, /Daily celebrate a feast, / Day and night dance and make merry! / Clean be thy clothes, / Thy head be washed, bathe in water! / Look joyfully on the child that grasps thy hand, / Be happy with the wife in thine arms! (Gilgamesh, quoted in Noss, 39). John Noss observes that Here breathes the spirit of the people of Babylonia. They had no hopes such as the Egyptians had of pleasantness inthe world beyond.
All joy was in this life (Noss, 39). This cold fact became achingly real for Gilgamesh as he has to confront the death of his best friend and bosom companion Enkidu. After Enkidu s death, Gilgamesh is bereft, confused, and terrified. Together [Enkidu and I] endured all kinds of hardships... I have wept for him day and night, I would no give up his body for burial, I though my friend would come back because of my weeping (Gilgamesh, 32). He cannot deal with the fact that someone so dear to him, such a part of his life, should be so utterly gone.
Weeping, he cries out, When I die, shall I not be like Enkidu? Enkidu s death has become his own, not only because the joy of their lives together has been extinguished but because Gilgamesh has been brought face to face with his own mortality. When he dies, he will indeed be like Enkidu. Surely there must be some antidote to this terrible fate! Gilgameshdecides to embark on a long journey to seek out Utnapishtim and ask him home survived the great flood. His first leg of the journey involves descending into tunnel-like cave composed of nine leagues of total darkness (similar t re birthing experience).
This is frightening enough, but he goes on toward then of the tunnel, observing, Now that I have toiled and strayed so far over the wilderness, am I to sleep, and let the earth cover my hear for ever? Let my eyes see the sun until they are dazzled with looking. Although I am no better than add man, still let me see the light of the sun (Gilgamesh, 33). As we can see, Gilgamesh still plainly believes that this journey will bedworth it if immortality lies at the end. When Gilgamesh at last finds himself atlas in the presence of the ancient Utnapishtim and learns the story of the flood, however, it is clear to him that Utnapishtim has no secret that will confer immortality after all; it was a one-time gift of the gods, and not something available to mankind at large. Gilgamesh has been so keyed up over Enkidu s death ant the rigors of his recent journey that he is overcome with exhaustion.
He sleeps at Utnapishtim some for six days and seven nights, and wakes up complaining that he had scarcely fallen asleep when Utnapishtim woke him up. Gilgamesh is incredulous that he could have slept that long without even being aware of it, and Utnapishtim proves it to him from the mole on the bread that hadn t even been baked at the time Gilgamesh fell asleep. Gilgamesh immediately sees the correspondence between him dreamless sleep and death: What shall I do, O Utnapishtim? he asks.
Where shall I go? Already the thief in the night has hold of my limbs, death inhabits my room; wherever my foot rests, there I find death! (Gilgamesh, 40). Unfortunately, despite Utnapishtim s efforts to help, human beings are only allotted so much time, and when it s up, it s up. The message of Gilgamesh extols the happiness of this life, because for the Sumerians there was no other. The Hebrews shared this lack of belief in a paradise after death. This may come as a shock to many people of our own day, for whom the promise (or threat) of beatific or internal afterlife is their main rationale for behaving themselves, but there is no evidence in Genesis that the Jews of those ancient times believed that death brought them either punishment or reward.
On the contrary, Isaac Asimov notes that like many ancient peoples, early Jews seemed to believe that the dead crossed over into a land of shades. He writes that this underworld, which the Bible calls Sheol, was thought of at first as a dim place where the was no particular torture, but where there was an absence of joy. Norway there any distinction between good and evil; all human beings went thereupon death... (Asimov, 173). He adds that The moralization of Sheol, its conversion into a place of torture for the wicked, while the good go elsewhere, came later in history, toward the end of Old Testament times (Asimov, 173). Bible commentary edited by J. R.
Dummelow translates Sheol as the grave (Dummelow, 109), but Asimov prefers not to translate it at all, feeling that any connotation we might attach to it does not do justice to the Hebrews conception this sad and shadowy place. For obvious reasons, the Hebrews were in no great hurry to get to Sheol, any more than Gilgamesh had been in a hurry to become like Enkidu. we note Genesis 44 that as Joseph s brothers plead with him for return of their youngest brother Benjamin, they tell him that if the youth is not returned safely and soon, their father will die of grief, and [you] will bring down the gray hairs of... our father to Sheol (Genesis 44: 31). Clearly the Hebrews dreaded death, not because they feared the tortures of Hell, but because life was so much richer, and so terribly brief. The wish to remain alive is one that human beings share with animals, but only the human being recognizes what the alternative is.
According to the psychologist Ernest Becker, man recognizes instinctively that he is very different from the lower animals, because he alone shows evidence of a self-reflective consciousness. According to Becker, Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity... Yet at the same time, ...
man is a worm and food for worms. that is the paradox; man is out of nature and yet hopelessly in it (Becker, 26). this dilemma, according to Becker, forms the basis for our spiritual impulse an impulse which was sparked relatively early in the history of the human being. In both the epics of Gilgamesh and Genesis, written so long ago, threaded can clearly see an effort being made to come to terms with the complex issues and emotions surrounding the transitions of life and death. However, the Sumerians and the Hebrews seem to have taken different paths in terms of their response to this dilemma. Sumerians seem to have dealt with the inevitability of death through a glorification of being alive.
The Hebrews, on the other hand, found their own salvation in community and tradition, which insured an ongoing and consistent expression of faith despite the deaths of individual members and this still remains true today. In this way the Jewish faith is able to truly bridge life and death in a way that the Sumerian philosophy could no. Asimov, Isaac. Asimov s Guide to the Bible. (New York: Avenel) 1981. Becker, Ernest.
The Denial of Death. (New York: The Free Press) 1973. Bible. Revised Dummelow, J. R. A Commentary on The Holy Bible (New York: Macmillan) 1978 Epic of Gilgamesh Noss, John B. Man s Religions. (New York: Macmillan) Moskin, Marietta D.
In Search of God. (New York: Atheneum) 1979 1980
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