I do apologize for being gone so long. Been crazy busy.
MatthewLee wrote:Aron Ra (or anyone else who would like to discuss this topic):I know that you won’t be around for a bit so I will start posting evidence for the basic point I would like to start with if that is agreeable. I will start a new thread for this if it is more appropriate so please let me know and I will do so as needed.
I will limit it to one meta-point at a time, with accompanying sub argumentation. I think this will help until we have really had a chance to read and respond to each other’s points for sake of clarity and courtesy. Whenever you have time I will be glad to see your response. I will begin with the above-mentioned point.
I believe the first time I heard this point was in your video “Evolution of Genesis” (Timestamp 20:20) and I made note of it as interesting. Given the depth of your presented evidence there I do not presume to state things you don’t know but rather I am just laying out what my evidence led me to believe. Your video actually made me want to read Gilgamesh and start to get an idea of the layout of the text and it’s historical links to other Near East Traditions. I say again with a deeper shade of meaning that, in fact, my debates with you and with other atheists have really taught me a lot. There are few things I find more enjoyable or more rewarding than reading ancient mythology and Scriptures for content.
Of course, the more I researched the more I heard the recurrent theme in scholarship of disagreement. Some scholars believe there is a connection between the two stories and others fervently disagree. It is reasonable to make the assertion that there is a connection, but I hold with the scholars who disagree. I’d like to lay out a bit of supplementary info as to where this fits into the Epic of Gilgamesh tablets and also make a comparison of the characters. It is my tentative assertion that under scrutiny of the text the differences begin to make the similarity between the stories less probable and therefore suggest that Genesis may not be referencing these characters and icons. Your quote from the former discussion was:
“The character of the serpent was adapted from the story of Lilith and Huluppu tree, as you probably already knew. She lived in a tree in the sacred garden of Inanna with ‘the Serpent who could not be tamed’. Gilgamesh came walking through the sacred garden just as Yahweh did in Genesis 3:8, carrying a flaming sword like the one mentioned in Genesis 3:24. This is where part of that legend came from, at least the part with the snake.”
So I read your proposal that the similar elements indicating a relation the two stories would be the tree, the garden, the snake, the walking anthropomorphized deity, and the flaming sword.
The best versions I have read all say that the poem entitled sometimes “In the first days, the very first days”, “In those days, in those far-off days“, “Inanna, Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree” and others by the greater narrative of the tablet “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the nether world”. The poem is supposed to fit in around the twelfth tablet. I don’t think it was an original part of the epic but was supplemental. It is important to note that we are citing translations of broken and battered tablets full of lacunae in a language that is still being discovered. They add to their interpretations all the time. I believe that Sumerian, Akkadian and the derivative forms of the diverse languages expressed in their scripts have not been really understood in any significant way for much longer than since the middle of the 19th century. To me this seems to mean that it is difficult to make any clear and lasting parallels because the translations all are so wildly different based on the opinions of the translators.
Here is a link to the texts I started with
A: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1814.htm
B: http://jewishchristianlit.com/Texts/ANE ... 2.html#FN1
The first link is The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (“The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature is based at the University of Oxford. Its aim is to make accessible, via the World Wide Web, over 400 literary works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennia BC.”
The second is an incorporated translation by “Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer (1983)Samuel Noah Kramer (1938)”
In the dramatis personae/plantae of the text we have Gilgamesh, Inanna, Lillith (also rendered lillitu), the serpent, the Anzu Bird (with several different names), and the Huluppu tree.
Point 1: Gilgamesh is a bit of a confusing character to me. He is listed on the Sumerian Kings List and is considered a divine ruler but not a full-fledged deity on his own. I believe the kings list has him ruling for over a hundred years.
The problem there is with the sexegesimal numeric system. It appears to be a sliding scale such that one can get an accurate age by dividing by twelve or sometimes by ten, or sometimes not even then. I asked an expert about this and he said it was too complicated to explain in email. Instead he said I should read his book,
Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth. I started to, but I haven't come to that part yet. I mention this a bit after after ten minutes into in my video on
How Archaeology Disproves Noah's Flood. If you're interested, that video is part of a series, "
How AronRa Disproves Noah's Flood".
Funny story about that playlist. Someone shared one of these videos on a Christian forum a few days ago, and the flood of stupid has since breached the levy. I'm getting comments that read like a class full of special-education kindergartners who've just been told that there's no Santa.
He is best described as a demigod by the accounts I have read of him and the epic seems to describe him that way. I cannot see a parallel between Gilgamesh and Yahweh because Yahweh is a full fledged alpha and Omega type God (even if we take into the account the idea that he might have been a Canaanite war God) and Gilgamesh is only some portion deity. He seems to represent the Near Eastern Tradition of Kings saying… “I’m God and you’ll worship me that way” and then making art that reflects this.
That seems a fair assessment. Lots of kings claimed divinity despite the fact that the Sumerian King List even says that the kingship descended from Heaven so many reigns ago. All these kings would have worshiped El, including GIlgamesh.
I don't remember Gilgamesh ever describing himself as a god. Remember that the whole point of that story was Gilgamesh trying to beat his own mortality after witnessing the death of his boyfriend, Enkidu.
It's worth noting by the way that he succeeded. Gilgamesh is the earliest biography there is. We still know of his life and loves nearly 5,000 years later. Not bad for a guy seeking immortality.
I believe the nature of the character would discourage me from interpreting him as like Yahweh walking through the garden. Although, I can see how the elements could be seen to be overlaid in the simple narrative context. His presence seems ancillary and his actions more human. He doesn’t use godly power… he uses an axe. I don’t think Yahweh used an ax. Although that would have been really cool.
We start with GIlgamesh carrying a sax (I'm told that's a sword, not an axe) and then a thousand years or so later, the story has changed such that the lord of the garden has given the flaming sword to his minions, the cherubim.
Also, and this is trivial, I don’t recall reading that he was walking through the garden. Is there a citation that supports this assertion?
"Tablet XII" is not part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is a later Assyrian Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian poem of
Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld. It does not say that Gilgamesh is walking through the garden. Instead, that part of the tale begins with Gilgamesh already there and carrying his "axe of the road".
Point 2: The Goddess: “Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. She later became identified by the Akkadians and Assyrians as the goddess Ishtar, and further with the Hittite Sauska, the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, among many others.”
Ancient History Encyclopedia
This casts some doubt, in my mind, on the connection between her and the first human woman in the Genesis account. The idea of it being a holy garden is a point in common, though, but it seems only a glancing blow. The tree didn’t start out in this garden, either. It was actually uprooted and taken there and planted so as to let it grow and fatten to make more wood for the bed and the throne…
“70-78"At that time, there was a single tree, a single halub tree, a single tree (?), growing on the bank of the pure Euphrates, being watered by the Euphrates. The force of the south wind uprooted it and stripped its branches, and the Euphrates picked it up and carried it away. I, a woman, respectful of An's words, was walking along; I, a woman, respectful of Enlil's words, was walking along, and took the tree and brought it into Unug, into holy Inana's luxuriant garden.”
I guess I'm missing the "point" of your second point. If it is that the Bible is not an identical copy of any of these myths, then maybe you missed the point, because it wouldn't be. The argument is that all of these superfluous but previously thought to be unique details are already there, but not the core importance of them which was obviously written in later. That's what happens when all the old stories are adapted to a new religion.
Point 3:
From A: The serpent is where we have to start looking at the interpretations of the text carefully…
“At its roots, a snake immune to incantations made itself a nest. In its branches, the Anzud bird settled its young. In its trunk, the phantom maid built herself a dwelling, the maid who laughs with a joyful heart. But holy Inana (1 ms. has instead: I, holy Inana,) cried!”
From B: ““Then a serpent who could not be charmed
Made its nest in the roots of the tree,
The Anzu-bird set his young in the branches of the tree,
And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.
“I wept.
How I wept!
(Yet they would not leave my tree.)”
I don’t recall the snake being female but I have no good reference for the Akkadian word and cannot conclusively say the gender of the noun used.
The idea of the snake being female didn't come from this fable but rather from a Talmudic legend, which itself was adapted from this story, and then adapted again by the Jews, before being accommodated by Medieval Christians. In that story, the serpent wasn't just a companion of Lilith's but an incarnation of hers: returning to seek vengeance against the younger woman, Eve. This is why virtually every rendering by all the Christian artists of the Renaissance depict the serpent in the garden as a woman.
Also, the text seems to suggest that the snake was not anthropomorphized in this poem. It wasn’t evil or good and it did not speak. It seems to have just been a snake which troubled the Goddess.
That's because this is the earliest version of the story, before the serpent was recast as Lilith and then later recast again as Satan.
The addition of the other elements also seems to discourage overlaying the stories as far as the serpent goes. It seems after a few readings that in this story we are talking about symbolism which might have been rich and meaningful to the people it was written for with metaphors lost to time and in translation.
Ironically the same is true about the 3rd version of this story, the one in Genesis. It too was obviously entirely metaphorical and never meant to be taken as literal.
This means that the serpent perhaps had other qualities not indicated by the text or that the readers may have known as cultural memes long lost. I haven’t found any analogues to it in the epic but I am a still looking. The differences in the interpretations seem to indicate this as well because in the A translation we see a snake who was immune to incantations (which means Inanna could not have simply used her powers to dislodge it from the tree) and in the B one we see a snake immune to charms. I would have to know something about Inanna’s perceived powers and duties to really know if there was a connection there to the snake in genesis. There is a complete lack of the serpent trying to convince her of anything or any kind of fall.
That trope didn't come until the serpent was re-cast as one of Lilith's disguises.
He only seems to want to delay her from making a bed and a throne from the tree. She seems quite bothered by this. There is an interesting parallel here to Jeremiah 8:17
17"For behold, I am sending serpents against you, Adders, for which there is no charm, And they will bite you," declares the LORD.”
Obviously snake charming has a greater linguistic significance which may mean a grand metaphor where the prophet is speaking of a nation or problem that will not be solved or expelled by any Earthly means without divine assistance. The snake may not have been a snake at all but an idiom.
So, if it was a literal snake the two stories cannot be derivative. and if it was a metaphorical snake then ostensibly it would seem we were talking about an idiom that doesn’t match up. The serpent in the garden may have been derived from an earlier tradition but if so a cursory investigation of the text of this poetry seems to disagree with it being that source.
Here is the complete passage from the two translations I used:
From A:
“"The woman planted the tree with her feet, but not with her hands. Inana watered it using her feet but not her hands. She said: "When will this be a luxuriant chair on which I can take a seat?" She said: "When will this be a luxuriant bed on which I can lie down?" Five years, ten years had gone by, the tree had grown massive; its bark, however, did not split. At its roots, a snake immune to incantations made itself a nest. In its branches, the Anzud bird settled its young. In its trunk, the phantom maid built herself a dwelling, the maid who laughs with a joyful heart. But holy Inana (1 ms. has instead: I, holy Inana,) cried!" In the matter which his sister had told him about, her brother, the warrior Gilgamec, stood by her.
136-150He strapped (1 ms. has instead: ......) his ...... belt of 50 minas weight to his waist -- 50 minas were to him as 30 shekels. He took his bronze axe used for expeditions, which weighs seven talents and seven minas, in his hand. He killed the snake immune to incantations living at its roots. The Anzud bird living in its branches took up its young and went into the mountains. The phantom maid living in its trunk left (?) her dwelling and sought refuge in the wilderness. As for the tree, he uprooted it and stripped its branches, and the sons of his city, who went with him, cut up its branches and bundled them (1 ms. has instead: piled them up). He gave it to his sister holy Inana for her chair. He gave it to her for her bed. As for himself, from its roots, he manufactured his ellag and, from its branches, he manufactured his ekidma (the correct pronunciation of this word is unknown) .
The serpent was apparently originally symbolic, as it has always been in every version since.
Point 4: It is interesting that you quoted a flaming sword. Can you point to a citation? Did I miss that quote? I don’t think I read about one if it was in the text. There is an ax which is translated as “ax of the road” or “bronze axe used for expeditions”. You quoted this correctly in your speech about the evolution of Genesis (TS 20:20 or so?) but here I believe you may have mistakenly (with respect) called it a flaming sword. The ax weighed seven talents in every translation I have read (and some change in minas) which is anywhere from approximately 700 pounds to 500 pounds roughly as far as I have been able to estimate. That is a big axe and I don’t recall fire being mentioned but again, I would be willing to acknowledge any info I have missed.
No, you're right.
According to Archibald Henry Sayce, Gilgamesh was originally supposed to have been a fire god and a solar hero and a precursor to Hercules. That doesn't seem to be the case though because (1) he is in the Sumerian King List, and (2) archaeologists believe they've found his tomb. So we're talking about a real person exaggerated into mythology. That does not seem to be the case with Biblical characters, who are either adapted from elder mythology or apparently imagined out of nothing.
Conclusion:
The translation from the Oxford source seems to consider the latest scholarship and the latest incorporated translations although I admit I have only begun to peruse it. The tree is either just a tree or is not a tree but a metaphor for something which I have not been able to divine yet.
Again, in every version of this story, the tree appears to have been symbolic though the meaning has evidently changed. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the fruit of the tree of eternal life were obviously never meant to be envisioned as real fruit one could make a pie of nor taken from trees that could be cut down for timber.
Many of the translations specify that the tree is an elm or willow which lends credence to the idea that it is just a tree. The tree is inhabited by three entities which are not at all simple to understand. “Anzu(d) Bird” references a demon or evil spirit of some sort which is often considered a bird form with other animal characteristics which is referenced in other literature of the time and would have had some meaning. The demon sometimes rendered “lillitu” or other transliterations, is a very, very complex character which I have heard interpreted “ghost maiden”. “Dark maiden”, or many other things but always a demon or ghost or spirit of some kind. I would be very interested to discuss her later uses in Jewish tradition. The serpent is also either just a serpent or a metaphor for some other kind of evil being. Perhaps a nation or people who attack and cannot be quelled by any means other than violence. These elements do not seem to correlate to the content literally or figuratively (in metaphor) to the account in Genesis.
Obviously I have to disagree as elements of various Genesis fables can be found throughout Semitic mythology long before any interpretation of anything Biblical.
When we compare the narratives side by side I feel that the incorporation of them in their proper context would suggest there is only trivial similarity.
Even if that were true, which it obviously isn't, we have perilously similar concepts occurring in the oldest myths known to man, which were written by the very grandfathers of the Biblical authors, whose familiar version doesn't appear in the Bible until more than a thousand years later. If the Bible did not not borrow these concepts from all the old myths of Semitic ancestry, then where do you imagine they came from? That's a serious question deserving an answer.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 9:03 pm