Noah vs. Utnapishtim (Bible and Gilgamesh)

reply to post by darkelf


hehe it makes me smile people still not understand that 1 year = 1 full moon in the "bible sence" very much occationaly

i bet noah wasent much older then 65 and moses around 75 ..

my 2 cents

reply to post by darkelf


hehe it makes me smile people still not understand that 1 year = 1 full moon in the "bible sence" very much occationaly

i bet noah wasent much older then 65 and moses around 75 ..

my 2 cents

reply to post by cormac mac airt


According to the Greeks that is. and the Greeks were considered to be a very young society in their heyday.

Nevertheless, if I use what the Greeks said concerning the Phoenicians, the city of Byblos, I think, was founded in the year 2800 b.c. and many others were founded throughout the Mediterranean at the earliest dates in history and they were only founded after the Phoenicians had arrived in the region from somewhere in the East, along the Erythrean sea I think.

The point being Phoenicians built sea faring vessles and everyone in the region depended on them for their ships. Hebrews did not build ships and still don't. Sumerians did not build ships, river barges perhaps, but the Euphrates and the open ocean are two entirely different experiences. Only Phoenicians built ships.

This being the case, unless the Hebrews and Sumerians forgot how to build sea faring vessels after the flood, I would say that the story of Noah is not a Hebrew or Sumerian story in origin, but one they acquired from someone else.

That's why I think so many people don't believe the Bible and such...It has nothing at all to do with them or their society.

reply to post by huckfinn


two points to add

1. The ark (presuming it was built and Noah existed) was a barge, not a seagoing ship, it had no sails or oars, nor from what is said in the bible was Noah or his family seafarers-they would have been true landlubbers.

2. Sumer did have ships or others had ships to bring them resources from India, Teak from Southern India (Malabarian) and Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan came in from sea from the Harappan civilization and wood and copper from Dilmun. Documents and archaeology point to sea trade from India to Mesopotamia.

This being the case, unless the Hebrews and Sumerians forgot how to build sea faring vessels after the flood, I would say that the story of Noah is not a Hebrew or Sumerian story in origin, but one they acquired from someone else.

Except that there's no evidence of the story coming from anyone else. It also should be noted that although Byblos dates to around 3000 BC, the Phoenicians aren't mentioned as seafarers until much later in the 2nd millenium BC and genetically the Phoenicians and Canaanites are one and the same. So who else would they be getting their story from?

cormac

reply to post by cormac mac airt


I would recommend Shelley Wachsmann's Seagoing Ships & Seamanship in the Bronze age Levant, ISBN 0-89096-709-1

Ok, short version Hans, what am I missing?

cormac

reply to post by cormac mac airt


That's not really true...the world is full of Flood stories and I only use the name Phoenician because it was made popular by the Greeks. Who called them that, they never called themselves that. My use of it shouldn't suggest that I think they were called that in 3000 b.c., when no Greeks existed, as we remember them.

But Sumerian civilization was built upon another culture, known today as the Ubaid, they probably didn't call themselves that. The Ubaid vanished, the Sumerians took over their cities, maybe they took their stories as well. The Akkadians, who came after the Sumerians took the Sumerians' stories. It's obviously what people do.

Perhaps the people known to the Greeks as Phoenicians were the Ubaid who preceded the Sumerians and provided them with the story of the flood. Which had nothing at all to do with the Sumerians directly.

According to the Greeks, the Phoenicians claimed to have come from the shores of the Erythrean Sea, a place I believe refers to anywhere water touches the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.

Another reason I don't think the flood story is native to the Sumerians is because when the flood came it took the occupants of the ark somewhere else, the Sumerians who told the story hadn't gone anywhere. they lived in the same place and cities they always lived in.

[edit on 5-1-2009 by huckfinn]

That's not really true...the world is full of Flood stories and I only use the name Phoenician because it was made popular by the Greeks. Who called them that, they never called themselves that. My use of it shouldn't suggest that I think they were called that in 3000 b.c., when no Greeks existed, as we remember them.

Actually that is true. Just because the world is full of flood stories doesn't mean that any or all of them are THE flood story. You've answered your own question as the Greeks are the ones who gave the peoples we know as Phoenicians their name. Regardless of what the peoples we know as Phoenicians were called or whether they were seafarers from the start, the first mentionings of them in that context don't occur until later, AFAIK.

Another reason I don't think the flood story is native to the Sumerians is because when the flood came it took the occupants of the ark somewhere else, the Sumerians who told the story hadn't gone anywhere. they lived in the same place and cities they always lived in.

Its called literary license, notice the similarities and differences between the stories of Utnapishtim, Atrahasis and Ziusudra. Each version reflects the beliefs of their differing cultures.

[Edit to add the last paragraph]

cormac


[edit on 5-1-2009 by cormac mac airt]

And another reason I don't think the Sumerians, or the Hebrews for that matter, are the original authors of the Flood stories...

The Phoenicians are known for creating our alphabet. Apparently they perfected and exported throughout the western world what Sumerians are generally given credit for first using. As it is known that the Ubaid had a written language, it is likely to me that it was the Phoenicians/Ubaid who taught the Sumerians how to use the written word along with the concept of literature by sharing their stories with them.

I don't think the Sumerians or the Hebrews versions are original but inherited from another more ancient people who are the actual subjects of the stories they told.

The Phoenicians are known for creating our alphabet.

Yes.

Apparently they perfected and exported throughout the western world what Sumerians are generally given credit for first using.

Sumerians (first written language) and Phoenician alphabet (ancestral to our own) are not the same things. The Sumerians had their own alphabet, it just wasn't ours.

As it is known that the Ubaid had a written language.....

Interesting if true. Where is this know?

......it is likely to me that it was the Phoenicians/Ubaid who taught the Sumerians how to use the written word along with the concept of literature by sharing their stories with them.

You do realize you're mixing apples and oranges here, don't you?

cormac

My only point is that neither Sumerian or Hebrew are the sources of this story, but 2 groups among many that adopted the story, took "literary license" and passed it off as their own. And that the Sumerians didn't get there version from the Hebrews and the Hebrews didn't get theirs from the Sumerians, but that a third version pre-dating both Sumerians and Hebrews exists somewhere and perhaps that will prove to be the source document/clay tablet.

Okay, entirely speculative with no evidence to back it up. Gotcha.

cormac

reply to post by cormac mac airt


Less speculative than suggesting that the Bible is plagiarized from the Sumerian, I think.

And that's news to you? Many cultures from around the world have been incorporating aspects of other, near cultures into their own myths and legends since time immemorial. Nothing new.

cormac

News Flash

A guy named Spekewe in what we would call 9,846 BC, about noon on a hot sultry Tuesday in late Spring. The gentleman was thinking about that flood he'd seen last fall which washed away his clan's seasonal hunting site and how one guy named Nobh rode out the flood and came walking back a few days later.

Yep you guessed it

He came up with the seed of the story...how do I know this?

I have a can of Hormel Chili with beans sitting on shelf near me. It sends vibrations to me in archaic Linear A.

It's smart for a can of Chili.

More seriously, the stories origin is lost, however it is reasonable to assume that the Sumerians first wrote it down and that story spread thorough out the Middle East, where the Hebrew's picked it up.

O'says the chili can.

I sourced from Wiki, take it for what it is:

According to some people, In the period from 4500–4000 BC the literate and sea-faring Ubaid (Pre-Sumerian) culture spread into northern Mesopotamia and along the Arabian littoral (coastline of the Arabian Peninsula). Showing the growth of a trading system that stretched from the Mediterranean coast (Modern Lebanon and Israel) through Oman.

What the above suggests is that prior to the rise of the Sumerian civilization a well-advanced society existed in a contiguous space stretching from the Mediterranean coast through the desert, down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, along Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Red Sea. By 4000 B.C., the Ubaid, identified by pottery and such, were present on the Mediterranean coast, the very same coast where the Phoenicians lived (As the Greeks called them) 3500 years later. The same people who claimed to have come from along the same shores of the Erythraean Sea (Arabian littoral), according to Herodotus.

Now that I’ve provided support for the notion that those sea-faring people along the eastern Mediterranean coast known to the Greeks as Phoenicians and the Bible as Canaanites and the people at Eridu, known to us as the Ubaid, have links to one another prior to the rise of the Sumerian debacle.

My assertion is that the flood story existed prior to the Sumerians. I have not seen one example of the Sumerian sea-faring merchant, as this was not a part of their society. They were agrarian river folk at best. Their greatest contribution to history is committing the near perfect crime. The group called Sumerians are the regional successors (shores of the Persian Gulf) to a much older society. The Sumerians simply re-wrote the story in the new script they created; It didn’t first belong to them. Other successor groups to this larger and older society obtained the story in the same way, they didn’t adopt it from the Sumerians.

After the Sumerians “conquered” the land of Southern Mesopotamia, many people were held in their squalor as hostages, such as Abraham and his family. According to the bible story, Abraham and his family broke away from this place and found a new home along the coasts of the Mediterranean. After destroying the idols of his father, I don’t think Abraham kept a few stories of the Sumerians and Akkadians, so that he could teach them to his children.

So, yes, many cultures do incorporate aspects of other, nearby, cultures into their own myths and legends, the Sumerians were possibly the first to do this; they incorporated Ubaid stories into their own society. But they didn’t create anything and pass it down to the Hebrews.

P.S. If you haven’t guessed it, I am opposed to any attempt to place the Sumerians in an exalted place in history. It is said that History begins at Sumer, but it can also be said that crimes against Humanity began at Sumer.