The Water God(s) of Mesopotamia!

I've been researching the topic of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian and Babylonian water gods, for quite some time, specifically after finding and following the trail of the Sumerian "Enki." And my research has discovered something is seriously wrong! When I say wrong, I mean WRONG, with the current data available on the subject.

To understand why I believe there's a huge discrepancy in the data, it's necessary to define the the etymology (the root languages) of the associated words and some of their back history.

With very little effort, it is possible to identify at least 2 of the Sumerian gods with biblical equivalents. This relation is particularly obvious with the Sumerian gods known as Enki and Enlil. Enlil appears to be the equivalent of Jehovah, while Enki appears to be the equivalent of the Serpent in the Garden.

Enki, who's name originally meant LORD EARTH (En=Lord, Ki=Earth), had become associated with the water god. He was Lord of the Abzu (Abyss). This attribution is found in his later akkadian personification of EA, the water god. Further tracking of this water god, revealed his story in later incarnations such as Triton, Poseidon and Dagon.

The real puzzler appeared when I learned that the prefix "AB" meant water, and that the word "EL" meant god. Ab+el. Abel. That bothered me immensely. There was a riddle in the peculiar spelling of Abel, who was one of the first offspring of Adam and Eve in the biblical account. Why would they name their child after the water god, if by all accounts, the water god appeared to be the "Serpent in the Garden?" Clearly, the translation of the words along the way, had some sort of.....problem.

I'm not looking for an argument, just wondering

You seem to be using anthropological linguistics to somehow uncover events in ancient history. Comparing languages in such a way is a great way to identify cultural interactions. I wonder how you can be sure of your accuracy? You are comparing Sumerian (non-semitic) to Semitic. Neither have common root words and are accepted as developing isolated from each other. Can you be sure that any analysis you make comparing the English words will show anything more than confirmation bias?

As I said, I'm not looking to criticize. I used to immerse myself in similar pursuits when younger.

As I said, i did my research.

For example. I was a bit confused on the argument that Jehovah is Allah. The opposing argument stated that the etymology of his name EL was not a derivative of IL, and that the only place IL could've derived from was LIL (Enlil).

Here's the chart



So off i went to an expert on the etymology of mesopotamian languages.

here's the resultant thread on the topic.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The issue is that the AB prefix survived to Babylon, where it was imbeded in the prefix for BABEL (gate of god, gate of chaos, etc)

reply to post by undo

Agreed. You've done your research

I was concerned you were focused on the English and naturally that would be a dead end. It would be like studying apples to draw conclusions from eggs I read the suggested thread, and it's clear you are well down the path of your studies. It's also appears that you're approaching a form of 'uncertainty principle.' The disparate time-lines, historical obfuscation. unknowns and unknowables could drive you mad! Regional dialects, inaccurate translations, emergent ideologies of the period. All these things make clarity difficult to achieve. I wish you luck in your studies Undo.

Howdy Undo

I'm interesting to know where this research is leading to? Just exploration for interest or are you looking to build a hypothesis?

you might be interested in knowing that BABEL as the gate of god, could also be called the water gate of god, or the water gate of chaos, or the gate of the water god (tiamat, yet another incarnation of the serpent in the garden!).

[edit on 23-12-2008 by undo]

hans,

well i'm trying to understand why the texts called him Abel and where the discrepancy (if any?) occured.

reply to post by undo



Hey undo -

When you say texts, re: Abel, am assuming you mean biblical texts? I am out of my depth with etymology, but if you can get the skeptics around here to aknowledge good research, you've got my attention and respect.

Originally posted by undo
hans,

well i'm trying to understand why the texts called him Abel and where the discrepancy (if any?) occured.

Hmmmm well, from my point of view there wouldn't have been an Adam or Eve so there wouldn't have been a son named Abel. So the question is why would a later writer put that name on him?

Have you looked at the story of Dumuzid and Enkimdu? Abel is the traditional English renderings of the Hebrew names Havel (הבל).

reply to post by undo


I have never seen so many people attempt to drag down Christianity. You were more subtle then others but this is pathetic.

hans,

This is the clincher, and a point some will forget in the effort to separate english from the root language: it works the other way as well. babel is the english too. the sumerian-akkadian is KA.DINGIR.RA (gate of god)... the babylonian is bab-ili (notice the IL suffix? if you've read my link on ba'al vs. bel, you will understand how this works)

here's an excerpt from the international standard bible encyclopedia


source
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and data on it here as well

Ancient Scripts: Akkadian
www.ancientscripts.com...

i also argue this point with myself (lol) on this page here at ats
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by crmanager


read this whole thing
www.abovetopsecret.com...

you will see what i believe on the subject.

Originally posted by crmanager
reply to post by undo

 

I have never seen so many people attempt to drag down Christianity. You were more subtle then others but this is pathetic.

No one on this thread is trying to "drag down Christianity."

In fact, they are discussing The Old Testament, so if anything, they are trying to "drag down Judaism."

But in all seriousness, how is it a bad thing that a person wants to study the region, culture, language or time period that gave birth to the religions that we know today????

That is the very reason that I decided to study Koine Greek, so I could gain my own understandings of the New Testament.

The pursuit of knowledge IS NOT PATHETIC, but bashing someone for that pursuit IS.

OP good thread and great post, it is an interesting idea as to why Adam and Eve named Abel, Abel.

One thing that I have always pondered is this:

I was raised Christian, we (and by we I mean the youth group children) were always taught that when God created Adam and Eve, they were the ONLY people on Earth at that time. Then Adam and Eve have Cain and Abel.

So now the tally is at four people.

Cain kills Abel.

Three people.

But then, all of a sudden the Bible explicitly states:

Genesis 5: 16-17And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the East of Eden.

AND CAIN KNEW HIS WIFE

It is interesting, so I do believe that modern Christian beliefs are based on a lot of assumptions....

[edit on 12/23/2008 by dalan.]

I think they were "prototypes" or rather ... what's that word....Archetype! for humans as a group and in general. the only line the biblical texts are seriously concerned with are those leading to the advent of the messiah, so who the other people are, is not deemed relevant. in deutoronomy, moses explains that they had an oral tradition, passed down amongst their people, that described what happened before -- moses even instructs them to ask the elders what happened in the past. so you see two sides of the same story emerge from the same area of the world, one from the perspective of the slaves and one from the perspective of the rulers and their offspring.

reply to post by dalan.


Oh no...you got me. An inconsistancy in the Bible.

Way to go Indy!

In the Cathecism of the Catholic Church..."The Bible is truth, allegory and hope."

You are so right. The Friggin Summerians are the basis of all religions. So what? What about where their ideas came from?

Relax. This is a blatant post to prove Western religions came from the Friggin Summerians...we all get it.

their ideas came from the same place as the biblical stories, just from a different perspective.

This is a blatant post to prove Western religions came from the Friggin Summerians...we all get it.

I don't believe it came from the sumerians. there's archaeological evidence that the semitic people were in Sumer before it was wiped by the black sea flood. so my position on it is, that they are both telling the same story. the biblical version is from the perspective of the slaves and the offiical version is from the perspective of the hybrid nephilim of Sumer, who were the rulers of the known world before the flood.

[edit on 23-12-2008 by undo]

Originally posted by undo
With very little effort, it is possible to identify at least 2 of the Sumerian gods with biblical equivalents. This relation is particularly obvious with the Sumerian gods known as Enki and Enlil. Enlil appears to be the equivalent of Jehovah, while Enki appears to be the equivalent of the Serpent in the Garden.

I have a hard time reconciling this, frankly. He doesn't lead humans out of a garden of paradise, the amount of wisdom he teaches them is limited, and he's also a creator deity: en.wikipedia.org...

To quote from that article:

In character Enki is not a jester or trickster god, he is never a cheat, and although fooled, he is not a fool. Enki uses his magic for the good of others when called upon to help either a god, a goddess or a human. Enki is always true to his own essence as a masculine nurturer. He is fundamentally a trouble-shooter god, and avoids or disarms those who bring conflict and death to the world. He is the mediator whose compassion and sense of humor breaks and disarms the wrath of his stern half-brother, Enlil, king of the gods. He is the Challenger who tests the limits of Inanna in the myth Enki and Inanna and the Me and then concedes graciously his defeat by the young goddess of Love and War, by strengthening the bonds between Eridu and her city of Uruk. So he becomes the Empowerer of Inanna.

You can, if you warp the symbolism enough, make it fit. However, to make it a solid connection, you would have to show that the Jews were developing the concept of the serpent and Eden during a time when Enki was not being portrayed as the creator/nurturer.

And Enlil isn't a very Yahweh-like character. He's a god who is a child of a creator god rather than a creator, and was a rapist:
en.wikipedia.org...

This doesn't fit in with the depiction of Yahweh, IMHO.

The real puzzler appeared when I learned that the prefix "AB" meant water, and that the word "EL" meant god. Ab+el. Abel. That bothered me immensely. There was a riddle in the peculiar spelling of Abel, who was one of the first offspring of Adam and Eve in the biblical account. Why would they name their child after the water god, if by all accounts, the water god appeared to be the "Serpent in the Garden?" Clearly, the translation of the words along the way, had some sort of.....problem.

The problem is that you're looking at root words in an unrelated language. Abel in Hebrew means "breath." "Abel" is not actually his name... the Hebrew version is actually "Havel" or "Hebel", as you can see if you look it up in a Strong's Biblical Concordance (available online at www.blueletterbible.com... )

The oldest surviving copy of Genesis is from the Dead Sea Scrolls and dates about 200 BC. The oldest part of Genesis (which was cobbled together from two or more sources) is dated to about 900 BC.... during the Babylonian time period rather than the original Sumerian.

Now, there's no doubt that the Bible has borrowed some of the Babylonian tales (based on earlier Sumerian tales), but they do change the names of the heroes (as seen in the Noah tale) to fit their own culture. Names are not derivatives of or short forms of a longer name in another language because the Hebrews wanted to record their own version of things as it related to their people... and it would have not been effective to have a Nice Jewish Guy like ADM and a Nice Jewish Girl like CHAVVAH (the Biblical spellings of "adam" and "eve") to have a baby with a non-Jewish name. Particularly when all their other babies had Nice Jewish Names with Nice Jewish Meanings.

I don't think they just borrowed it and I'm not completely convinced that Enki is satan. but a serpent man? yeah, he was a seraph, methinks. and since all their data comes from the same place, it seems to me that it wasn't a case of borrowing but a case of two different ways of describing the same events.

Originally posted by undo
I don't think they just borrowed it and I'm not completely convinced that Enki is satan. but a serpent man? yeah, he was a seraph, methinks. and since all their data comes from the same place, it seems to me that it wasn't a case of borrowing but a case of two different ways of describing the same events.

I don't see how you're making this connection... perhaps you could clarify it for me?

I checked on "seraph" and found that the word occurs in the Bible (which I knew) and refers to burning (not snakes.) Is "seraph=serpent" a recent interpretation? A check of Bible concordances confirms that it refers to burning.

I have a little difficulty with the idea of the Hebrews appropriating other deities into their religion as angels/seraph... at least at the time the books were originally written. For one thing, they're never given names. A second issue is that they were not proselytizers... either you were born into their tribe or you were an outsider. They didn't accept converts, so there was no reason to turn a local god into an angel... or saint, as the Christians later did in order to win converts.

And which event with Enki and Enlil are you seeing as similar to Yahweh and the Serpent and Eden? I am confused about this -- I haven't made a deep study of the Sumerian mythos.