Flood Stories
There have been hundreds of flood stories told worldwide, many of which have been told orally, which leads to a variation in the stories. Some experts claim there are over five hundred flood stories. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis in the Bible are two of the many flood stories told orally throughout the world. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis in the Bible are similar and different because of the protagonist, the role of the gods, and major plot events that occur.
Utnapishtim and Noah, the protagonists of the stories, are similar in many ways and different in others. Utnapishtim closely relates to Noah because Utnapishtim was told to build a boat because a flood would soon strike, just as Noah was told to do. Utnapishtim was told by Ea in a dream whereas God told Noah normally. However, Utnapishtim was told he had 7 days to build a boat. In Genesis in the Bible, Noah was not told a time. In both cases, Utnapishtim and Noah were given specific directions as for what to bring on board with them. Utnapishtim was told to bring people and animals and Noah was told to bring people and two of every kind of animal.
Furthermore, in The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis from the Bible, the god/ gods played a significant role in the story. There were multiple gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh such as Anu; lord of firmament, Enlil; the counselor, and Ea; the god that told Utnapishtim to construct the boat. The majority of gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh were trying to abolish mankind itself due to mankind being too loud, others were against abolishing all of mankind. Some of the gods were unsatisfied and disagreed about the idea of total and complete human abolishment. The ultimate goal was not to have any evidence of mankind, but one god decided to warn only one person, Utnapishtim, about the flood. In Genesis in the Bible, God wanted very little of mankind to survive the flood because mankind were extremely evil. God also wanted two of every animal to board the boat in order to keep life existing, instead of abolishing everything. These two stories are similar because the main goal of the gods/god was to eliminate most of or all of mankind; these two stories are different because of how the gods/god went about achieving the abolishment of most of or all of mankind.
Lastly, there were key plot events in The Epic of Gilgamesh and in Genesis in the Bible prior, during, and after the flood. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, prior to the flood, the gods wanted to destroy all of mankind, but some gods disagreed, so the gods decided to tell Utnapishtim to build a boat. This is different from Genesis in the Bible, because god knew what he was doing when he decided to abolish mankind, and warned Noah and told him to construct the boat. During the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim, his family, and his animals were unable to
Regular Assignment #1 The Flood of Genesis and The Flood of Gilgamesh have some great similarities as well as some things that are different from one another. I also have always know of one flood but I have now learned there is still one flood however there are over four hundred different versions of the story. In 1872 a researcher put together the Babylonian tablets found in Mensch. This is where he found that no later than the 17th Century B.C. that there was another story that was very similar to…
Professor Owens O9/23/2014 For class we have read three different accounts/stories of the great flood, from Apollodorus, Gilgamesh, as well as the biblical account of Noah. Of all three of these Gilgamesh was the only one with a first person narrator, the other two being in third person narrative form, this changes the dynamics of the story greatly. Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtem, who is the figure in this story who most resembles the biblical Noah and Deucalion from Apollodorus. In the end Utnapishtem…
Two Men, Two Floods, One Goal: Survival The largest flood ever recorded happened in China in 1931 and killed between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 people. Even though this deluge was destructive beyond belief, it was nothing compared to the floods experienced by two men named Noah and Utnapishtim. In the face of adversity, these men and their families had to collaborate to build a boat big enough to house every kind of animal on the earth. This task seemed impossible, but with perseverance and pure faith…
Western Civilization | The Story of Noah and the Epic of Gilgamesh | Same Story or Two Different Tales | | RUSSEL CLAY | 2/21/2013 | The story of the great flood as written by the Babylonian and Noachian people has been a topic of great debate. This topic is as controversial as which came first the chicken or the egg. Which story is fact and which story is fiction? Scholar and religious philosophers have debated this question for centuries. The one common fact,…
that we see when we compare the Biblical flood to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh has lost some of the details of the original Genesis account through constant retelling, but we can still see some similarities between the two. There have been many accounts and tales of a worldwide flood written down throughout the centuries. Some of them closely resemble the Biblical account of Genesis 6-8 such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. As the story of the flood was told and retold to the next generation…
The Flood of Mankind The Epic of Gilgamesh and Hebrew Scripture’s Genesis In the today’s society, crime, violence, and war ravage the earth crippling the freedoms of humankind. Mankind lives amongst poverty, pestilence, and famine from the poorest to the richest country. The world is governed and presided over by men, for greed of money and over the corruption of power. Injustice rather than justice protrude the streets where the innocent child plays, men lay with men and women with women, while…
The floods of Gilgamesh and Genesis were similar because both had the intention of extermination and both shared the same type of passengers on the boat, but differed in the sense of where the boats landed after the flood. The floods of Gilgamesh and Genesis were both intended to exterminate the human population. In the Gilgamesh flood the gods wanted to remove mankind over a quick, irrational decision, “The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reasons of the Babel”…
Comparison of the Floods Kacie Minnix August 22, 2014 Liberty University The Flood of Noah God gave the people a last chance to change their evil ways when he first ordered Noah to build and ark. He told him to finish it in 120 years. God gave the people a period of grace and they did not repent. God told Noah and his family to go inside the Ark with his family and to let the animals He selected in. On the second month and the seventeenth day the gates broke loose in Heaven and the earth opened…
onboard of the ark throughout the flood have returned to dry land. The Lord has wiped all of mankind and every animal off the face of the Earth. After the Lord alerts Noah that they can return to “land”, he tells Noah to build an alter and make burnt offerings. In this passage, the Lord blesses Noah and his sons and promises them a life without another flood to destroy the entirety of land and humankind. The Lord starts with a call for a new beginning, life post flood that must be different than life…
written language, on 12 stone tablets. Gilgamesh has the earliest version of the Flood Story, a narrative that appears later in Genesis 6-9 and the Quran, Sura 71. Each version has very different emphases and draws a different moral. During the era in which the epic is written, the civilization had a polytheistic religion. One goddess that had an impact on the story was Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. In the story, Gilgamesh goes to a ziggurat, or temple, to pray to the gods. The epic of Gilgamesh…
