Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

Professor Furuli made the observation: it would be a fine study to compare
them and make a list of all the similarities.

I would like to call to the attention of the readers of this list that a
number of scholarly studies have in fact been made. Garrett noted that
Wenham listed seventeen features preserved in the Epic of Gilgamesh and
Genesis:

"When compared form-critically to the other major ancient Near Eastern flood
accounts (especially the account in Gilgamesh, but also the Atrahasis, Ras
Shamra, and Sumerian versions), the Genesis narrative is found to have a
remarkably high number of formal parallels to those versions. Wenham has
isolated seventeen features the Genesis and Gilgamesh accounts have in
common, and these usually occur in the same sequence. There are, to be sure,
significant theological differences between Genesis and the other versions,
but formally they are of the same catgory." (p.27 , Duane Garrett,
Rethinking Genesis, The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of the
Pentateuch, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1991, ISBN
0-8010-3837-5)

Garrett is probably alluding to Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word
Biblical Commentary, Word Books, Waco, Texas, 1987, ISBN 0-8499-0200-2.


My own research suggests that the ancient Hebrews creatively drew from the
creation myths of the ANE world, and reinterpreting them with a "new twist,"
invented a loving, caring, God in contrdiction to the fickle, quarreling,
and un-caring gods of the source-myths.

Those new to this list may be interested in my paper available as an e-mail
attachment titled  Sabbath Origins and the Epic of Gilgamesh. I take the
Humanist view that Genesis is drawing upon, and transforming motifs and
themes in its story of Eden, and that Adam and Eve are tranformations of the
Babylonian "Noah" Utnapishtim and wife,
while the notion of a seventh day as a rest day for God, is a transformation
of the gods resting on the seventh day in the Utnapishtim flood myth.  Do
not direct your requests to this list. Direct your requests to:

mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com

All the best,

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany