Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Pastor Rocine has made an interesting observation, a warning caution about
jumping to conclusions, in regards to the parallels under discussion between
the Epic of Gilgamesh and its Flood story and Genesis. He posits that these
parallels may be more cautiously accounted for as "similar reflections of a
common human experience than more speculatively as genetically direct
relatives."

I am well aware from having read some of the vast literature in this field,
that there are scholars who embrace Pastor Rocine's line of reasoning
(humanist as well as fundamentalist). And under certain conditions I have no
personal problem with this as a justifiable method of inquiry under the
right conditions.

As I have pointed earlier, scholars have identified 17 features that the
Genesis and Gilgamesh flood stories have in common and in the same sequence.
To say that 17 features- in the same sequence no less, are to dismissed and
explained away as "similar reflections of a common human experience than
more speculatively as genetically direct relatives" is not a line of
reasoning I can accept. It is obvious to me, if not to others, that we
possess here a genetic relationship not "reflections of a common human
experience."

All the best,

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany