Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

Dear Walter,

You haven't really answered my question. I will comment on just one 
point here. You allege that there are no Mesopotamian parallels to the 
Eden story. David Rohl (sorry to bring him up so much!), quoting S.N. 
Kramer, points out that this commonly stated point is just not true. 
For example, he points out that in Sumerian tales man was formed from 
clay but the female Nin-ti was formed from the rib of Enki. And of 
course other parallels between early parts of Genesis and Gilgamesh 
etc are well established. That there are Greek parallels also is not 
surprising, but tells us little about dating. After all, Aegean myths 
could have come to Canaan much earlier e.g. with the Philistines. 
Sorry, case still not proven.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
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Subject: Genesis and Greek Parallels
Author:  <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com> at Internet
Date:    22/01/2000 23:51


Peter Kirk:

Why do you find a closer model for Genesis in Greece rather than in 
Mesopotamia? Is Genesis really so much closer to Herodotus than to 
Gilgamesh? Of course it is different from both.

My research indicates that Genesis was composed in the 5th century BCE 
(the Medus myth, see earlier posts). I have noted however certain 
motifs that appear in Genesis and which appear no where else in the 
ANE myths, but they do appear in the Greek works of Homer and Hesiod 
(9th-7th centuries BCE). How to account for this strange phenomenon 
?...

<snip>