Are you aware that the story of the Great Flood actually is the one of Gilgamesh ?

Question

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Maybe Gilgamesh is purely fictional, but so is the Bible.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

why Gilgamesh? Seems a lot of cultures have a flood story. Seems the story could be sourced to any one of them. I guess as long as it's not attributed to God of Abraham, then anything is acceptable, right?

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Asker's Comment:

there wasn't any right answer, so well, you have the ten points

Answer 2

I just had to read that for World lit.
Even more intersting is that Christians claim that they "stole" the story from the Jews, but the Hebrews were no where in history until about 1000 years later.
Almost all faiths have a story of a flood. Some of them even in blood. It's a common theme. It's not supposed to be literal.

Spiritual" the reason most use Gilgimesh is because it's been proven pretty concretly that is was indeed the "first" story. That is the cradle of life and the Babylonians where one of the first Civilizations that we know of. It s a really cool read.

Answer 3

Your theory is highly flawed.

Despite the lack of direct evidence, most scholars do not object to consideration of Gilgamesh as a historical figure, particularly after inscriptions were found confirming the historical existence of other figures associated with him: kings Enmebaragesi and Aga of Kish. If Gilgamesh were a historical king, he probably reigned in about the 26th century BC. Some of the earliest Sumerian texts spell his name as Bilgames. Initial difficulties in reading cuneiform resulted in Gilgamesh making his re-entrance into world culture in 1891 as "Izdubar".
In most texts, Gilgamesh is written with the determinative for divine beings (DINGIR) - but there is no evidence for a contemporary cult, and the Sumerian Gilgamesh myths suggest the deification was a later development (unlike the case of the Akkadian god-kings). Historical or not, Gilgamesh became a legendary protagonist in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Answer 4

Actually, the story appears in cultures throughout the world including the Greek story of Deucalion as well as being found in the Aztec and Hopi stories of the Creation of this Fourth World.....

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Immanuel Velikovsky has a theory about that in his book Worlds in Collision......

Core ideas
"Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. [...] The historical-cosmological story of this book is based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material." - Worlds in Collision, Preface.

The book proposed that around the 15th century BC, a comet or comet-like object (now called the planet Venus), having originally been ejected from Jupiter, passed near Earth (an actual collision is not mentioned). The object changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes which were mentioned in early mythologies and religions around the world. Fifty-two years later, it passed close by again, stopping the Earth's rotation for a while and causing more catastrophes. Then, in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, Mars (itself displaced by Venus) made close approaches to the Earth; this incident caused a new round of disturbances and disasters. After that, the current "celestial order" was established. The courses of the planets stabilized over the centuries and Venus gradually became a "normal" planet.

These events lead to several key statements that were claimed in the book:

Venus must be still very hot as young planets radiate heat.[3]
Venus must be rich in petroleum gases, and hydrocarbons.[4]

Venus has an abnormal orbit in consequence of the unusual disasters that happened.

Velikovsky suggested some additional ideas that he said derived from these claims, including:

Jupiter emits radio noises.[5]

The magnetosphere of Earth reaches at least up to the moon.

The sun has an electric potential of approximately 10^19 volts.

The rotation of earth can be affected by electromagnetic fields.

Velikovsky arrived at these proposals using a methodology which would today be called comparative mythology - he looked for concordances in myths and written history of unconnected cultures across the world, in particular following a rather literal reading of their accounts of the exploits of planetary deities. In this book, he argues on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer. For example, ancient Greek mythology asserts that the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Velikovsky identifies Zeus (whose Roman counterpart was the god Jupiter) with the planet Jupiter. Velikovsky identifies Athena with the planet Venus, although the Greek counterpart of the Roman Venus was Aphrodite and not Athena. This myth, along with others from ancient Egypt, Israel, Mexico, etc. are used to support the claim that "Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972:182).

Source(s):

Having actually read this controversial book......

Answer 5

Noah 4417 years ago, and Moses 3520 years ago at death is believing the great flood happened same as Gilgamesh and other after the fact when it is idle gossip believed to be myth same as most today think it is. Humans had only been on earth 1656 from Adam when the flood came, Methusaleh age 969 years old, died the same year as the flood and Adam had lived to be 930 years old.
Moses was 857 to 897 years in the Exodus after the flood. Exo.7:7; Deut.34:7;

So you did not give Gilgamesh his time period.

Source(s):

Bible.