The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis

In 1872, George Smith, who worked in a London print shop, discovered something that filled the newspapers, became the talk of Victorian society, and thrust Christian faith into consternation that it has still not resolved.  Smith blended in with most of London’s population.  He was out of school at 14, married, and rearing 6 kids. 

The single unusual thing about Smith was his fascination with the British Museum’s trove of ancient Assyrian artifacts.  He walked to the museum as often as he could, made friends with the scholars and staff, and found ways to spend time in the rooms that held hundreds of clay tablets, which had shipped from British occupied Mesopotamia 20 years before.    

Smith was not one of the prestigious curators or Assyriologists who dominated the museum’s Ninevah collection.  What he lacked in academic prestige, Smith more than made up for in enthusiasm.  It was that enthusiasm that compelled him to learn how to decipher those cuneiform clay tablets. 

One day as Smith was working with artifacts that British archeologists had unearthed from Asherbanipal’s palace library, his eyes scanned the cuneiform impressions.  He was able to get the gist of what the text on one of them was saying.  It told a story of a boat and a man.  The boat was afloat on a great body of water but had come to rest.  The man released a bird…

George Smith leaped to his feet.  He danced around and reportedly started taking his clothes off.  He knew that he was reading something that no human had read in at least 2000 years. 

The clay writings that George Smith was studying so carefully was the 11^th and final tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Some scholars argue that Gilgamesh is the world’s oldest book.  Archeologists have reassembled most of its text, which is 50 pages in length.

George Smith’s discovery took place at the height of the British Empire’s dominance over territory and people.  Hubris fueled the British imposition of its language, culture, economic exploitation, and religion on diverse lands and populations.  To find stories told in Genesis on very ancient tablets which may have been written before the Old Testament, was a sobering shock to the English-speaking world’s pride.  “What was our sacred writ doing on their clay?”  “What is primitive mythology doing in our Bible?”  “Did someone copy something, forge something?” 

Discovering and deciphering the Epic of Gilgamesh took place at a time when Christianity assumed that the Bible was the oldest and truest book in the world.  Archeological finds such as the Asherbanipal excavation, plus scientific innovations like Charles Darwin’s 1859 publication of Origin of Species, forced people to puzzle over questions that Christians had never thought of.  “How did the Bible come to be?”  “Can it be trusted?”

Such questions are formidable when raised in the abstract.  Two college first year students are debating, one an evangelical the other, an atheist.  The latter says that the Bible’s authors copied stories from ancient peoples and that the Noah’s Ark story was well known around the Middle East a thousand years, before Homer wrote the Odyssey.  The evangelical kid has never heard such a thing and assumes that such information is a liberal lie designed to undermine people’s faith.

Do the Reading

Another approach that avoids unsettling information about the Bible’s human origins is to read the material in question, to read the Epic of Gilgamesh and assess personally how damaging it seems.  I’ve done just this over the course of about 2 hours. The experience was not only pleasant but left me with a comfortable conviction that the mythic elements which crop up throughout Old Testament, give priceless points of comparison through which we can gain a sophisticated understanding of the Bible’s unique and powerful character.

Here’s how this has happened to me.  I read Gilgamesh in translation.  I found it entertaining and occasionally inspiring.  The book is a collection of Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu’s adventures and begins with a catalogue of Gilgamesh’s personal qualities:

He had seen all. He all knowledge possessed. Wise was he beyond measure. Gilgamesh was the possessor of all understanding. He had wisdom of all things. He knew of the Secret and of the Mystery. He knew of the time before the Great Flood.[1]

Despite Gilgamesh’s impressive strengths of mind and body, he abuses those under his authority.  He has character flaws.  The deities in the story devise a plan for a harlot to seduce Gilgamesh and for a strong companion, Enkidu, to check Gilgamesh’s overpowering character. 

I’m impressed by the idea of relationships being employed for character development.  Heterosexual intercourse, with no reference to marriage, also crops up in the plot as personally transforming.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s quest to kill Humbaba, a figure who embodies evil, brings to sharp clarity the personal and introspective character of the stories.  The text’s message isn’t interested in community benefit through the killing of Humbaba.  The cosmic background of Humbaba is of no interest in the story.  Instead, the interest centers on the anxiety and courage of Enkidu and Gilgamesh in pursuing this dangerous adventure.

The Epic’s second half looks like a typical “hero’s adventure” tale where an individual leaves home, undergoes trials, triumphs by obtaining some symbolic prize, and returns home again.  While these stories focus on the exploits of the hero, the point of the adventure is for community betterment.

The Key to Eternal Life

In Gilgamesh, the hero looks for the key to eternal life, which someone can find, according to lore, by visiting Utanapishtim, the only individual who has obtained immortality.  Utanapishtim is a Noah figure.  He has crafted a large boat, rescued animal pairs, and survived a great deluge.  Apparently, surviving the flood achieves immortality, which is why Gilgamesh seeks Utanapishtim’s counsel.

The reader notices a delightful lightness, even silliness, as the story begins.  Unlike the grave tone in Genesis version, the Epic of Gilgamesh tells how the gods who create the flood do so in the most frivolous manner. 

But, in those days of yore, the multitudes teemed upon the face of the Earth and the unceasing clamor and wickedness of the people aroused the wrath of the Gods. And thus, the Great Gods purposed a mighty Deluge to rain down in order to wipe out mankind. A vow of secrecy was sworn by the Great Gods. Their father, Anu, Lord of the Gods, swore the oath. Also did their advisor, the valorous Enlil, God of Storms, swear to it. Also did their Chamberlain Ninurta, God of War, swear to it. Also did Ennugi, God of Canals, swear to it.[2]

So, the great secret, which the gods keep among themselves, is that they were annoyed with people and simply drowned them.  In this thought is indeed a cosmic truth, namely that the divine realm is no more thoughtful nor moral than the human one. 

Utanapishtim had spoken this message plainly to Gilgamesh in the preceding 10^th tablet.  The message here is indistinguishable from that of the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes.  In the 10^th tablet Utanapishtim chides Gilgamesh for his obsessive-compulsive questing.  He may as well have said, “Relax Gilgamesh, we’re all going to die, we know not when or why, enjoy yourself, have a beer and let’s relax.”  What he does say is:

We are like unto the Mayfly floating on the waters, gazing upon the Sun, and then we are no more. All is transitory. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are. They both portray the image of Mortality. No distinction is there between master and servant when both have reached the end of their allotted life span and breathed their last.[3]

The Genesis Flood story tells the same sequence of events with similar characters, props, and setting.  But the Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis 6-8 are different projects.  The Bible’s Flood story extends the creation texts in the preceding chapters.  It ponders the appalling power of humanity to bring creation ending disruption or rescue for all creatures.  It’s a reflection on the Creator’s limitations and yearning.

Simply reading the Epic of Gilgamesh with the question, “What is this all about?” makes clear that it is a different project than that of the Bible’s Genesis Flood. 

The 19^th century saw the discovery of several instances where mythological or primitive elements found their way into Israel’s consciousness, were modified, and became part of the Scriptures.  One example is the idea that the Creator makes all things from by bringing order to chaos.  The chaos motif shows up in the creation myths of several ancient societies including Israel.  The discovery of this fact need not lead to pitched battles over the Bible’s originality or contorted apologetics that insist that such discoveries are mistakes or evil misinformation and that no other material antedates or rivals what Genesis records.

What if we could receive such discoveries as new light, which brought the Bible’s meaning into sharp definition.  In the case of creation from chaos, ancient societies tend to see chaos as an enemy and creation as a fight.  In the biblical creation, chaos is dark and watery to be sure.  But it’s no evil.  It harbors no malevolent plan. 

In ancient middle eastern societies, the creator, someone like the warrior Marduk, vanquishes chaos once and for all.  In the Bible, ordering chaos is a process, spanning 6 days, and then continuing.  Put differently, ordering chaos is a historical process.  In ancient societies creation is repeated, or better, reenacted ritually at annual celebrations when cosmos-making is renewed. 

It is helpful to understand what kind of projects the various mythic elements pursue and how Israel’s rabbis needed to rework these elements for them to bear a new message.

It is in the simple reading with questions, “what is going on here, what is trying to happen?” that opens wide great doors through which we can venture, maybe discovering something completely unexpected on the other side.

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[1] Davis, Gerald J. Gilgamesh: The New Translation (p. 17). Insignia Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[2] Davis, Ibid. (p. 67).

[3] Davis, Ibid. (p. 68).