Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (31 page)

The gods then start a storm of wind and rain, led by the storm god Adad, that devastates the land with such force, even the gods get scared and hide up in heaven like frightened dogs with their tails between their legs. The blowing wind and gale force downpour lasts six days and seven nights until “all the people are turned to clay.”

The boat finally runs aground on Mount Nimush, and after seven days, Utnapishtim lets out a dove to see if it can find a perch, but it does not and returns to him. He waits and sends a swallow, and then finally a raven that does not return, indicating enough dry land to get out of the boat.

Utnapishtim then offers a sacrifice to the gods, who “smell the sweet savour” and “gather like flies around the sacrificer.” But when the great god Enlil arrives, he is angry to discover Utnapishtim survived the destruction. When he finds out that Enki had leaked the plan to Utnapishtim, they quarrel. But the crafty Enki denies violating the will of the gods because he did not tell Utnapishtim
directly
, but through a dream.

Enlil resigns himself to the trickery and decides to bestow immortality on Utnapishtim and his wife, so they would be like the gods, but placing them “at the mouth of the rivers” to dwell faraway from normal mankind.

Utnapishtim then explains to Gilgamesh that the gods will not assemble for his benefit to bestow upon him eternal life. He is destined to die like all humanity. To prove the impossibility, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights to prove his worthiness of becoming immortal by exercising power over the stepchild of death: sleep. Gilgamesh cannot do so and he is sent on his way with the consolation prize of finding a magic plant that will restore his youth. As stated before, the serpent then steals that plant away from him.

Wenham has listed seventeen major correlations between the Genesis Flood and the Gilgamesh Deluge that indicate a strong genetic connection between the two narratives:

1. Divine decision to destroy

2. Warning to flood hero

3. Command to build ark

4. Hero’s obedience

5. Command to enter

6. Entry

7. Closing door

8. Description of flood

9. Destruction of life

10. End of rain,
etc.

11. Ark grounding on mountain

12. Hero opens window

13. Birds’ reconnaissance

14. Exit

15. Sacrifice

16. Divine smelling of sacrifice

17. Blessing on flood hero
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But Alexander Heidel’s classic
The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels
has teased out the differences between the two that shed light on their radically divergent meanings.

To begin with, the name for the Flood hero in
Gilgamesh is Utnapishtim, which means, “he saw life,” an apparent free rendering of the Sumerian
Ziusudra
, that meant “he found everlasting life.” In the Flood story most likely borrowed for the Gilgamesh Epic, his name is Atrahasis which means “exceedingly wise.” In Genesis, Noah means, “rest.”
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The Sumerian Noah, Ziusudra, was a priestly king of the city of Shuruppak, the tenth in line of the prediluvian Babylonian kings. In
Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim is not a king, but a wealthy citizen of Shuruppak. The Biblical Noah is the tenth prediluvian patriarch, but beyond this, we only know he was pious in that he “walked with God” and found favor in his sight.
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In Genesis, only eight people were in the ark with the animals; Noah, his three sons, and all their wives. In the Sumerian Deluge and Gilgamesh, Noah’s extended family also came along with some craftsmen, and a boatman.

Heidel then points out the theological differences between the narratives regarding the cause of the Flood and the possibility of redemption for humanity.
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In Atrahasis, the “noise” of man’s overpopulation and “cries of rebellion” awaken Enlil from his sleep to send several plagues and famines without satisfying results before he conspires to send a flood to drown out their rebellious noise.
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In Gilgamesh, the gods send the Deluge because of an undefined sin of mankind (Tablet XI:180). Utnapishtim lies to his neighbors about the ark because the gods do not want man to know what they are about to do.

Contrarily, in
Genesis, the Flood is very clearly a righteous judgment upon an earth that was “corrupted and filled with violence.” “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God gives man a “period of grace” of one hundred and twenty years with which to repent and obey God (Gen 6:5-6). Though this purpose is not stated explicitly in Genesis, two other passages in the New Testament seem to indicate this notion of God providing such opportunity.

1 Peter 3:19–20

[In the spirit] he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because
they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared
, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

2 Peter 2:5–6

if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved
Noah, a herald of righteousness
, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly... making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;

Surely, there is an assumption, sometimes explicit, but always implicit throughout the Old Testament that if man repents, God will stay his hand of planned judgment. But the notion that Noah actually “preached” words to the condemned is not necessarily in the text. Some Evangelicals assume that Noah as “herald of righteousness” means he preached sermons like the Apostles in Acts. But this assumes too much. For the context of the New Testament passages are about Noah’s
example
to us
“of what is going to happen to the ungodly” of Peter’s current era.

Jesus in his Olivet sermon uses Noah’s
example
as a sermon illustration for his coming judgment as well.

Matthew 24:37–39

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and
they were unaware until the flood came
and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Noah’s preparation for the Flood was a
declaratory
action
that spoke louder than words, and apparently, it was not understood by those who were “unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.”

Another passage sheds light on the notion that Noah’s
act
of building the boat in anticipation of the Flood was itself the “proclamation.”

Hebrews 11:7

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear
constructed an ark
for the saving of his household.
By this he condemned the world
and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

Though God always seems to give a generation under condemnation an opportunity to repent, he does not always do so with sermons of words, but certainly with examples of actions.

The ark also provides an example of significant difference between the narratives. The length of Noah’s ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, with a displacement of approximately 43,300 tons. It had three levels to contain the animals, that on the surface of the account is structurally feasible. Utnapishtim’s vessel however, was not so amiable to reality. According to Babylonian measurements, it was supposed to be a square cube of 200 feet on all sides and was divided into seven levels, displacing approximately 228,500 tons, making it a rather questionable sea worthy craft.
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In the Biblical story, it is well known that the flood began with rain coming down from the heavens and waters coming up from the deep. The rain storm lasted 40 days and 40 nights, and then after 150 days, the waters began to abate until the earth was dry enough to leave the ark about 360 days or 1 year after the start of the flood. In the Babylonian versions, the flood storm lasts only 7 days and 7 nights, followed by an unspecified number of days for the waters to dry up before Noah leaves the ark.

Upon leaving the boat, Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, and Noah all build altars and offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and appeasement unto their gods. But the theological incongruity between the accounts is spelled out in the divine reactions. In Gilgamesh, “
The gods smelled the savour, the gods smelled the sweet savour, the gods gathered like flies around the sacrificer” (Tablet XI:161-163). Of this passage, Andrew George writes,

The simile used to describe the gods’ arrival is famously the image of hungry flies buzzing around a piece of food. This imagery implies a somewhat cynical view of gods, even more disrespectful than the earlier simile likening them to cowering dogs.
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Heidel adds a dimension to this zoomorphic (animal-like) denigration of the gods when he suggests that the gods had been without food sacrifice from humans for so long that they were hungry like a bunch of flies dependent on parasitic hosts. Enlil then starts to quarrel with Enki for revealing the secret to Utnapishtim, wherein Enki defends himself with trickery by arguing that he did not reveal it directly to Utnapishtim, but through a dream, thus freeing him from blame.

Contrary to the Babylonian zoomorphic simile of the gods, the Bible engages in anthropomorphism (human-like) in that man is created in the image of God and thus sacrifice is understood in the priestly terms of atonement for sin (Lev. 1:9). God “smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man (Gen. 8:21).’” Heidel explains

The propitiatory character of the sacrifice is brought out quite clearly in the biblical narrative, where the ascending essence of the burnt-offerings is called a “soothing odor,” or, literally, an “odor of tranquilization.” One purpose of Noah’s sacrifice, as seems to be indicated by what follows, probably was to appease the wrath of God which had been kindled by the sins of mankind and which Noah had just witnessed. But at the same time it was undoubtedly an offering for the expiation of his own sins and those of his family.
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Whereas the Babylonian anthropomorphic descriptions of their deities tended to reflect human weaknesses (hunger) and sin (quarreling), the Biblical account depicts the human-like character traits of God in terms of relationship (propitiation and atonement).

In the Babylonian versions, Noah and his wife are blessed with eternal life after Enlil gives in to Enki’s defensive arguments. They are then taken to a distant place, “at the mouth of the rivers,” probably referring to the Persian Gulf, into which the Euphrates and Tigris rivers opened up. In Gilgamesh, this was the mythical and distant “place where the sun rises,” in the Sumerian version it was the island of Dilmun, now considered by most scholars to be in the area of the Bahrain islands.

The Biblical version is theologically motivated by God’s covenantal nature. God blesses Noah, and then grants him the original charge given to Adam to multiply and fill the earth, and to exercise dominion over the creatures (Gen 9:1-3). As the flood was a return to the chaos waters before creation, so the world of Noah is a new creation with a new Adam. And God reinforces his value of the created image of God in man, by bringing special attention to capital punishment for murdering man, made in the image of God.

The rainbow becomes God’s covenant promise to stay his hand from Deluge judgment, unlike the
Gilgamesh Epic, that has a secondary mother goddess claim that a necklace strung with flies will, “remind her of the hungry gods buzzing around [Utnapishtim’s] sacrifice, and ultimately of her special responsibility to her human children”
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(Tablet XI:165-169).

Comparison and Contrast

The value of comparative religion lies in achieving a better understanding of the historical and cultural context of ancient writings like the Bible. Too often, both religious believers and unbelievers approach the text with their own preconceived modern worldview or political agenda that they project upon the text in order to “use” it for their own purposes, positive or negative. Christians have been guilty of forcing poetic passages into the straightjacket of a hyper-literalistic hermeneutic, or imposing our notions of historical accounting or scientific accuracy upon ancient writers who just did not write with our post-Enlightenment modern scientific or historical worldview.

I addressed the Mesopotamian cosmology in the Bible in an appendix of
Noah Primeval
to make the point that the Biblical authors were men of their times that could not have possibly been writing Genesis as a scientific treatise on the origin of the material universe, simply because they did not write creation texts with that intent. They wrote them as theological/political documents. When we impose our own modern categories upon the Bible, we are engaging in the worst sort of cultural imperialism, denying the human side of the divinely inspired text.