Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (32 page)

But it works the other way as well. Modern notions of literary evolution get imposed upon the Bible by detractors who wish to discredit the narrative by reducing it to one of a variety of myths that evolve over time. This modern prejudice also ignores the polemical thrust of much ancient literature that interpreted historical events with divergent meanings, or engaged in retelling narratives through contrary theological lenses. This is not the syncretism of evolutionary plagiarism, but the subversion of worldview polemics.

Another aspect of storytelling where this subversion occurs is in the changing names of characters and locations in ancient narratives. As indicated earlier, the Flood hero has different names depending on which era and culture is composing the text. Some of this comes down to simple translation between languages.
Utnapishtim
in Akkadian may simply be the Babylonian translation of the Sumerian
Ziusudra
, which both mean “finding long life” or something similar. Others may be derivative. Some scholars argue that the name
Noah
can possibly be derived from the middle element of
Utnapishtim
, as one rendering has it: Ut
n’ah
pishtim.

Other cases illustrate outright changes of names to fit the story to the culture’s paradigm and differing deities. An important Sumerian text,
The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld
, was literally rewritten by the Babylonians as
the Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld
to accommodate their goddess Ishtar.
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The Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk, and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon, giving mythical justification to the rise of Babylon as an ancient world power in the early 18th century B.C.
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And then when King Sennacherib of Assyria conquered Babylon around 689 B.C., Assyrian scribes rewrote the Enuma Elish and replaced the name of Marduk with Assur the name of the Assyrian chief god.
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The Bible contains the renaming of people that often occurred in the ancient Near East with the intent of expressing destiny or identity. Faithful readers are familiar with Abram’s name changed to Abraham to become the “father of many,” or Jacob (“supplanter”) to Israel (“striving with God”), or Saul of Tarsus being changed to Paul, as a possible Romanizing of his mission to the Gentiles.

But the Hebrew writers of the Bible also engaged in the renaming of enemies for polemical purposes. Thus
Baalzebul
, the god of Ekron, whose name meant “lord of the heavenly dwelling,” was renamed
Baalzebub
by the author of 2 Kings 1:2-6, which means the derogatory, “lord of the flies.”
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The wicked queen of Tyre, whose name
Izebul
meant “where is the Prince Baal?” was renamed by the Jews as
Jezebel
, which is a slurring wordplay on dung (2 Kings 9:37).
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Genesis 11:9 even explains its polemical renaming of the city of Babylon (“Gateway of the Gods”) to Babel (“Confusion of Tongues”) .

I sought to capture this historical environment of changing names and concepts throughout the series of
Chronicles of the Nephilim
by having characters, locations and measurements change in ways that reflected history. Thus, locations like Erech, Aratta, and Shinar in
Enoch Primordial
(and the Bible) become the later known Uruk, Ararat, and Sumer in
Gilgamesh Immortal
. The Watchers change their names to Mesopotamian deities, Inanna changes her name to Ishtar, Ninurta to Marduk, and Gilgamesh changes his name, reflecting an important historical theory of the origins of Babylon. Even measurements begin as ancient calibrations like cubits and leagues in
Noah Primeval
, but eventually become the more modern familiar measurements of feet and miles by
Gilgamesh Immortal
. I wanted to give the reader the same experience of real world changing identities, times, and cultures.

There is both continuity and discontinuity within comparative religion, that captures both the common understanding as well as the polemical differences that separate and change meaning. A comparison of the
Gilgamesh Epic with the Bible bears this out as Heidel concludes,

As in the case of the creation stories, we still do not know how the biblical and Babylonian narratives of the Deluge are related historically. The available evidence proves nothing beyond the point that there is a genetic relationship between Genesis and the Babylonian versions. The skeleton is the same in both cases, but the flesh and blood and, above all, the animating spirit are different.
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Uncovering Noah’s Nakedness

One additional significant element of
Gilgamesh Immortal
requires explanation. In the novel, Noah’s son Ham rapes his own mother Emzara that results in the curse of the fruit of that maternal incest: the child Canaan. This brutal scene is not mere voyeurism of depravity, it is the very theological foundation upon which the rest of the
Chronicles of the Nephilim
are based. And that foundation is not imagined fantasy, it is the actual Biblical basis of the Jewish claim on the Promised Land of Canaan, as odd and controversial as it may seem. But as previous discussions have shown, Genesis is no stranger to odd and controversial stories.

Here is the text from the Bible:

Genesis 9:20–27

20
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.
21
He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.
22
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.
23
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.
24
When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him,
25
he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”
26
He also said, “Blessed be the
Lord
, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.
27
May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.”

Literalists have a difficult time with this passage for several reasons. They do not like to admit the fact that Noah becomes a drunk after being the worlds’ greatest Bible hero of that time. They read Genesis 6:9 that says Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and that he walked with God as being a description of Noah as some kind of moral perfectionist one level less than Jesus. But as explained in the appendix of
Noah Primeval
, they miss the fact that righteousness was having faith, not moral perfection. Secondly, having faith was not perfect faith because all Biblical heroes falter in their faith. Thirdly, “blameless” was a physical Levitical reference to genetic purity (as in “spotless” lamb) that was most likely a reference to being uncorrupted by the fallen Sons of God. Fourthly, walking with God did not mean being sinless. Noah was a sinner with imperfect faith and obedience as every believer is. His broken humanity is how we identify with him and draw our inspiration.

The real problem for literalists who do not consider the ancient Near Eastern poetic language of Genesis is in concluding that an entire nation was cursed simply because one of its forefathers saw his dad without clothes on! While it is certainly possible that ancient Mesopotamians had some holy taboo about a parent’s nakedness that we are simply unfamiliar with, there is nowhere else in the Bible that affirms the absurdity of such a taboo.

There are however, several places that explain the concept of “uncovering a father’s nakedness” as a figurative idiom for having sexual intercourse with his wife.

Bergsma and Hahn’s masterful article “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27)” elucidated for me the notion that I used in my novel that Ham had forced maternal incest with his mother, Noah’s wife.
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They explore the different scholarly explanations of “uncovering Noah’s nakedness” and disprove them: voyeurism, castration, and homosexual paternal incest. There are simply no references in the Bible anywhere that reinforce any of these interpretations.

The only one that is reaffirmed and makes sense is that Ham’s uncovering his father’s nakedness was an idiom or euphemism for maternal incest.

They explain that the definitions of uncovering nakedness in Leviticus 18 are tied to the practices of the Canaanites (sound familiar? Canaan is cursed?). And the Biblical text itself explains that in a patriarchal culture, uncovering a man’s nakedness was an expression that actually meant uncovering his wife’s nakedness.

Leviticus 18:7–8

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you sha
ll not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness.

Likewise, they explain, “Lev 18:14, 16; 20:11, 13, 21 all describe a woman’s nakedness as the nakedness of her husband.”

They then prove that “seeing nakedness” and “uncovering nakedness”
are equivalent phrases and are the usual expressions of sexual intercourse in the Holiness Code of Leviticus (18:6; 20:17). It could not be more explicit than Deuteronomy 27:20:

Deuteronomy 27:20

‘Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has unc
overed his father’s nakedness.’

Biblically, “uncovering a man’s nakedness” was an idiom for having sexual intercourse with his wife. What then of Shem and Japheth walking backward so as not to see Noah’s nakedness? Surely, this is not a reference to avoiding maternal incest, but a literal covering of Noah’s body with a cloak? In that case, the literal and the figurative collide in a metaphor of meaning. The authors explain the apparent incongruity this way:

The brothers’ actions play on the broader meaning of the phrase.
Not only did the brothers not “see their father’s nakedness” in the sense of having intercourse with him, but also they did not even dare to “see their father’s nakedness” in a literal sense. Where Ham’s act was exceedingly evil, their gesture was exceedingly pious and noble.
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The final clincher to making sense of this bizarre passage is the curse of the son Canaan. Throughout Genesis 9, Ham is oddly
and repeatedly referred to as the father of Canaan. It is a strange repetition that draws attention to itself and is finally climaxed with Canaan being cursed instead of Ham for Ham’s dirty deed. Well, if Canaan was the fruit of that illicit union of maternal incest between Ham and Emzara, it makes perfect sense within that culture that he is cursed. It may not sound kind to our modern ears, but it is perfectly consistent with that Biblical time period. Ham sought to usurp his father’s patriarchal authority through maternal incest which was “uncovering his nakedness.” The fruit of that action, the son Canaan, is a cursed man. And that cursed man is the forefather of a cursed nation.

The writer of Genesis, whether Moses or a later editor, was clearly showing the origins of the evil curse on the land of Canaan that they were about to take from the Canaanites. Canaan was cursed to be a servant of the Shemites, or Semites of Israel, and that is a justification of their conquest of the Promised Land.

In short, the Canaanites are the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Israelites, the Seed of the Woman, and they deserve to be dispossessed of their land by the God whom their ancestors rejected and by whom they were cursed. Of course, there is much more to the story than that, for there were giants in the land of Canaan as well, giants that were the descendants of the Nephilim, the original Seed of the Serpent. But you will have to wait for the novels
Joshua Valiant
and
Caleb Vigilant
to see how that all fits together.

About the Author

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter for the award-winning feature film,
To End All Wars,
starring Kiefer Sutherland. It was awarded the Commander in Chief Medal of Service, Honor and Pride by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, won the first Heartland Film Festival by storm, and showcased the Cannes Film Festival Cinema for Peace.

He also co-wrote
Alleged
, starring Brian Dennehy as Clarence Darrow and Fred Thompson as William Jennings Bryan. He previously adapted to film the bestselling supernatural thriller novel
The Visitation
by author Frank Peretti for Ralph Winter (
X-Men, Wolverine
), and wrote and directed
Wall of Separation,
a PBS documentary, and
Lines That Divide
, a documentary on stem cell research.

Mr. Godawa’s scripts have won multiple awards in
respected screenplay competitions, and his articles on movies and philosophy have been published around the world. He has traveled around the United States teaching on movies, worldviews, and culture to colleges, churches and community groups.

His book,
Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment
has been released in a revised edition from InterVarsity Press. His book
Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination
(IVP) addresses the power of image and story in the pages of the Bible to transform the Christian life.

Find out more about his other books, lecture tapes and dvds for sale at his website
www.godawa.com
.