Gilgamesh And Gensis–A Religious Comparision Essay, Research Paper

In our society, which is overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian, students often find itdifficult to compare the Bible stories with tales from other cultures, because ourown belief system is wrapped up in the former, and it is hard for many of us toachieve enough distance from these stories to evaluate them objectively. Yet ina comparison of the Biblical book of Genesis with the ancient Sumerian text Epicof Gilgamesh, many parallels suggest that the same type of spiritual searchinginspired the composition of both works. In addition, it would seem that bothcultures shared a concern for the nature of human life, and how its brevityaffects the way life should be lived. However, the conclusions each culturederived from their observations are very different, and this led them to developvery different philosophies of life. Gilgamesh is an interesting document because it contains severalepisodes in common with the Judeo-Christian Bible. For example, John Nossnotes that The original flood story was Sumerian and came out of grimexperiences of the overflowing of the two rivers [the Tigris and the Euphrates]. Several of the later versions of the tale, mostly fragmentary, have come down tous. The finest of these forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, into which it wasinserted as an interesting interpolation. According to this narrative, the godsdecided in anger to punish man s sins by a flood. their secret decision wasrevealed to one man. The good god Ea felt kindly toward Utnapishtim[Gilgamesh s ancestor] and told him about it. The man proceeded immediatelyto build an ark (Noss, 38). Marietta Moskin agrees that many of the earliest Hebrew stories derivedfrom the Sumerian. She writes that, The authors of Genesis surely must havelooked around to see what other people thought about creation. And there wasquite a lot. there were the Sumerian Seven Tablets of Creation; there was theBabylonian Gilgamesh epic. . . . (Moskin, 30). Thus the similarities should no surprise us — right down to the reasonGod was supposed to have decided to destroy the earth by water. In the Biblicalbook of Genesis, the author tells us that: The earth was corrupt in god s sight,and the earth was filled with violence (Genesis 6:11). Part of this, the Genesisauthor comments, was largely due to the fact that the human beings on the earthhad become extremely sinful; The Lord saw that the wickedness of men wasgreat in the earth, and it grieved him to his heart (Genesis 6:5). So hedetermined to kill all the people of the earth, saving only one family which hadsteadfastly maintained their righteousness. This, of course, was the family ofNoah. The parallels between this story and that of Gilgamesh are too obvious tobelabor. However, several interesting points can be made here about thecharacteristics of Sumerian religion. For one, it is clear that, like most primitivepeoples, the Sumerians took everyday happenings they observed occurringaround them — devastating floods, for example — and elevated them into myth. the Hebrews did too. Secondly, the Sumerians plainly believed that theirbehavior as a society directly impacted their fate — in other words, if theybehaved badly the gods would punish them. Again, this belief underlies Mosaiclaw as well. And finally, like the Hebrews, Sumerians believed their gods haddirect contact with man, in a manner specific enough to be able to impartinstructions for building an ark. This type of contact is made explicit in the passage where Gilgameshencounters the goddess Siduri-Sabitu at the cave by the sea that surrounds theworld. Gilgamesh seeks entrance and is initially refused, but when he explainsthe nature of his quest she lets him in, only to explain why he was being foolish. In a beautiful passage she tells him to stop concentrating on death — go homeand live. Thou, o Gilgamesh, let thy belly be filled! / Day and night be merry, /Daily celebrate a feast, / Day and night dance and make merry! / Clean be thyclothes, / Thy head be washed, bathe in water! / Look joyfully on the child thatgrasps thy hand, / Be happy with the wife in thine arms! (Gilgamesh, quoted inNoss, 39). John Noss observes that Here breathes the spirit of the people ofBabylonia. They had no hopes such as the Egyptians had of pleasantness inthe world beyond. All joy was in this life (Noss,39). This cold fact became achingly real for Gilgamesh as he has to confrontthe death of his best friend and bosom companion Enkidu. After Enkidu s death,Gilgamesh is bereft, confused, and terrified. Together [Enkidu and I] enduredall kinds of hardships. . .I have wept for him day and night, I would no give up hisbody for burial, I though my friend would come back because of my weeping (Gilgamesh, 32). He cannot deal with the fact that someone so dear to him, somuch a part of his life, should be so utterly gone. Weeping, he cries out, WhenI die, shall I not be like Enkidu? Enkidu s death has become his own, not onlybecause the joy of their lives together has been extinguished but becauseGilgamesh has been brought face to face with his own mortality. When he dies,he will indeed be like Enkidu. Surely there must be some antidote to this terrible fate! Gilgameshdecides to embark on a long journey to seek out Utnapishtim and ask him howhe survived the great flood. His first leg of the journey involves descending intoa tunnel-like cave composed of nine leagues of total darkness (similar to a

rebirthing experience). This is frightening enough, but he goes on toward theend of the tunnel, observing, Now that I have toiled and strayed so far over thewilderness, am I to sleep, and let the earth cover my hear for ever? Let my eyessee the sun until they are dazzled with looking. Although I am no better than adead man, still let me see the light of the sun (Gilgamesh, 33). As we can see, Gilgamesh still plainly believes that this journey will beworth it if immortality lies at the end. When Gilgamesh at last finds himself atlast in the presence of the ancient Utnapishtim and learns the story of the flood,however, it is clear to him that Utnapishtim has no secret that will conferimmortality after all; it was a one-time gift of the gods, and not somethingavailable to mankind at large. Gilgamesh has been so keyed up over Enkidu s death ant the rigors of hisrecent journey that he is overcome with exhaustion. He sleeps at Utnapishtim shome for six days and seven nights, and wakes up complaining that he hadscarcely fallen asleep when Utnapishtim woke him up. Gilgamesh is incredulousthat he could have slept that long without even being aware of it, andUtnapishtim proves it to him from the mole on the bread that hadn t even beenbaked at the time Gilgamesh fell asleep. Gilgamesh immediately sees the correspondence between him dreamlesssleep and death: What shall I do, O Utnapishtim? he asks. Where shall I go? Already the thief in the night has hold of my limbs, death inhabits my room;wherever my foot rests, there I find death! (Gilgamesh, 40). Unfortunately,despite Utnapishtim s efforts to help, human beings are only allotted so muchtime, and when it s up, it s up. The message of Gilgamesh extols the happinessof this life, because for the Sumerians there was no other. The Hebrews shared this lack of belief in a paradise after death. Thismay come as a shock to many people of our own day, for whom the promise (orthreat) of beatific or internal afterlife is their main rationale for behavingthemselves, but there is no evidence in Genesis that the Jews of those ancienttimes believed that death brought them either punishment or reward. On thecontrary, Isaac Asimov notes that like many ancient peoples, early Jews seemedto believe that the dead crossed over into a land of shades. He writes that thisunderworld, which the Bible calls Sheol, was thought of at first as a dim placewhere the was no particular torture, but where there was an absence of joy. Norwas there any distinction between good and evil; all human beings went thereupon death . . . . (Asimov, 173). He adds that The moralization of Sheol, itsconversion into a place of torture for the wicked, while the good go elsewhere,came later in history, toward the end of Old Testament times (Asimov, 173). ABible commentary edited by J. R. Dummelow translates Sheol as the grave (Dummelow, 109), but Asimov prefers not to translate it at all, feeling that anyconnotation we might attach to it does not do justice to the Hebrews conceptionof this sad and shadowy place. For obvious reasons, the Hebrews were in no great hurry to get to Sheol,any more than Gilgamesh had been in a hurry to become like Enkidu. we notein Genesis 44 that as Joseph s brothers plead with him for return of theiryoungest brother Benjamin, they tell him that if the youth is not returned safelyand soon, their father will die of grief, and [you] will bring down the gray hairs of. . .our father to Sheol (Genesis 44:31). Clearly the Hebrews dreaded death,not because they feared the tortures of Hell, but because life was so muchricher, and so terribly brief. The wish to remain alive is one that human beings share with animals, butonly the human being recognizes what the alternative is. According to thepsychologist Ernest Becker, man recognizes instinctively that he is very differentfrom the lower animals, because he alone shows evidence of a self-reflectiveconsciousness. According to Becker, Man has a symbolic identity that bringshim sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a lifehistory. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms andinfinity. . .Yet at the same time, . . .man is a worm and food for worms. that is theparadox; man is out of nature and yet hopelessly in it (Becker, 26). thisdilemma, according to Becker, forms the basis for our spiritual impulse – - animpulse which was sparked relatively early in the history of the human being. In both the epics of Gilgamesh and Genesis, written so long ago, thereader can clearly see an effort being made to come to terms with the complexissues and emotions surrounding the transitions of life and death. However, theSumerians and the Hebrews seem to have taken different paths in terms of theirresponse to this dilemma. Sumerians seem to have dealt with the inevitability ofdeath through a glorification of being alive. The Hebrews, on the other hand,found their own salvation in community and tradition, which insured an ongoingand consistent expression of faith despite the deaths of individual members –and this still remains true today. In this way the Jewish faith is able to trulybridge life and death in a way that the Sumerian philosophy could no.

Asimov,Isaac. Asimov s Guide to the Bible.(New York: Avenel) 1981.Becker,Ernest. The Denial of Death. (New York:The Free Press) 1973.Bible. RevisedDummelow,J.R. ACommentary on The Holy Bible (New York: Macmillan) 1978Epic of GilgameshNoss,John B. Man s Religions. (New York: Macmillan)Moskin,Marietta D. In Search of God.(New York: Atheneum)1979 1980