Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Gilgamesh..ripped of Genesis.

DA Morgan posted:
Actually no. That is not why we disagree with it. We disagree with it because we have read the Epic of Gilgamesh and we know it is just a bad plagiarism of the original work.

Plageriarism? How do you figure?

I see it this way...Gilgamesh called for a cube shape ark...the bible calls for a more rectangle shape box...that has excellent properties for staying up-right, unlike a cube.

So the question is...how did the original writer of Genesis know the excellent principles behind the ark? You guys claim they were pretty ignorant concerning ship building, so, how did they get it right? Did they guess?

To be honest it sounds like the Gilgamesh story ripped off the Genesis story.

Ah-ha-ha! You do have a sense of humor, trilobyte.

"So the question is...how did the original writer of Genesis know the excellent principles behind the ark? You guys claim they were pretty ignorant concerning ship building, so, how did they get it right? Did they guess?"

No scientific evidence of this whatever. All we have are assertions from religions fanatics. So there are fish all over the world that require a special degree of salinity. When the world flooded, did all the salt water fish suddenly become fresh water fish, or vice versa? Answer? it obviously never happened.

"To be honest it sounds like the Gilgamesh story ripped off the Genesis story."
Well ... except for the fact that the Gilgamesh story is a LOT older!

For those that want to get a really good picture of the deck Trilobyte deals from here, again, is what he wrote:
"Gilgamesh called for a cube shape ark"

Here is what is actually written on the 7th Tablet of the Epic.

"Seventy-two cubits was your height, 14 cubits your width, one cubit your thickness"

I guess where trolls come from 72x14x1 are the dimensions of a cube. But that is certainly not what I was taught in elementary school.

Want to read it yourself?
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab7.htm

I read your linked text, and it appears to me that he is referring to a door that is 72 x 14 x1 cubit. He's saying he made this door.

"The Ark story told in Genesis has parallels in the Sumerian myth of Ziusudra, which tells how a carpenter was warned by God to build a vessel in which to escape a flood sent by Him. Less exact parallels are found in other cultures from around the world. Indeed, the deluge story is one of the most common topics across the globe, leading both skeptics and believers to see this trend as proof of their position."

Pointless arguing over this one.

Believer: They are all different reports of the same event. The fact that so many different cultures report it, leads one to assume there is some truth in the event.

Skeptic: The writer of Genesis just copied it - commandeering an old myth for his own purposes.

Blacknad.

Not possible Rose for several reasons. The primary one being that a door opening only has two dimensions.

But you might, also, want to do the math.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit

The Biblical ark dimensions were 300x50x30 cubits (Genesis 6:15) which is about 140x23x13.5 metres or 459x75x44 feet, so its volume was 43,500 m3 (cubic metres) or 1.54 million cubic feet.

These dimensions provided optimal stability and would allow it to list up to 60 degrees and still right itself.

The Gilgamesh ark dimensions were 120L x120B x 120D cubits.

This would topple very easily.

Assuming what they told me in school was right, then the Gilgamesh ark was definitely a CUBE.

Blacknad.

Dan,

You have a habit of posting links that you don't read properly.

From your link:

"Enkidu raised his eyes,...and spoke to the door as if it were human:
" You stupid wooden door ,
with no ability to understand... !
Already at 10 leagues I selected the wood for you,
until I saw the towering Cedar ...
Your wood was without compare in my eyes.
Seventy-two cubits was your height, 14 cubits your width, one
cubit your thickness,
your door post, pivot stone, and post cap ..."


OR:


Assuming you are right and they are not the dimensions for the door but are indeed for the ark then at:

"Seventy-two cubits was your height, 14 cubits your width, one cubit your thickness"...

Then the ark was only (assuming we are using the Summerian cubit from your wiki-link) 20.4 inches wide. Or we could go with the Egyptian cubit and say the ark was 20.63" wide.


Or we could just read the Gilgamesh passage correctly and realise that he was just writing about a huge door.

Blacknad.

Dan, your main mistake here was to include these five words:

"Want to read it yourself?"


Right, now do we get to coax an admission from you that you were actually mistaken? Come on, you can do it ;-)

Blacknad.

Obviously I misread something but where are you finding the 120 number with respect to the size?

The closest I can find is a reference such as this:

"To do this, Gilgamesh fashions 120 beams, 60 cubits long"

Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A446410

and this:

" Urshanabi told Gilgamesh to get 120 logs to push them through the water"

Source:
http://www.geocities.com/trpjwig/mideast/gilgamesh.html

DA:

Amaranth is right. It is a door he beholds.

Thank you for the great link, however. I find the Indian stuff very entertaining and more informative than one might expect.
jjw

The bottom line is this...why is the ark mentioned in Genesis so "just right" ... while Gilgamesh not?

It sounds like Gilgamesh was ripped off from Genesis. Not the other way around.

"The bottom line is this...why is the ark mentioned in Genesis so "just right" ... while Gilgamesh not? "
More time to think it through? It's not clear that it's so "just right." There's no scientific basis for the belief.

jjw wrote:
"I find the Indian stuff very entertaining"

I do too. But Gilgamesh, most likely a real person, was Sumarian.

A typical 19,000 tonne cargo ship has a breadth/depth ratio of 1.7.

The Biblical ark (22,000 tonnes - assuming a density of 0.4) has a B/D rating of 1.67.

These are ideal ocean going dimensions, which makes it a fortuitous guess, or shows a knowledge of ship-building.

Blacknad.

Dan,

"According to the version of the Deluge story contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet XI) the Ark is a cube with an edge of 120 cubits."

http://www.metrum.org/deluge/delgilg.htm


It derives from:

Gilgamesh XI,line 58 the length is said to be ten ninda (a ninda was a dozen cubits). Therefore 120 cubits long. And in XI, line 57 it reads "120 cubits each I raised its walls".

Blacknad.

They have done test on models with the same size ratio as the ark....and they do quite well.....So there is a scientific basics for this belief. (but you can continue to tell yourself there isn't if you would lke too)


But back to the original question.....If Genesis ripped off Gilgamesh, then how did a bunch of ignorant ancients who never built an ark get perfect dimensions for their story?

Why not stick with the cube shape of Gilgamesh?

I think the answer is, is that Genesis is the original.

Yes, the Genesis account must be the original. After all, it's a thousand or two years younger than Gilgamesh, so...

Wait. That doesn't sound right. Well, we KNOW the Bible's flood story is the original. That's established, right? So then this extra millenium or two that the Gilgamesh story has on the Bible story can be ignored by a simple hand wave. That's from the time honored creation science Law of Pre-Ordained Conclusions.

Care to prove that last statement?