Since the time of enlightenment and biblical criticism,
it has widespread the idea that the ‘authors’ of the Torah took on different
Mesopotamian legends and adapted them into post captivity Judaism, by changing
names of pagan deities for their God’s and other details.
That is how they
ascribe the creation narrative, the universal flood, Babel tower, the decalogue,
and many more biblical stories, to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Code, and
other Mesopotamian tales (1). And in time, these ideas have been wining
conviction among modern Christian theological colleges and churches.
BIRTH OF THE JEWISH RELIGION
It is true that our modern copies of the Old
Testament followed a post Babylonian version, the same as the Judaism we know
today is post exilic, after the destruction of Judea in the 70 CE.
However, we hold that religion cannot appear
overnight, especially not among millions of followers. The sophistications and
convictions the Jews had to reconstruct their temple, with a set version of
books and specific priesthood rules, and their pre-existence as a ‘Jewish’
nation, are not something anyone ‘created’ over the 70 years that lasted their
captivity. When King Nebuchadnezzar took over Judea, there was a temple, a
priesthood, a Torah, and a theocratic state already existent, hardly the casual
invention of Hebrew captives from after the captivity.
If then we consider that these stories were copied
from other lose books and sources that guarded the previous captivity religion,
we arrive to a now disappeared written source that kept alive their religion,
too meticulous as to rely on contradictory oral narratives. Judaism, from whenever
it started, started as a religion of the book, according to a set of sacred
laws, more highly guarded and revered than any other sacred book in human
history. And always, it got attributed
to their Hebrew-Egyptian founder, Moses, who appeared to rescue 2 million Hebrew
slaves from captivity (2), which seems to indicate that the Hebrew nation did
not born casually, but that they had a determined binding elements that
identified them as such. Their books said they were blood related. They were
family.
By the time of Moses (Around 1500 BC), then these
stories were first written, already away from Sumerian and Mesopotamian
influence, and referred to the beginning of human history as they saw it.
The whole Hebrew nation proclaim a common ancestry
in the character they call Abraham, who lived around 1800 BC., but who hardly
left any laws or form of religion, except the idea of a single deity and a sacrificial
system of worship and circumcision as only rituals. The whole of Jewish Law was
born at the time of Moses, after the liberation, which preceded all Eastern
contact. If any influence may have happened, it would have been Egyptian and
not Babylonian or otherwise.
WHY THE SIMILITUD
Moses wrote the story of Genesis from different
sources he had at hand, written and oral, but overall, from guided revelation
and divine guidance. In fact, all details told in Genesis about creation, the
Nephilim, the Flood, Babel and others, as well as the rituals and
details of biographies, must have come from a different source to the well-known
eastern legends, because even when they are similar in certain aspects, details
vary greatly and almost differ from them all.
The events narrated in Genesis come from the beginning
of humanity, from the time when human life was common and isolated to a small
land space. After humanity expanded over the globe and became estranged from
God, these early stories were mutated according to their families, and adapted
into legends with extra additions.
That these all have a common ancestry, it is the base
for which Gilgamesh story has also similitude with Wiracocha of the pre-Inca
America, Pirrha in Greece, Gun-Yu in pre-Imperial China, and Bergermil among
the Nordics in Europe.
The truth is, that the Genesis account is not based
on these later human legends, but that these legends evolved from a common story
known to all humanity, as it is written in Genesis, and that later were reflected
in their own mythology in lands distant from each other, and who did not know
one another.
Omar Flores.
(1) Gilgamesh
among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic, Thedore Ziolkowski, (2012).
"The
Epic of Gilgamesh",
F. James Rybka, (2011).
The
Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic – Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (in English and Akkadian). vol. 1
and 2, Andrew R. George, (2010).
(2) The
Old Testament of the Old Testament (Overtures to Biblical Theology), R W L Moberly, (1992).
The
Moses Legacy: The evidence of history,
Graham Phillips, Pan (2003).
Israel
and the nations: The history of Israel from the Exodus to the fall of the
second Temple,
F. F. Bruce, (1998).
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