Preview

Comparing The Story Of Noah's Ark Vs. The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
507 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparing The Story Of Noah's Ark Vs. The Epic Of Gilgamesh
Joshua Badejo
Mr. Tokar
CHW3M1
19 September 2013

Noah’s Ark vs. The Story of the Flood The Story of Noah’s Ark and The Story of the Great Flood are very alike in many ways. They both distinct characteristics of the ark, or person, the events that took place are also parallel to each other. The Sumerian version of the story is in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew/Christian version of the flood story is told in the book of Genesis .In both cases God chose an honorable men that he thought would be capable of carrying out the task. A verse form the bible expresses one of the reasons God choice Noah, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. (Genesis6:9). The Gods must have thought Utnapishtim was also a great and honorable man because Ea appeared in his dream and warned him about the flood. Both Noah and Utnapishtis’s families were also saved from the flood. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great...” (Genesis 6:5) “The uproar of mankind is intolerable…” (Gilgamesh 108) In both stories The God/s wanted to flood the world because of the
…show more content…
”Tear down your house and build a boat…then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures.”(Gilgamesh 108) “Make yourself an ark…and of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two every

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The supernatural and natural worlds are very closely related within these two novels. The gods, which represent supernatural, are present in the natural lives of humans in both The Epic of Gilgamesh and in The Golden Ass. The supernatural and natural worlds are constantly interacting with one another, and Gilgamesh and Lucius, themselves, are mixture of natural human and supernatural creatures. The presence of gods, super powers, and creatures not of the natural world are all proof of the overlapping of the natural and supernatural worlds.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Many comparisons come from the Old Testament in the story of Noah’s Ark, both the Bibical religon and The Samerion religon delt with a great flood. In both stories that the “sins” of man have angered their gods and so the gods will punish the human race. They both had warning this was going to happen, alon with specific instructions on how to spare themselves along with carrying out the certain wishes of the gods. Noah had instrucions, as Gilgamish did. Noahs instructions were “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou salt make it of: The length of the ark should be three hndred cubits, the breadh of it fifty cubits and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thouh finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the inside therof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.” Genesis 14-16. (6) Gilgamesh was instructed: “O man of shuruppak, son of Ubartutu: Tear down the house and build a boat! The boat which you are to build, its dimensions must measure equal to each other: its length must correspond to its width. Roof it over like the Apsu.” Tablet XI 24 and 28-30. They both followed the rules just as they were told, didn’t leave one detail out. It is obvious they…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Noahs Ark and Gilgamesh

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Story and the Noah’s Ark story from the Bible are similar in many ways. They are similar in the sense that they both got rid of their houses and all of their belongings. Noah received his message from God to start building the boat while Gilgamesh received his message in a dream. But in the story of Noah’s Ark, Noah was to build the boat to exact measurements which were 300 cubits for its length, 50 cubits for its width, and 30 cubits for its height. Where in the Epic of the Gilgamesh it was to be built “shall have her dimensions in proportion, Her width and length in harmony.” The story never tells how big the boat was for all living seeds. So as a reader we can picture Noah’s massive boat where we cannot do the same for Gilgamesh’s boat They were both were to build enormous boats that would be able to hold all forms of life. In the Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Story, Gilgamesh fills his boat with all forms of life along with silver and gold. Whereas Noah built the boat only to fit all animals and his family. The Epic of Gilgamesh fought through only six days and seven nights where Noah fought through forty days and forty nights. But we do know the Bible uses the number 40 as a way of saying a long period of time. Both Gilgamesh and Noah released a Raven and a Dove but Noah released 3 doves while Gilgamesh only released a swallow after the release of other two birds. The Gilgamesh Epic has close parallels with the account of Noah’s Flood. Its close similarities are due to its closeness to the real event. However, there are major differences as well. Everything in the Epic, from the polytheism to the absurd cubical ark, as well as the worldwide flood legends, show me that the Genesis account is the original, while the Gilgamesh Epic is a distortion.…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gilgamesh is told to be the oldest existing story in the history of humankind, imminently, the story has many similarities to the bible. Bible is a text oof belief based lessons and the base of the religion of Christianity which has many similarities to Gilgamesh as in they both include the tales of worldly destruction with the reasons, destroyer and the saving. All similarities aside, the two texts can be contrasted as the bible is the root of world’s biggest universalizing religion and the Gilgamesh was not extracted as a manuscript and if man made errors are factored in, it may not have been comprehended as it was supposed to be. Gilgamesh and the bible can be compared and contrasted based on the stories, lessons and the effects on the evolution…

    • 133 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Growing up in a Christian home, it was mandatory to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday. Since my mother always attended “big church” with the other adults, she felt like I needed to grow up through a youth group. In youth group, we learned many things about God and the bible. We would learn about David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Joseph and Mary, and many more stories. However, one story that seems to be the most significant is the story of Noah and the Ark. Noah is one of the most influential people in the Bible who steered away from God and his word. When thinking about the story of Noah, another story is very similar to the life of Noah. In the story of Gilgamesh, a man by the name of Utnaptishtim experience the fate Noah had with the flood. Even though these stories are very similar, there are differences that are present.…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The flood in Gilgamesh had many similarities to the story of Noah ark in Genesis of the Bible. When Gilgamesh was trying to find everlasting life, he went to Utanapishtim to learn how to get everlasting life. Utanapishtim told the story of the great flood and how the people had overwhelmed the earth and upset the gods. In Noah ark, God needed to cleanse the earth because the people had become to corrupted. I feel like the reasons why they flooded the earth was different in both stories because the Gods want to flood Earth because it was to crowed and in Genesis God want to save the people but cleanse the earth from the evil. They both had similar story line. The Gods came to one person to save men kind. In the story of Utanapishtim the god…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Genesis 6:7-8 reads, “7 So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.’ 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (The Holy Bible). This scripture introduces the well-known story of Noah’s Ark. God sent forty days and forty nights of non-stop rain to wipe out the sin-ridden humans and purify the Earth. One male and one female from every animal species and the family of Noah would be spared in order to repopulate the Earth. There has been much debate over the existence of such an event even though versions have been recorded in many cultures and languages. Some say that the bible’s…

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The parallels between The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Benjamin R. Foster, and the Genesis stories, from The Hebrew Bible, are uncanny. The overall theme of these stories talks about divine intervention and questions the human condition of mortality. Both of these infamous literary works address the fact that humans are the only known species capable of abstract thinking, moral judgment, and meta-cognition. While continuous belief compares this ability with the divine, the human life is limited whereas the supernatural is not. Theodore Hiebert raises this same awareness in “The Eden Narrative: A Literary and Religio-historical Study of Genesis 2-3” by saying, “wisdom and immortality are a stable pair in the ancient Near East, and that they are used both in Mesopotamian myths and in Genesis to explain the human condition and to mark the line between human and divine” (p. 2). The literal and metaphoric resemblances will force critical readers to wonder if the antecedent Gilgamesh story influenced the stories in Genesis.…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Accepting immortality and the ultimate powerlessness to be in control of death's inevitability is something that both Gilgamesh and Noah encounter. Gilgamesh faces the death of his closest companion, Enkidu, with hopelessness, fear, and anger. "In his bitterness he cried, 'How can I be at peace? Despair is in my heart. What my brother is now, that I shall be when I am dead. '" (p. 141) To Siduri's questioning, Gilgamesh responds, "Because of my brother I am afraid of death, because of my brother I stray through the wilderness and cannot rest." (p. 144) Noah, faced with the impending death of everyone except his own family and the pairs of creatures joining him in the ark, is unquestioning and obedient in following God's instructions. After the instructions about the animals that he is to take into the ark, "Noah did so; just as God commanded him, so he did." (p. 172) When God tells Noah that He will blot out all of creation in forty days and forty nights, "…Noah did just as the Lord commanded him." (p. 171 and 172) Both of the characters deal with death; respond differently, thus resulting in contrasting outcomes.…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being a man of religious background, specifically Roman Catholic, I began read the tablets of Gilgamesh skeptically. However I did notice a significant difference between the Genesis chapters 6 through 9 and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The story of Noah as written in the Holy Bible, under Genesis was written as I believe within a society that carried very strong morals. A belief in something bigger than themselves; and their belief in that one thing was called God. A God that was merciful and compassionate, yet vengeful, in regards to his creation known as mankind. In regards to Noah’s story, God was to banish the word of all creatures including man for the violence state that they had become. In the essence of gender relations, it’s stated in Genesis that God saw how beautiful women were created as the daughters of men. It also mentions how God saved the life of one man and his family from a flood that was to be the end of one Generation, the original generation that got out of control in God’s eyes and the beginning of a fresh start. I also feel that the society, in which the accounts of the bible were written, was one of insecurity and redemption. Maybe the bible was like a code of conduct, with examples in which one at the time could refer too. That there were consequences, to ones actions, however through the act of redemption one could be saved, and forgiven by a merciful God. I don’t see vast examples of gender relations in this story for it speaks between man and God directly.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Genesis and Gilgamesh

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When God made human beings he did so because he was lonely, but not so long after the creation of mankind God regretted what he had made. We were terrible neighbors. So God sent a flood as a punishment for all mankind. In both Gilgamesh and Genesis God announces the flood to one ‘savior’ of mankind, but in each story he does it in a different way. In Gilgamesh God comes in a dream while in Genesis God just tells Noah face to face. Despite the channel of communication both saviors take head to God’s warning and build a boat. They each take all different types of animals with them to repopulate the earth, but when it comes to the humans they chose to take Utnapishtim and Noah chose differently. Utnapishtim chooses to take his family along with a pilot for the boat and some craftsman, people that are necessary to rebuild a civilization. On the other hand you have Noah who only takes his family. The duration that each hero would embark on is also very different. Utnapishtim’s flood lasts for six days. While Noah’s flood lasts an astounding forty days. Another thing that makes these two stories extremely different is the final destination of the boats. While they both end up in the same region, the Middle East to be exact, Mt. Ararat and Mt. Nisir were maybe 500 miles away from each other. You can’t end up in two different places in one story. Lastly, the final blessings received from God at the end of each of the two journeys were also very different. Utnapishtim was granted eternal life for his good deeds while Noah was…

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In both, an individual was warned of the great flood to occur. Both Noah and Utnapishtim were advised to build an ark big enough to survive the flood and sustain the life their families and a subset of Earth’s species. The floods in both instances were global disasters and exterminated all of mankind. At the end of each tale, a bird was sent as a method to discover if land was nearby. Finally, Noah and Utnapishtim offered sacrifices to the gods for choosing them to survive the flood.…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gilgamesh Vs Genesis

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the Genesis, the reason for the floods is because the human race has become evil. God found that “the evil of the human creature was great on the earth [...] And the Lord regretted having made the human on earth” (Genesis 6). On the contrary, in Gilgamesh, the reasons for the flood aren’t explicitly said, rather, the “great gods decided to send down the Deluge,” (Gilgamesh 88). In the Genesis, the reasons for the flood are because of the corruption of the human, whereas in Gilgamesh, it’s never said why. In addition, the choosing of the saviors in both accounts differ. Noah is chosen by God as he “was a righteous man, he was blameless in his time” (Genesis 6). In Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim is chosen by the God Ea who is his master. Noah is chosen because of his character whereas Utnapishtim is chosen because of his status as a king and his role as servant to…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    the epic of gilgamesh

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages

    URruk in her days of glory under the rein of King Gilgamash. Three forth God and one third beast he boosted "Who could have been a man more suited than me" He said. The last of his kind Gilgamash emerged supreme among the folk of URuk, His head high in the sky as proud Bull. Son of Ninsun Perfected by Aruru the Goddess of creation .Eyes as deep as the sea , Hair as wise as light, his armor shinning as a furnace of fire, fairer then the fairest ,his might unreasonable and unmatched.…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Next, God as a loving partner and God as a warrior are compatible with Noah and the Flood. As a loving partner, God allowed Noah to preach for 120 years about the flood (Genesis 6:3). This gave the people sufficient amount of time to harken to the words of Noah. Everyone had a chance to trust Noah and be saved. God showed compassion towards Noah by…

    • 716 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays