Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions.

The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions.

Sixto Ruiz

Coastal Carolina University

Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 2

Abstract

It is known that Abrahamic religions are influenced by the surrounding cultures contemporary to

their beginning. Comparing the flood story from the Bible, Noah, and the flood story from the

Epic of Gilgamesh to see similarities and dissimilarities. The comparisons revealed that the

stories of the Christian Bible were greatly influenced by themes of stories that were prevalent at

the time. Comparing these stories gives insight to the influential power of the cultures of the

time to the mythos of Christianity. Another aspect of comparison done is themes that are present

in the description of the Garden of Eden and the story of Etana.

Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 3

The Influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic Religions

It has been known that there are similarities between stories of the Bible and the epics of

Mesopotamia. There are stories in the Bible, such as Noahs ark and the Garden of Eden, that

show many similarities in some stories that circulated Mesopotamia around the time of

Abrahams life. Some of these similarities are more widely known than others that are imbedded

in the stories. However, there are differences between these stories not as widely known as the

similarities.

Research has been done into the similarities between stories of the Bible and

Mesopotamian culture. In his paper, Abraham Winitzer (2013), he discusses themes in the story

of Etana and proposes that whoever wrote Genesis used those themes in created the story of the

Garden of Eden. In Noah and the Flood (Lewis. 1984), a comparison is done on the differences

of the flood story within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Eugene Fisher (1970)

compares the flood stories in Genesis and in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Leonard Swidler (2011)

takes a closer look at the Garden of Eden and analyzes the themes that were placed in the story.

However, these authors only look at the individual stories to find the similarities between the two

cultures, and not comparing them as a collective to understand the influence one culture had over

the creation of the other.

Although similarities between stories from the Bible and Mesopotamian stories have

been found by comparing the same stories side by side, but they have not compared them along

side others with the end goal of seeing how far Mesopotamian cultures embedded themselves.

How pervasive the culture of the time and area is not known on the stories of the Old Testament.

Looking at the flood stories of the two cultures and themes from the story of the Garden of Eden

and Etana, will hopefully shed some light on the pervasiveness.

Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 4

It is expected that the influence Mesopotamia had on the creation of the Abrahamic

religions was a lot greater than what most would have thought. By comparing these stories it

could shed light on the beginnings of the Abrahamic traditions, given that Abraham originated

from the city of Ur in Mesopotamia. This research could help further the search for the origins

of the religions.

Methods

Procedure

The stories of Noah and the Epic of Gilgamesh were compared for possible similarities.

Looking at the flood story a comparison was done using two papers Noah and the Flood, which

looks at the flood story from the Bible in the perspective of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim

traditions; and Gilgamesh and Genesis, which looks at similarities between the flood stories in

Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Themes in the story of Etana and that of the Garden of Eden in Genesis were compared in

search of any similarities. The two papers that were used for this comparison were The Garden

of Eden Story and Etana in Eden. The former covers aspects in Genesis about the Garden of

Eden that are often misread for wisdom, but this paper was used for the analysis of themes in the

Garden of Eden. The latter paper covers some themes that are present in both Etana and the

Garden of Eden, but also recounts the story of Etana and analyzes themes within the story.

Results

The correlations between the two flood stories from Mesopotamian culture and the

Abrahamic religions are similar in all but number of gods and immortality (Table 1). The results

from comparing the two flood stories showed similarities, but they also showed that there were

some things that were quite different.

Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 5

Table 1

Similarities and Dissimilarities in Flood Stories

Noah Epic of Gilgamesh

Flood
Motive Humanity lost connection Gods secretly plan to flood

with Yahweh the Earth

Agent of Flood God The five great gods

Moment of Salvation Yahweh tells Noah to build Ea leaks the gods secret plan

an ark to Utnapishtim and tells him

to build a boat
Attainment of Immortality
Number of Gods 1 5

The main similarity between the two stories was the flood, or the act of the god(s) flooding the

earth. The motive of flooding the earth are similar in that it is the god or gods that wants to flood

the earth. In the story of Noah, it was the Jewish God that flooded the earth because humanity

had lost their connection to Him. However, in the Epic of Gilgamesh it was the five great gods

that secretly planned to flood the earth. In both stories it was one god that warned someone and

told them to build a boat to ride out the flood. In the story of Noah, it was Yahweh, the same one

that planned to flood the earth, and in the epic it was Ea, one of the great gods, that warned

Utnapishtim to build a boat for his family. At the end Utnapishtim and his wife gained

immortality from the gods as a payment for flooding the earth. In the story of Noah all they

received was Yahweh telling them to go and repopulate the earth.

Concerning the stories of the Garden of Eden and Etana there were similarities between

the two in not only just the content of the stories but also the language in which they were

written. In the Garden of Eden, there was Adam and Eve, and they lived happily until a serpent
Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 6

told them that if they eat from the tree in the middle of the garden that they would be immortal

like God. In Etana, there was a snake and an eagle. They lived happily together under and in a

poplar tree. They swore an oath to live mutually and to hunt together. However, one day the

eagle ate one of the snakes eggs, and the egg asked the help of Samas. Samas told the snake to

sit and lie in wait in a dead body for the eagle to come. Once the eagle arrived the snake mete

punishment towards the eagle by ripping out its feathers and by cutting off its wings. The eagle

then asked the help of Samas and Samas listened and sent Etana. The sword Etana used in the

rescuing of the eagle has some connection to the flaming sword of the cherubim that stood guard

over the gates of Eden keeping mankind out.

Discussion

The two stories of both Mesopotamian and Biblical origin show many connections

between them. Showing that there was a god of some sort that flooded the earth and a god that

told a man and saved him and his family. There were correlations between Adam and Eve, and

the serpent and the eagle in the story of Etana.

Looking at each individual story and comparing the two versions of each story can show

that there are similarities as well as dissimilarities within each one. However, when comparing

the two versions of each story one only gets a small clip of the overall picture. Looking at

different versions of more than one story along side each other can show that one or the other has

a great influence upon the other. That is the case with the stories of the flood and of Eden.

Though this is only a small sample, it does show that there is some influence of Mesopotamia on

that of the origination of at least the stories that are present in the Bible.

Conclusion
Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 7

In conclusion, there is still more research to be done on other stories in the Bible to

analyze the influence one culture had on the writing of them. This small snippet of comparison

shows that there is some influence that was put upon the writing of these particular stories, but to

know the extent of that influence comparing more of the stories from the Bible to the stories of

other Mesopotamian regions would be needed to make more a definitive decision concerning the

pervasiveness of the influence.

Reference

Lewis, J. P. (1984). Noah and the flood: in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition. Biblical

Archaeologist, 47(4), 224-239.

Running head: The influences of Mesopotamia on Abrahamic religions. 8

Fisher, E. J. (1970). Gilgamesh and Genesis: the flood story in context. The Catholic Biblical

Quarterly, 32(3), 392-403.

Swidler, L. J. (2011). The Garden of Eden story--source of often mis-read wisdom: a Jewish-

Christian dialogue. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 46(2), 143-149.

Winitzer, A. (2013). Etana in Eden: new light on the Mesopotamian and Biblical rales in their

semitic context. Journal of The American Oriental Society, 133(3), 441-465.