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The ANE Desk
Old Testament passages beside the ancient Near Eastern texts they are compared with, and what Israel does with what it shares.
Tear down your house, build a boat
A god warns one man, tells him to build a boat to set measurements, and to bring living seed of every kind on board. Gilgamesh XI and Genesis 6 share the order of events. They do not share the reason the man is warned.
Genesis 6:13-22, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: why was this one man saved? The boss tipped off one worker before the layoffs. Maybe the worker was the best on the floor. Maybe the boss was breaking ranks with the board. Same tip, very different story. Why does Noah get the warning?
Reed-hut, reed-hut! Wall, wall! / O reed-hut, hear! O wall, understand! / Thou man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, / Pull down thy house, build a ship, / Leave thy possessions, take heed for thy life, / Abandon thy property, and save thy life. / And bring living seed of every kind into the ship. / As for the ship, which thou shalt build, / Of which the measurements shall be carefully measured, / Its breadth and length shall correspond. / In the deep shalt thou immerse it.
The sequence runs the same way: the decision to destroy, a warning to one man, an order to build a boat with given measurements, and living creatures brought on board. Atrahasis has the same order in its own words, "Dismantle the house, build a boat", and the Sumerian version King translates has its hero Ziusudu warned at a wall. King said the correspondence of the Babylonian story with Genesis "is recognized by every one and need not detain us." He also noted that the Gilgamesh boat was smeared with pitch and bitumen inside and out, as the ark is pitched inside and out.
Ea warns his man behind the other gods' backs. Dalley's note explains that Ea spoke to the reed hut because he had been sworn to secrecy. In Genesis the God who sends the flood is the God who warns Noah, and Noah is warned because he is righteous. King put it this way: both Hebrew versions make the saving of Noah part of the divine intention from the beginning. The boats differ too. King reads the Gilgamesh vessel as equal in length and breadth, 120 cubits each way, while the ark is 300 by 50 by 30 cubits.
The shared sequence is not in dispute among the sources read here. What it shows is. King argued the Hebrews knew the Sumerian tradition through Babylonian channels, by oral tradition rather than by copying a document, and before the exile. The IVP Bible Background Commentary says there is no reason to doubt that the Mesopotamian accounts and Genesis refer to the same flood, with each culture seeing it through its own theology. Those are different explanations of the same likeness, a shared tradition and a shared memory, and neither is proved by the likeness itself. The shape of the Gilgamesh boat is also argued: the IVP commentary thinks a ziggurat shape more likely, King compares it to the round pitched coracle of Baghdad. Both are inferences.
Not a claim that Genesis copied Gilgamesh XI. King, who found the likeness overwhelming, still argued for tradition passed down, not a scribe with a tablet.
- L. W. King, Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition, Schweich Lectures 1916 (Project Gutenberg eBook 2030), Lecture II, introduction and sections IV and V, and Lecture III
- Stephanie Dalley, trans., Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford), Atrahasis, Tablet III, column i, and Notes to Atrahasis, n. 29
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (InterVarsity Press), sidebar Ancient Near Eastern Flood Accounts
