Tool Alpha
The ANE Desk
Old Testament passages beside the ancient Near Eastern texts they are compared with, and what Israel does with what it shares.
Like flies over the sacrifice
After the flood the hero offers a sacrifice, and heaven smells it. In Gilgamesh and Atrahasis the starving gods crowd round like flies. In Genesis the Lord smells the pleasing aroma and makes a promise.
Genesis 8:20-21, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: what does a god want from a sacrifice? The family brought a hot meal to the house after the funeral. The people inside might be grateful for the kindness, or they might be truly hungry. The same dish means something different depending on who needs it. Does the God of Genesis 8 need Noah's offering?
When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice.
Both stories have the hero leave the boat and offer a sacrifice, and both say heaven smelled it. King's summary uses the same phrase for both: the gods smelt the sweet savour of Ut-napishtim's sacrifice, and in the earlier Hebrew version Yahweh smells the sweet savour of Noah's burnt offering. Atrahasis, in Dalley's translation, has the gods smell the fragrance and gather like flies over the offering.
The Mesopotamian gods are hungry. With no humans there were no offerings, and Atrahasis describes the great gods during the flood as parched and famished. The IVP Bible Background Commentary says Genesis falls far short of that picture and that its phrase pleasing aroma was kept from a world where sacrifice was food for the gods. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible makes the same contrast: Israel's God does not need human food, while the gods in Atrahasis crowd round because the smell promises an end to their hunger. In Gilgamesh the goddess wants Enlil kept away from the offering because he brought the flood without thinking. In Genesis the Lord who smells it is the one who sent the flood, and he answers with a promise about the ground.
The wording overlap is real, sweet savour in both, and the scene is in the same place in both stories, which is why this is graded close. Whether Genesis is replying to the hungry gods on purpose is another matter. The IVP commentary and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds note describe the contrast; neither says Genesis was written to answer it. That reading would be an inference.
Not a claim that Israel's sacrifices fed God. The phrase stayed. The idea behind it in Mesopotamia did not.
- N. K. Sandars, trans., The Epic of Gilgamesh, ch. 5, The Story of the Flood
- L. W. King, Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition, Schweich Lectures 1916, Lecture II, section V, citing Gilgamesh XI, line 162
- Stephanie Dalley, trans., Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford), Atrahasis, Tablet III, columns iii and v
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (InterVarsity Press), on Genesis 8:21
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, ed. John H. Walton and Craig S. Keener (Zondervan, 2016), note on Leviticus 1:9, an aroma pleasing to the Lord
