Flood Story – Babylonian Story in the Epic of Gilgamesh
Essay Preview: Flood Story – Babylonian Story in the Epic of Gilgamesh
Report this essay
Flood Story- Final Draft
Perhaps the second most important historical account of the common flood story can be found in a Babylonian story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. When the Biblical and Babylonian stories are compared you witness a numerous amount of similarities between the two. You can conclude that there are most likely more stories that follow the same similarity. We seem to witness throughout time that flood stories are starting to look similar to each other. The common flood story of today was ubiquitous in retrospect. There are stories from Asia, India, Australia and many more. These stories occurred sporadically throughout time. You witness that each culture has a different perspective of the flood story that all have the same idea. They also can relate to each other with great similarities and differences.
Many flood stories compare to each other dramatically. For example the Babylonian and the Bibles version of the flood story compare to each other with tremendous similarities. When stories are juxtaposed you can observe how similar and different they are. In the Babylonian story it states, “I sent out a dove The dove went, and then came back, no resting-place appeared for it, so it returned.” The Bibles story is almost the exact same saying, “He sent out a dove… but the dove found no resting-place… and she returned.” As you get further along in the two stories it occurs like that throughout both of them. You ponder it and wonder how two different cultures and religions have the same concept with each others story when they were around the same time period. If these two stories have the same concept you can conclude that there were probably many other similar flood stories. Its quite marvelous to see how stories from back then could have the same idea occurring for both of them.
When you search Flood Stories in the internet you receive pages and pages of different results of flood stories. You notice that the beginning, middle, and end of each story you research has the same perspective. The beginnings of most stories that I read about started out with the villages or tribes of different cultures having some type of controversy or the humans thinking they are infallible, or become big headed in some way. This usually resulted in the gods getting involved and causing the big flood. Then someone found out about the flood coming and managed to find safety with other companions. When the flood came to an end they would have somehow survived it. The people who survived the flood would repopulate the world. Then you go back to all the different types of flood stories and realize they all have the same concept.
You seem to notice that almost every story compares to the classical Gilgamesh story. This is probably because that was the common story of that time and when it reached its zenith many cultures started comprehending