On Wed, 20 Sep 1995 12:29:40 -0500 you wrote:
>I wrote
>BH>So we have some records going back to the popularly accepted time
>frame for the flood, and these records don't mention the flood, with
>the exception of the Gilgamesh epic which might be just a fanciful
>legend, or might be a seriously corrupted account of an actual event
>which occurred long before the popular flood date.
>Stephen responded
SJ>As to the Gilgamesh Epic being "just a fanciful legend", Ramm
>points out: "Believe that common oral tradition was handed down for
>5,000 years so that the Babylonians received it, or what you will.
>The parallels between Genesis and Babylonian materials is too close
>to be sheer accident or verbal coincidence." (Journal of the
>American Scientific Affiliation, VII, No. 4, December, 1955, p. 6,
>in Whitcomb J.C., & Morris H.M., "The Genesis Flood", 1961, Baker,
>Grand Rapids MI, p488)
BH>My main rationale for my statement above was based on the
>description of the ark in the Gilgamesh epic. It was top heavy and
>would have turned turtle in the turbulence likely in the flood
>described in Genesis. Perhaps I jumped to conclusions. In any case
>I believe Morris pointed this aspect out in one of his books.
There is no doubt that the Gligamesh Epic contains "fanciful"
elements, such as it being a cube of 120 cubits. But that does not
make it "just a fanciful legend". The similarities between it an the
Genesis Flood account are too great to be accounted for on just
fanciful invention. IMHO the Babylonian Flood tradition is an
important historical confirmation of the Flood.
BH>On the other hand, if the flood had occurred 5 million years ago,
>it's difficult to believe that we would know about it unless God had
>provided for us to know by telling Moses about it. Since the flood
>is a significant event in God's program for men, we need to know
>about it. Dating the flood when Glenn does eliminates conflicts with
>historical records, as well as explaining the genetic diversity of
>man, if you require that the flood had to wipe out all except eight
>humans.
SJ>But as Whitcomb & Morris point out, even 100,000 year-old Flood
>would be a big problem for oral tradition (and there is no evidence
>of writing then):
>"The most serious limitation on the stretching of Genesis 11, in the
>opinion of some scholars, is that which is imposed by the Flood
>traditions of many nations, especially that of Babylon....remarkable
>are the similarities between the Genesis account of the Flood and
>that which is recorded in the Gilgamesh Epic...How could certain
>details of the story of the great Flood have been more or less
>accurately handed down from one primitive stone-age culture to
>another, purely by oral tradition, for nearly 100,000 years, to be
>finally incorporated into the Gilgamesh Epic? That such could have
>happened for four or five thousand years is conceivable. That it
>could have happened over a penod of nearly 100,000 years is quite
>inconceivable. The Gilgamesh Epic alone, rightly considered,
>administers a fatal blow to the concept of a 100,000 B.C. Flood."
>(Whitcomb & Morris, p488)
BH>GOTCHA!
Oh no! :-)
BH>_Why_ do you assume the flood account was passed down as oral and
>eventually written tradition? Possibly some of what Moses wrote in
>the Pentateuch was from historical records. I'm not denying it. But
>what's wrong with God simply _telling_ Moses about events that were
>too ancient to appear in the Hebrew historical records, or correcting
>errors that had crept in with time. Or don't Whitcomb and Morris
>believe that God _could_ really speak to Moses?
Well then you have to assume that God told the Babylonians too! Moses
was about 1,500 BC whereas the Gilgamesh Epic dates from 2,500 BC:
"The [Flood] story was widespread in the ancient Near East and
excavations have yielded quite a number of texts or fragments which
refer to the story of the Flood, although these differ in detail...
Of special interest to Bible readers is a Gilgamesh fragment from the
middle of the second millennium B.C., that is, from the Middle Bronze
Age, found in level VIII at Megiddo." (Thompson J. A., "The Bible and
Archaeology", Third Edition, 1982, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
p15)
I do not rule out that Genesis 1 might have been revealed, but Genesis
itself indicates it is made up of several written sources with the
footer "These are the generations (ie. family histories)..." (Gn
2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 10:32; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 36:9;
37:2). This suggests that the "generations of the sons of Noah" Gn
6:10-10:1, which includes the Flood story, was a written tradition,
probably on tablets (P.J. Wiseman, R.K. Harrison).
God bless.
Stephen
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