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Epic Of Gilgamesh And Genesis Essay

765 Words4 Pages

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception (Carl Sargon)”. According to The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis, unprecedented floods occurred in the stories. The exception fell on the kind men, Utnapishtim and Noah: they survived the powerful event of destruction. However, in the same theme of the stories, there are sources of similarity and differences. Even though both The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis are similar in that they all used the floods for the destruction, both the stories are different from each other in distributing roles within the Gods and a way to warn the extermination from the Gods.

First, the similarity between The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis is the relevance with the floods that were used to exterminate the human. To prove the occurrence of the flood, chapter 5 of The Epic of Gilgamesh includes, “For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts (line 62-63, p. 21)”. Also, in Genesis, the text “The waters flooded the earth for a …show more content…

The Epic of Gilgamesh had the Gods who are Anu, Enlil, Ninurta, Ennugi, and Ea (line 2-3, p.20). In contrast to The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis had the only God according to the whole story. As the omniscient God existed over the world, the God in Genesis naturally controls every field of the world without distributing roles. On the other hand, a number of the Gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh can split the roles into parts. For example, Anu is the lord of the firmament, warrior Enlil is the counselor of the city Shurrupak, Ninurta is the helper, Ennugi is the watcher over canals, and Ea is the God of wisdom (line 2-3, p.20). After all, the only God affects every part in Genesis, but lots of the Gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh perform separate

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