I. Rapaport
[Rabbi Dr. I. Rapaport, O.B.E., Emeritus Chief Minister of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and Chairman of the Melbourne Beth-Din, has written extensively on Biblical and Judaic subjects. The present article is a non-technical abridgment of his book “The Hebrew word SHEM and its original meaning,” published in Melbourne, 1976. Dr. Rapaport now lives in Givatayim, Israel.]
I have recently had occasion to re-examine the Akkadian text of Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic, which has long been looked upon as the classical tablet on the Flood in ancient Assyro-Babylon and the prototype of the Flood narrative in Genesis chapters 6–9. Various reasons had prompted me to make this effort. The most immediate one was the knowledge of the wide disagreement among Assyriologists over the rendering and interpretation of numerous features in the cuneiform narrative, and I thought that a new attempt at sorting out those differences might be worthwhile.
However, I seem to have found more than I had bargained for. In fact, as I am about to point out, it was not only invidividual features which were a source of much dispute, but the thesis itself which was originally propounded by George Smith in 1872 — that Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic contained a Babylonian Flood story — began to appear based on assumptions which one was hardly entitled to make in the first instance. So that, in a sense, my statements here are an invitation to contemporary scholars to undertake a new inquiry into the theme of Tablet XI in general and into its relationship to the Flood story in Genesis 6–9 in particular.
1. One of the difficulties concerns the question of the source of the Flood, or of how it came about. In the Biblical account, the cause of the Mabbul is explicitly stated: The water came in massive quantities both from the “windows of heaven” and the “fountains of the deep.” But in Tablet XI the source of the cataclysm is not clearly indicated so that scholars have to speculate over it. Thus
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we find that Alexander Heidel attributes it to natural rainfall. L.W. King speaks of an inundation by the Euphrates and the Tigris which caused the Flood. Again, Friedrich Delitzsch maintains that it was due to tidal waves from the Persian Gulf, and the eminent Viennese geologist Eduard Suess says that it was the result of seismic disturbances in the Indian Ocean.1
In our view, such a variety of opinions on one and the same upheaval shows that none of the explanations is really the correct one. Hence the question remains and, moreover, considerable doubt is raised on whether the upheaval was in fact in the form of a Flood or in some other form.
2. This doubt is made to stand out all the more boldly when, on re-examining the cuneiform tablet, one notices that the very term “water” or “rain” is not mentioned in the text even once as playing any active role in the whole progress of the upheaval. This total omission of both the element of water and that of rain from the text — to my utter amazement, unnoticed by any scholar so far — is the most puzzling aspect of Tablet XI seeing that those elements are indispensable for the production of a real Flood.
By stark contrast, the Biblical narrative has some twenty separate references to water and rain as active components of the Deluge in the days of Noah. There is water in Genesis 6–9 everywhere, covering everything, and rising from land level up to and higher than the highest mountains under the heavens. Why, then, is “water” or “rain” not referred to even once as playing any part in the alleged Flood in Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic?
For that matter, also two other cuneiform compositions — the Atrahasis Epic in Old Babylonian and the Tale of Ziusudra in Sumerian — do not contain any mention of either of the aquatic components although we are told to regard the texts as descriptions of Flood upheavals in ancient Mesopotamia. But why is such the case? Surely, the lack of these terms in each of the Flood stories is baffling, to say the least, if not giving rise to the suspicion that there is something basically wrong in the interpretation of those stories as diluvial phenomena.
Clearly, there cannot be a Flood without water.
3. In this connection there is also another serious difficulty. When George
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Smith, the British cuneiform expert, first announced his sensational discovery of “the account of the Chaldean Deluge” in 1872, he simply took the Akkadian word adannu, whose real meaning he did not know at the time, and rendered it by the English term Flood or Deluge.2 There was no one available on that occasion to tell him that his translation was inaccurate, inasmuch as the true meaning of adannu was appointed time — and not Flood or Deluge.
It took a few years before the mistake was discovered and, instead of adannu, the Akkadian term abūbu was selected to signify Flood or Deluge in the cuneiform tablet.3 But also this time there was no unanimity of translation among scholars. The well-known Assyriologist C.J. Gadd of the British Museum in London, in his excellent rendering of Tablet XI, translated abūbu by cyclone.4 Similarly, the Danish scholar Jorgen Laessoe most convincingly argued that abūbu could not mean Flood or Deluge, and gave it the meaning of windstorm or heavy wind.5 It is true that these scholars, too, interpreted Tablet XI as a Flood tablet, but they did so for other reasons — reasons which cannot easily be accepted as valid.
Under the circumstances, the impartial reader is compelled as it were to put a question-mark against the generally held view that the cuneiform text is the classical Flood story of ancient Mesopotamia and also to claim that it cannot have been the thematic source of the Biblical narrative in Genesis 6–9.
4. My own view is that abūbu means a cyclone, as Professor C.J. Gadd has suggested, or some other type of devastating windstorm.6 But before I proceed to
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elaborate on this point, I find it advisable to mention that it is not only a few details here and there in Tablet XI of the Babylonian epic which make it most doubtful whether the cuneiform text could have been known to the Hebrew writer of Genesis 6–9 (some more of these details will be referred to later in this article). Indeed, the whole substance of the Babylonian tablet is of such a mythological and polytheistic nature that it is amazing to see how modern scholars could possibly have placed the monotheistic Hebrew narrative of the Flood alongside the cuneiform story with so much nonchalance as if the two had been on the same substantive and ideological wave-length. They then made their comparative analysis in an utterly superficial manner, linguistically and thematically, and concluded that the Biblical Flood narrative was dependent upon the Babylonian Flood account, or, at least, that both had drawn upon some pre-historic common tradition.7
Thus we know that Tablet XI describes how the great deities — including Anu, Enlil and Ea — one day decided to bring about an abūbu, without any reason being given for such a cruel decision. At the time, those deities lived in the city of Shuruppak, by the Euphrates, and one of them — Ea — secretly divulged the decision to Utnapishtim, one of the residents of Shuruppak, again giving no reason for this divulgence. Without going into the details of the catastrophe, which duly came along, it is interesting to know that the deities involved went almost berserk while the land was being destroyed and humanity killed, while Utnapishtim had built himself a ship which took him out to sea and enabled him to live with Ea until the upheaval on land was over after some six days and nights.
In the translation of C.J. Gadd, the upheaval is described in Tablet XI:128–132 as follows:
For six days and nights
The wind, the storm raged, and the cyclone overwhelmed the land. When
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the seventh day came the cyclone ceased, the storm and battle which had fought like an army.
The sea became quiet, the grievous wind went down, the cyclone ceased.
We will presently discuss one or two details of the cuneiform story, for the better elucidation of the problem, but at this stage it will be sufficient to indicate that after it was all over, the deities came together “like flies” to the offering which Utnapishtim had made, except for Enlil whom the goddess Ishtar tried to exclude. But in the end he turned up and was very angry at finding that someone had come out alive from the catastrophe in which everyone was to have perished without exception. Then, after some harsh words from Ea, Enlil went up to the ship, took out Utnapishtim and his good lady, blessed them and had them raised to the status of deities and placed “at the mouth of the rivers” (where they are presumably alive to this day).
Such is the summary of the story of Tablet XI and inasmuch as it is beyond the scope of this article to make comparions between this crude tale and the Biblical narrative, which could easily mirror a most serious case held in a highly civilised court of justice in our own time, we will only recall the statement by Professor Hermann Gunkel in this matter. As he wrote about the two narratives, the learned professor commented that if the Hebrew author of the Biblical Flood account had known anything about Tablet XI he would have felt a deep sense of revulsion.8 Our own task here is to act almost the part of the Devil’s Advocate and to refute the idea that Tablet XI is a description of a Flood upheaval.
5. I have already mentioned that in my view the cuneiform text speaks of stormwinds causing the catastrophe at Shuruppak. We recall that there is no reference to the presence of water anywhere in the text of the Babylonian tablet. In the narrative, as we have just seen in the translation of C.J. Gadd which was quoted above, the catastrophe was made up by the raging of wind, storm and cyclone, and I am assured by meteorologists that the destructive power of those weather phenomena let loose upon an area is incalculable. And there need be not a single drop of rain or water accompanying those phenomena.
Thus, Tablet XI would be telling us about a “dry” upheaval which had nothing to do with a Flood or Deluge, in the ordinary meaning of the term, with the
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further consequence that the cuneiform text in reality having nothing to do with the Flood story in Genesis chapters 6–9. And we can only add, without any qualms of conscience, that there is absolutely nothing in Tablet XI which would be contrary to this interpretation — namely, that the text describes an upheaval of a completely “dry” nature. Indeed, such a view of the text will alone resolve all the difficulties involved.
6. Thus, in the light of our new suggestion, the scene of the birds being sent out by Utnapishtim will now receive a completely satisfactory explanation. We recall that in the Biblical account there is reference to Noah sending out birds for the purpose of enabling him “to see if the waters had subsided from upon the face of the land.” Now, insofar as the episode of the birds in the cuneiform text is concerned, we find that Heidel maintains9 that Utnapishtim made “a mistake in logic” by sending out his birds in the sequence in which he did it. Professor Roland de Vaux holds that the bird episode in the Gilgamesh poems “has an exact parallel in the story of the Flood (Gen 8:10–12).”10 Professor W.G. Lambert refers to “the episode of sending out three birds to ascertain if the waters were subsiding” as “the closest parallel of any Mesopotamian flood story with the Book of Genesis.”11 And George Smith who was the first to speak of the Bible and the cuneiform inscription agreeing that the birds were sent out “in order to ascertain if the Flood had subsided,” went on to say that “in the details of these trials there are curious differences between the narratives.”12
The reader will immediately notice that in the interpretation of the bird episode all the above-mentioned scholars agree that the purpose of Utnapishtim’s bird experiment was to “ascertain if the waters had subsided,” although they do not agree as to whether the episode indicates “an exact parallel” to the Biblical narrative, or only “a close parallel,” or an “agreement” between the narratives, or “a mistake in logic.” Yet, at the simplest perusal of the cuneiform text, we can all see that there is not the slightest reference in the tablet to Utnapishtim desiring to know whether “the waters had subsided” or not. The cuneiform text is
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completely silent on the purpose of the mission of the birds, and it is only our modern scholars’ desire to see a thematic identity between the Babylonian and the Biblical versions of the upheaval that induced them to say that our Utnapishtim sent out the birds to “ascertain if the waters had subsided” on the pattern of Noah’s action.12a
Be it as it may, the truth appears to be that Utnapishtim was interested to find out the state of the weather outside the ship in which he was esconced while the stormwinds were ravaging the mainland. The upheaval was now over, mankind had perished, stillness had set in, but was the weather quiet enough for the man of Shuruppak to leave the ship and get back to his own place? This information he wanted to obtain from the behaviour of the three different species of bird which he had sent out — the dove, the swallow and the raven. Utnapishtim was testing the weather — and not the Flood — inasmuch as the upheaval was of a dry nature only.
7. We will now also understand why the vessel in the Biblical narrative was described as an ark, while the one in the Babylonian account is described as a ship. George Smith was wrong in attributing the difference in nomenclature to the fact that the Hebrews were an inland people while the Babylonians were a maritime people, so the former had an ark, while the latter had a ship. The true explanation seems to be that Noah’s ark was sufficient to keep him safe during the Flood which was ravaging the land, while Utnapishtim had to seek shelter in a ship which was to take him out to sea while the mainland was being devastated by a covergence of winds.
Hence, too, André Parrot could have avoided referring to Noah’s ark as a boat,13 and Gordon J. Wenham could have avoided looking at Utnapishtim’s
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ship as upon an ark.14 The two vessels served different purposes, and they were, therefore, called by different names. The two scholars were obviously misled by the view that the Babylonian and the Biblical narratives were of an identical nature which they equally obviously were not.
8. There are several more difficulties in the way of accepting that Tablet XI is a Flood tablet on the one hand, and that as such it served as a prototype for the Flood story in Genesis 6–9 on the other. I will list here only two of them.
a) Modern scientific endeavour had long tried to verify whether such upheavals had indeed taken place in historical or even pre-historical times. And seeing that according to Tablet XI the city of Shuruppak was specifically mentioned as the place where the great cataclysm was said to have occurred, various groups of archaeologists went to the area, Shuruppak being the modern Farah. Indeed, early in this century, such a group under the auspices of the reputable Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft excavated right down to the oldest levels of human settlement. (See also Mallowan, Iraq, 1964, p. 69).
Now, the results which our archaeologists arrived at were that ancient Shuruppak had in fact been destroyed — but only by a fire, and not by a Deluge. And the evidence for it they discovered in the thick layer of ashes at the lowest levels of their excavations. We will gladly accept these findings as valid as well as lending themselves to confirmation by the text of Tablet XI:103–104 where we are told about the Annunaki gods setting the land ablaze with the glare of their torches. Thereupon the savage winds came along and turned the fire into a conflagration. Shuruppak was then destroyed by a fire — and not by a Flood.
b) Finally we have the chronological argument against Tablet XI having been in a position to serve as the prototype for Genesis 6–9. It is known that of all the cuneiform texts extant in our time it is only Tablet XI which contains the episode with the birds, and as such it is the cuneiform source which could have been the source of the Biblical Flood story which, too, tells the details of a similar episode with birds being sent out and returning.
Now, it is quite definite that Tablet XI as we now have it, and indeed it is the only one of its kind, comes from the reign of King Ashurbanipal (669–626), that is to say, in the seventh century BCE, and it was in fact discovered in the library
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of that ruler in the Assyrian city of Nineveh. And as for the Book of Genesis, even radical Bible critics have asserted that the book was composed in the tenth century BCE;15 that is to say, three centuries before the cuneiform tablet was written down. The chronological difficulty is then quite obvious, namely that we are asked by our modern Assyriologists (and Biblicists) to accept an absurdity, inasmuch as a composition of the tenth century BCE is said to have taken its material from a composition of the seventh century BCE, that is three centuries later.
As it is, some scholars were aware of this chronological absurdity, yet they have made little issue of it, or have ignored it completely. I am not prepared to share this attitude. If anything, I would rather argue for the view that the bird episode of Genesis 6–9 was somehow known to the writer of Table XI who, having been impressed by its originality, went on to adapt it for his own needs. And seeing that in the seventh century BCE there would have been some hundreds of thousands of Judeans in the Assyrian Empire, after King Sennacherib had taken so many of them into Assyrian captivity, soon after his abortive siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE, it is more than conceivable that one or another Judean exile would have had a hand in the development of Assyro-Babylonian epics.16
9. All in all, we believe that an historic mistake was made by those who turned the cuneiform sources into the origin of the Biblical Flood story. Hence our challenge to contemporary scholars to start a reversal of this process. It will do us all a great deal of good to look up to Genesis 6–9 as a sublime narrative of literary independence and of the highest didactic value.
On our part, we are convinced that this narrative stands alone among the upheaval stories in the literatures of the world. It is a description of an event which is unique in its spiritual concept, its perfect prose, and its moral righteousness.
(Reprinted by permission from Dor le Dor, Vol. 12, No. 2, Winter 1983/84.)