Flood of Epic of Gilgamesh and Book of Genesis of the Holy Bible :: Epic Gilgamesh essays

The Flood of Gilgamesh and contemporaries The Epic of Gilgamesh records a story of a world-wide flood and pre-dates Genesis. So some claim that this invalidates the Genesis record. But P.J. Wiseman presents an interesting surmisal in this regard in his book Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis (New York Thomas Nelson, 1985). He believes that Moses did not write Genesis but rather translated it from ancient stone tablets compose in Cuneiform script. The tablets each would have been in the first place written by eye-witnesses of the particular events, or those who received their information from eye-witnesses. He breaks Genesis into parts according to the phrase These are the generations (KJV This is the history - NKJV This the account - NASB NIV Gen 24 51 69 101 1110 1127 2512,9 361,9 372). He compares the use of this phrase and the structure of each section to the stone tablets written in cuneiform script. Many of these tablets have been discovered and they date to the t hird millenium BC. Wisemans theory is that Genesis is translated from individual tablets which would have contained the material before each occurrence of the above phrase. So the narratives of the creation of the universe (Gen 1) and of the Garden of Eden (Gen 2) would have been written on one tablet by Adam as these events were revealed to him by the only Eye-witness of the events, God Himself. The narratives of the Fall and subsequent events would have been written on other tablet by Adam as an eye-witness of the events. Adam then passed each of these tablets on to his descendant Seth. Seth then recorded the events of Gen 5 and passed the tablets to his descendant Noah. Noah then recorded the events of Gen 6-9 and passed the tablets to his descendant Shem, and so one until Joseph. Joseph then recorded the final chapters of Genesis and placed all of the tablets in the library of the pharaohs. Moses then, while in pharaohs court, would have had access to these tablets. He then tr anslated them into his native Hebrew. The above theory fits with various evidences in the Scriptures. For instance, it would explain such passages as Exod 63 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, LORD YHWH, I was not known to them. But the Tetragrammaton appears in Genesis, making for an apparent contradiction.