Have you read the Epic of Gilgamesh? Have you read the Bible?

Like most folks here, I’m struggling to understand how you could (accurately) explain the Epic of Gilgamesh to a Christian in such a way that he actually loses hope in the Bible and throws away his faith.

I’m guessing that the logic is something like this: The Bible stole stories from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is older. Therefore, the Bible can’t be true. Therefore, Christianity can’t be true. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.

The parallels are exaggerated

If we look back at the first half of the nineteenth century, the disciplines of archaeology, history, comparative religion, and linguistics were still in their infancy. Scholars still didn’t understand the development of Indo-European myth and language, and parallels between widely diverse cultures led to the assumption that all ancient language and mythology were descended from a common ancestor. This sparked a quest for what we might call the Unified Field Theory of ancient mythology: a prehistoric religious system that connects and explains all ancient religion and mythology.

While mainstream scholars tended to shy away from theories of the common origins of ancient mythology, some scholars tried their hand at the subject anyway, and some of their theories are still deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. Some of the more prominent bad actors are Robert Graves (The White Goddess), James Frazer (The Golden Bough), Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons), Gerald Massey (The Natural Genesis), and Margaret Murray (The Witch-Cult in Western Europe). Many of their hypotheses are still plastered all over the Internet, despite being spectacularly wrong.

When cuneiform was deciphered, it opened up a whole new world of Victorian quackery, and it wasn’t long before people like Peter Jensen were claiming that every story in the Bible was a retelling of the newly-discovered and recently-translated Epic of Gilgamesh (see: Panbabylonism - Wikipedia). We saw a similar phenomenon when Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered (Jesus was Horus!), when the Dead Sea Scrolls were translated (the early Christians were Essenes!), when the Nag Hammadi library was discovered (The Gospel of Thomas predates the canonical gospels!), etc.

But when we really start digging into the subject, parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible start to fall apart. For example, some folks argue that the story of Enkidu parallels the story of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis. From How the Bible Borrowed from Other Stories (samwoolfe.com):

“The first parallel is between the story of Enkidu/Shamhat and Adam/Eve. In both stories, a man is created from the soil by a god and lives among the animals. He is introduced to a woman who tempts him – he accepts her offering of food, decides to cover his nakedness, leaves paradise, and is not allowed to return.”

That summary is extremely misleading. It is true that both Enkidu and Adam were human beings, both lived on planet earth, both breathed air, etc. But the elements that distinguish each story are fundamentally different.

Adam. - Adam, whose name means “man,” is representative of the entire human race, created from the dust of the earth in the image of God, and brought to life when God breathes his own spirit into Adam’s nostrils. Adam is placed in a paradise, innocent of the concept of sin, and given a wife who is created from his own side. The two of them are given a single prohibition: do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve is tempted by the serpent, and eats from the forbidden tree. She then gives some of the fruit to Adam, and he also eats. Upon committing this act of disobedience, both of them become ashamed of their nakedness, and attempt to cloth themselves with leaves. God punishes their disobedience by allowing mortality and death to enter the world, cursing the ground so that it requires cultivation before bringing forth food, and permanently expelling them from paradise.

Enkidu. - When the citizens of Uruk pray to the gods to deliver them from the tyranny of Gilgamesh, the gods respond by bringing a piece of clay to life to act as Gilgamesh’s enemy and distract him from his evil ways. Enkidu is covered with shaggy fur, and lives like a beast, eating grass, sucking milk from the teats of wild goats, freeing animals from traps, and making a general nuisance of himself. A local trapper decides to deal with the problem by hiring a prostitute to sleep with Enkidu. The plan works, and after of week with the prostitute, Enkidu finds that the animals are all afraid of him. He decides to accept the prostitute’s offer to accompany her to Uruk to meet Gilgamesh, but first she takes him to a nearby shepherd’s camp where she teaches him how to wear clothes and eat like a civilized human being. Enkidu was never in “paradise,” and he is never prohibited from returning to the fields.

In context, the actual parallels between the two stories are: (1) Both Adam and Enkidu happen to be men. (2) Both stories have a female character. (3) Both Adam and Enkidu like to eat food. (4) Both Adam and Enkidu live a world where animals exist. (5) In both stories, a woman hands a man a something to eat. Using the same logic, we could conclude that the Honey Nut Cheerios commercial featuring “Shut Up, Steve” is based on the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Sam Woolfe continues:

Later on in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a snake steals a plant from Gilgamesh which has the power to give him immortality. The snake represents evil in the epic and represents Satan in the Bible.

In Genesis, the serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit by promising her that her eyes will be opened, and she will become like God.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of an herb growing at the bottom of a lake that, when consumed by an old man, will restore to him the vigor of youth. Gilgamesh manages to find the plant. But later, as Gilgamesh is leaning over the edge of a well to draw some water, a snake pops out of the water, snatches the plant, and then dives back down into the well.

So, again, the alleged parallels are misleading, and essentially boil down to the fact that both stories happen to include a snake and food. The Epic of Gilgamesh does not imply in any way that the snake represents evil.

When we get to flood narrative, there are some legitimate parallels. The only problem is that the same parallels exist in dozens of cultures all over the earth, making it difficult to prove that the biblical account was inspired by one of the Babylonian or Sumerian accounts. Which brings me to the next point:

The significance of alleged parallels is exaggerated

Full disclosure, I’m not an Evangelical, a fundamentalist, or even a Protestant, so I lack that inherent sense that Christianity stands or falls on the historical accuracy or originality of the Bible. But there is a relatively small minority out there who believes, somewhat inexplicably and against all historical evidence, that Christianity is founded on the Bible. If you can show that the Bible has errors, then the entire religion supposedly collapses like a house of cards.

But the fundamentalist only has to claim that the Bible corrected the historical record. It was delivered via divine inspiration, after all. So, who cares if the Babylonians reinterpreted a common narrative to fit their own polytheistic beliefs? Clearly, Moses set the record the straight in the book of Genesis, and the fact that the Babylonians preserved so many details in common with the Genesis account only proves that the flood actually occurred.

At the end of the day, I can’t think of any branch of Christianity that stands or falls on the originality of the text. Imagine applying that criteria to any other field of study. “Well, we used to believe that Hitler invaded Poland, but then we found some earlier Polish newspapers saying that Hitler invaded Poland, so clearly Hitler never existed.”

I mean, come on.