15 - Are we Europeans really good readers of biblical texts and interpreters of biblical history?

Summary

1999

It is common to see the Hebrew Bible, played off against its environment in the ancient Near East, as being on a higher level than, say, Mesopotamian sources. An example of this may be the introduction to the story of the Flood in Genesis, often compared to Mesopotamian mythological texts. These cuneiform texts present a far more primitive explanation for the Flood. In the Old Testament, God realized that the human race is corrupt and therefore decides to destroy humankind, and so he does – with the exception of one person, Noah, who was the only righteous man of his generation. Noah's family is also spared. In the Babylonian versions, we are told that, after the creation of humankind, the human race increased to such a degree that the noise they made disturbed the gods in their sleep. The gods therefore decided to destroy all human beings. Humankind survived only because the wise god Ea betrayed his divine colleagues and disclosed the secret of the coming Flood to his hero, Utnapistim (or Atrahasis).

The decision made by the gods was certainly a foolish one. The gods were starving for the duration of the Flood, since nobody survived to till the fields and bring sacrifices. In the Babylonian version, the story of the Flood is obviously a total disaster for both humankind and the gods. No wonder the gods could easily agree after the deluge on never repeating this mistake of theirs.