Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim, and the Antediluvian Prophets

While recently reviewing a Bible study dealing with some antediluvian topics, I also happened to be reading through the Epic of Gilgamesh, something I had only perused in times past.

Many things struck me as I worked through it, but as I'm always looking for clues and connections to primaeval memory, and one aspect of Tablets 9-11 struck me.

The Babylonian Noah known as Utnapishtim is revealed as immortal and yet the demigod Gilgamesh is not. In despair over the course of his life and his pending mortality Gilgamesh seeks answers, and knowing that Utnapishtim was a mortal granted immortality, he believes the answer may be found with him.

But Utnapishtim is not easily accessed and Gilgamesh travels to a kind of divine mountain at the end of Earth, fights off lions, meets guardians in the form of Scorpion Men, traverses a tunnel, and crosses the sea of death.

Utnapishtim's account (also told in the Atrahasis) is not in accord with Genesis, but there are similarities – a convoluted memory of the real event.

The aforementioned Bible study focused on the antediluvian prophets of Noah and Enoch. As readers will surely know, Enoch was taken away, taken to heaven and did not suffer death. We don't know any of the particulars associated with this. One thinks of Elijah and the chariot of fire. One wonders if Enoch's departure was something visually spectacular, something that might have survived (if convoluted) down through the ages. It's not hard to imagine that contemporaries as well as memory might suggest that Enoch had become immortal, or one of the gods.

Is it a leap to posit that the memory of the antediluvian prophets might have been conflated? Might not the figures of Noah and Enoch been confused? I wondered this as I read Gilgamesh. What if it inadvertently recorded a confused account and testimony of the antediluvian witness – conflated in the Gilgamesh Epic's character Utnapishtim?

Of course many believe that Gilgamesh himself is but Nimrod in disguise. This is possible, but also speculation. It's also noteworthy that in some of the ancient and apocryphal traditions, Gilgamesh himself is a Nephilim or giant which would explain the epic's reference to him as partly divine – or of partial elohim ancestry.

None of this is conclusive, but one needn't look very hard to find many parallels to the Bible, from the Divine Counsel, to giants, and the Flood.

Unbelieving scholars simply believe the Hebrews stole all these stories from their neighbours, but believers know better. On the one hand it can be reckoned something of a waste of time to pursue Babylonian or Greek mythology, but one cannot help but be fascinated by the parallels. These mythologies are of course distortions but they contain grains of truth and it can be said they are like blurry shadows testifying to something more tangible in the past – a time when the more immediate descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth had knowledge of the old world and the events surrounding its demise.

The early apologists certainly thought so and argued that it was the Greeks and others that stole and perverted the true testimony retained by God's people. It's a frequent theme in the writings of second century men like Tatian, Theophilus, and Athenagoras. I cannot say that I'm always convinced of their arguments but this topic continues to fascinate.