Flood Stories

[TheBigDog]

Here is one of my school assignments from this week. I was eager to get some conversation on the topic in the class threads, but it seems like I scared everyone away. So I am posting here instead as I do find the topic very interesting.

In reading these two stories I am convinced that they are in fact the same story. The differences are a matter of how they are being interpreted by the author, and who the audience was at the time of writing. I don’t say that to discount the importance of these stories to their respective religions, but rather to say that they should be interpreted symbolically rather than literally; but that is an essay for another day.

 

The similarities are mainly in the overall theme of floods destroying life from the land. Both floods are initiated by the will of God or gods. Both floods destroy life on the land. In both stories a single man is given warning of the coming flood so that he may preserve life by building a boat. Birds are used in both stories to find land after the flood. These similarities are the broad strokes of the story, and are why I think it is the same story being told in different times and under different circumstances.

 

It is the differences in the stories that allow us to understand the authors and the audiences in the different time periods.

 

In the story of Noah, the audience is monotheistic. It is God, singular, who is responsible for the flood in the story of Noah, while it is a committee of gods who decide to have a flood (caused by another group of gods) in the Gilgamesh tale. “The city was already old when the gods within it decided that the great gods should make a flood,” is how it is stated in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Harris p.52). This tells me that the audience of the Gilgamesh tale believes in regional gods, with a hierarchy of power within the god community, where the audience of the Noah tale believes in a single, all powerful God.

 

I also found it interesting that the god Ea had to use childish tactics to warn Upnapishtim about the flood while preserving his oath of secrecy taken with his fellow gods. He did this by pretending to speak to the walls of a hut, all the while intending for his words to be heard by Upnapishtim. Once Upnapishtim acknowledged he was listening Ea gave him specific instructions for getting out of town, gathering animals, and building a boat. By contrast, in the story of Noah, God set out to punish men and animals for being wicked. He picked one good man from among all men and gave him specific instructions for building the arc and gathering animals. Because God is without committee or peers He has no reason for secrecy of deceptive tactics. This contrast tells me that the author of the Noah version was giving specific purpose to the flood, and representing the intent and power of God in a very specific manner. In the excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh there is no stated purpose to the flood, emphasizing a seeming randomness to the rule of multiple gods.

 

Other meaningful contrasts include Noah taking only his sons and their wives, while Upnapishtim was instructed to take “. . . all kinds of craftsmen,” (Harris p. 52) in addition to the pairs of animals, recognizing the need to preserve human knowledge and skills for rebuilding after the flood. Upnapishtim is also credited as being immortal; a gift given to him by the gods. Noah lived to be 950 before dying at the end of the story. This is another hint at the cultural differences between the audiences of the two stories. In the polytheistic world of the Epic of Gilgamesh it is within the power of the gods to do such things as grant immortality, while a purpose of the book of Genesis is to emphasize that immortality belongs to God alone.

 

This got a little long, but it was a fun assignment.

 

Bill

 

 

Harris, S. L. (2007) Understanding the Bible (7th edition). McGraw Hill, Inc. New York, N.Y.

 

Holy Bible (New King James Version)

What other flood stories exist in historic religious texts? I found a complete translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh that may not be the best, but was an easy read. (check out tablet 1, column 4 :hyper: :phones: )

 

Bill

[Turtle]

What other flood stories exist in historic religious texts? I found a complete translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh that may not be the best, but was an easy read. (check out tablet 1, column 4 :hyper: :phones: )

 

Bill

 

I have one here to post, but I must qualify it as coming from an oral tradition. I first saw it in a collection of Native American stories, but found a suitable version on a site full of flood stories. I also like it because on a clear day I can see Mt. Ranier! :)

 

I must say I didn't know we had so many flood story origins, and I initially only thought to look for the Mayan story as I had seen it previously. It may prove interesting to follow through the list finding the commanalities & differences in the way you have in your essay.

 

Here's the Skagit story:

 

Skagit

The Creator made the earth and gave four names for it -- for the sun, waters, soil and forests. He said only a few people, with special preparation for the knowledge, should know all four names, or the world would change too suddenly. After a while, everyone learned the four names. When people started talking to the trees the change came in the form of a flood. When the people saw the flood coming, they made a giant canoe and filled it with five people and a male and female of all plants and animals. Water covered everything but the summit of Kobah and Takobah (Mts. Baker and Ranier). The canoe landed on the prairie. Doquebuth, the new Creator, was born of a couple from the canoe. He delayed getting his spirit powers, but finally did so after his family deserted him. At the direction of the Old Creator, he made people again from the soil and from the bones of the people who lived before the flood.

Flood Myths

 

Again we have the boat, pairs of animals and plants, a single creator, and other people killed but the chosen. Interestingly we have a new creator taking over the reins under tutelage, the boat lands on a prairie not a mountain, and new people have to be made in addition to those surving on the boat. :shrug: :hyper:

 

Post Script: Intersting too that this Skagit flood story has elements of Genesis in it as well. The talking trees reminiscent of Eden's tree of knowledge, and the need of creators to change things when people get too clever, as in the tower of Babel.

[Turtle]

Here is one of my school assignments from this week. I was eager to get some conversation on the topic in the class threads, but it seems like I scared everyone away. So I am posting here instead as I do find the topic very interesting.

 

Bill

 

Another source comes easily to mind, and that is Joseph Campbell and his Power of Myth. They have the 6 hours of interview with Bill Moyer on CD, and the companion book is still available.

 

Campbell covers the flood myths, but goes much further to illucidate differences in myths in regard to whether their cultures are hunter/gatherer, agrarian, or pastoral. His claim & concern is that we people have not developed a mythology for industrialism. Good stuff Maynard. ;) ;) :)

 

The Power of Myth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[InfiniteNow]

I found particular insight in Boerseun's post here:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/theology-forum/11423-ark-flooding-earths-mass-3.html#post172926

 

You can stay right about anywhere in the world, and chances are that sometime in your life, you'll experience a huge storm, resulting in a flood. Even in the deserts, flash floods are not unknown. And you will tell your kids about it. And they will tell their kids. Every single spot on Earth is dependent on the will of the atmosphere; which is utterly unpredictable, more so for a guy 5,000 years ago than the early morning weatherman.

 

These stories will grow, and as your community spreads out and you meet up with your neighbours, they've got similar stories to tell. Eventually you believe it must have been a world-wide flood, because everybody tells the same stories about their ancestors experiencing this big flood.

 

And also here:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/theology-forum/11423-ark-flooding-earths-mass-4.html#post173099

 

Humans have a tendency to live near rivers, lakes, and seas, for water, food/agriculture, and transportation...and perhaps it's no surprise that those areas might be prone to flooding. Take a look at any map, historical or current, and you'll see that most major population centers are located near water.

[Turtle]

I found particular insight in Boerseun's post here:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/theology-forum/11423-ark-flooding-earths-mass-3.html#post172926

 

And also here:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/theology-forum/11423-ark-flooding-earths-mass-4.html#post173099

 

I think the point of this thread however, is to discuss the literary context of the stories themselves, not the veracity of the stories 'god(s)' claims. That is to say, of all the oldest stories we have from humans, many deal with floods. This makes it interesting as a theme in a literary context, as well as possibly anthropologically, in our pursuits of mapping humans' spread by way of memes.

;) :beer:

[TheBigDog]

I think the point of this thread however, is to discuss the literary context of the stories themselves, not the veracity of the stories 'god(s)' claims. That is to say, of all the oldest stories we have from humans, many deal with floods. This makes it interesting as a theme in a literary context, as well as possibly anthropologically, in our pursuits of mapping humans' spread by way of memes.

:(

Yes, this is a Theology thread; no hint of Earth Science.

 

Turtle, thanks for the link to the flood stories. I found it interesting that several of the Indian tribes had flood myths in their oral traditions. I wonder if it is possible to document if these were not influenced by western Biblical belief? For instance, if the tribes had a story telling tradition, and they were exposed to the story of Noah when making contact with the westerners. Then they tell a similar story because, well, that is what they do. Meanwhile the person meeting them and recording the stories takes it as being an ancient tale. Considering that there was no written history it is very difficult to know. :cup:

 

What can we use to tell the difference?

 

Bill

[Turtle]

Yes, this is a Theology thread; no hint of Earth Science.

 

I honestly can't tell if that's tongue-in-cheek or not, but I think there exists hints of everything in these old and ancient stories. All deserve careful examination in order to provide a clearer contextual understanding of the whole.

 

Turtle, thanks for the link to the flood stories. I found it interesting that several of the Indian tribes had flood myths in their oral traditions. I wonder if it is possible to document if these were not influenced by western Biblical belief? For instance, if the tribes had a story telling tradition, and they were exposed to the story of Noah when making contact with the westerners. Then they tell a similar story because, well, that is what they do. Meanwhile the person meeting them and recording the stories takes it as being an ancient tale. Considering that there was no written history it is very difficult to know. :shrug:

 

What can we use to tell the difference?

 

Bill

 

Yes, I think it may be possible to document the lineage of particular stories by finding the oldest authoritive sources possible to use for the analysis. (Here's some source info we can check through from the link I gave: >> Permissions

 

I do know that Native Americans pride themselves on the uniqueness of their stories and myths, as well as the tradition of memorizing & telling the stories. Moreover, as we have established that the Sumerian written stories are older than biblical stories and that these Sumerian stories came from oral traditions, they are equally susceptible to the challenge of your argument.

 

If I were to proffer speculation on the Skagit flood story similarity to the biblical as you suggest, I would say that they are simply different branches of the earlier root story, and not one branching from the other.

 

I think its more likely the Skagit witnessed a tsunami, many of which geologists have documented in the area they lived. The survivors then as the saying goes, had quite a tale to tell. :cup: :)

[InfiniteNow]

I wonder if it is possible to document if these were not influenced by western Biblical belief? For instance, if the tribes had a story telling tradition, and they were exposed to the story of Noah when making contact with the westerners. Then they tell a similar story because, well, that is what they do. Meanwhile the person meeting them and recording the stories takes it as being an ancient tale.

Moreover, as we have established that the Sumerian written stories are older than biblical stories and that these Sumerian stories came from oral traditions, they are equally susceptible to the challenge of your argument.

The stories are related, but not necessarily in a serial manner. Correlation does not prove causation. Air conditioners running more frequently when it's hot outside does not mean that air conditioners make the temperature rise.

 

If I were to proffer speculation on the Skagit flood story similarity to the biblical as you suggest, I would say that they are simply different branches of the earlier root story, and not one branching from the other.

Had it been spread around with greater frequent, rep points your way would have went... just for the quote above. Very well said, mathemartist.

 

Possible too are similar roots, yet different fruits.

 

While a commonality and overlap of story content (whether writ or sung) may exist in different cultures, the story authors, as well as each individual authors' personal flood based experience, could very well have been unique... representative of unrelated meteorological events.

 

Ou, peut-etre, au contraire. Je ne le sais pas. :)

[TheBigDog]

I am past wondering if the Flood from Gilgamesh is the source of the Noah story. There are far too many details that defy the odds of coincidence for one to not be the source of the other.

 

My argument about the Skagit story is not about it authenticity. I do not doubt that there is pride in among the American Indians about their oral traditions, what I am questioning is the accuracy of those traditions, especially over a period of generations. I am also speculating that in the process of documenting the stories, the person doing the documentation could influence the content of the story, much the same way that observing a quantum particle will dictate its properties.

 

First the first. A person tells a story to several other people. It is not written down, but is repeated over and over again. Even if the story is told every day, there will be circumstances where a portion of the story is emphasized or deemphasized because the story teller is trying to make a particular point. Or perhaps the story teller adds in some detail because they are tired of explaining and answering questions about the meaning of a story. Or a story teller like to make people laugh, so the twist the story in such a way that gets giggles. Over time the root ofo the story is still there, but it has become many more things. In a culture without writing there is no way to understand when such things are happening. It is like playing "telephone" where you whisper something around a circle and see how distorted the phrase becomes when it gets back to the beginning. Everyone in the process intends to respect the original story, but the end result is that it changes over time.

 

Second the second. Much of the early translation of tribal lore was done by missionaries. Let us assume that these folks were all equally skilled, dedicated and unbiased. As they are interpreting stories from a foreign tongue they have the parallel task of learning that language or teaching a native speaker their own language. This was being done in parallel to the process of converting natives to Christianity. At the heart of this was the fact that the Bible was being used as the means of teaching English to people. With all of those facts aligned it seems more than likely to me that the stories being translated could tend to take on a flavor of Christian mythology.

 

The third part of the equation is that once a written tradition was established, it would begin to have its own influence over the oral traditions.

 

The wild card in oral traditions is the creative human. In any culture you would have your Stephen King, a prolific story teller who would make up mythology on the fly. To those who are not burdened with having to remember the stories they would hear one of these new creations and have to assume that they simply had never heard it before. To a person just arriving on the scene, they would hear one of these stories and record them as though they were an ancient tale.

 

To further confuse things, if the native person who is guiding the translation is the creative story teller, or is seeking the approval of the person doing the recording, they might bend the translation sufficiently to make the translation similar to the missionary's own tradition.

 

I am very loath to take oral traditions as accurate. Who knows? Nobody.

 

Bill

[Turtle]

I am past wondering if the Flood from Gilgamesh is the source of the Noah story. There are far too many details that defy the odds of coincidence for one to not be the source of the other.

 

You only got one foot on the boat there laddy, 'til yer says whichin is which. :)

 

My argument about the Skagit story is not about it authenticity. I do not doubt that there is pride in among the American Indians about their oral traditions, what I am questioning is the accuracy of those traditions, especially over a period of generations.

 

I have not found the kind of sources I want to use to relieve your doubt; however, I point you to the efficacy with which Muslims memorize the Quran word for word, as well the kind of breach changing those words represents.

 

I am also speculating that in the process of documenting the stories, the person doing the documentation could influence the content of the story, much the same way that observing a quantum particle will dictate its properties. ...

I am very loath to take oral traditions as accurate. Who knows? Nobody.

 

Bill

 

The satisfaction you want here is only available on a case-by-case basis of specific translations. The method is no less than that of a research paper.

 

It is not that nobody knows, it is that you don't yet know. ;) How badly do you want to know if any Native American flood stories are 'authentic' ? :)

[Turtle]

Found some pertinent material to allay your fears. ;) :) :) >>

 

...Story telling was a way of relating history, transmitting cultural knowledge, and giving expression to the esthetic and poetic endeavors of all Native American peoples. As Chief Standing Bear explained:

 

 

Story-telling is an ancient profession, and these stories are among our oldest possessions. For many years before the white man ever came to our homeland these legends were told over and over, and handed down from generation to generation. They were our books, our literature, and the memories of the storytellers were the leaves upon which they were written. (quoted in Humishuma, 1990, p. 305)

Using Traditional American Indian Stories to Teach Indigenous Languages

[maikeru]

I am past wondering if the Flood from Gilgamesh is the source of the Noah story. There are far too many details that defy the odds of coincidence for one to not be the source of the other.

 

I think it could also be argued, and this makes more sense in my mind, that this particular Flood story originates from ancient history when Semitic peoples still hadn't branched off and diverged much from each other. Rather than one group stealing it from another, each of them "inherited" or picked up early on stories that characterize a certain group of related languages or ethnic peoples. As the people spread out, settled new areas, languages, traditions, and cultures changed, so did some of their oldest and most precious stories like the Flood myth. Stories also find new purposes and new variations in retellings.

 

Some examples which come to mind, but these aren't flood myths specifically, are from other cultures and peoples:

 

East and Southeast Asia: Heavenly bird goddess who loses her feathers or robe and must marry the man who has them (a fisherman or prince). I watched a Japanese Noh play about a year ago at my university which dealt with this. (It's also notable that many Noh plays derive from ancient Japanese myths and traditions, and Noh itself came from temple dances and religious drama.) And I have found plays and retellings of this basic story in Vietnamese and Thai.

 

Germanic peoples: I've read the tales of the Brothers Grimm and other collections, and noticed a basic story involving seven long-lost brothers and one sister who becomes mute, suffers hardship for their sake, and then restores them to their proper forms, status, or inheritance. There are countless variations of this. Even with the collection of the Brothers Grimm, there must be at least a dozen stories which have this central plot at their core. At the core, they're the same story. Seems to have been widespread among various Germanic peoples.

 

Celtic: In one of the tales about Cuchulainn, the greatest Irish hero, he proves his bravery by beheading a feared opponent and then allowing himself to risk the same fate. The same basic story appears in Gawain and the Green Knight. Both involve feasts, gatherings of the greatest heroes in the land, tests of bravery, keeping one's word (not to run away or avoid what was promised), etc. Arthurian stories seem to be Celtic in origin, and the Ulster Cycle, which contains Cuchulainn's tales, is Irish--obviously a strong Celtic connection. This seems to be some ancient Celtic tale that has taken many different forms and variants.

 

Asiatic Siberian peoples: there are many myths recalling how the Supreme Deity created the world from a grain of sand, speck of mud, or bit of dirt fetched up from the bottom of a giant lake or ocean, usually by an animal like a bird or otter. This seems to be an ancient story, and it's obviously a religious one. This was studied by Mircea Eliade in his book on shamanism.

 

Certain "ur-myths" or "proto-stories" seem to characterize ethnic peoples. They're probably favorite, important, and/or religious stories that diverged, changed, and multiplied into many variations, just as peoples and their languages did. I don't think flood myths are an exception. :shrug:

 

My argument about the Skagit story is not about it authenticity. I do not doubt that there is pride in among the American Indians about their oral traditions, what I am questioning is the accuracy of those traditions, especially over a period of generations. I am also speculating that in the process of documenting the stories, the person doing the documentation could influence the content of the story, much the same way that observing a quantum particle will dictate its properties.

 

In general, it seems the accuracy of the traditions is somewhat poor. What are more important are the central message(s) and important, defining characteristics of personages or actions. I think this is characteristic of any kind of storytelling. Storytelling usually doesn't try to get the facts straight unless one of the author's purposes is to be historically authentic. Even Homer is guilty of anachronism, for example, mixing societal structures of 1200 B.C. or so Greece with his 800 B.C. Greece. But he keeps details that are relevant and important to the telling.

 

First the first. A person tells a story to several other people. It is not written down, but is repeated over and over again. Even if the story is told every day, there will be circumstances where a portion of the story is emphasized or deemphasized because the story teller is trying to make a particular point. Or perhaps the story teller adds in some detail because they are tired of explaining and answering questions about the meaning of a story. Or a story teller like to make people laugh, so the twist the story in such a way that gets giggles. Over time the root ofo the story is still there, but it has become many more things. In a culture without writing there is no way to understand when such things are happening. It is like playing "telephone" where you whisper something around a circle and see how distorted the phrase becomes when it gets back to the beginning. Everyone in the process intends to respect the original story, but the end result is that it changes over time.

 

Storytellers are usually a special breed. Not everyone makes a good storyteller. Sometimes they're very important in society (take poets in ancient Greece, who were the "mouthpieces of the gods") or not (take local storyteller in a small Thai village). It can be the domain of men or women. What is pretty clear is that usually storytelling is the domain of a specialized, more-or-less talented few. And it usually plays an important function in society, such as at town/village festivals, holidays (religious or not), or pure entertainment and relaxation after a hard day's work (as in Yugoslavia when men came in from the fields or their shops and gathered at the kafana, the coffeehouse, late at night).

 

The third part of the equation is that once a written tradition was established, it would begin to have its own influence over the oral traditions.

 

As long as the written tradition finds some way to pass into the oral tradition, and the oral tradition has a place in society. In most cases, literacy and a written tradition have driven oral traditions into extinction, as seen in Europe, increasingly in India, Asia (and Japan, their most famous story from the oral tradition, Heike Monogatari, died out in the 1800s, after contact with European societies and a drive to modernize the country, including toward increasing literacy and education), Finland (the Kalevala, the inspiration for J.R.R. Tokien's works, is no longer sung and has become extinct), Americas, etc.

 

The wild card in oral traditions is the creative human. In any culture you would have your Stephen King, a prolific story teller who would make up mythology on the fly. To those who are not burdened with having to remember the stories they would hear one of these new creations and have to assume that they simply had never heard it before. To a person just arriving on the scene, they would hear one of these stories and record them as though they were an ancient tale.

 

To further confuse things, if the native person who is guiding the translation is the creative story teller, or is seeking the approval of the person doing the recording, they might bend the translation sufficiently to make the translation similar to the missionary's own tradition.

 

I am very loath to take oral traditions as accurate. Who knows? Nobody.

 

Bill

 

If you are further interested, I suggest you read The Singer of Tales by Alfred B. Lord and Milman Parry. It'll answer many of your questions and raise some new ones too. It really opened my eyes as to what an oral tradition is and can be, and helped me understand a lot of the literature, mythology, and folk and fairy tales I've liked to read over the years. I would consider both The Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's flood to be fine examples of oral poetry. At some point, probably Noah's flood was turned into or recorded as prose rather than sung or recited poetically.

 

Milman Parry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Epic poetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amazon.com: The Singer of Tales: Books: Albert B. Lord,Stephen Mitchell,Gregory Nagy http://www.amazon.com/Singer-Tales-Albert-B-Lord/dp/0674002830/ref=sr_1_1/104-4052486-4107158?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179198210&sr=8-1

[Turtle]

Just listened to Charlie Rose interview author Erica Wagner, and he asked her what her "what is your favorite book from the last ten years?" She said A Story Sharp As a Knife, a collection of Haida Indian myths & stories. I don't know if it has any flood stories or not, but the book is the kind of scholarly work that bears witness to the authenticity of the content of ancient stories. :lol:

 

...In 1900-01, with the help of a translator, ethnographer John Swanton took down the words of the last traditional Haida poets, historians, and storytellers. Bringhurst draws on Swanton's transcripts for these two volumes, the first of which is also graced by his commentary...

A Story as Sharp as a Knife - University of Nebraska Press

[InfiniteNow]

If you are further interested, I suggest you read The Singer of Tales by Alfred B. Lord and Milman Parry. It'll answer many of your questions and raise some new ones too. It really opened my eyes as to what an oral tradition is and can be, and helped me understand a lot of the literature, mythology, and folk and fairy tales I've liked to read over the years.

<...>

Milman Parry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Epic poetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amazon.com: The Singer of Tales: Books: Albert B. Lord,Stephen Mitchell,Gregory Nagy

 

I'd like to thank you, Maikeru, for suggesting the above reading. The first night I read your post back in May, I followed your link to Amazon and decided to purchase a copy (partially, as a result of the resonance I've experienced reading your posts). I've been reading it, and I've encountered thoughts and ideas which impact me on multiple levels. It's not a topic which I'd previosly considered in any meaningful way, and I'm glad I picked this one up. Thanks.

 

 

We must grasp fully who, or more correctly what, our performer is. We must eliminate from the word "performer" any notion that he is one who merely reporduces what someone else or even he himself has composed. Our oral poet is composer. Our singer of tales is a composer of tales. Singer, performer, composer, and poet are one under different aspects but at the same time. Singing, performing, composing are facets of the same act.

<...>

Whether the performance takes place at home, in the coffee house, in the courtyard, or in the halls of a noble, the essential element of the occasion of singing that influences the form of the poetry is the variability and instability of the audience.

[maikeru]

I'd like to thank you, Maikeru, for suggesting the above reading. The first night I read your post back in May, I followed your link to Amazon and decided to purchase a copy (partially, as a result of the resonance I've experienced reading your posts). I've been reading it, and I've encountered thoughts and ideas which impact me on multiple levels. It's not a topic which I'd previosly considered in any meaningful way, and I'm glad I picked this one up. Thanks. :phones:

 

I'm glad that you're finding it as enjoyable and stimulating as I did. I don't think I'll ever think about folk and fairy tales, epics, or storytelling in quite the same way after reading the book. When I first read Parry and Lord's book, I must have read the passage you quoted three or four times to let its significance sink into my mind. I still remember it very well.

[Glotesqyphon]

Has anyone read "Uriel's Machine" by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas?

[Snocrash]

This page mentions quite a few good books on this topic and comparative mythology in general:

 

Parallel Myths - Story-Lovers SOS Story Lists