EXPLORATORY PAPER: THE GREAT FLOODS IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Sagas of the Flood. By Hermann Usener, 1899; Tr. by Robert Hutwohl, 2024
Die Sintfluthsagen. Untersucht von Hermann Usener. Mit Fünf Abbildungen und einer Münztafel, 1899
One remembers the astonished movement into which educated people were transported far beyond the circles of their specialists when George Smith gave the first report and sample of a cuneiform report on the flood on December 3, 1872. Just then, the big question about the relationship between the Semitic and Aryan legends had been discussed in quick succession by theologians and orientalists. 1. In the legend of Mount Apesas near Nemea, Deucalion takes the place of Perseus. 2. The germinal point of the flood legend. Idea of the baptism of the Jordan and the birth of Christ. 3. When examined against the five essential components of the Semitic flood legend, the Indian legend shows itself to be independent. 4. The Greek, its relative, preserves ancient goodness in the creation of people and has borrowed the divine judgment from another group of legends. 5. The loading of animals into the ark could have been known early on through Phoenician trade articles, but was never part of the flood legend. 6. The release of the dove, which Plutarch attributes to the Deucalion, is borrowed from Semitic-tinged recent reports. 7. The Semitic legend was formed by poets, but grew out of the same mythical image as the Aryan. The old image emerges tangibly in Egyptian hymns. Derivation of the remaining elements.
Great Floods from Primary Scientific Hypothesis to Myths
2018
In this article, I will try to explain the Great Flood myths that exist in almost all religions and cultures of the world. These stories exhibit a common theme that the great floods are based on the natural catastrophe theory to explain the emergence of fossils. I think the myths of great floods that are reflected in holy texts of some religions represent a primary scientific theory that indicates the source of the fossils.
Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age.
This is an excerpt from Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age (C&L Press, 2015). The narrative motif of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh is debated. Most scholars believe the flood story in this Epic is a late add-on, as it interrupts the flow of the narrative, and that its use as an answer to the question "How do I gain eternal life?" is an unrelated narrative fragment. In this part of the essay different comparative mythic traditions are marshaled forth to show that the theme of rebirth share and tropes with the epic in question, and that Utnapishmtim's answer to Gilgamesh may have been the right one.
A Biblical Theology of the Flood
2002
A. Terminology: mabbûl (13x) and several other terms B. Extra-biblical Flood stories 1. Flood stories are almost universal (see Nelson, Deluge in Stone) 2. Stories nearest area of dispersion closest to Biblical account 3. Four main flood stories from Mesopotamian sources a. Eridu Genesis (Sumerian, ca. 1600 B.C.)–See T. Jacobsen, JBL 100(1981): 513-529 = Creation, Antediluvian Period, Flood b. Atrahasis Epic (Old Babylonian version, ca. 1600 B.C.)–see W. G. Lambert and a. R. Millard, Atrahasis (Oxford, 1969) = Creation, Anediluvian, Flood c. Gilgamesh Epic, 11 tablet (Neo-Assyrian version, 8th-7th cen. B.C.)–see Pritchard, ANET, pp. 23-26; and Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and OT Parallels (Chicago: University Press, 1946) = only Flood d. Berossus' account (Babylonian priest 3 cent. B.C.)–See Lamber and Millard, pp. 134-137 = just Flood C. Unity of the Genesis Flood Story–see accompanying photocopy from W. Shea, The Structure of the Genesis Flood Narrative and Its Implica...
The Myth of the Flood. Georg Gerland, 1912) [Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl, 2024]
1912
We have seen that there are reports of suddenly occurring great, destructive floods, that there are deluge stories, which very often also became deluge myths, not among all, but among very many peoples in the most diverse countries; but that an originally uniform myth of the Deluge, which spread over the whole earth and has the same meaning for all tribes and peoples, does not exist and never did. Just as little as a terrestrially uniform deluge ever occurred and could not occur. We only have partial flood events, flood narratives, mostly mythologies of individual peoples and tribes. These reports are retained in the memory of the people as mythologies, but they do not merge from one people to the next, and the Semitic, biblical report is also only a local myth that gradually spread over the whole world with the spread of Christianity. Johannes Riem’s opinion of Georg Gerland’s work: … “Gerland is a romantic among ethnologists. For him, the flood is just a pure natural myth. In the detailed introduction he spreads about legends and myths, about the relationship of primitive man to the surrounding nature, which he can only understand anthropomorphically. For this reason, Gerland always puts together the flood tales he reproduces with a studious emphasis on the mythical . . .” The pdf has been bookmarked, enabling the reader to jump to various geographical parts of the world.
The Flood in Legend and Science. Johannes Riem. 1925, Tr. by Robert Hutwohl,: 2024
1925
This work includes an important World Map of Flood Reports, at the end.. The investigation of the Hellenic flood sagas has shown that the older their form, the simpler and more authentic they are, but the more recent they are, the more detailed they are, the more embellishments and details are told. Riem says: “Long and detailed discussions with Dr. Kunike have convinced me that he is obviously right, that the fact of the flood must be admitted, because all myths, especially natural myths, are based on a real fact, but that a later myth-forming time then took possession of the material and took possession of it given the present form of a myth. This is particularly evident in the American Indian sagas, in which the rabbit seen there in the moon plays a major role.”
The Genesis Flood Narrative: Crucial Issues in the Current Debate
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2004
The purpose of this article is to examine major interrelated issues that are present in current discussions about the biblical Flood narrative of Gen 6-9. These include such questions as: the unity and literary genre of these chapters, the nature and extent of the biblical Flood, the relationship between history and theology in the Flood narrative, and the relationship of the biblical Flood narrative to other ANE flood stories. There are three major interpretations of Gen 9 : (1) nonhistorical (mythological) interpretations suggest that Gen 6-9 is a theologically motivated account redacted from two hfferent literary sources (J and P) and lmgely borrowed from other ANE mythological flood traditions; (2) limited or local flood theories narrow the scope of the Genesis Flood to a particular geographical location or locations (usually in Mesopotamia); and (3) tradtional views regard Gen 6-9 as a unified, historically rehble narrative describing a worldwide, global Flood, and written as a...
After the Deluge (and Before): Biblical Formation and Reception in Light of the Flood Narrative
2012
The following syllabus was used for an advanced seminar on the flood narrative (Genesis 6-9) during the spring term of 2012. It was chosen because it is the only biblical narrative that has clear connections to all the major literatures relevant for the study of the Hebrew Bible: the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman world, the Documentary Hypothesis concerning the composition of the Pentateuch, intertextual allusions within the Hebrew Bible, and all major postbiblical literature: apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, rabbinic literature, the New Testament, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Church Fathers and the Qur’an. For each class students read a primary source and prepared brief introductions on that source, using suggested reference guides. As a final paper students were requested to choose a biblical story, and write a seminar paper following the same exercise, and searching for relevant material using suggested guides including Kugel’s book, Ginzberg’s Legends, and various indices of these ancient texts. Click link above to view file.