Rainbow Myth (Fairy Tale of Noah's Ark) copied from the Sumerian civilization 5,000 to 6,000 years ago

[웃 910]

I didn't know this. Maybe you knew it was plagiarized from another civilization? Below story is from Dawkin's latest book:

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

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The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories ever written. Older than the legends of the Greeks or the Jews, it is the ancient heroic myth of the Sumerian civilization, which flourished in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Gilgamesh was the great hero king of Sumerian myth - a bit like King Arthur in British legends, in that nobody knows whether he actually existed, but lots of stories were told about him. Like the Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses) and the Arabian hero Sinbad the Sailor, Gilgamesh went on epic travels, and he met many strange things and people on his journeys. One of them was an old man (a very, very old man, centuries old) called Utnapashtim, who told Gilgamesh a strange story about himself. Well, it seemed strange to Gilgamesh, but it may not seem so strange to you because you have probably heard a similar story...about another old man with a different name.

Utnapashtim told Gilgamesh of an occasion, many centuries earlier, when the gods were angry with humankind because we made so much noise they couldn't sleep.

The chief god, Enlil, suggested that they should send a great flood to destroy everybody, so the gods could get a good night's rest. But the water god, Ea, decided to warn Utnapashtim. Ea told Uttnapashtim to tear down his house and build a boat.

It would have to be a very big boat, because Utnapashtim was to take into it 'the seed of all living creatures'.

Utnapashtim built the boat just in time, before it rained for six days and six nights without stopping. The flood that followed drowned everybody and everything that was not safely inside the boat. On the seventh day the wind dropped and the waters grew calm and flat.

Utnapashtim opened a hatch in the tightly sealed boat and released a dove. The dove flew away, looking for land, but failed to find and and returned. Then Utnapashtim released a swallow, but the same thing happened.

Finally Utnapashtim released a raven. The raven didn't come back, which suggested to Utnapashtim that there was dry land somewhere and the raven had found it.

Eventually the boat came to rest on a mountaintop poking out of the water.

Another god, Ishtar, created the first rainbow, as a token of the gods' promise to send no more terrible floods. So that is how the rainbow came into being, according to the ancient legend of the Sumerians.

Well, I said the story would be familiar. All children reared in Christian, Jewish, or Islamic countries will immediately recognize that it is the same as the more recent story of Noah's Ark, with one or two minor differences.

The name of the boat-builder changes from Utnapashtim to the Noah. The many gods of the older legend turn into the one god of the Jewish story. The 'seed of all living creatures' becomes spelled out as 'every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort' - or, as the song has it, 'the animals went in two by two' - and the Epic of Gilgamesh surely meant something similar.

In fact, it is obvious that the Jewish story of Noah is nothing more than a retelling of the older legend of Utnapashtim. It was a folk tale that got passed around, and it travelled down the centuries. We often find that seemingly ancient legends have come from even older legends, usually with some names or other details changed.

And this one, in both versions, ends with the rainbow.

In both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis, the rainbow is an important part of the myth. Genesis specifies that it was actually God's bow, which he put up in the sky as a token of his promise to Noah and his descendants.

There is one more difference between the Noah story and the earlier Sumerian tale of Utnapashtim. In the Noah version, the reason for God's discontent with humans was that we were all incurably wicked.

In the Sumerian story, humanity's crime was, you might think, less serious. We simply made so much noise the gods couldn't get to sleep!

I think it's funny. And the theme of noisy humans keeping the gods awake crops up, quite independently, in the legend of the Chumash people of Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of California.

The Chumash people believed that they were created on their island (it obviously wasn't called Santa Cruz then, because that is a Spanish name) from the seeds of a magic plant by the Earth goddess Hutash, who was married to the Sky Snake (what we know as the Milky Way).

The people of the island became very numerous, and, just as in the Epic of Gilgamesh, too noisy for the goddess Hutash's comfort. The racket kept her awake all night. But instead of killing them all, like the Sumerian and Jewish gods, Hutash was kinder. She decided that some of them must move off Santa Cruz, onto the mainland where she wouldn't be able to hear them. So she made a bridge for them to cross by. And the bridge was...yes, the rainbow!

The myth has a strange ending. As the people were crossing over the rainbow bridge, some of the noisy ones looked down - and they were so frightened by the drop that they got dizzy.

They fell off the rainbow into the sea, where they turned into dolphins.

The idea of the rainbow as a bridge crops up in other mythologies, too. In old Norse (Viking) myths, rainbows were seen as fragile bridges used by the gods to travel from the sky world to earth.

Many peoples, for example in Persia, west Africa, Malaysia, Australia and the Americas, have seen the rainbow as a large snake which soars out of the ground to drink the rain.

How do all these legends start, I wonder? Who makes them up, and why do some people eventually come to believe these things really happened?

These questions are fascinating and not easy to answer.

But there's one question we can answer; what is a rainbow really?

----------------------------------------------------

Rainbow = http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/question41.htm

Two interesting things. One, you are gonna believe in the myths of the religion you are brought up in. So for example, a mere 500 years ago when the Aztecs were at the height of their power. You'd be eager to please the sun god (the fifth sun god cause the other 4 had previously died by this time). He loved blood. And he wanted human sacrifices or else he wouldn't rise in the morning. They'd have 4 priests take a human to the top of a pyramid. And the fifth priest would work as fast as possible to cut out his heart. You see he had to work very fast because Huitzilopochtil (his name) loved still-beating hearts!

The Greeks worshipped a sun god called Helios. They thought the sun was Helios driving a chariot across the sky!

"Here is one of many origin myths from India. Before the beginning of time there was a great dark ocean of nothingness, with a giant snake coiled up on the surface. Sleeping in the coils of the snake was Lord Vishnu. Eventually Lord Vishnu was awakened by a deep humming sound from the bottom of the ocean of nothingness, and a lotus plant grew out of his navel. In the middle of the lotus flower sat Brahma, Vishnu's servant. Vishnu commanded Brahma to create the world. So Brahma did just that. No problem! And all living creatures too, while he was about it. Easy!"

"Here's a typical origin myth, from a group of Tasmanian aborigines. A god called Moinee was defeated by a rival god called Dromerdeener in a terrible battle up in the stars. Moinee fell out of the stars down to Tasmania to die. Before he died, he wanted to give a last blessing to his final resting place, so he decided to create humans. But he was in such a hurry, knowing he was dying, that he forgot to give them knees; and (no doubt distracted by his plight) he absent-mindedly gave them big tails like kangaroos, which meant they couldn't sit down. Then he died. The people hated having kangaroo tails and no knees, and they cried out to the heavens for help. The mighty Dromerdeener, who was still roaring around the sky on his victory parade, heard their cry and came down to Tasmania to see what the matter was. He took pity on the people, gave them bendable knees and cut off their inconvenient kangaroo tails so they could all sit down at last; and they lived happily ever after."

The Norse of Scandinavia (Vikings) turned tree trunks into the first man (Ask) and the other tree trunk into the first woman (Embla).

------------------------

These are just some examples, although there are thousands more. The second point is there are no myths about bacteria, atoms, molecules. Why you ask? Because the primitive people that created all of these myths were terrible in science! They didn't know something as barely visible as a dust mite contains more than 100 trillion atoms!

So it is pretty easy to see why there are no religious fairy tales made up about things that require a microscope. The myths of these primitive species (as I like to say - at the time their intelligence was at a record low and superstition at a record high) are about things like: the sun, the first humans, rainbows, lightening, the sky. Why we have seasons, night and day. Really primitive basic 4th grade level science that has all been fully explained.

[Danno 1,228]

Whats worse, to discover something was a Myth or Hoax?

Not trying to shake your faith in science but, everything is not what it seems (rainbows included.)

[웃 910]

Whats worse, to discover something was a Myth or Hoax?

Science NEVER lies! Myths do (see the various creation myths that YOU WOULD BELIEVE IN if you were raised in that area and time)! You'd be a Muslim if you lived in Pakistan. You'd rip still-beating hearts out of your fellow man if you lived in Mexico in 1500! You'd believe in the Greek Gods if you lived in Ancient Greece in the 7th century BCE. Funny it is now called mythology! I see the same thing being said about today's religions in another 500 years...

Family Tree of the Greek Gods (which you'd believe in if you were around then):

Jivaro Head Shrinkers

Up until recent times, warriors of the Jivaro people of South America would cut off the head of a slain enemy and then shrink it down to a much smaller size. The warriors believed that this would trap the soul of the dead enemy inside the shrunken head and prevent it from ever taking revenge against the killer. For additional protection against attempts at revenge, the head would usually be soaked in a sacred liquid that would remove all remaining hate from the trapped spirit and transform it into the supernatural slave of the warrior. The heads were also used in religious rituals that celebrated the past victories of the tribe.

The Temple of Rats

Everyday about 20,000 rats roam through the Karni Mata temple, located in the city of Deshnoke in northwestern India. These rats are believed to be re-incarnations of certain dead people who will eventually be reborn as higher life forms

Egyptian Crocodile Worship

Many ancient Egyptians believed that a god called Sebek (or Sobek) could appear on the earth in the form of a living crocodile. At one time some people even believed that this god had taken the form of a particular crocodile named Petsuchos which lived in a large pool of water beside a temple in the Fayyum province. Because this crocodile supposedly was a god in disguise, it was fed the best cuts of meat, and was pampered so much that it became quite tame. The priests at the temple even put golden rings in its ears and gold bracelets on its legs.

THE LIST GOES ON AND ON AND ON....Do you agree that you'd believe in this weird mythology if your parents told you to and you were around during these times?

Not trying to shake your faith in science but, everything is not what it seems (rainbows included.)

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Not unexpected. Much of the mythology in Genesis was borrowed from other religions, including the creation story, or rather stories, as at least two different stories are recorded in Genesis, and what happened to Adam's first wife, Lilith? And what of Cain? Did his descendants survive the great flood? It seems the Judeans had a lot of time on their hands during the Babylonian Captivity. They could have spent some more time on plot continuity.

Edited October 15, 2011 by Crusty Old Perv

[scandal 951]

The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories ever written. Older than the legends of the Greeks or the Jews, it is the ancient heroic myth of the Sumerian civilization, which flourished in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Gilgamesh was the great hero king of Sumerian myth - a bit like King Arthur in British legends, in that nobody knows whether he actually existed, but lots of stories were told about him. Like the Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses) and the Arabian hero Sinbad the Sailor, Gilgamesh went on epic travels, and he met many strange things and people on his journeys. One of them was an old man (a very, very old man, centuries old) called Utnapashtim, who told Gilgamesh a strange story about himself. Well, it seemed strange to Gilgamesh, but it may not seem so strange to you because you have probably heard a similar story...about another old man with a different name.

In addition to Gilgamesh and Noah, there are many, many other flood myths in cultures throughout the world. All take the same basic concept of a God or gods punishing humans by flooding them, and some courageous human hero surviving the flood to recreate life, anew.

Here's a list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths , which has many such myths.

Interestingly, I didn't find the one I remember reading as a child about the Algonquin flood myth of Nanabozo:

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheGreatFlood-Algonquin.html

[scandal 951]

Whats worse, to discover something was a Myth or Hoax?

Not trying to shake your faith in science but, everything is not what it seems (rainbows included.)

That's a very silly clip

Is that really the best you can do? Piltdown man?

Just to poke a few holes in this little bit of inanity -

1. At 2:34, the critique that "Darwinian synthesis is effectually dead" is a no-sh!t-sherlock moment. Darwin never advanced a specific causal mechanism of speciation. How could he, in 1859, knowing nothing about cellular structure, genetics, recombinant DNA? Darwin was spot on about the fact that we evolved, and that evolution is shaped through natural selection. He did not understand at the time that the mechanism was genetic mutations. We do understand this today. This reinforces and strengthens evolutionary science, and does not tear it down in the slightest.

2. 2:38 "We have no intermediate fossils between rhipidistian fish and early amphibians". WRONG. We do have that missing link. It was discovered recently in the Canadian Arctic and is called Tiktaalik http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html

3. 3:14 is patently silly. Not all life is cellular, and not all life arises from cellular division. Viruses are the most numerous life forms on Earth and are non-cellular. They are essentially DNA strands with a protein coating, and require a host cellular body to replicate. Viruses have been created in laboratories from non-living organic chemistry soups. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2122619.stm

[Dan and Judy 614]

floods are not a myth, they realy happen. there is one in Thailand right now. I have recently had discussions with Texans who think that rain is a myth.

[SMR 368]

Think about this logically. If the story of Noah as recorded in the Bible is true, every civilization on Earth descended from Noah. Thus, every civilization on Earth would be expected to remember or have stories about this flood. Some details would change but the idea of a big flood because God/the gods was/were angry would likely persevere. Naturally, the fact that these stories are had in practically every culture isn't proof that the flood happened. But it hardly acts as evidence that this is a made up story. If anything, it corroborates the Biblical account.

[scandal 951]

Think about this logically. If the story of Noah as recorded in the Bible is true, every civilization on Earth descended from Noah. Thus, every civilization on Earth would be expected to remember or have stories about this flood. Some details would change but the idea of a big flood because God/the gods was/were angry would likely persevere. Naturally, the fact that these stories are had in practically every culture isn't proof that the flood happened. But it hardly acts as evidence that this is a made up story. If anything, it corroborates the Biblical account.

Logically, one can draw multiple possible inferences. Any of them may be true. There is no definitive proof of any of these possibilities.

a. There was one unique devastating Flood which occurred in history during a time of human historical recollection and memory (i.e. less than, say, 5-6,000 years ago). The Flood was accurately and correctly documented in the Hebrew Bible in the Noah story. All other historical accounts of floods are derivative of that story, and local corruptions of it. The Bible is true, the Judeo-Christian GOD is true, all other religions are false.

b. There was one unique devastating Flood which occurred in history during a time of human historical recollection and memory (i.e. less than, say, 5-6,000 years ago). The Flood was accurately and correctly documented in the account of religion X (Gilgamesh, China, India, Algonquin Indian, whatever). All other historical accounts of floods are derivative of that story, and local corruptions of it. The religion of X is true, all other religions, including the Judeo-Christian GOD are false.

c. There was one unique devastating Flood which occurred in history during a time of human historical recollection and memory (i.e. less than, say, 5-6,000 years ago). All peoples of the world who experienced it came up with their own myths and stories to explain it. They share similar accounts due to the similar empirical nature of what they experienced (devastation, recreation of new life).

d. There have been many devastating Floods which have occurred throughout history. All peoples of the world who experience these floods come up with their own myths and stories to explain them. They share similar accounts due to the similar empirical nature of what they experienced (devastation, recreation of new life).

You apparently believe in something like account a. which ascribes a unique flood, a metaphysical explanation to it, and that the Judeo-Christian account is the True explanation.

I lean toward explanation d. as being a much closer fit to our modern understanding of how many floods and disasters humanity regularly contends with, and how diverse are the peoples of the Earth with no opportunity for communication between, say, Algonquin Indians and ancient Sumerians to share their flood stories. I think d. makes much more sense, and has the added benefit of not needing metaphysical explanations for something that is quite simple to understand without them.

[웃 910]

I thought the Sumerian myth was in Mesopotamia 5,000 to 6,000 years ago (4000 BC to 3000BC) while the Judeo/Christian/Muslim account is 2325BC. So I would rule out letter A. They were late to the campfire by about 2,000 years!

This guy says:

"The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years."

Wikipedia says 2348:

Date of the flood The Ussher chronology, a calculation of the dates of creation and other Biblical events published in 1650 by the Irish Archbishop James Ussher, places the Great Flood at 2348 BC. Using the Masoretic Text of the Bible shows the date to be 1656 years after creation.^[42] Ussher calculated that the creation occurred in 4004 BC; using the King James Bible, this creation date gives the date of the Flood as 2348 BC. Although the Ussher chronology remains highly influential, other theologians have given different dates for the Creation; for example, Joseph Scaliger claimed it to have occurred in 3950 BC, while Petavius calculated the date as 3982 BC.^[43][44]

[scandal 951]

I thought the Sumerian myth was in Mesopotamia 5,000 to 6,000 years ago (4000 BC to 3000BC) while the Judeo/Christian/Muslim account is 2325BC. So I would rule out letter A. They were late to the campfire by about 2,000 years!

You're right, of course.

[SMR 368]

I thought the Sumerian myth was in Mesopotamia 5,000 to 6,000 years ago (4000 BC to 3000BC) while the Judeo/Christian/Muslim account is 2325BC. So I would rule out letter A. They were late to the campfire by about 2,000 years!

This guy says:

"The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years."

Wikipedia says 2348:

Date of the flood The Ussher chronology, a calculation of the dates of creation and other Biblical events published in 1650 by the Irish Archbishop James Ussher, places the Great Flood at 2348 BC. Using the Masoretic Text of the Bible shows the date to be 1656 years after creation.^[42] Ussher calculated that the creation occurred in 4004 BC; using the King James Bible, this creation date gives the date of the Flood as 2348 BC. Although the Ussher chronology remains highly influential, other theologians have given different dates for the Creation; for example, Joseph Scaliger claimed it to have occurred in 3950 BC, while Petavius calculated the date as 3982 BC.^[43][44]

The Judeo Christian claim is that the book of Genesis was written by Moses as a record of revelation he received regarding past events. Noah was not a "Jew" per say as that term had little meaning before the time of Judah (or Jacob or Abraham at a stretch). Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions going around and I don't pretend that this is provable. But you have to make considerable assumptions to disprove it.

[SMOKE 1,426]

Science NEVER lies!

true. another scientist just comes around later & proves the first one was a dumbass & didn't know what they were talking about.

i wonder if one will actually prove there isn't a higher power.

i doubt it. they have jackshit other than a theory themselves...but, everyone w/ faith must prove why they have faith to them. pfft

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The Judeo Christian claim is that the book of Genesis was written by Moses as a record of revelation he received regarding past events. Noah was not a "Jew" per say as that term had little meaning before the time of Judah (or Jacob or Abraham at a stretch). Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions going around and I don't pretend that this is provable. But you have to make considerable assumptions to disprove it.

First time I heard that, and I have been a student of religion all my life.

[scandal 951]

The Judeo Christian claim is that the book of Genesis was written by Moses as a record of revelation he received regarding past events. Noah was not a "Jew" per say as that term had little meaning before the time of Judah (or Jacob or Abraham at a stretch). Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions going around and I don't pretend that this is provable. But you have to make considerable assumptions to disprove it.

1. What does any of this have to do with flooding? You haven't addressed any of the points made in response to your earlier post. That's your right, but it seems you are just taking the conversation in random directions here.

2. No one claims Noah was Jewish. In the Biblical account, he clearly is not. What does that have to do with anything?

3. The Orthodox Jewish belief is that the Torah is the word of God handed down to Moses at Sinai. Literally the word-for-word text, spoken by God to Moses who transcribed it. Except of course that Deuteronomy and Exodus both describe this event, and events which follow it, an obvious logical inconsistency. And more importantly, despite the fact that analysis clearly shows multiple authors who wrote different pieces of the text which was then redacted into a single volume. Experts today overwhelmingly subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis which holds that several authors, labeled J,E,P,D wrote the various segments of the Pentateuch and were then stitched together by Redactor R. The text fragments have been dated to historical Israel around 600-700 BCE. Meaning that all the stories they wrote about, particularly in Genesis and Exodus- Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph in Egypt etc., Moses , "happened" hundreds or thousands of years after the Biblical accounts. They have about as much accurate historical significance as a modern day writer writing about King Arthur and the Round Table.