Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 27
Babylonian Flood Story Part 2
Welcome to Messiah In The old Testament. Today we are presenting Part 2 of our Babylonian Flood Story. In the previous episode we looked at the background and introduction to this story. We looked at the excavations that were going on in the city of Nineveh, specifically the Library of Ashurbanipal. And we looked at a bunch of tablets and their state, how they were all broken up. And how these Assyriologists worked hard to put them all back together and interpret them.
And then we talked about all the potential sources for the Babylonian Flood Story. We looked at the historian Berossus who was a priest of Bel Marduk. He wrote a history of Babylon. His writings don’t exist in actual written form but they have been quoted by various other historians. And we went through some of those quotes, specifically what Josephus had to say.
Then we looked at the Epic of Atrahasis and talked about the excavation at the Temple of Shamash the sun god and how the three tablets were discovered which had a detailed account of the Epic of Atrahasis. Plus, there were tablets found at the Library of Ashurbanipal as well. And then finally, we talked about the Epic of Gilgamesh and the twelve tablets and then Tablet XI was the Flood Tablet. And we are telling you the modern interpretation of this story that was originally written on Tablet Number XI with a little bit of extra stuff added. But there’s really been very little addition to that original story.
So here is the story of Gilgamesh:
Gilgamesh was a demigod. In other words, he was part human, part divine. It's listed in the tablets, other parts of the tablets, kind of like the introduction, that Gilgamesh's mother was a goddess named Ninsun. His father was a human. So, he was part human, part god. He was imbued with superhuman strength. He could do all kinds of physical feats. And in that respect, he was described as kind of a divine figure. But he was mortal. He was still subject to the rules of man. So, if he was shot with an arrow through the heart, he would die just like any other man. So, he
wanted to achieve immortality like his mama. And so, he had heard during his travels, and you can read that if you read the whole epic, he learned his travels that there was a man who had cheated death and had achieved immortality. And that was this guy we talked about. And remember in the tablets Uta-Napishtim. Now Uta-Napishtim was immortal.
So, when Gilgamesh found Uta-Napishtim he asked him the following question, “How is it that you stand in the assembly of the gods and have found life?” So Uta-Napishtim tells him the story of how he achieved eternal life. So, he was a king. He was the king of a city which was situated on the Euphrates River. Kind of like the city of Sippar.
They called it Shuruppak. In the epic, this city was an old, ancient city. And this city had its own set of gods that ruled over the city. There were gods over these lower gods. And it turns out there was one kind of cranky god. His name was in Enlil. Enlil was the god of rain, thunder, storms and he was upset because man was just too noisy. He was making too much noise, he was raucous. The actuality is, that instead of giving the gods their proper due and reverence, these guys were all
partying and drinking beer and carrying on. So, Enlil was very unhappy about it. So, he came up with a plan. He called all the gods together in a secret meeting. They all met together and he revealed his plan to flood the earth. Well not all the gods agreed with him on this. Some did, some didn't.
There was one specific god whose name was Ea. Now he's the god of wisdom, also known as Enki. We met him in the creation story. Enki snuck away privately away from the other gods and he informed the king of the city Uta-Napishtim that the flood was coming.
And he said, “There's a flood that's going to come against mankind. And you are to tear down your house and build a giant boat. It's time for you to abandon wealth and spurn possessions to keep mankind alive.” So, the king took Enki's words to heart. So, he being the king, he hired a bunch of workmen, a bunch craftsman and they set about building the boat. Now Ea told them specifics on how big to make the boat.
It was supposed to be 10×12 cubits tall. So, like 180 feet and as wide and as long. So, it was like a giant box they were building. So, King UtaNapishtim hires all these workers and he says, “Okay, you come build this boat for me and I will bring you showers of food and rivers of beer. And it’s going to be one giant party.” In fact, they said it was to be like a New Year's Festival. Apparently, the Babylonians had blowout New Year's festivals every year. So, they built this boat in record time.
And the specifics are given in the text. It says that it had six decks, seven levels, each deck was divided into nine compartments. They were to coat the whole ship inside and out with pitch. So, it would be waterproof. It [pitch] was the caulking they used between boards.
So then, the king took all the silver, all of his gold, all of his belongings, took his family and they brought them out on the boat. And they brought animals from the field, tame animals, wild animals, brought all these animals in from the field. And then some of the craftsmen and their families were allowed to enter the boat. And then the boat was sealed up by the chief boatman. The boatman was given the king's palace and all the king's belongings as a reward for launching the boat.
So, they got a bunch of logs and they rolled this giant boat, giant box down and launched it into the Euphrates River. So, there we are floating in the Euphrates. And the next morning after the boat is launched, it says that the sun rose and, in the sunrise, the glow of the sunrise, a black cloud appeared. And the black cloud got bigger and bigger as the storm approached. And then the storm just broke out and it stormed straight for, let me see now, seven nights and six days. And then on the seventh day the storm broke. And the storm stopped. So, the bad part is over. There they are floating on calm seas finally. And the water was starting to recede, starting go down after the seven days and seven nights. So, another week goes by and everybody was getting a little impatient. They
want to get off the boat. So, Uta-Napishtim opens a window and he sends out a series of birds.
He starts out first with the dove. The dove circles and comes back, finds no place to land. Then he sends out a sparrow. The sparrow does the same thing, makes a circle, comes back and does not land anywhere. Finally, he sent out the raven.
And the raven, as the raven was flying, saw that the water was slithering off the land. And they knew that they were saved. Now the boat had gone aground on a mountain that was called Mount Nimush. And it is someplace close to the banks of the Euphrates where Shuruppak was. So, they landed on this mountain. There are a lot of candidates where people have come up with what mountain that really was. And so finally, after the raven saw the water was receding, the raven flew off and did not come back. So then, they unsealed the door and everybody exited from the ark.
The animals went out and Uta-Napishtim built an altar on the top of Mount Nimush. And he sacrificed to the gods on Mount Nimush. It says [in the translation] that he sacrificed a sheep, but it could have been any number of animals that he who sacrificed. So, Enlil finds out that all these animals, all these people were saved. He was not happy because he knew the noise would come back. So, he went down very angry but one of the gods took him aside and then calmed him down. And so, then they went to Uta-Napishtim and said because you have saved mankind you are going to be rewarded.
And the quote was, “Previously Uta-Napishtim was a human being but now let Uta-Napishtim and his wife become like us, the gods.” So, this is how Gilgamesh planned to become immortal. And the story goes on about how Gilgamesh went down to the bottom of the ocean and found these special herbs that would give him eternal life. But we’re not going to get into that that part of the story. Now, I would like to look little bit at the provenance of our story. The tablets that they took from Ashurbanipal’s library are not just flood stories or creation stories. There is also a story which is like the Tower of Babel and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a lot of stories from Genesis that are in
their [Babylonians] writing. We are not going to cover those today, but we may bring them up when we get to those stories in the book of Genesis. Now let’s look at the provenance of Gilgamesh.
We know that Tablet 11 is currently located in the British Museum. It's on display in room G 55. And I will show you a picture of it on display. But there's these other two tablets as well. The one on display is a nice big chunk of tablet which is not busted up and destroyed but the other tablets aren’t in such good shape. Now, the text has been translated many times by many different people. And there are lots of publications of the Epic of Gilgamesh. You can order them on Amazon. You get any number of them.
So, the story came from the excavation, 1849, in the ruins of the Library of Ashurbanipal. They all reside now in the British Museum. Now the Library of Ashurbanipal was destroyed around 609 to 612 BCE. The tablets that contain the story of Gilgamesh were written by a scribe who actually identified himself in the writings.
And the scribe, his name is Sîn-lēqi-unninni and it is thought that he lived somewhere around 10th to 13th century BCE although nobody knows with any certainty. But he was a Babylonian scribe and the contents of the Epic of Gilgamesh, they think, come from around 2000 to 2400 BCE from the Sumerian culture because they have old tablets that have been excavated from that time period that have all the stories in the Epic of Gilgamesh that are found in earlier Sumerian writing. So, they assume the flood story also came from the early Sumerian source. However, they've never been able to find any other tablets for the Epic of Gilgamesh, at least by my research, other than the tablets from the temple or the Library of Ashurbanipal. This provenance has been used by expert Assyriologists to prove that the Babylonian Flood Story predates the Biblical Flood Story, predates the Greek Flood Story. So, they theorize that the Babylonians came up with the story first and everybody else copied from the Babylonians. In fact, they say that the majority of the stories from the beginning of Genesis are stories that were co-opted and stolen from the Babylonians. So, they say that the Hebrews copied the Babylonian story. Therefore, what's in the Old Testament is basically a bunch of myths and stories that are not original to the Hebrew culture. And then the Egyptologists have chimed in and they say, “Well, there is no archaeological evidence that Moses ever existed. There is no archaeological evidence that the Children of Israel ever lived in Egypt.” And they totally dispute and discard the stories of Moses and the Exodus. When you start striking down all these stories, one by one, and say they're all just myths, all just stories, there's no proof, the Bible is not authentic, the Bible is just another book of myths and has no value. Now, I dispute this. I do not believe for a minute that because some Babylonian tablets dated back to two centuries BCE, or
two millennia I should say BCE, prove that the Bible is not real. I think that is just ridiculous thinking and they should really look at the real facts. If you go back and you look at the origin of the biblical story and compare that to the provenance of the Babylonian story.
I mean, we can go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls and we can get to maybe two or three centuries BCE where the Torah has been proven to be the same as today's manuscripts, the chapters of Isaiah for example are identical.
You can even go back further and find inscriptions that are basically verses from the Torah. And you can go back even now to 500 or 600 BCE. And I think with your further investigation you can finally go back even further and further.
The Hebrew language is thought to be derived from the Aramaic language which is thought to be derived from the Phoenician and the Babylonian languages.
We know from the Word of God that there were written copies of the Torah, for example Josiah, during his reign which was about 640-ish BCE, found a copy of the Torah in the temple. And we know that Moses when received the word from the Mountain of God, he wrote down what God told him. He wrote down the promises. He wrote down the laws.
He wrote down the testimony that Elohim gave him. So, we know that there was writing all the way through and I think there is a continuum even though we don't have the archaeological evidence in her hands or
in front of our eyes. We know that there was a continuum of story, of written word all the way up to the present. Now, if you want to believe these Assyriologists and you want to believe these Egyptologists who are trying to totally steal your faith and steal any belief you have in the Bible. Feel free, that that's your choice. I happen to not make that choice. But I will tell you one thing with great certainty. I don't want to live under those Babylonian stories. I don't want to have the Babylonian gods as my God. Because the Babylonian gods in all of the stories universally they do not like man. They have a great dislike for men. They only created man to be a slave to do their work for them. Their idea of a good day is when they punish man and they squash him like a bug. Compare that with my God Elohim, with the prophecies that we have already looked at so far. We see a loving God. We see a God who created man to be family. We see a God who gave his creation multiple second chances, the inability to come back and be reconciled. And through this whole Messianic process that we’re discussing, that is the ultimate path back to God to get reconciled with God. God wants to elevate you and me. And he does not want to squash is like a bug. I am never going to be standing before you saying something like “Welcome to Messiah in the Epic of Gilgamesh” or “Welcome to Messiah in the Epic of Atrahasis” or “Welcome to Messiah in the Enuma Elish” because Messiah is not in any of those stories. Messiah is not in any of those documents. So, if you believe the theory that the Hebrew scribes copied from the Babylonian scribes, I wonder which Babylonian scribe came up with the whole idea of Messiah so that Hebrew scribes could copy that. So, next time we’re going to talk about the Greek story. The Greek story is just a smooth continuation from the creation story that we told you before. Starting with Pandora and moving on into the wild and crazy Greek story.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, and then was tortured and crucified. And after he died, he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he
comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.