Comparison

Noah and Gilgamesh are the two main characters in each flood story. Noah is placed on a pedestal to show his righteousness as he is the center of the story. Noah is the chosen one as a descendant from Adam. He lives to be 250 years old. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the main character is Gilgamesh but the story is told from Utanapishtim's view, he uses the word "I". Gilgamesh is like a founding father and is placed on a pedestal because he is 2/3 gG-d and 1/3 king. Gilgamesh, like Noah, does show leadership qualities. They are both the builders of each ark.

The reason for the flood is different in each epic. In Genesis, G-d announces the flood to take place as a way to kill all mankind because of all the corruption and clear the world of its evilness. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood is caused by the older G-d's, such as Enlil. The G-ds come together as an assembly to create meteorological chaos with winds, water, meteors, etc. They feel this is necessary because of the overpopulation taking place and because it is tradition for this to occur every 1200 years.

Genesis is written to show people to "right" way to carry on their lives. The Bible contains many stories, such as Noah's Ark, as a way to start a new religion, gain followers, and spread ideas and values. Oppositely, the Epic of Gilgamesh is more of a cultural artifact, not a religious one. This story allows historian, archeologists, and people like us to read a folklore from the time of Mesopotamian. The Bible is more of a moral guide, where the story of Gilgamesh is more of an enjoyable story from ancient times.

Emily Clarke, Genesis Ch 6-9

Along with some of my fellow classmates, this is my first time actually reading out of the Old Testament in English. The only other time I have read the Old Testament was when I was making my Bat Mitzvah, where I read the story about sibling rivalry between Jacob and. Esau. Now, as a 19 year old woman, I was able to appreciate the beauty of the language and meaning behind the stories compared to when I was a young 13 year old child.
The power of G-d does not surprise me as I read the texts. Just from my everyday knowledge of religion and my own beliefs, G-d is one of the most, if not the most, authoritative and dependable characters in literature. I never understood the reason for the flood until I read Chapter 6 of Genesis. A line that caught my attention was "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” I finally was able to understand the reason behind the flood and read why G-d was so angry. I also pictured in my mind an actual flood that encompasses all the mountains and moreover the entire Earth. Not that I would ever want myself or any person to be on Earth at the time of a flood but to watch from afar would be a pretty spectacular site. In my opinion, water is the more powerful object on Earth, which makes sense as to why G-d would choose water as a means of destruction. I also thought about other symbolic characteristics of water, such as water as a cleansing material, or water as a purifying material. A literary tool that caught my eye was how the author used precise numbers to describe a length of time. For example,“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” I feel this technique adds detail to a short story. “Less is more” would be the phrase I would use to describe this literary technique.