Texts in conversation

Compare Eridu Genesis VI and Genesis 7:3

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · Hebrew Bible

Summary

In Eridu Genesis, Ziugiddu is honored as the preserver of humankind, while in Genesis Noah brings people and animals into the ark to preserve life through the flood.

Passages

Eridu Genesis VI

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · The Sumerian Deluge

6 Ziugiddu, the king, bowed down in front of Anu and Enlil. 7 Anu and Enlil showed kindness to Ziugiddu. 8 They granted him life like a god’s, 9 They gave him breath that would last forever, like a god’s. 10 At that time Ziugiddu, the king, 11 The name of the [...] Preserver of the seed of humankind [...] 12 They settled him on a [...] mountain, the mountain-land of Dilmun, where the sun rises.

1600 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Eridu Genesis

Genesis 7:3

Hebrew Bible

1 The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation. 2 You must take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, the male and its mate, two of every kind of unclean animal, the male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird in the sky, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of the entire earth. 4 For in seven days I will cause it to rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the ground every living thing that I have made.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

References

"... This whole biblical description of a world-destroying flood represents a foreign element in Israelite tradition. The Levantine highlands in which Israel was situated are relatively arid and do not experience sustained, overwhelming floods. Rather, such floods are more typical of the river plains in Mesopotamia, especially in the wake of snowmelts in the mountain headlands of the Tigris and Euphrates in Turkey and Iran. It was in this Mesopotamian context, during the gradual collapse of the UR III order, that we see the development of several Mesopotamian narratives about the flood and the increasingly frequent use of the flood as the narrative backdrop for cosmological etiologies of Mesopotamian civilization. The three main Mesopotamian literary texts with narratives about the flood are the Atrahasis epic, the Sumerian Flood narrative (aka “Eridu Genesis,”), and the adaptation of a version of Atrahasis in the eleventh tablet of the standard edition of the Gilgamesh epic ... These stories, especially the versions of the Atrahasis flood story (including the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh), share an overall framework. The non-P flood narrative features a number of connections to these Mesopotamian flood stories, even as it diverges in crucial respects as well. To be sure, the non-P flood story is no longer a drama of interaction between gods, and there is no evidence that it ever featured several significant features of the Mesopotamian tradition, such as the address to the elders, convening of the people to construct the ark, or a correlate to the goddess memorializing the days of the flood. Nevertheless, the non-P flood story does follow a similar trajectory of movement in the Mesopotamian flood narratives ..."

David M. Carr, The Formation of Genesis 1–11: Biblical and Other Precursors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 153–154.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

The Survivor Receives Life Like a God

Eridu Genesis6 columns

Compare Eridu Genesis VI and Genesis 7:3

Summary

Passages

Eridu Genesis VI

Genesis 7:3

References

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