Plagiarism in the NT

Debate Room
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Hello Guys,

I would like to present to you a theory of mine that the story of Jesus death and resurection
has all been plagiarized from mostly two older Sumerian stories called the descent of Inanna into
the underworld and the other The dream of Dumuzi.

These stories were written over 4 to 5 thousand years ago by the Sumerians and were actually lost.
Some 150 years ago during an archeological dig in modern day Iraq, they found thousands of clay tablets written with symbols called Cuneiform. Verry quickly they could translate these texts, and a lot of information could be gained by reading these text about the Sumerian civilasation, they also found some mythical stories about their gods and religion including the descent of Inanna into the underworld and The dream of Dumuzi.

My premesis is that before the christian religon became the roman state religion these two stories still existed in libraries in the big cities of their time (Alexandria, Rome, Pergamum… etc) and that the early christians had access to them and used these texts to write a new version, the Jesus narative as
we know it. Just like West side story is a retelling of Romeo and Julliet but in a different time and
a different setting. When the Christians became the Roman state religion, they destroyed every kind of scripture telling about other gods and myths. Fortunate they didnt know that the two mentioned Sumerian stories were also written on clay waiting in the sand to be uncovered, otherwise these would have been destroyed as well.

If you are interested and have the time please read these two stories first before continue with this.
If you have questions Im happy to answer them. Next is a table of the comparrisons I made between the
two Sumerian stories and the 4 gospels.

As you will find out, my assumption is that the figure Jesus is playing the parts of Inanna (female godess as well as her husband Dumuzi)

Please tell me what you think of it.

The following links are from the website of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
Inana’s descent to the netherworld: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.4.1&charenc=j#
Dumuzis dream: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.4.3&charenc=j#


Jesus narative Gospel The descent of Inanna into the underworld
Jesus on trial by the jewish counsil or high priests Mathew 26: 57, Mark 14: 53, Luke 22: 54, John 18:19 Inanna on trial by the judges of the underworld
Jesus says nothing Mark 14: 60-61, Mathew 26:62-63, Luke 23: 9 Inanna says nothing to defend herself
Peter waits outside in the courtyard and denies three times he was with Jesus after the rooster crowed Peter cries Mark,Mathew,Luke,John Ninshubur waits outside at the gate of the underworld .After three days she mourns Inanna for being trapped int the underworld
Jesus found guilty by the sanhedrin Mark,Mathew,Luke,John Inanna found guilty by the judges of the underworld
Jesus ordered to be crucified by Pilate Mark,Mathew,Luke,John Inanna is executed and hanged on a hook on the wall
Joseph of Arimethea asks for the body of Jesus Mark,Mathew,Luke,John Two sexless beings asks Erishkigal for the body of Inanna
Jesus is pierced by a spear John Inanna is pierced by a hook
Joseph/Nicodemus embalming Jesus body with mixture of Aloe and Myrh John The two sexless beings apply the water of life and food of live to the body of Inanna
Joseph puts Jesus in a tomb (place of death) Mark,Mathew,Luke,John Inana is in the underworld a place of death
Mary Magdalene waits outside the tomb Mathew Ninshubur waits outside at the gate of the underworld
After three days Jesus is resurected and the first person he meets is Mary Magdalene who he casted out 7 demons Mark 16: 9 After three days Inanna is resurected leaving the underworld followed by 7 demons who have to bring back the replacement of Inanna. The first person Inanna meets is Ninshubur who the demons want to take away but Innana can prevent this.
After three days, Mary magdalene runs away for help after she finds the tomb stone has been removed and the tomb is empty John 20:1 After three days, Inanna has not returned, Ninshubur runs to the other gods to find help
Mary meets two disciples Peter and someone else and together they return to the tomb, the two disciples enter the tomb John 20:2 Ninshubur returns to the underworld with two sexless creatures who enter the underworld
Mary magdalene is crying outside the tomb John 20: 11 Ninshubur is lamenting the loss of Inanna in the underworld
Mary magdalene sees two angels in the tomb, right after that she sees Jesus John 20: 12 Ninshubur sees the two sexless creatures entering the underworld and after some time Inanna returns
Jesus goes on a yourney and meets two persons on their way to Emaus Luke 24:13 Inanna meets two of her sons on her way to find a replacement for her, the second son resides at a temple called Emush Kallama
Jesus rebukes Thomas for having no faith in him John 20: 24 Inanna rebukes Dumuzi her husband for not mourning her while she was dead.
Jesus narative Gospel The dream of Dumuzi
Jesus enters the garden of Gethsemane Mark, Mathew, Luke, John Dumuzi after visiting his sister Geshtenana hides for the mob of demons in the grass and long grass (garden of Geshtenana).
Jesus prays three times to God. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Mark, Mathew, Luke Dumuzi prays three times to the god of justice Utu to let him escape the demons who captured him and bound him. Utu changes Dumuzi into a gazelle or snake so he can escape.
Jesus finds his disciples sleeping Mark, Mathew, Luke After escaped Dumuzi is tired and sleeps
Jesus disciples denies they will betray Jesus Mark 14: 19, Mathew 26: 22 Dumuzi lets his sister and his friend swear not to betray him
Jesus is betrayed by Judas who took a bribe and pointing him out to an angry mob Mark, Mathew, Luke, John Dumuzi is betrayed by his friend who took a bribe from the 7 demons and tells them Dumuzi is hiding in the grass
Jesus is captured by an angry mob Mark, Mathew, Luke, John Dumuzi is taken prisoner by the angry 7 demons
Jesus is mocked and beaten by his guards Mark, Mathew, Luke Dumuzi is molested by the angry 7 demons
A young man following Jesus is seized but he escapes naked leaving his garment behind Mark 14: 51, Dumuzi escapes his demons three times.
All disciples fled Mathew 26: 56 Dumuzi escapes his demons three times.

Oh did I mentioned that Dumzui is a sheperd and that his name means the true son?

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This is gold, very well done and thank you for bringing it to attention.

The bible is riddled with plagiarism from the very first sentence in the OT (that from Ancient Egyptian mythology)

I really fail to see why, in 2020 anyone would consider the bible anything more than badly written fiction

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Thanks for sharing … will look into this more.

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Couldn’t agree more… but just a point or two…

The early Christians would not have needed to go to the libraries of Alexandria ,et al… The very early Christians were predominantly Jewish converts and as such would have been familiar with the tales of Inanna (Ishtar ) and Dumuzi (Tammuz)…

Further they were revered and “worshiped” by many Jews … Much to the annoyance of the Yahwist party within Israel … see Jeremiah 7 - 17/18 and Ezekiel 8-14 …

Don’t forget the Jews during their Babylonian Exile were put to work in the libraries of Babylon itself , taught to use the Babylonian script (Cuneiform).

I recommend “The Ark Before Noah by Irving Finkel” …

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@BlackTom

Welcome to AR

Fascinating stuff.

It has has long seemed to me that the people who became the Jews may have lifted a lot of stuff from the Sumerians, especially from the Epic of Gilgamesh. They also seemed to have lifted YHWH from the Sumerians

Your take is very erudite and I will have to spend a lot more time to reach an informed opinion.

I do have one issue with your hypothesis.There seems to be a conflation of correlation and causation. Whilst correlation can suggest a causal relationship, it is not necessarily the case and is not credible evidence for causation in itself.

Have you read any of Dr Richard Carrier’s work or seen any of his lectures on YouTube? If so,I’d be very interested in your opinion. If not, I recommend his ideas , especially on the historicity of Jesus.

Carrier is also a mythicist, arguing that the religion which became christianity is a synthesis of Judaism and the Greek mystery religions. His stuff is erudite and compelling.

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Hello Boomer,

Thanks for your reply.

On the issue of conflation of correlation and causation Im not completely sure what you mean
by that. If you mean that because there are some real smoking guns that keeps my theory floating
it doesnt mean that the rest of the comparisons are solid as well. In that case I understand but
I still think all comparissons are valid based on the following reasoning:

That not only do the events look alike, but the events in the gospel are also following the events
in the right order compared with the two sumerian stories. Although I must admit that when the story of
Inanna ends and so Jesus is going to heaven, we have to make a jump back in time to match the
story of the garden of Getshemane with Dumuzi’s dream. But then these events are matching up
again in time.

On Richard Carrier I did watched some video’s from him on Youtube, interesting stuff, great
speaker to. I certainly believe that the Jesus figure started out as a mythical figure.
Though there is one issue I have, he asserts that “Jesus was the name of a celestial being,
subordinate to God, known by the jews”, I cant find any reference to that conclusion. When I watched his videos I even wanted to send him my theory to get an honest opinion but there is no way to contact him unless you are in his inner circle, which is understandable.

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Hello Watchman,

Thanks for your reply,

I dont understand how Jewish converts should know about the tales of Inanna (Ishtar) and Dumuzi (Tamuz), they are not supposed to know these gods, they only have one God. And if so wouldnt they be allarmed by the fact that the stories look alike?

They might have worshipped these gods in older times in the OT but accordingly these worshippers were punished and their religion destroyed. And that happend at least hunderds of years before the events in the NT.

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Gidday Black Tom. Welcome to AR.
There is no doubt at all about the myth of Jesus relying on previous myths legends and religions. Resurrected hero myths were immensely popular in all ancient civilisations. Jesus certainly wasnt a new idea. I read somewhere that even Plato was so revered by his fans they insisted he too was born of a virgin mother, was the son of a god and also rose from the dead.

The death and resurrection motif was popular among the Egyptians too. A contemporary and competitor of Jesus, Apollonius of Tyre was said to have led a parallel life to JC, with wise sermons, miracles, virgin birth etc except Apolllonius survived his crucifiction and lived on to a ripe old age writing. There are many statutes to Apollonius throughout the middle east. Strangely none for Jesus.

The ancient world around Jesus’ time was full of mystery religions, celebrating the victories of heros and heroines against death and all even providing knowledge for the common man to apply to save his soul. The majority of people at the time could worship any god, or all of them. Some priests in one temple worshipped at the temples of other gods as laity. The Jews still worshipped Baal and Asherah and others.
The story of the Jews is not their obedience to YHWH but their disregard for him. Their story is full of incidents where they forget him for other gods and he punishes them. Ishtah was a very popular goddess in Jerusalem and even had a huge statue of herself in the Temple which is given as one of the reasons they were taken in bondage to Babylon.

It was only around 600 BC after being released from slavery in Babylon the idea of only one god took hold amongst the Jews and that’s where all the troubles really started right up to when Christianity became the official Roman state religion after which Jesus’ followers just literally killed, tortured or destroyed all pagan worship and worshippers and knowledge, including the Jews. It was the worst aspect of the Jewish religion the Christians and the Muslims adopted.

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The old gods endured right through to Roman Times. They may have had different names. The Greek Zeus became the Roman Jupiter. Ishtar, Cybele, Issis were all ancient goddesses who still had temples and worhshippers as late as the Roman Empire. There was much more tolerance for all the pagan religions in those days. It is only with monotheism of the Abrahamic religions that brought about the wholesale intolerance. The old gods and worshippers were only destroyed in the minds of those who worshipped YHWH …and wrote the Old Testament.

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Correct, I was talking about the YHWH worschippers.

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Helllo Grinseed,

The thing is I know that there are a lot of theories and commentaries about Jesus being a myth relying on previous myths legends and religions. The problem is that, until now ofcourse, there was no written ancient text about a myth, that could be pointed at, as being an original source of the gospel stories and in particular the death and resurection story. I searched for it but I couldnt find it, except for some copycat stories from the OT and some lines of Josephus Flavius biography.

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Yes… but we only have the Biblical record…which was written by the Yahwist Preists of the Temple ,upon their return from the Babylonian exile… so in effect we only have their word for the destruction of belief in these deities .

As Inanna was a fertility godess and Tamuz was associated with corn it fairly likely that whatever the “metropolitan” preists were saying , the rustic farmers and trades men would have maintained their support for the old ways.

Eventually ,of course these practices would have lost their “roots” and just become folk lore… in much the same way that I’ll wager you ,yourself has undoubtedly made offerings to “the other world” in your time.

You’ve thrown a coin into a pond ,well ,fountain or river ,making a half hearted jokey wish or just for luck . Completely forgetting the origin of making offerings to the underworld via water. .

Further the fact that the Jewish calendar names the month of June as “Tammuz” (traditionally a month of mourning) ,this would seem to point to a continued familiarity if not actual use of the Tammuz / Inanna narrative.

“Jewish tradition considers Tammuz to be a month of mourning, and [rabbinical Jews] even observe a fast on the [17th day of the month]”

source …

(PS …apologies for my delay in replying … Somewhere I’ve read an article by an archaeologist (I think Israel Finklestein.) about the continued veneration of Ashera and other old deities down to quite late dates , Unfortunately I can not find the article ,as yet. so I will not put that forward for your consideration until I have the article.)

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Perhaps best to use dictionary definitions:

correlation

[ kawr-uh-ley-shuhn, kor- ]SHOW IPA

SEE SYNONYMS FOR correlation ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

mutual relation of two or more things, parts, etc.:Studies find a positive correlation between severity of illness and nutritional status of the patients.

the act of correlating or state of being correlated.

Statistics. the degree to which two or more attributes or measurements on the same group of elements show a tendency to vary together.

Physiology. the interdependence or reciprocal relations of organs or functions.

Geology. the demonstrable equivalence, in age or lithology, of two or more stratigraphic units, as formations or members of such.

causation

Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Wikipedia.

cau·sa·tion

(kô-zā′shən)

n.

1. The act or process of causing.

2. A cause.

3. Causality.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

The overall meaning is that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, although it may
(((((((((((((((((((((((((9))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Examples: An example. There are some interesting correlations between the flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah flood Myth. This suggests,but does not prove that the Noah myth is derived from the epic of Gilgamesh.Flood myths are not uncommon in societies around the world.

There are some similarities between Hammurabi’s code and SOME of the 613 commandments which make up Mosaic law.

All major religions contain pretty much the same moral code; Be kind to your neighbour, do not lie, cheat , rape or murder.

Hinduism predates even Judaisms, Buddhisms began in India around the sixth century bce. There are some tenuous similarities in ancient Egyptian religion to Christianity.

What has not been established is that there is any causal relationship between any of those myths/ belief systems and either Judaisms or Christianity.

Your hypothesis is fascinating,and I think worthy of further study. I had a look at the links you posted,which seem to be translations, but do not present any arguments.

Sorry to be a noodge, but could you please tell your academic background and point me towards any peer reviews of your hypothesis.

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“The thing is I know that there are a lot of theories and commentaries about Jesus being a myth relying on previous myths legends and religions. The problem is that, until now ofcourse, there was no written ancient text about a myth, that could be pointed at, as being an original source of the gospel stories and in particular the death and resurection story. I searched for it but I couldnt find it, except for some copycat stories from the OT and some lines of Josephus Flavius biography.”

I don’t know if there would be just one single much less orginal source that would point directly at Jesus. The resurrected hero motif was an immensely popular story device that stretches back to earlier civilisations both in Egypt and the Euphrates-Tigris valley. Religions are maintained by the written word and only the priests had that sort of education. The peasants could not read but they had as much imagination as the priests and despite the authority of the temples, the common folk worshipped who they felt did best by them in terms of luck and destiny. As I mentioned earlier the story of the Jews is more about their rebellion against the dictates of the priesthood and therefore God, rather than their subservience to their authority.

These societies and civilisations were based on agriculture. The Fertile Crescent ran from Egypt along the Nile, up through Palestine to Syria to the Turkish border then east to the Euphrates then south down through Mesopotamia following the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. From one end to the other was one large unbroken agricultural belt, through which passed an immense traffic of commerce, trade and travellers. Ideas and religious beliefs travelled too. It was a time of a fairer climate and a greener environment than it is today. And a time of greater tolerance for the beliefs of others. If someone else was living a better life it might have been because of the gods he worshipped, so for most it was no big deal to include a neighbours god in your prayers. You will note that the OT, written by the interested priesthood, had much to condemn about this loose practice.
Kingdoms sprung up and fell away over time but the farmers and peasants kept working the land and worshipping the gods that did best for them. Those kings and princes were only politicians like ours today who come and go, sometimes managing to improve or undermine things for everyone else but it was the common unknown people who kept living simple lives working to keep the peace and to keep society working.

Abraham left his Chaldean hometown of Ur in Mesopotamia and travelled to Haran, a city in that still stands today in Turkey. He lived here for awhile before heading south to Egypt and then heading back to Palestine/Canaan. Abraham would have picked up a lot of information about other gods and religions on the way, as would all his tribe. Eventually this old man thinks a supreme god talks to him and then shit really starts happening.

The agriculturally based resurrection theme follows the rebirth of the seasons and the crops that those societies depended on. The ancient Summerian cities were just large agricultural operations built around the ziggurats dedicated to each their gods which served not only as temples but as silos, warehouses and in some cases housed distilleries for producing ales from surplus grain. Writing is invented in these places to record the inventory of the temples and its the priesthood who are the first writers. The wars fought in those days were not between gods but between city states. The gods were praised when the state defeated its enemies.

Probably the best OT book to look at for a genesis to Jesus is Daniel. Its supposed to be a book of prophecy supposedly written 500 BC, but was in fact written much later. It covers the campaigns of Alexander the Great, then his governors who took over Egypt and Babylon and Macedonia. It tells how the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Babylon warred over the possession of Canaan. All the prophecies of Daniel up to this point are historical fact because they were written up about two hundred years after they happened.
Daniel has a dream about a warrior, named the Messiah, who would come to defeat the Babylonian king who is returning from a massive campaign in which he has conquered the Egyptians and kills their king. The messiah is to lead an army of angels to slaughter the Babylonian king on the plains near the Mediterranean Sea. None of this happened of course, no surprise. Egypt was not conquered and the Babylonian king died peacefully in his sleep in Babylon.

Meanwhile the few hopeful believers waited patiently for the Messiah, but then the Maccabean Revolt happened, the Jews regained self government under the Hasmodean line of kings, and the Jews were left waiting for the Messiah, because Matthius Maccabee did not fit the prophecy in Daniel. And so we know the Book of Daniel was written just before 160 BC because none of the ‘prophesies’ accounted for the Maccabean Revolt and none came true afterwards. So they waited for the ‘real’ Messiah. About 100 years later the Romans arrived around 60 BC and appointed their own puppet king in Herod the Great. The need for the Messiah remained and people were again oppressed by the barbaric outsiders and they continued to wait patiently for him.

I think that there was a real guy called Yeshua and he was a radical Jew who had an agenda of his own.
He never wrote anything himself and there are no contemporaneous writings about him anywhere. Everything written about him was done after he died.

Some, including some of his disciples, had thought he was the Messiah, but he died, possibly at the hands of the Romans, but there are no independent records to support the idea. But in any case Yehshua died and the children of Israel remained under the yoke of the Romans. Some disciples, stunned because of his untimely and unexpected death, mixed the Messiah tale with resurrection myths and declared Jesus had come to defeat death not the Romans and that idea really caught on and was embellished, popularised, argued, fought, killed and died for. When it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the loving faith was spread eagerly around the known world with blood thirsty enthusiasm. In the meantime the Jews keep waiting for the ‘real’ Messiah, coz Jesus was a meshuggeneh and not the real deal.
And the early disciples looked for prophetic and vague references to Jesus in the Torah which they found in Isaiah and Micah and which Christians today still vainly proffer as proof of his divinity.

If you google the ‘Ascension of Isaiah’ you can read an amazing account of the 7th Century BC prophet’s dream of a trip to heaven and the witnessing of the celestial Christ being crucified in the sky by demons and buried on the moon, really. I feel sure St Paul knew more about this legend than he did about the real Jesus who he never met. This story was apparently compiled from three separate versions in the first century AD and was probably only part of a large unorganised campaign of story writing promoting many different stories that supported the Christian cause.

The celestial Christ was an adaption of the Greek concept of the Logos, which was a creative force which the Christians eventually adopted as representing Jesus. The great Arian heresy resulted with a victory for those priests who believed in the enigmatic Trinity and that Jesus was divine and not merely a man adopted by God. They could not perceive Jesus the Christ as a mere mortal so they ignored the gospel stories as allegory and decided on the mythical tale above where he is crucified somewhere over the earth, saving him from being sullied by this sinful unclean place. That the Christ after being resurrected goes to Hell for three days tells you what a low opinion the priests had for the earth.

You won’t find neat complete stories from the old world of religions and certainly none about Jesus in particular. The Christianity we know today is a finely honed, repeatedly washed and rinsed version of the original and the story of Jesus is totally lost in a long history of revision, omission, lies personal and political imagination. But that means there’s a lot available to read to draw on. I am an atheist and might seem strange that I have an image of Jesus in my head drawn from a lot stuff I have read, but I regard it all as a myth and it fits nobody else’s idea of Jesus at all. If you were looking for a neat clean origin of Jesus, sorry that boat is long gone.

One book I recommend is Richard Freidman’s Who Wrote the Bible. You can get a free PDF version here

If you haven’t already read it I guarantee it will knock your socks off or at the very least confirm your suspicions that only mere mortal men wrote it.

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Fascinating post,thanks.

Reading the later (?) Jewish tradition about the Messiah shows clearly that Jesus/Yeshua/Yoshua could not possibly have been the Mashiach/Messiah (literally annointed one).

The Jews are still waiting for their Mashiach. Some reasons are; He is to be a warrior king in the Davidic tradition. He is most certainly NOT divine and will not die young.

In their book’ The bible unearthed’ archaeologists, Finklestein and Siberman have posited that it is likely that the kingdom of David and Soloman did not exist . That yes, the Tel Dan Stele does refer to a house of David, but it is likely David was a local tribal chief.

PS thanks for the book reference. I’ll see what I can dig up, So far I’ve only read Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting David’ on that topic. Although, I’ve long believed the gospels are pure fantasy and that the Pauline epistle which are not forged at best were written by a bloke after he fell of his horse and had some visions.

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Hello Boomer,

I only have a bachelor degree in Computer Sciences, but I have a broad interest in all kind of subjects.
Therefor I dont have any peers that can review it, so if I gave the wrong impression about myself I’m sorry about that, that wasnt my intention. That said I dont think you need a academic degree in ancient languages or theological studies to aknowledge something is smelling here. It also realy suprises me that I am the first one that connects the dots and is comming forward with this hypothesis, I tried to find on the internet If someone was before me but I didnt find it. I mean these texts are there for more then 100 years and even in book print available.

https://www.amazon.com/Inanna-Queen-Heaven-Earth-Stories/dp/0060908548

You are right, see previous comment of me, nobody tried this before.

I do understand you but you took the wrong example to proof your point. You only have to read the following translated story from the epic of Gilgameš to come to the conclusion that the Noah story was indeed copied or inspired by it. The proof is in the details. By the way it seems that the Gilgamesh flood was again copied from the epic of Athrahasis.

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That claim is what bothers me.It’s why I asked about your academic background . If you had a background in say history or anthropology there’s a good chance you would have come across other studies as you pursued your interest

So I Googled " Sumerian mythology and Christianity".Guess what? 2,800,000 hits.Just two:

Semitic Mythology

Semitic mythology arose among several cultures that flourished in the ancient Near East, a region that extended from Mesopotamia* in modern Iraq to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. These groups of people spoke Semitic languages, had similar religions, and worshiped related deities. Three great religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—grew out of Semitic traditions.

Semitic peoples shared many of the same myths and legends. Among the—

Ancient Sumerian Origins of the Easter Story

05/11/2009 05:12 am ET Updated May 25, 2011

As you say, translations from some available cuneiform have been available for around 100 years. Your claim is simply not credible.

As for the Noah flood myth and the epic of Gilgamesh. ‘many scholars’ believe there is a causal connection, but there is no consensus as far as I’m aware. That’s why I cited it.

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Hello Boomer,

Thanks for the link to the Huffpost article, it is the first article I read that supports my proposal with more details. So I concede that Im not the first one with this theory, I have read other articles but the only comparison they make is that Dumuzi and Inanna are dying and resurected Gods and Inanna being hanged and resurected after three days, but that doesnt cut it for me, it lacked the details I have laid out. I think I will contact the author and send her my theory I laid out over here, Im curious if she is going to respond and what she has to say, so thanks again.

Sometimes people amazes me, when an animal walks like a duck swims like a duck quacks like a duck they say, well it still might not be a duck. I think the reason there is no consensus is that although the two stories are very simmilar there also some major theological differences and religious scholars cant cope with it. One christian article I read, they made a perfect comparisson with all the details they have in common only to conclude on the end that because the bible is the unerrand word of God their version must be the original one and the other Gilgamesh version must have been copied and corrupted over time. Even tough the Gilgamesh clay tablet version is the oldest surviving written version predating the oldest written biblical flood story version by thousands of years, go figure.

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Yeah. I don’t have a firm opinion on this matter, but concede you may well be right…

The lecture below is worth a glance if you haven’t seen it, if only for Professor Finkel’s puckish wit. (he can actually read cuneiform)

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Yeah, that’s the essence of Freke and Gandy’s book, “The Jesus Mysteries” which I reviewed back in 2016.

UK Atheist