August 6th, 2020
I am almost done reading Mesopotamian Myths by Henrietta McCall which is a short book that goes into some of the literary traditions of ancient Mesopotamia. When ordering this book from Amazon, a mistake was actually made and I was sent The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia which provides a history of various archeological expeditions and explores the culture of ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Persia. This book was compiled in response to the looting of the museum during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by coalition forces. I’ve been reading this book alongside Mesopotamian Myths in an attempt to understand the culture and literary traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and see if I can find any parallels to the Judeo-Christian tradition. I’ve seen it stated multiple times that the myths of ancient Mesopotamia went on to influence both Israelite and Greek myth and by learning more about this culture I can hope to understand more about the Judeo-Christian religion and Greek Philosophy. At present, I haven’t found anything significant yet aside from some correlations between the various Flood Myths of the world. Something I’ve been thinking about with regards to these myths has been this idea of three stages of “history”. The first is the time before the flood, which may represent a time before civilization and was passed down orally for many generations. The next stage is the bronze age that ends around 1200 BCE. There are some written accounts that survive from Mesopotamia (and likely Egypt) that talk about things from barley counts to creation myths. It is in some of these texts that the Flood Myth is mentioned as in the Epic of Gilgamesh written down in 1800 BCE. Through a quick Google search, it would seem that most scholars agree that the Book of Genesis was written several hundred years after this. I recently purchased Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman, which probably goes into this and I may have to begin to read it before I finish with the Bible. Another thing to note about Ancient literature is the timing of The Odyssey and The Illiad were first written down. Based on Classical Myth by Bary Powell:
- Early/Middle Bronze Age: 3000-1600 BCE
- Late Bronze Age: 1600-1150 BCE
- Dark Age: 1150-800 BCE
- Archaic Age: 800-480 BCE
- Classical Period: 480-323 BCE
- Hellenistic Period: 323-30 BCE
The Archaic Age is when The Odyssey and The Illiad were written down, but these tell of stories during the end of the Late Bronze Age and were likely orally handed down throughout the ages. This is indicative of these ancient stories, namely that they were passed down orally for hundreds if not thousands of years. As well they influenced each other, What we have is a small sliver of this tradition. There were likely hundreds of variations on these stories that were influenced by the culture and current events. The major myths from what I can tell are the creation myth and the flood myth with every culture coming up with its own variation, but at the same time influencing and being influenced by the myths of other cultures. I get this image in my mind of snippets of these stories tossing and turning over one another and circulating each like molecules in a vast ocean and similar to how a water molecule on the Southern coast of Africa may find it’s way to the Northern coast of America, so to do these stories circulate through trade and migration. What we have is like a beautiful painting of waves on a beach, while magnificent is only a mere snapshot of the whole. It is overwhelming to imagine the various ways in which these stories spread, but I think that it can be said that this is lost on many people. I believe this idea has only come about due to discoveries of these ancient texts beginning in the 19th century and onwards. I think that may explain the rise in fundamentalism these days. I think it can be said that the bedrock of Western Civilization has been based on the Judeo-Christian Tradition, but we are learning now that there is a time before the Bible stories and other cultures that influenced the Judeo-Christian tradition. Along the way, there’s the Heliocentric Model of the Solar System, the Theory of Evolution, and the Big Bang Theory, that through no fault of their own, upends the very notion that humans are special. I think that scares a lot of people, especially in the creationist camp. Look at Ken Ham’s argument: If the Bible isn’t true, that means the moral teachings aren’t true, which is not something that is desired, therefore it should be believed that the inherently unbelievable things in the Bible should be believed to be able to hold onto the moral teachings of the Bible. I think this misses the point and I think Jordan Peterson has a pretty good idea about how to resolve this. His main argument is that these stories in the bible are just stories, but they teach us about what it means to be human, to sacrifice, to relate with one another, to be subordinate to powers beyond our control and that the lack of a belief in these stories leads to the atrocities perpetrated in the first half of the 20th century by Hitler and Stalin. Now we live in an age of declining faith in the west and rising fundamentalism in the east. I don’t think I have anywhere close to an answer as to how to move forward other than to say that we should abandon this notion that the bible is literally true and that we should focus more on what the Bible is trying to tell us about these things. That is what I am attempting to do for myself by reading the Bible and studying the context around how it was written and the world that surrounded it and how it influenced Western civilization. I may then grow beyond it in my later years, but I think at in early age the lessons should be told and retold to young audiences so that they can get those morality lessons instilled from an early age without emphasizing they believe in the things that should not be taken literally. In conclusion, there is a vast ocean of culture and stories that exist outside of our worldview because they were never written down and I am only scratching the surface.