Quote:
Originally Posted by WormChancellor
True, the story of the Garden and the Flood appear in ancient Sumerian texts, many years before the Bible was written. What has always interested me, though, is that these two tales are present in the mythos of nearly every ancient civilization. From the Aztecs to the Iroquois, from the ancient Japanese to the Sumerians, these legends always seem to crop up. Geological records seem to indicate some kind of worldwide natural disaster somewhere around the Cambrian period. Who knows? Perhaps the events portrayed actually happened.
|
I was leaning toward the Garden of Eden, superimposed through Sumerian culture to Semitic (specifically Hebrew) culture. Because Abraham left the Sumerian region, this would be his greatest access to epic stories. The story of man coming from the forest, quite evidently, comes from the Epic of Gligamesh. (The flood also.)
While I do agree a flood story exists in so many cultures. It could be a mere coincidence because each early civilization existed in the presence of a source of water. Those bodies of water, in the early days, were prone to flood as techniques for control were nonexistent. After a definite period of time, great floods were inevitable, just as today. A vast flood from a body of water would seem to cover the known earth for people so attached to a specific location.
It is hard to prove, or fathom, our species was so advanced in the Cambrian/pre-Cambrian to create epic stories of floods passed between generations until now.