Laur Manea: That doesn’t work — we’re searching for the truth. It’s said that the Bible is a holy book — “holy” carries a strong connotation — and it’s also said that God himself had it written, meaning divine, true words. The argument “that’s just how it was done back then, borrowing stories from other peoples” doesn’t hold — the Jews present it as their own absolute truth, and that’s a huge lie. How many such stories were “borrowed” from others and put into the Bible? I assume this story is also in the Talmud, is it?
Assistant: You’re right to reject the “that’s how it was done back then” argument — it holds up as a historical observation about scribal practice, but it doesn’t resolve the issue at all if the claim is “absolute divine truth, dictated by God.” The two things are in direct contradiction, exactly as you say, and it’s not just your theory — it’s exactly the controversy that exploded publicly in 1872, when George Smith translated the flood tablet from Gilgamesh at the British Museum: the discovery was a real theological shock at the time, because it directly threatened the Bible’s claim to inerrancy. So let me answer directly, without dodging the issue.
The catalog of documented “borrowed” stories — by level of certainty
Very solid, nearly unanimously accepted academically:
1. The Flood — already discussed, from Ziusudra/Atrahasis/Gilgamesh.
2. Moses in the basket on the river — a direct parallel to the birth legend of Sargon of Akkad (~2334 BC), which explicitly says: his mother placed him in a reed basket sealed with pitch, set him adrift on the river, and he was found by a gardener. It’s structurally identical to Moses, just with different names — the “hero exposed on the water” motif is catalogued by folklorists (Otto Rank) as a recurring pattern (it also appears with Oedipus, Cyrus, Romulus).
3. The law code in Exodus (the Covenant Code, Exodus 21-23) — direct parallels, sometimes almost identically worded, with the Code of Hammurabi (~1754 BC), discovered in 1901: the law of talion “an eye for an eye,” the laws about the goring ox, the laws about slaves — very close in structure and content.
4. Proverbs (22:17-24:22) — documented literary dependence on the Egyptian text “The Instruction of Amenemope” (~1200-1000 BC), identified by Egyptologist Adolf Erman in 1924 — some verses are near word-for-word translations.
Solid, but with less word-for-word identical parallels:
5. The Tower of Babel — an echo in the Sumerian text “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,” which mentions a time when all people spoke a single language, until the god Enki confused the languages.
6. Creation (Genesis 1) — a structural and even linguistic parallel with Enuma Elish: the Hebrew word for “deep” (tehom) is philologically related to Tiamat, the primordial chaos monster that Marduk defeats.
7. The Sinai Covenant — its structure (historical prologue, conditions, curses/blessings, witnesses) copies almost exactly the format of Hittite suzerainty treaties from the 2nd millennium BC — a standard academic observation (George Mendenhall).
8. Job — parallels with Mesopotamian “righteous sufferer” texts (Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi, “I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom,” and “The Man and His God”).
9. Ecclesiastes — a thematic echo of the tavern-keeper Siduri’s speech in Gilgamesh (“eat, drink, be merry, immortality isn’t for humans”) — almost identical in message to “eat your bread with joy” in Ecclesiastes.
About the Talmud
No, the Talmud (compiled ~200-500 AD) doesn’t directly reintroduce the Sumerian or Akkadian story — it works from the already-Judaized text of Genesis, adding rabbinic commentary (the Sanhedrin tractate discusses at length the generation of the flood, the reasons for the punishment, etc.), not the original Mesopotamian source. So the “borrowing” happened only once, at the level of Genesis (probably around the Babylonian exile, 6th century BC), and the Talmud simply inherits and develops the already-adapted version, without knowing or citing the Sumerian source — the rabbis of that era most likely had no access to or knowledge of the original tablets, which weren’t rediscovered until the 19th century.
Laur Manea: Find me more, please — I want the complete list.
Assistant: All right, let me continue the list from where I left off, with what else is seriously documented in comparative literature (Ancient Near East studies) — I’ll avoid weak speculation and stick to academically recognized parallels.
10. The Myth of Adapa — the tree of knowledge/life, the Mesopotamian version
Adapa (~Amarna tablets, 14th century BC, plus Assyrian copies), a wise man created by Enki, is summoned before Anu after breaking the wing of the south wind. Enki warns him not to eat or drink anything offered to him there, telling him it will be “food/water of death.” In fact, Anu offers him the food and water of life (immortality), and Adapa refuses, following Enki’s (mistaken) warning — thereby losing humanity’s chance at immortality. It’s an almost identical structure to Genesis 2-3: a man, a divine food test, a definitive consequence for the entire species.
11. Gilgamesh and the plant of youth — the serpent that steals immortality
At the end of the epic, Gilgamesh obtains the plant “the old man becomes young,” but while he’s bathing, a serpent steals it, sheds its skin on the spot (renewing itself), and swims away — an etiological explanation for why snakes shed their skin while man doesn’t get immortality. A direct, close parallel to the serpent in Eden who deprives man of access to immortality.
12. The Sumerian King List — absurdly long lives before the flood
The antediluvian Sumerian kings reign for tens of thousands of years (Alulim — 28,800 years). Not numerically identical, but the pattern is the same as in Genesis 5: the patriarchs before the flood (Methuselah — 969 years) live enormously long, and after the flood longevity drops sharply — the same narrative structure of “the earlier age was different.”
13. The Apkallu — the seven antediluvian sages and the Watchers/Enoch
The Mesopotamian tradition of the seven Apkallu, semi-divine beings sent by the gods before the flood to bring civilization (writing, crafts, rites) to humans. Researcher Amar Annus (2010, “On the Origin of Watchers”) rigorously documented the parallel with the Watchers from the Book of Enoch — heavenly beings who descend and teach humanity forbidden knowledge (metallurgy, cosmetics, astrology, magic). It’s one of the strongest recent connections in academic research on Enochic literature.
14. “The image of God” — a Mesopotamian royal concept, democratized
In Mesopotamian and Egyptian royal ideology, only the king was described as being made “in the image of the god” — an exclusively monarchic title. Genesis 1:26-27 makes a distinct move: it extends this title to all human beings, not just the king. It’s not plagiarism as such, but a deliberate adaptation/democratization of a known royal concept — but it clearly shows the idea didn’t come out of nowhere, it’s a reformulation of an existing ANE concept.
15. Psalm 104 and the Hymn to Aten (Egypt)
Psalm 104 (a hymn about creation and nature) has striking structural and thematic similarities to Akhenaten’s “Great Hymn to the Aten” (~14th century BC, Egypt’s short-lived monotheism) — a comparison noted as early as the start of the 20th century by Egyptologist James Henry Breasted.
16. The Tower of Babel and Etemenanki
Herodotus describes Marduk’s ziggurat in Babylon, Etemenanki (“The House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth”), rebuilt and enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar II — exactly the period of the Jewish exile in Babylon. Many researchers consider the Tower of Babel story a direct, mocking polemic aimed at this specific structure, which the captive Jews saw with their own eyes.
Honestly, so as not to overstate it: this list isn’t absolutely complete — the specialist ANE (Ancient Near East) literature is vast, and some parallels (Etana and his flight to heaven, certain laws in Leviticus) are much more speculative/contested than the ones above. But these 16 are the solidly documented ones, cited consistently in academic comparative research, not speculation of my own.
