On The Accusation That "The Jews Copied The Story Of Adam and Eve"

I, like you, am not a student of either the languages or the early literature of Mesopotamia.  I only know about the Epic of Gilgamesh from what other people have said about it and it really hasn't interested me enough to read a translation of it.  If it were of continuing relevance to politics and life as the Hebrew scriptures are, I might read it but I'm far more interested in the Mosaic tradition, the Prophets and the Gospels and Epistles because those are, as Habermas, Kloppenberg and others have pointed out, the source and sustenance of the morals and values that find their political expression in egalitarian democracy, the only legitimate form of government there is.  

If, as you claim, the "Jews" stole the story of Adam and Eve from what is claimed to be an older tradition - something which I rather doubt, considering what I've read about that alleged borrowing would make the parallels tenuous enough to exist in the imaginations of those drawing them and not in the actual history of the Genesis stories - that does nothing to devalue the Hebrew telling of them. 

It's a rather odd way to debunk the truth-value of something by pointing out that the same truth is shared by different peoples in different times.  I'd have rather thought that would be evidence supporting the reliability of it. Multiple attestation is generally taken as support for what is asserted.  But not in the modernistic-atheistic way of thinking in which everything, including rules of evidence must come out with the preordained atheist conclusion.  

Perhaps "the Jews" knew those stories and made their telling of them consistent with their own moral insights.  That's not an uncommon thing to do, I think a lot of the alleged modern, "skeptical"  or "critical" distortion of the Bible does that, only giving them a reading that prefers amorality if not immorality.  Which would certainly not be an analysis that is to the discredit of the people who wrote down Genesis.  

So, no, what I said about the value of the story of Adam and Eve is a valid way of reading it.  If the Mesopotamian story of Enkidu (which I know only from doing what you obviously don't ever do, fact checking claims made before I write about them) has any such value, then good.  If it provides more confirmation that self-deification and self-aggrandizement leads to death, good.  Though I think a lot of the alleged parallels are rather ambiguous and unconvincing. 

It would, by the way, be a lot less surprising to find that the small, relatively back-water and constantly besieged and conquered people who produced those Scriptures would be influenced by one of the major political, military and intellectual powers of the time than the later, European, especially the insular English language imagination of them would imagine them to have been.  Maybe that's because for most of two thousand years, the perspective of those times and places were only available to later Europeans from the Hebrew writings, not from an ability to read languages and literature recorded in cuneiform or other writing systems. 

The Hebrew Scriptures are full of talk about such influences, especially objections to them leading the Children of Israel astray in the worship of foreign gods and taking up immoral practices - temple prostitution is one that springs to mind - from them.  I think it is one of the most remarkable things about that tradition that it asserted that they owed their very existence as a people to the obedience to God's will and the morality that freed them from slavery and peril as a distinct people under the domination by the major powers that surrounded them.  What brought them out of slavery under Pharaoh.   As I mentioned, the Scriptures are all about the importance of morality, of the Hebrew elucidation of justice and radical economic justice and of its preservation, noting that the very existence of the Children of Israel depended on that.  Over and over, again, it attributes military disasters, foreign invasions and exiles to the failure of those to whom The Law was given, to follow it.   Over and over again it attributes disasters coming from unjust rulers often going with foreign values and morality in opposition to the Mosaic teachings of radical egalitarianism. 

I think today, in the United States, with Putin working hand in glove with American billionaires, millionaires and our own haters of egalitarian democracy to destroy the only thing that makes the United States worth preservation, nothing could be more relevant than that reading of the First Testament. 

Also, in opposition to later, European imaginations, that was almost never about the one item in The Law that is fixated on, sex, it is about the failure to practice economic support for the poor, injustice to the widow and orphan, the oppression of even the stranger among them.  The real story of Sodom and Gomorrah is all about that, as the mentions of it in the later Prophetic writings note, something which the later European pagan imagination, in which that kind of radical, economic justice is either deemphisized or unknown, distorted into being all about sex. 

Looking around, in response to your objection, I did find this interesting because the book of the Jewish scriptures it finds the closest parallels with is one I find unappealing, one that almost always leaves me cold. 

The closest parallel between a biblical text and the Epic of Gilgamesh is seen in the wording of several passages in Ecclesiastes, where a strong argument can be made for direct copying. The author of Ecclesiastes frequently laments the futility of “chasing after the wind” (for example, Eccl 1:6, Eccl 1:14, Eccl 1:17, Eccl 2:11, Eccl 2:17, Eccl 2:26, Eccl 5:16, etc.), a notion reminiscent of Gilgamesh’s advice to the dying Enkidu: “Mankind can number his days. Whatever he may achieve, it is only wind” (Yale Tablet, Old Babylonian Version). Earlier in the story, Gilgamesh persuaded Enkidu that two are stronger than one in a speech containing the phrase, “A three-stranded cord is hardest to break” (Standard Babylonian Version, IV, iv). Similarly, Ecclesiastes tells us, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work…. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccl 4:9-12). These may simply be common sayings picked up by both authors, but Eccl 9:7-9 seems to directly quote the barmaid Siduri’s advice to Gilgamesh on how to deal with his existential angst:

When the gods created mankind,

They appointed death for mankind,

Kept eternal life in their own hands.

So, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full,

Day and night enjoy yourself in every way,

Every day arrange for pleasures.

Day and night, dance and play,

Wear fresh clothes.

Keep your head washed, bathe in water,

Appreciate the child who holds your hand,

Let your wife enjoy herself in your lap.

(Meisner Tablet)

This advice sums up the message of both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes, two texts that wrestle with the search for meaning in the face of human mortality.

I don't find much that's useful for promoting egalitarian democracy in that.  I think it's more likely to lead to Trumpian self-indulgence and Republican-fascists acting like there never will be an accounting.  I think a pending sense of an accounting coming is far more in line with the Hebrew Scriptures and is invaluable in prodding people to do what's right.