[The Unsucky English series so far: Gilgamesh 1: Dangerous Questions ~ Gilgamesh 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job - this post concludes #2.]

~     ~     ~

So there I was: caught, before all my new 14-year-old students’ eyes, with Enkidu’s pants down - and his wee-wee in hoo-hoos I knew nothing of.¹

When we would come to Genesis later in the semester, I knew I’d be walking the netless tightrope over the heads of the many 14-year-olds who had predictably swallowed whole, since before their first teeth, their literalist childhood teachings about Adam, Eve, and the Six Days’ Creation.

But I had no idea I’d be dealing now, in tender Week Three of their high school careers, with this whopper of a sex scene between Shamhat, the temple prostitute, and Enkidu, the innocent, half-neanderthal and half-Adam “wild man” - and his jaw-dropping seven days’ erection: ²

Shamhat stripped off her robe and lay there naked,
with her legs apart, touching herself.
Enkidu saw her and warily approached.
He sniffed at the air. He gazed at her body.
He drew close. Shamhat touched him on the thigh,
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is. For seven days
he stayed erect and made love with her,
until he had had enough.³

Again, in the schooly translation I read when I was in high school, somebody had forgotten to include that part.

But the alley cats were out of the bag. Since we were all reading this translation for the first time together that night, half of my students were surely at that very moment in pop-eyed sync with me, “wtf?”-ing their margins and asking the same questions:

Would the “good people” students tell their parents? Were those parents emailing or calling the principal at the very moment we were all sitting there gawking at these lines? Tomorrow, when the monster lumbered into the school-building to corrupt their young, would a mob of torch-bearing parents send this poor, misunderstood Frankenfreak to his tragic end?

All that monster wanted was to give their kids the deepest, most relevant, coherent, and beautiful year of literary studies they would ever receive. And now, because of an unexpectedly graphic scene about what birds, bees, and each of these parents do - or did, at least once, when they made the shiny-eyed wonders brightening my classroom - would it all come down in flames?⁴

And would they make allowances for the fact that I first found the book in the school library? If I went down, should I bring the librarian with me? (Joking. Joking.)

I was jealous, suddenly, of math teachers. They never had problems like this.

But there was nothing to be done, for now, but finish the homework by finishing Book One. In the end, I realized, it all depended on whether these three-week-old high schoolers could handle it. I couldn’t wait to check the chapter annotations I’d assigned.

I finished the chapter and went to sleep.

The Next Day

“Beautiful.”

“Profound.”

“Deep.”

“Lovely.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the students’ annotations sang this section’s praises. Not a single immature reaction.

I was so proud of them. And I was saved.

The class discussion was even better.

“It’s a different culture, so it’s not surprising that sex would be treated with a different outlook,” said one.

Answered another: “The sex scene itself is wonderful for its simple narration of the events we study in biology - the voice is so objective, it’s almost scientific.”

A third: “And that shows how radically different this culture saw sexuality. It’s just another thing in life, described as simply as the weather, or a flower, or a beautiful sunset. It’s not pornographic or anything. It’s just part of life.”

A fourth: “But it’s more than that.”

“Explain that,” I said. “What do you mean?”

This student went on to give the most perfect explication of what happens after the sex scene, and what a deep, beautiful, mysterious, and alien point of view the world’s earliest civilization had, 2,000 years before King David and 3,000 years before Jesus, about the meaning of sexuality.

Before Shamhat

“Look at what happens to Enkidu after the sex scene,” he said, “and compare it to who he was before it.

“Before it, Enkidu was this weird wild man, created by the goddess Aruru - in exactly the same way, by the way, that the later god of Genesis created Adam - from clay - which makes me wonder if this isn’t another Judeo-Christian-Islamic borrowing from the older Sumerian/Babylonian culture.

“He was ‘one-third man, two-thirds animal,’ remember: the perfect ‘double,’ just as the god Anu ordered, for the ‘one-third man, two-thirds divine‘ Gilgamesh. And I mean ‘perfect’ in the ‘balancing’ sense too. Remember, Anu said Gilgamesh’s ‘double’ should ‘balance’ him - to bring ‘peace’ to Uruk by making Gilgamesh stop snatching all the new brides from his subjects’ beds.

“But the ‘balancing’ doesn’t stop there,” he continued. “It gets deeper.”

“How?” asked another.

“Setting, basically. Gilgamesh is the king of the first city in the world, and he knows that and is proud of it. He’s proud of civilization.  I would argue he sort of symbolizes it.

“But the setting associated with Enkidu?  ‘Wilderness’ - Nature. Enkidu drinks with gazelles at watering holes, runs with them (and as fast as them), and knows nothing, literally, about cities and civilized humankind.

“So Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh by symbolizing Nature - the opposite of the city, and its civilization, which literally has a wall to keep Nature out.

“But it gets deeper still, this ‘balance.’ Because contrary to what we’d expect, ‘civilized’ Gilgamesh is not superior to ‘wild and natural’ Enkidu. We see that because Enkidu saves the other animals from the ‘civilized’ hunter’s traps. He’s compassionate, this natural man. And he’s innocent. Gilgamesh, though, is screwing the brides of every groom in town. The civilized king is glorious, yes - he built Uruk’s walls and is semi-divine, after all - but he’s also really flawed by his heartlessness. Enkidu ‘balances’ this, too.

“Finally,” he continued, “Enkidu ‘balances’ Gilgamesh in his physical strength. It’s like Achilles and Hector in the Iliad - perfectly matched superhero types. So that’s it: Aruru did a bang-up job of creating exactly what Anu ordered - a ‘balancing double’ to Gilgamesh.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Who was this kid? I had to break in: “Did you steal my annotations?,” I asked. “Who are you? I haven’t memorized all of your names yet.”

“Not now, Mr. B.,” he said. “I’m on a roll. Don’t interrupt. I’ve only covered the ‘before Shamhat’ Enkidu. I want to get to the ‘after Shamhat’ stuff now.”

Could I adopt this kid? Buy him from his parents? He was too good to believe.

“Wow. My apologies. Go for it.”

After Shamhat

“I’ll keep it short. It’s this: Gilgamesh’s mysterious ’solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the wild man worked brilliantly - though I don’t quite get why. Sex with this prostitute from the goddess Ishtar’s temple transforms Enkidu. And it does it in clear stages. I numbered them when I annotated.

“First, this sacred sex lifted him above the other animals that he used to hang out with. He doesn’t realize it - this is the weird thing - but the other animals do. They all run away from him when he tries to rejoin them at the watering hole.

“It’s mysterious, for sure,” he said, while I fought back exultations over this kid’s genius. “But the best guess I can give is this: All animals have sex, so it can’t be the simple sex that makes the other animals realize he’s no longer like them. So the only thing I can figure is that the poet is trying to say that sex seen as a holy thing - initiation into Ishtar’s mysteries, maybe? - is what separates man from animal. Seen this way, it’s not a brute act with Shamhat.

“And did you notice,” he went on, “that thing where Enkidu tries to run after the fleeing animals - before Shamhat, he was as fast as them, remember - but now he can’t catch up with them? Where is it . . . . yeah, here:

He tried to catch up
but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,
his knees trembled, he could no longer run
like an animal [he emphasized this line], as he had before.

–doesn’t that remind you Samson and Delilah in the Bible? It did me. I tell you, Mr. B., you’re right about that one. You see a million things in Gilgamesh that you thought were unique to the Bible.

“But Delilah is bad for Samson, while Shamhat is good for Enkidu.”

“I never thought of that,” said another. “I think I see what you’re saying.”

“Yeah. It’s all there. The next thing that happens because of Shamhat is deeper still: Enkidu realizes - where is it -

‘his mind had somehow grown larger.
He knew things now that an animal can’t know.’

“So what are these things he ‘knew’? It doesn’t say. But it reminds me of the scene in Genesis where Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it doesn’t tell us what they learned either. All it does is show us that they covered their private parts.

“But here, they don’t cover anything, and no god gets angry. Instead, Enkidu just keeps transforming. Since the bell’s about to ring, I’ll rush: the next thing he learns sitting ‘at Shamhat’s feet’ is language and communication:

‘He understood all the words she was speaking to him.’

“And man, those words were interesting:

‘Now, Enkidu, you know what it is
to be with a woman, to unite with her.
You are beautiful, you are like a god.’

“‘You are like a god‘” he repeated. “So what’s happening here? Gilgamesh is ‘two-thirds god,’ remember. Is it okay, Mr. B., to read into this that sex with Shamhat maybe makes Enkidu less of a ‘balance’ to Gilgamesh now?”

“It’s okay to read anything you want into it, as long as you can justify your interpretation with good evidence. And you’re doing fine so far.”

“Because I was thinking that again, it was Gilgamesh that sent Shamhat in the first place. He wants to bring Enkidu over to his ‘civilized’ side. And it seems like it worked.”

“How?”

“Because the next thing that happens is that Shamhat tells Enkidu that he should not ‘roam the wilderness and live like an animal,’ but should instead come with her to Uruk, to Ishtar’s temple, and to Gilgamesh’s palace. And he goes. Because of Shamhat, a temple prostitute, Enkidu is no longer an animal. He’s closer to the gods now; and because of Shamhat, Enkidu is about to become civilized.

“And that’s like Adam and Eve upside-down and inside-out.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s obvious,” he said. “Eve seduced Adam and the result was God’s curse. Shamhat seduced Enkidu and the result was Ishtar’s blessings of godliness and civilization for Enkidu.”

“Strictly speaking, weren’t Adam and Eve cursed for disobeying their God?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s still pretty opposite. After all, the gods here aren’t giving any orders at all - the absence of orders is the opposite of their presence, right? - and the result of the seduction is a blessing, the opposite of a curse.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see what happens. It’s been ten years at least since I read this story, remember - and I’ve never read this version, either. And I’ve forgotten most of it. So I’m as clueless as you about what will happen next.”

“There’s just one thing I wanted to ask, though,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“The plot’s really weird. The gods create Enkidu to make Gilgamesh change his ways.  But now, instead, we see Enkidu changing, not Gilgamesh. What’s going on?”

“It’s a mystery to me, too. We’ll see. But you left one thing out.”

“What?”

“You didn’t mention the last way that Enkidu changed: when Shamhat described Gilgamesh to him, isn’t his reaction confusing? The narrator tells us Enkidu ‘felt‘ something ‘deep in his heart . . . . the longing for a true friend.’ So that’s one more point for your theory that Shamhat civilizes him - he wants to escape his solitude and join human society, enjoy friendship.

“Again, that’s what he felt. But what he says is totally unexpected:

‘Take me with you
to . . . the palace of Gilgamesh the mighty king.
I will challenge him. I will shout to his face:
I am the mightiest! I am the man
who can make the world tremble. I am supreme!’

“Those hardly sound like words of friendship to me,” I said. “So maybe the gods’ plan for Gilgamesh is not as off-track as it seems.”

End of Class

The bell rang.  I turned off the alarm, and rose to get ready for work. An interesting bit of fantasy that was. “Too good to believe” indeed? I could only hope. I’d find out after the shower and drive to work.

~     ~     ~

Just kidding. I wouldn’t pull that on you. Here’s the real story:

Most of the annotations from the girls in the class were minor variations on: “ewwwww.” Sometimes three w’s, sometimes ten.

The boys? Smiley faces in the margins.

I wonder if those gender reactions for this age group are cross-culturally similar, or different. And I don’t know.

I imagine I tried to elicit discussions like the points made by the dream student above.

When I explained to them that I was as shocked as they were to read the scene, and was afraid they wouldn’t be able to handle it, they all assured me it was unexpected, yes, but nothing they hadn’t seen before online, on TV, in the movies.

“But it was weird to see it in English class.”

~     ~     ~

Can You Take a Minute?

If anybody has made it this far, I’d appreciate feedback on the three approaches I’ve tried so far in this Gilgamesh series. Number One was straight lecture style; Number Two was told as a “teacher story,” but in the second-person “you” point of view - I wondered if that would make the experience more immediate for readers, but also feared it might get old, especially if I continued it for months. This one was still a “teacher story,” but told in first person, with heavy Socratic dialogue.

If any of you care to share which of the three you think I should stick with, I’d be very appreciative.

Photos:
Belly-Dancer by macwagen
Bizarro World © DC Comics,
used under Fair Use Law

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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

1. I stole this “wee-wee/hoo-hoo” line from Bill Maher’s brilliant “New Rules” rant about how American Puritanism silenced John Edwards, the most important voice for the poor “since Robert Kennedy,” per Maher. It’s very relevant to the discussions we’re having in this series.
2. And did I later joke in class, “This guy’s a walking Viagra commercial”? Or, “And you thought the Six Days’ Creation was impressive”? Or, “Talk about needing a rest on the seventh day”?  I don’t remember. But if asked, please say that I did.
3. all excerpts taken from Stephen Mitchell’s admirable 2004 translation of Gilgamesh.
4. If you think I’m exaggerating, check out this and this from readers who have seen it happen to other teachers.

---

14 Comments

• At September 4, 2008, The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] [The Unsucky English series so far: Gilgamesh 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: This Post ~ 3: Adam and Eve in Bizarro-World] [...]

• At September 4, 2008, Unsucky English, Lecture 1: On Gilgamesh | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] [This post had major problems in its original draft. I heavily edited it for all you stumblers. Subsequent posts in this series: 2. The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job, a serious farce ~ 3: Adam and Eve in Bizarro-World] [...]

• At September 4, 2008, Narro87 wrote:

  Your posts on this topic are absolutely wonderful! It's a highlight of my day to see another ready to be read. Keep up the amazing work! And as for your style, simply do what's more natural in your mind--all of them are very effective and very engaging.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks for that. Please spread the word. I'm possibly losing a lot of readers uncomfortable with this series. I'd love to find new ones who might appreciate it. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Jack641 wrote:

  Came across your site quite by accident but I've read up on the Gilgamesh series you've had going here. This is some really great stuff; everything so far has been easy to read and fascinating at the same time. I had a teacher in high school who would teach a bit like this, and he really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Surprisingly, no one ever gave him any trouble for challenging us and making us uncomfortable with our preconceived ideas, even though we went to a catholic high school.

  Anyway, reading stuff like this makes me think about a career change. Keep it up; I'll be reading.

• At September 4, 2008, Alyce wrote:

  I stumbled upon the first lecture in this series and have since added your blog to Google Reader. I am loving it!

  I must say that I enjoyed the first post's format the most. With the latter two, the story of Gilgamesh seemed to get lost in the story you were creating of the classroom. We are the students, and I think your brilliance has a better chance of standing out if your writing takes the form of a lecture. Believe me: your thoughts can stand on their own!

  My two cents. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Louise Maine wrote:

  I particularly cared for the third followed closely by the first. Love the posts and will be coming back to them when life is less hectic to digest further. Religion, science... great fuel for the mind...

  Louise Maines last blog post..Wiki woman?

• At September 4, 2008, Hannah wrote:

  Hello!

  I particularly liked the writing style of this one. The first one was enjoyably readable as well, but the second I couldn't finish - wayyyy too much teacher-jargon on how to teach a subject. I was lost.

  I guess I should actually get a copy of this book before continuing... :D

  Hannahs last blog post..What I'm Going To Do With My Life

• At September 4, 2008, Jazzyblueteach wrote:

  The third was definitely my favorite of the three, but you killed me when that alarm went off! Don't ever ruin a perfectly good dream again! I was in awe of this boy wonder and then you had to go and wake up. For shame!!

  Ok, I can say this much. The version I am being forced to read for this Babylon class is not even close to as much fun. I am tempted to suggest a text change. Of course I can read what I want and no one will ever be the wiser. :)

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Your teacher was a lucky person.

  If you're thinking of going into teaching because of me, that's ironic - I just left it :)

  School-teaching, anyway.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thank for that, Alyce.

  I hear you on diluting the message with stories from the classroom.

  I think I just wanted to paint a picture of the silly but very real fears teachers have because of all these social forces at play in schools.

  Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll probably do as you suggest for most future posts.

  Thanks again.

• At September 4, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Louise, Hannah, Jazzy,

  Thanks for the feedback.

  Without being defensive at all (I'm really not), it's ironic that my own favorite so far is the second one - "The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job."

  I think it has something to do with the set-up via the Sedaris stories. That "seeing with your ears" syndrome is so real, and Sedaris proves it with "Us and Them" (and what a pregnant title).

  But I know, anyway, that I'm pulled in two directions at least when writing these: to write for the old "edublogger" audience that I said (and meant) I was bored writing for; versus to write for students anywhere.

  I'll figure it out (or not).

  Hey, Jazzy, what translation are you reading? A.R. George? Mitchell has taken some heat for his liberties. He claims to have based them on the most accurate translations - and George's is acknowledged to be that - but others charge him with too much lassitude at times.

  It would be interesting to hear what your prof thought of the Mitchell translation - would love a report back if you do :)

• At September 4, 2008, Tim wrote:

  Hi Clay.

  All of the posts so far are fascinating, but I have to say the first was my favourite, stylistically-speaking, but then I'm neither a student (currently) nor a teacher so maybe I'm not your intended audience.

  In any case, I'm loving this series and can't wait to see where you take it next. Keep up the good work!

  Tims last blog post..http://caananite.stumbleupon.com/review/24728827/

• At September 5, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  I loved all three, but I enjoyed the second the most. I could analyze all the reasons why I love blueberries, too, but I come here to be entertained.

  (I enjoyed the third, and maybe I am too naive, but I've had the rare kid take off in thought in science, and I was going to compare notes, then you woke up. That hurt.)

  Any sort of well-crafted Socratic dialogue is always welcome. (Works well in the class once kids get used to it, but it leaves them a bit exposed. I have to work hard to erase any hint of "aha!" when using it--but if I can get the dialogue going on in their heads after class, I've done my job.)

  Michael Doyles last blog post..First day of school, biology (sophomores)

[This post had major problems in its original draft. I heavily edited it for all you stumblers. Subsequent posts in this series: 2. The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job, a serious farce ~ 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards]

To My Few Student Readers: Please Stay

I’m bored writing for adults these days, and most of my readers are adults. If you’re a student, can you send this link to your friends, put it on Facebook, etc? I want students as my audience for this series, because I want to share with you all a series of posts, beginning today and continuing for years, probably, about:

Why the Classics Only Seem to Suck

I don’t blame students who think classic literature sucks.¹

They have millions of good reasons to think that. They may, for example, have:

1. teachers who aren’t that great at reading, writing, or teaching, or
2. great teachers at not-so-great schools that are afraid to let them read the most controversial literature (almost all schools are really afraid of students and their parents), or
3. English worksheets that turn literature into anatomy tests (”Identify which phrase below is an example of onomatopoeia” and similar dentist drills), or
4. five-paragraph essays to write in which the teacher in #1 tells them that they “must not use ‘I’, must have a topic sentence in the first line of each paragraph,” and a million other rules that real writers (we just excluded most teachers there) ignore altogether, or
5. a lack of time to read the books assigned in English class, what with all the other homework (they want to have a little time of their own to just live their life, after all, to maybe read stuff they want to read - so why not just read the Sparknotes summaries?), or
6. over-their-head levels of language complexity or adult content that they really shouldn’t be expected to comprehend (language) or care about (a middle-aged housewife’s psychology) until they’re well out of high school, or
7. dry lists of words and terms to memorize for that most ultra-sucky thing of all - that thing which more and more schools and parents seem to think education is now - the S.A.T.

My Promises for This Series

I promise not to bore you with trivia or disgust you with showy diction - to use “use” instead of “utilize.”  And I promise to try to give you enjoyable ideas of why, despite the pain of many English classes, this thing called literature, played with naturally, gives pleasure.  Much classic literature is wonderful.  I get more pleasure out of a used one-dollar copy of a Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde play than I do out of my $5,000 home theater.  When I want a buzz, I choose books over booze and bongs. Good literature is the best drug out there.

Added Bonus: I’ll throw in a “big picture” tour of the history of literature from the earliest story ever told - today’s post - forward through the centuries to the Greeks, the Hebrews and their Bible, the Romans, the fascinatingly whacked Middle Ages and the lovely Renaissance, the supremely dangerous Shakespeare and the often-kinky Romantics, straight on up to a few choice books from our modern times. (That’s another thing that annoys me about so many English classes I’ve had to teach: they rip all books out of their historical context, and disconnect them from their times and each other. It’s like studying butterflies pinned under glass instead of watching them fly among the flowers.)

I’ll also avoid constipated scholar-talk in favor of the conversational, occasionally dangerous style of a teacher who can tell you the truth, as he sees it, about these books without fear of being fired for ruffling the feathers of the fearful “three P’s”: parents, principals, and preachers.

Great books are often door-openings to dangerous places, places polite society fears and deems off-limits.  When those doors open in a classroom, teachers often refuse to enter.  There’s always the student who can’t handle it, who complains to one of the three P’s, and forces the conversation to remain, safe and proper, in the well-lit hallway.

Not so here where, away from school, we can touch the taboos, and experience how literature can be a threat and a danger to who we are, to how we’ve been conditioned to see life, to our culture’s status quo.

Doris Lessing really nails the connection between schools and the status quo better than I could dream of doing, so I’ll close this section with her:²

“You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgment. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.” - Doris Lessing

Now here goes.

Starting at the beginning - literally: c. 3,000 BCE

Let’s start with the oldest story ever told (or at least that we have written down), the first story in the history of our species, the story whose title, tragically, will make your eyes roll and your feet head for the exit door the minute you hear it, because it’s associated with your lifetime of aversion to classroom classics.

I’m talking about Gilgamesh.

Don’t leave.

It’s one of the coolest books you’ll ever read.  It comes from one of the earliest cities, literally, on Earth - but it’s so alien to everything we Judeo-Christian types have been conditioned to think of as “good and evil,” “right and wrong,” that it seems a work of science fiction or fantasy more than anything else.

Really, don’t leave. You’ll miss the part about a religion that sees sex as a good and holy thing.

I’m not making this up.  Here’s the background:

Gilgamesh is the story of a Sumerian king who actually lived and ruled around 2,700 BCE. That’s almost 5,000 years ago. The city itself was a thousand years old when the story was written, so we’re talking a story from a civilization 6,000 years ago.

Stop and let that sink in.  The Bible is only half that old, with the “Old Testament” reaching its final form around 400 BCE, and the “New Testament” not being slapped together until around 330 CE (or A.D., if you’re out of touch with proper scholarly conventions).  So Gilgamesh is more than twice as old as the Bible. The Bible’s a pup compared to this story, and as I’ll argue, the Bible is less wise, in many deep and fundamental ways, than this Sumerian book as well.

Moving on:  The king’s city, Uruk, was such a walled and templed and terraced wonder that the citizens themselves were blown away by it.  Since the story is from an age close to the agricultural revolution, when we stopped wandering around as nomads and living more like herd animals than humans, we get a sense, when we read this story, that the people who wrote it are totally aware of what a cool thing they’ve accomplished by making one of the world’s first grand cities - first, do you hear?

Looking out from Uruk’s walls across the sandy plains of what is today Iraq (Uruk was not far from later Babylon and today’s Baghdad³ ), you would have seen no other cities.  Cities, to repeat, were new, and Uruk was one of the first.  When you read this story, it’s like the story-teller remembers the days before the city was invented, the days of wearing animal skins and being goat-herders or hunter-gatherers.  And you can clearly tell he loves his city all the more for the different kind of life it makes possible - the civilized life.

It’s a story, then, of humanity basically crowing its pride over creating civilization by creating that Most Needful Thing for civilization to exist at all: a city.  If someone were to have written a blurb on the back of the book back then (which he couldn’t have done because the “pages” were actually baked clay tablets stacked like bricks in the library, all covered in reed-imprinted cuneiform), he would have written something like,

Unlike our neighbors in every direction, we aren’t hunter-gatherers, goat-herding nomads, or farmers in country villages.  We’re civilized. We built a city.  And we’re damned proud of that.

Luckily, since Uruk was civilized, it had court poets instead of flag-waving idiots to tell the story a bit more gracefully, and to tweak it and revise it over a couple thousand years to make it just so.

On Sex, Good and Bad

I have to be careful about sex here, because the story itself is.

On the one hand, the city had temples (like the ziggurat pictured right) dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, the goddess of love, fertility, procreation, and - strangely - war. (Aphrodite is basically the Greek version of the much older Ishtar, and Venus the Roman version. You knew that.)

We’re so blind today to the seeming magic through which sexual intercourse leads to pregnancy, and pregnancy to the creation of life from the womb of woman, that it takes a bit of imagination-work for us to appreciate how much sense it would make to pre-civilized and first-civilized humans to consider sex, pregnancy and birth, and above all women, as magical, sacred things.

That the Sumerians did consider sex sacred is clearly shown by this fact:  the temples of Ishtar were staffed with priestesses whose role was to have sex there, in the temple - whether only with the king or other elites, or with everyone, I don’t know.  These temple prostitutes were not “sinners,” were not “immoral”; they were respected every bit as much as Pastor Teds and Imam Abdullahs in churches and mosques around the world today.

And sex was not a “sin.”  It was a holy thing.  Check out “heiros gamos” on Wikipedia for the juicy (but deep) details.  (And stay tuned for my own theory, when we get to the Bible one of these days in this series, of how Ishtar and the Sumerians influenced the Jewish priests who wrote the Bible’s Genesis to make Eve such a bad character in the story, and sex - everybody’s favorite hobby, to riff off Woody Allen - such a bad, guilty act.)

So in Uruk, it may have been your duty as a good, gods-fearing citizen, to go to “church” occasionally to have sex with a temple prostitute.

In class, this point would get giggles from the immature or freak-outs from the ever-present class prudes, and the following idea would never sink in - which is sad, because it could lead to possibly deep and beautiful ideas such as this:

Think of how different it must have been, as a young person entering puberty, not to be shamed for suddenly discovering sexuality, but to instead, I imagine, be congratulated by family and society, maybe brought to “church” - the temple - to have that sexual awakening honored and instructed through some religious initiation.  To be welcomed into this magical new stage, rather than met with the silence and denial puberty is usually met with in our own culture.  “Abstinence-only” sex education would be laughed at in Sumer, and priests, parents, and schools would be comfortable with this natural thing.  There were far fewer locked doors, hidden materials, and guilt-burdened consciences for boys and girls back then, I suspect.

But it could also lead to less “beautiful” but still “deep” questions like this: For the “prostitute,” how was “temple prostitution” then different from prostitution now? Since sex wasn’t shameful then, was prostitution also not shameful?  Were the temple prostitutes abused and frowned upon the way many prostitutes are today?⁴  Or were they protected from abuse by the temple, and by the reverent treatment of those they served there - treated less like today’s “whores,” in other words, than like today’s preachers?   Since they surely thought of sex differently than we in the West do in the Judeo-Christian framework - and we inherited much of that framework whether we’re religious or not - it’s not an easy question to answer.⁵

(Do you see the “science fiction” side yet?)

But on the other hand, there was such a thing as “bad sex” in this story - and it’s what gets the plot rolling.

King Gilgamesh was a bit of a jerk when it came to sex.  Because he was king, and above the law, he had more choices than his wives or the temple prostitutes.  And the choice he made struck everyone involved - even the gods, who looked on from heaven - as really, really wrong: Gilgamesh chose to treat himself to the bed of every new bride on her wedding day - before her husband did.

So the people of the kingdom get understandably offended by this cocky king, and their complaints finally make it to the ears of the gods: the big-daddy god in particular, Anu (think Zeus and you’re close enough).

And here’s another place I think it gets deep and beautiful - but first let me take a detour to mention a couple of important things that connect to the beliefs of Jews and Christians and Muslims today.  The “deep and beautiful” stuff won’t work unless you know this.

On God, His Leadership Style, and His Fore-Fathers

First, the Gilgamesh epic is from a culture⁶ that spoke a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, and that dominated the Middle East for thousands of years before Judaism, the religion of the Bible and of Jesus, even existed.

Second, the Hebrews who first settled Israel over a thousand years after the Gilgamesh story knew this dominant culture, and included many Sumerian myths in the Bible; two well-known examples are the Six-Days’ Creation and Noah and the Flood in Genesis (the Sumerian Noah, Utnapishtim, will be a major character by this story’s end, by the way - and will tell the original and much older Sumerian version of the Flood later adapted in Genesis). You can read the Sumerian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, yourself to see the similarities.  It’s only a few pages long.

But the differences between the Sumerian and Judeo-Christian gods are even more interesting.

The most interesting difference to me is that the Sumerian religion had male and female gods and, more importantly, that the main Sumerian “god the father” type was, like most fathers, married. It’s always seemed weird to me that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god is alone, unmarried.  Zeus had Hera, the Sumerian Anu had Aruru, but Yahweh, the “God” of the Bible?⁷  No female for him.  You have to wonder why the Hebrews took the female from heaven, who did it, when, and how.  I do, anyway. But I’ll share those thoughts down the road.

The other interesting difference is in the morality - I almost want to say “leadership style” - of the two father gods. To see the difference, let’s do a thought experiment:  pretend Gilgamesh did his wife-stealing stunt in Jerusalem, that Gilgamesh was a Hebrew and his god was not Anu but Yahweh, the god of the Jews and Christians.

When that God hears that Gilgamesh is deflowering all the wives of all “His people” - “coveting” more than his neighbors’ (and subjects’) “asses” and therefore breaking one of the Ten Commandments - how do you think that God would react?

People will argue with me here, but I don’t see how they can win: that God deals with sinners, rebels, and others who disobey him with this “leadership decision”: punishment.  He’s an “angry God,” as he says himself. ⁸ It’s hard to see that God doing much but using angry force to punish Gilgamesh and make him change his ways.  Human obedience is what matters to that God, as I read him; human wisdom comes a distant second.  You want evidence?  God’s instructions for dealing with people who disobey his laws, over and over (in Deuteronomy especially), is to simply kill them. And Adam and Eve received one hell of a punishment because of their disobedience, too.

Back to the Story: “What Would Jesus Anu Do?”

But the earlier Sumerian god, Anu?  His reaction to Gilgamesh’s adulterous outrage is totally intriguing, and in my view, totally cool.  I like this god.

He doesn’t say “Punish him.”  He doesn’t say “Kill him.”  Instead, he turns to Aruru, the goddess who the Sumerians believed created humanity from earthly clay, and tells her to do it one more time.

He tells her, more interesting still, not to create any old human, but instead a special type. “Now go and create,” he tells her,

“a double for Gilgamesh, his second self,
a man who equals his strength and courage,
a man who equals his stormy heart.
Create a new hero, let them balance each other
perfectly, so that Uruk has peace.”

And so she does.

I’m going to stop here for the moment, and just share why I think Anu is a god worthy of the title.  Because by creating a “double” for Gilgamesh instead of simply killing him on the spot, he shows that to him, “sin” is a lack of wisdom.  As you’ll see, he creates this double so that Gilgamesh may have the experiences he needs to grow wiser.  I also think he’s just plain smooth for not freaking out and throwing a temper tantrum, but instead coolly coming up with this mysterious idea:

“Make a double for him. That should do the trick.”

What a wtf plot twist. Love it. Suspense accomplished.

And it’s a wonderfully optimistic view of man for a God to have: not “fallen” and in need of salvation, not infantile and in need of a list of Commandments to unthinkingly obey, not tainted by any “original sin,” but instead: capable of growing through experience, of learning and finding his own way, of finding “balance” that brings “peace.”

That “double,” by the way?  His name is Enkidu - and he’s Gilgamesh’s double in a curious and fascinating way: Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine, one-third human; Enkidu, on the other hand, is - get this - two-thirds animal, one-third human. Gilgamesh is the king of civilization; Enkidu is a wild-man living naked in the wilderness, alone with no human companionship.  But this animal-man is actually innocent and good - shades of some pre-Biblical Darwinian understanding that, hello?, humans are indeed animals in the animal kingdom, and that that bit of natural obviousness is nothing to freak out about?

Before Closing:

Challenges, corrections, extensions, additions, and anything else are welcome. More on Gilgamesh soon.⁹

~     ~     ~

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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

1. thanks to Tom, by the way,  whose post partly inspired this and who turned me on to that article.
2. and thanks to R. Greco for this gem
3. that’s right: the US military is occupying and bombing the earliest civilization in the Middle East, and for any of you familiar with Mosul, that’s where the clay tablets holding the Gilgamesh story were uncovered, after two thousand years of sand-buried silence, by a British guy in the late 1800s
4. And - are there prostitutes today that don’t feel ashamed, aren’t abused or frowned upon, and actually find fulfillment in their profession?  Aren’t the questions endless?
5. Thanks to the Salon.com forum that mentions this post for pointing out this angle.
6. it’s complicated: the Sumerians were overthrown by other races, including the Akkadians and Babylonians, who spoke different langauges, but kept the story alive
7. Yahweh is a Hebrew name for what English-speaking Jews and Christians call “God”
8. And boy, I just opened the floodgates to a million evangelists to explain how Jesus marked a change in God’s law, a new covenant, with mercy replacing wrath, et cetera. But I’m going to side with the Jewish people on this one, for the sake of argument, and stick only to their original, non-Christian texts. The Torah above all.  I’m talking about that God as the literary character we read about in Jewish religious literature.
9. and if you decide to buy the book, be sure to buy the Mitchell translation pictured above. All the other ones are pretty crappy. This one’s fantastic.

---

94 Comments

• At August 26, 2008, Morgante Pell wrote:

  We actually read Gilgamesh for school last year... without glossing over the sex. The only thing I wish is that I hadn't read it for school. Reading in preperation for a test is less enjoyable by many orders of magnitude, no matter the content. When you are trying to remember exactly what a list of 10 vocab words meant, it's hard to get into the flow of the story. I don't care what school would have me believe, but reading which isn't fun (and thus engaging), isn't worth reading.

  On another note, I think you oversold this too much. Teens interact with the people and ideas, not the "lingo."

• At August 26, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @Morgante, Yeah, it was a hard one to write. Many interruptions, which always kill me. But the "lingo" was less a reflection of what I think "teens" would like and more an attempt to just write about stuff I love in ways similar to how I sometimes talk about it with friends.

  Did you read the Mitchell version? And did you talk the connections to Judeo-Christianity? Those connections are more than half of what makes the story so interesting.

• At August 26, 2008, Your page is now on StumbleUpon! wrote:

  [...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]

• At August 26, 2008, Morgante Pell wrote:

  Yes, it was the Mitchell version if I remember correctly.

  Unfortunately, we didn't talk about the connections with Judeo-Christianity in any great detail... we discussed the "facts" about the connections (which stories were replicated), but the class certainly wasn't encouraged to discuss the moral implications... only what could be expected coming from public schools in the US.

• At August 26, 2008, fairyhedgehog wrote:

  I'm not a student but I thought this was brilliant.

  fairyhedgehogs last blog post..Feedback

• At August 26, 2008, Tracy Rosen wrote:

  I feel like I live in a different world of teaching than you ever knew existed. I talk to my students all the time about the great themes of literature, film...the stories that hold us together and drive us apart.

  And I'm not at all worried about getting fired over it...where the heck did you work that you had such worries?

  oh - and do you really have a $5000 stereo system? Cool :)

  Tracy Rosens last blog post..Pick it up

• At August 26, 2008, John Larkin wrote:

  Going to grab Gilgamesh and read it again. It sits on the bookshelf between Cicero and Herodotus. My year elevens and I had a rather enjoyable afternoon reading Poet and The Women by Aristophanes. They even sang the chorus with melodies that they made up on the fly depending on the meter. The plot cracked them up. The reading cracked them up. The smiles were broad, the laughter was long. They will remember something of the position of women in 5th century Athens. We completed Act One. The second act this Thursday. Great post Clay.

  Cheers,

  John

• At August 26, 2008, Sharon Seslija wrote:

  I can hardly wait for the next installment. I'm going to pick up Mitchell's Gilgamesh today.

  Sharon Seslijas last blog post..Research Projects That Motivate

• At August 27, 2008, Kate Tabor wrote:

  Good morning, Clay -

  Sorry, I'm bad with instructions, so I read your post even though I'm old.

  I love Gilgamesh, and Stephen Mitchell is my favorite translator of so many works and writers (Lao-tsu, the Bhagavad Gita, Rilke).

  One of my favorite Star Trek: TNG episodes, Darmok, (with the late Paul Winfield as the metaphor-speaking Tamarian captain) returns to this story of friendship. I may use it in my Science Fiction/Fantasy class this year.

  For the last two years I have taught Psychology in Literature to second semester seniors. Some very honest, enlightening, thoughtful, hilarious, and embarrassing conversations about literature happened in that class.

  And thanks once again to the United States Congress for yet another contemporary example of a man in public office having sex with someone who is not his wife. How easy that makes teaching The Scarlet Letter (which is about sex, love, the human heart, and choosing to defy convention.)

  Oh, and one of my favorite words is sucktastic.

  Kate Tabors last blog post..Rehearsal, revision: preview, prehear?

• At August 27, 2008, James wrote:

  Great post Clay; stumbled across this so I'm a first time reader here, but I'll definitely come back for more!

  I've loved literature from an early age, and like many others, school took the bright glow from that love and dimmed it with tests, dissection and going at the pace of the slowest student.

  THink it might be time to get out Sweet's Anglo Saxon Prose again and re-enjoy The Ballad of Cynewulf and Cyneheard!

  Thanks again :)

• At August 27, 2008, tim maguire wrote:

  Thanks for a great essay, I plan on reading further. Just so you know, mid-way through your piece, I went to Amazon and ordered the book.

  I have two comments:

  1. Personally, I'm bothered by the "proper scholarly conventions". BCE vs. BC and CE vs. AD. What, exactly makes the "common era" the common era? Oh yeah, THAT. Which is to say, BCE and CE are nothing more than empty PC posturing. A tool to help users pretend they are not using the referrant that they are clearly using. And because they obscure the basis of the time pivot, they obscure rather than advance meaning (as is typical for all things PC--it is the enemy of knowledge and understanding).

  2. The Hebrew god created nature, and therefore is above nature. Male and female are concepts of nature and therefore the Hebrew god, being above nature, is neither male nor female. It is a short-coming of the English language that we do not have a non-gender-specific third person singular pronoun, forcing us to give to god a gender that the Hebrews who first worshipped "him" would not have recognized.

  So, the Hebrews did not remove the female god from the pantheon, leaving the male god alone; the Hebrews removed gender from the pantheon, leaving a god neither male nor female. Interesting to me is the change introduced by Christianity--by giving god a consort and a son, they made him male for the first time. To my knowledge, you don't see "god the father" anywhere in the old testament. The new testament god has been brought closer to us, made more human and, therefore, less godly.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @Tracy: Really, you can question the wisdom of the Bible and its god in your classroom, and openly suggest that sex is a good thing, without fire alarms going off?

  And yes, $5,000 sound system. And I almost never listen to it.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Tim, thanks for the thoughts.

  Re: 1. I hear you, but I think there's substance to the shift from "BC" and "AD" to "BCE" and "CE." Yes, they still reference the same pivot point, which still smacks of cultural imperialism, but any alternative would be messier than going from British to Metric measures. At least there's no explicit or implicit confirmation that "Jesus is Lord" (Domini) when we say "CE." To me that's a good, respectful, scientific shift.

  Re: 2. It's been so long since I read Bloom and others about the different writers - what, J, D, Q, and Y ? - of the Old Testament. Seems I remember there are actually two main names for "God" in the Torah: what, El (maybe Elohim?) and Yahweh? And wasn't one more anthropomorphized than the other? God's "walking in the garden" and calling around for Adam and Eve after the Fall, for example - is that a Christian re-write?

  Still, interesting points. I'd love more clarification. God sure has come to take on a "fatherly" persona in Judaism as much as Christianity and Islam, as far as I can see.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @James, just a quick thanks for bothering to be kind.

  Anglo-Saxon….I love it. Half the job of a high school English teacher worth his or her salt these days is to un-teach the idea that long Latinate words (”SAT words”) are better for writing than the snappy Anglo-Saxon.

  As I love to tell my students, I'll take a "kiss" over an "osculation" any day.

• At August 27, 2008, Thomsen wrote:

  Here by Stumbling and just commenting to say how much I wish you had met my old religoin teacher from high school. You would have had a blast:

  "We'll be starting with the Bible. You know, the apple thing? Yeah, looking at the climate it was probably a fig and not an apple. And what does a fig look like? It looks like a uterus, it does! What do you make of that?"

  He had similar openings for every lessons and while some of them were more far-fetched than others, they did make people participate instead of texting their friends.

• At August 27, 2008, Laura Gibbs wrote:

  Hey Clay, I feel compelled to comment again: what fun!!! I actually love Gilgamesh, and don't have to be sold on it... I am so glad you are preaching the Gilgamesh gospel here! Gilgamesh is one of the options in my Myth-Folklore class (although it's competing with Egypt that week, and Egypt usually trounces Gilgamesh) - http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore - anyway, that's not until next week, but one of my students is working ahead, chose Gilgamesh, and did this great story retelling with Siduri, the ale maid. I'm pasting it in here - my students publish their formal writing assignments as webpages on the open Internet, but they do the blogging in an invite-only Ning (long story, my school is paranoid) - and this is one of the weekly blog story retelling assignments. Anyway, I'll send you an invite to the Ning if you are interested! Meanwhile, enjoy - I think she did a super job! :-)

  Laura Gibbs

  Univ. of Oklahoma

  ======

  My retelling is based on the Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh Departs. My story is told from the point of view of a narrator, and Siduri plays a larger role in the scheme of things; Gilgamesh learns to drown his sorrows in a good brew.

  Gilgamesh, having cried as much as a grown man (and a king to boot) possibly can, finally let his friend Enkidu be buried near the forest he grew up in. Gilgamesh wiped the snot from his kingly nose (the clogging of which was probably the reason he didn't put the guy in the ground sooner) and decided that no earthly pleasure could make him forget his sorrow. So, he set out on a quest to attain something new, whether it be immortality or something even better, he couldn't be quite sure. All he knew was that he had to find something to either elevate himself above human emotions, or to make him completely forget that Enkidu even existed.

  On and on Gilgamesh sojourned. Over rough, gravelly terrain did he stumble, through mosquito-infested bogs did he scramble. Many a splinter in his fingers did he suffer and much throbbing pain of stubbed toes did he endure. Finally, the woebegone king, again wiping the snot from his snout, and in great distress, came upon a building in a clearing. The sign outside the door read, "Siduri's Irish Pub." Having heard much of the goddess' knack for brewing many a fine stout and her wisdom in solving problems for her customers, Gilgamesh eagerly knocked on the door, hoping to be admitted within to question Siduri about the path to immortality.

  Siduri opened the door to see a snotty-nosed man with the dejected air of a whiny child, and promptly began to close the door again, having seen enough of these pitiful mortals tonight.

  "Please!" Gilgamesh cried, a snot bubble bursting from one nostril, "I need to know how to find the path to immortality!"

  At this request, Siduri couldn't help but open the door again. "All right," she sighed, "but I'm in the middle of cooling a batch of wort, and I need to transfer another into its secondary fermenter, but if you keep quiet and don't touch anything, you may be rewarded."

  Siduri's great wisdom was in her method of dealing with the problems of mortals. Rather than begrudgingly listening to the downpour of frivolous dribble that came out of the mouths of human beings, Siduri feigned interest whilst bringing them more and more beers, good strong beers, mind you, none of this commercial, watered-down, low-calorie liquid. And before she had to utter a single word of advice, her once bedraggled customers were soon recovering nicely, often to the point of singing and dancing and throwing all caution to the wind.

  Gilgamesh, after following Siduri around the micro-brewery behind the pub, was becoming increasingly discouraged. Apparently, as far as Siduri was concerned, he should give up his quest; the only person who knew how to gain immortality was Uta-Napishtim, and he hadn't been seen in these parts for years due to a little too much beer and too little money. His boatman, however, was a regular here, but he wasn't likely to be in tonight.

  "Just have a beer," Siduri exclaimed with a wave of her hand. "Here, this one's my imperial stout, over here we have a nice, full porter, and I'll throw in my famous pale ale on the house."

  Gilgamesh, having been a bit of a beer novice, shakily brought the stout up to his lips, dreading the idea of flavor and multi-sensory overload. But, alas! One drop of the nectar did him in; a whole new, bright and happy world opened before his eyes. More and more he drank, and more and more he savored. At long last, Gilgamesh completely forgot why he had come to Siduri in the first place, and joined in with the singing of several happy customers around him, feeling very hopeful and brave. In the middle of his quartet, the door to the pub opened, from which came a man whom Siduri immediately welcomed as Uta-Napishtim's boatman, Ur-Shanabi.

  "Good news!" Siduri shouted over the drawling warbling of an older man next to Gilgamesh. "Ur-Shanabi is here and has agreed to take you to see Uta-Napishtim."

  Gilgamesh looked blankly from one to the other.

  "Why would I want to go there?"

  Laura Gibbss last blog post..August 24 Round-Up

• At August 27, 2008, Hannah wrote:

  Most common Hebrew names for God (Conservative affiliation):

  adonai

  yud-hay-vav-hay (the letters, pronounced adonai)

  I've never heard adonai referred to as yahweh in a religious context, only scholarly. Hmm. I wonder how that happened. When did yahweh become the default scholarly name for the Hebrew god?

  And as a Jewish student in mainly Christian schools, I generally prefer CE and BCE myself. It's not offensive to use AD and BC, but it is a Christian reference.

  I think I'll go borrow a copy from the library...

  Hannahs last blog post..:)

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Hannah,

  I think the "Yahweh" is based on the yud-hay-vav-hay - i.e., YHVH. Change that "V" in "vay" to a "w" (a common substitution in Western languages) and you have YHWH. Throw in vowels and there you have it?

• At August 27, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  OK, this one put me over the edge--I linked it and stole your photo. So sue me.

  I loved Gilgamesh when I read it years ago. I need to read it again. Great literature bears rereading every decade or so. (Probably worth reading more frequently, but time is time.)

  Two points, both tangential, but both hit home:

  1) Sex is sacred. Reality twists. Lives are created. We suffer from our inability to even try to define sacred these days. We run from what's holy. One of your (many) strengths is that you do not confuse the religious with the sacred.

  2) Baghdad is an old city--when we started bombing Iraq, I mentioned (only to those I love) that cities around as long as Baghdad will likely outlast our culture.

  I'll go away now.

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Beyond School

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  RAmen, Michael. Hey, on a different note, where can I get one of those tinfoil hats you're sporting recently? You crack me up in such the right way.

• At August 27, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  If you promise not to tell, I'll tell you which brand of foil to use--one that's not tangled up with the Illuminati.

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Beyond School

• At August 27, 2008, Mamimon wrote:

  Being a Jewish student in a Jewish school, I just wanted to clarify a few things.

  1. First off the whole "Yaweh" phenomenon is actually blasphemous according to orthodox Judaism. Because (as was mentioned before) the ten commandments list "Using God's Name in Vain" as a sin. When talking about God in the mundane most Jews say "HaShem", which means "The Name" because there is so much dispute about naming God. There are layers upon layers of Jewish mysticism (kabbalah) underlying God's name. Names such as "Adonai" mean "My/Our Master", "Elohim" is a generic word for God in modern Hebrew (El, Shadai, Tsva'ot etc... fall under the same category). There is a "real" name for God supposedly, however this name is no longer known, officially, to mankind. As far as the derivation of "Yaweh" this comes from the ancient Hebrew word spelled "Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay." Now it is prohibited to pronounce that word in its true form so "adonai" is substituted (though it still commands a good deal of respect) even though "Yaweh" is actually a contraction of the Hebrew words for past and present, "Haya", and "Ye'heyeh", (interestingly ancient Hebrew did not have a future tense).

  2. As far as anthropomorphism is related to God, God's name is inextricably intertwined. Many of the aforementioned pseudonyms carry a specific attribute with them. For instance, when the Torah uses "Elohim" it is trying to emphasize God's attribute of strict law; conversely, when the Torah uses the name "El/El-Shadai" it is emphasizing the attribute of mercy. Neither one is "more" anthropomorphisized, each name carries a certain message that the Torah is trying to convey. Now this may easily be construed to show that Judaism is polytheistic; however, that is obviously not the case. The different attributes are not different Gods, they are merely different emphases that the Torah wants to create in order help the reader learn, and understand the context.

  3. I don't even want to touch the sex issue, but suffice it to say that the original Bible did not condemn any NATURAL sex (i.e. not homosexual, incestuous, etc...).

  4. For those of you who have suffered through the Da Vinci Code, please note that Dan Brown is thoroughly lacking in any deep Jewish Knowledge. According to Mr. Brown there are two male/female sides to God, "Yaweh" and "Shkhina (note that "kh" is the guttural sound made in the back of the throat)". First off, this is a load of bullshit, I have already explained "Yaweh. As far as the "Shkhina": The "Shkhina" is another anthropomorphic title of God. In fact the "Shkhina" is about as physical as God gets, the Torah describes God's "Shkhina" (usually translated as presence) residing amongst the Jewish people in the desert/ in the Holy of Holies etc... This is usually meant to be taken as a measure of the Jews' worthiness: when the Jews are acting appropriately, God resides amongst them, when the Jews sin, their temple is destroyed and the presence of God is no longer as concentrated or as obvious. The "Shkhina" is purely a literary tool meant to convey the people's ever-changing connection with God.

  PS: I apologize for getting so far into this dangerous territory, but I hope a cleared up a few misconceptions

  PPS: By the way, I completely agree with you as far as your ideas about teaching/inculcation are concerned. I get a larger than normal dose, being in a private school.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Mamimon, I appreciate the input. Without meaning to antagonize at all, I do want to touch the sex issue, because it's relevant to my comparison with the older religion of the Sumerians. My reading of popular rabbis introducing Judaism has led me to understand that Judaism is a lot less puritanical about sex than most Christianity is, but I've also read enough of the Torah (in English, granted) to know several strict condemnations of sex are to be found in it: women raped without yelling loud enough to be heard are to be married to their rapists; homosexuals (who being part of nature, I would argue, practice "natural" sex by definition, without supernatural definitions interfering - but we seem to disagree on this one pretty fundamentally) get death by stoning.

  Blast, I'm rushing because I want to go watch Hillary's speech at the convention. But this mention of the "original" Bible - what do you mean by that?

  Again, no trollishness intended. Thanks for the clarifications.

• At August 27, 2008, Brickman wrote:

  First time reader, also from StumbleUpon. Looks like someone knows where the traffic is.

  Anyways, I never actually read Gilgamesh, though I know enough bits and pieces of the plot that when I saw you were gonna be retelling it for a modern audience without holding back I knew it would at least be a fun way to kill some time. However, by the end of the page I'm glad I looked because this is far more than just a vivid plot synopsis (which is what I was expecting). Consider yourself bookmarked.

  I have to agree about reading for a test being absolutely horrid, although on the other hand I know I wouldn't have gotten halfway through Catcher In the Rye if I didn't have to (it took me a while to stop hating the protagonist as a person and notice that it was actually pretty good). Though part of it is that, when forced to read the closest thing to the original version that they can both get past the censors and nominally call English, most classics are just a pain in the butt to read in the format schools make you read, plain and simple. I know Shakespeare, for instance, was chock full of lude jokes, fight scenes and language that people of the time actually used, and on top of that most performances probably involved a lot of improvisation, but the teachers are probably glad that the average student doesn't understand that biting one's thumb was the equivalent of giving someone the finger (and so on), or at least take no steps to correct it. It's considered blasphemy if you don't read what the original script said word-for-word in the most serious tone you can and without stopping to explain what the phrase you just read meant at the time.

  Anyways, I look forward to reading this series, and will probably be exploring the rest of the site.

  PS: I'm a college student, going into my second year in engineering. I read for pleasure sometimes (though mostly sci-fi or fantasy, almost never classics), but as you can guess from the fact that I stumbled-upon your site, probably not enough.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Brickman, thanks for the interesting comment and "civilized" defense of me on SU (gosh there are some boobs there).

  I hear you on the catch-22 of English teaching. Force is aversive, but laxity is exploitable. We English teachers pull our hair out over how to escape that dilemma. (The link starting that numbered list of "suckiness factors" takes you to the Washington Post article that expresses it all very well.)

  Engineering, huh? I'm jealous. I discovered applied science's beauties way too late to be a player in those fields.

  As for Shakespeare - ob yes. I did a fun "King Lear Street Talk" project where students had to understand the cursing, and translate it into Mafia contemporary English. Fun stuff. Search "F-bomb" here if you're bored ;-)

  Thanks again for stopping by. Good luck in college. I miss college terribly.

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Laura, I've laughed over the punch-line more than once today. Good stuff ;-)

• At August 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  I'm a fan. I wouldn't have texted either.

• At August 28, 2008, Rick wrote:

  Love the post, glad you are making lit an experience instead of an assignment.

  One thing to mention, I think the stereotypical Christian has warped what Christians/ the Bible actually say about sex. If you read the whole Bible (Song of Solomon, for instance) you'll find that the Bible thinks sex is awesome. Freaking amazing. It does, however, specify that it is only this level of amazing in the marriage context where the sacred bond is forever only between two people. Ideally.

  The Bible doesn't say sex is bad. The Bible values sex very highly, which is exactly why it preaches that sex shouldn't be taken lightly.

  Plus I would argue that a monogamous sex life is the more enlightened view than temple prostitutes... sure its out in the open but those ladies were still giving their bodies away daily... which sucks for anyone.

  Just my thoughts.

• At August 28, 2008, Maimon wrote:

  Ahhh yes, I've heard those arguments before. Well, I'm sure you are aware of the vast amount of Rabbinic literature that has accumulated over the centuries, and they provide clarification to the "Torah Sh'Michtav" (the written Torah). Now, I should have prefaced that sentence with a caveat that would remind you that "Rabbinic literature" is not necessarily written solely by Rabbis. There was a tradition amongst Jews in the ancient times to have a solely oral law the "Torah Sh'Baal Peh," which was not meant to be written down. It was meant to be passed from Moses down, and interpreted throughout the generations; however, this chain was broken by a Roman massacre of many of Rabbi Akiva's students, and this forced the oral law to be written (which in an of itself was declared a day of mourning). Now, for my point: This Oral law explains all the various intricacies of the Written Torah.For instance, it is written that when a woman is raped and nobody responds to her calls, then all those that neglected her calls are worthy of having all their property destroyed. Other cases that you hear like that one are likely to have been previously resolved in a more reasonable way than you may have heard.

  As far as Homosexuals go, think about it from an evolutionary standpoint: you need to reproduce to sustain your species; if you want to reproduce, you need to be heterosexual;ergo the "natural" way to have intercourse is heterosexual. Once the dire need to reproduce for fear of extinction is gone, the need to only have heterosexual intercourse is obviated to a certain degree: therefore homosexuals have evolved as a societal phenomenon. Also, when the Torah prescribes death in any form you must be aware that death was such an uncommon occurrence that it is said that a "Beit Din" (a court of law) who kills someone once every 70 years is very harsh.

  By original I was just trying to stress the old testament.

  PS: I was rather tired when I wrote my last comment; as you can see my name has changed since then =)

• At August 28, 2008, Beth wrote:

  I'm obviously late to this party but I could not have put this any better! If you are okay I may quote this in my Western Lit class. I teach Western Lit and I do it because I LOVE BOOKS and it kills me when teachers turn it into something painful. These are great, exciting stories - STORIES PEOPLE - not crusty old books to be revered from afar.

  Beths last blog post..See Dick Fail His Class

• At August 28, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  @Beth: I think Clay is averse to lawsuits. I tried, but he won't bite. You have my permission to quote him

  @Rick: sex is all about giving away the body, monogamous or otherwise. I happen to be monogamous for a whole lot of reasons (not all I understand), but I'd put my money on the polyamorous as far as enlightenment goes.

  @maimon: not sure what the "natural" heterosexual position is, but I imagine it involves the woman standing on her head a few post-coital hours to up her chances of impregnation. And your reasoning puts condom use up there with buggery, but that almost makes sense given my Catholic background.

  @Clay: I've hijacked your site--take me to Libya.

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Capitalism and biology class

• At August 28, 2008, Craig wrote:

  I love discussions like this. Seriously, great posts people. I remember when I first read Gilgamesh in high school. Darn near gave me a crisis of faith! I was a conservative young christian at the time ( I am a liberal semi-young christian today)

  Gilgamesh actually helped me open my mind quite a bit to 'risky' ideas like... the bible might not be a literal representation of history, but rather that the ancient Jews who wrote it were influenced, heavily, by summerian culture and language. Even the Suzerain style covenant is a sumerian derivative.

  This topic is not ignored by two GREAT authors. Thomas Cahill in "The Gifts of the Jews" and Chaim Potok in "Wanderings". (Yes Yes... do not forget Potoks non-fiction!! Fantastic!)

  Cahill particularly emphasizes the different road the Jews took in regards to God and life in general.

  Once more book recommendation - author: Rob Bell, title: "Sex God" Brilliant view on how Christians ought to see sexuality. (That is, as a good, natural, and sacred thing!)

  It's a brave new world folks, not all differing ideas must be seen as clashing dichotomies. It's all part of the human story. Which brings me to my last point.... as a future history teacher, I'll use either date system and genuinely not give a flying freckle. (C.E. BC etc..). But really, if all we do is change letters around to be PC, are we really enhancing knowledge??

  All it tells me is that around the later part of the 20th century, social groups began to feel offended if they heard Christian language. And that is how students of history will read about our society. 80 years from now.

  I mean come on! I don't gripe about being born in the month of August, despite my loathing for Caesar Augustus and his brutal policies! Perhaps I should start a movement though, lets purge all Roman influence from our calendar! ;) I jest, I jest.

  This mechanic has homework if he wants to finish college in 5 years. l8r.

• At August 28, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:

  Yes, when we change letters around, we are enhancing knowledge--the process itself is enlightening.

  And there is no such thing as a crisis in faith--faith allows exploration. Maybe a crisis in "beliefs", but I'm all for that.

  Social groups are not offended by Christian language--they are offended by Christian presumption. A subtle (but important) difference.

  Clay already knows I'm one of those kind-of-off-tilt Christians. At least up to the point of the empty tomb.

  As far as the Roman calendar, point well taken--let your kids know where the term "August" comes from. Tell them about the Benedictine monks and time.

  Call it the 8th month. That you challenge the name August in class will mean something to a child whose mind is being dulled by a state-sanctioned curriculum.

  Really. I double dog dare you. =)

  (Clay, where are you?)

  Michael Doyles last blog post..Capitalism and biology class

• At August 28, 2008, Unsucky English - Dan Simmons Forums wrote:

  [...] http://beyond-school.org/2008/08/26/gilgamesh1/I stumbled to this and thought you guys might think it was interesting. That's the story of gilgamesh told in an 'unsucky' way. You guys will probably say it was unsucky to begin with, and I've never read it but still- about 1/4 through this thing and it's pretty neat... ANYWAY, figured you guys might think it was interesting, but you'll probably say he castrated a good book :P _________________________ I'm so adjective, I verb nouns! [...]

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Rick,

  Hm. Granted the "Old" (Jewish) "Testament" has a few books that honor sex. But it has a few that don't as well. (A big problem with any collection of texts from different authors spanning centuries.)

  But the Christian add-ons? Paul is pretty sex-o-phobic, from what I can see. "It's better to marry than to burn," he says. "Better to be celibate like me, but if you can't, tie the knot." (Many scholars question if Paul was a guilt-ridden homosexual. Google it ;-) )

  We're getting ahead of my game plan - I'll definitely write a piece on Genesis, and the utter weirdness of the "original sin" or "knowledge of good and evil" leading up to the covering of the original couple's genitalia. Strong implication there that sex is somehow shameful, no?

  Thanks for weighing in. I'm not sure where I stand on polyamory v. monogamy. The whole cultural context of each would require tweaking for people to be able to handle it.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Be my guest, Beth - of course. (Though Michael has already given that permission, I see.)

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks, Craig. I'm in a rush, so I'll point to my reply to Tim here about the CE v. AD thing.

  Mind you, I've lived and taught in China and Korea, so labeling their history in reference to the "Year of Our Lord" seems far more objectionable than it did when I was in the States. But even in the States, it is, as Michael notes, "presumptuous."

  I see historians as social scientists, bound by the rules of evidence that dictate any scientific craft. Their personal leaps of faith shouldn't seep into their as-objective-as-possible (or at least respectably skeptical) scholarship. They become propagandists when this happens.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  I know about the "vast amounts of oral tradition," etc, and see them much the way I see medieval scholasticism: centuries of argument and explication taken to infinitely complex levels, but - all based on false (or at least un-demonstrable, and therefore "proof-burdened") premises.

  So it takes me back to the original texts upon which all the volumes of commentary are based.

  Occam's Razor.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thank you, by the way :)

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Jump on in, John. Good discussions here.

  I'm dashed: my copy of the Mitchell translation belonged to my last school, so I don't have it handy to review for the rest of the posts! In Korea, that means weeks waiting for the mail from elsewhere.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks Betty :)

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  "Sucktastic" - duly noted. Will use in future episodes ;-)

• At August 28, 2008, George wrote:

  Re: 1

  If one finds a new celestial body, one gets to name it. If one finds ( creates ) a new element, one gets to name it. They that defined our "current era" named it.

  If you want to use CE, define it and it's yours. If it's the same as AD, then either you're a plagiarist or a fraud. THAT'S academic rigor. THAT'S being respectful. THAT'S science.

  Silly innuendos of undefinable and irrelevant motives, i.e. "cultural imperialism", are the methods of politicians and demagogues.

  You, sir, are a journalist.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Huh?

  Historians didn't "find" world history, and neither did the Church. Logic check.

  "Define it and it's yours" sounds so solipsistic I don't know what to do with it.

  Rude bombast is no substitute for logic: call an African "Johnson," you change his reality; call time "the Lord's," you do the same - motive or no motive.

  If you're not being rude, my apologies. I'm a bit of a tone-mirror in comments.

  Sir.

• At August 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Back again, Rick. Your comment,
  

  I would argue that a monogamous sex life is the more enlightened view than temple prostitutes… sure its out in the open but those ladies were still giving their bodies away daily… which sucks for anyone.

  just kept ringing.

  Because prostitutes around the world are still giving their bodies away daily, and because it's socially frowned upon, in most countries its illegality and reproach only add to the burden of the prostitute (and the lack of legal protection).

  It's a point I'm not sure I'm comfortable with, but still I see it and want to entertain it: if prostitution were still classified as holy and honored by society, might not that be preferable to the type of prostitution we have today in its stead?

  Again - thinking outside the box does not mean subscribing to each attempt ;-)

• At August 28, 2008, Tim wrote:

  Clay,

  Amazing post! Now I see what you've been up to... Teaching. I'm happy for you and impressed once again with your writing ability. One of my professors said that we don't spend enough time sitting under trees thinking about giants; you, however (I know how much you hate that word), have moved from thinking about giants to actually battling them.

• At August 29, 2008, Salon Table Talk - Religion: Good Idea or Bad? wrote:

  [...] Hearst I said hi..." -- Esme As long as we're talking about bible-as-literature, I thought this page looked interesting. It discusses The Epic of Gilgamesh and what it says about the Sumerian view of [...]

• At August 29, 2008, ChetG wrote:

  I quite honestly believe I would have killed to have learned the classics from you in high-school. I attended a very Bible-Belt rooted, South-East Texas high-school. We were never able to read anything for controversial than Huck Finn, or To Kill a Mockingbird.

  Your lecture style appears to be phenomenal. I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

• At August 29, 2008, Tracy Rosen wrote:

  Yes, really. It may be my luck, that I live and work in Quebec, where these subjects are perhaps less taboo than in other areas. But yes, really, I can.

  Tracy Rosens last blog post..Pick it up

• At August 29, 2008, Jemdawg's favorite web pages, page 4 - StumbleUpon wrote:

  [...] [...]

• At August 30, 2008, When Corrupting the Youth is Good | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] the comments on my last post (the first Gilgamesh essay), and of the people who also commented on it on StumbleUpon,5 it occurs [...]

• At August 30, 2008, Dessy wrote:

  Oh wow. I actually read this whole lecture and enjoyed it (despite being a God-fearing Christian).

  I've never read Gilgamesh, but now I'm curious as to what is written in this book.

  Bravo on the lecture, you really know how to target teenagers. Other than that, I don't really have much else to say other than I laughed at some of the "DON'T LEAVE!" parts.

  Nice.

• At August 30, 2008, Craig wrote:

  A crisis of beliefs is better way of puting it, for sure. It is what you get when your beliefs are based on one simple truth. I have met such people time and time again. Faced with the fact that the Bible has stories strikingly similar and seemingly borrowed from Gilgamesh, Christians who have always been told that the Bible is the absolute infallible word of God are suddenly at a lack for words. Thats why so many Christians ignorantly defend a literal interpretation of scripture. Literally shutting their mind to other ideas. To them, it is all false if any one thing is false. I ask, how does the message of Jesus change if we suddenly learn that the world wasn't made in 6 literal days and the Grand Canyon wasn't carved by the great flood!? Oh crap... guess we still have to love our neighbor and forgive people an stuff.

  Clay, I love the word social scientist. History as science is the best form of history. Yet, part of what historians do is give their interpretation and opinion on the data collected. Thus, an argument is born, and that is what historians do.

  Propagandists happen when no one else knows history well enough to argue with the pseudo-historian weenie-wack who spoon fed them a load of junk talking points that they should have known to spit back in his face.

  Propagandists depend on half-truths and half-wits to believe them. Our country (U.S.) has an abundance of both.

• At August 30, 2008, amberaly's favorite web pages, page 4 - StumbleUpon wrote:

  [...] [...]

• At August 31, 2008, rodgeman wrote:

  Hello. I found this site on Stumbleupon. I enjoyed reading your lecture and look forward to more. I have not read Gilgamesh but will. I am almost 40 and remember asking one of my English teachers if a story is every just a story and the teacher was caught off guard and said yes. I was always a prolific reader and my favorite epic is Lord of the Rings. I do not agree with all of your lecture but enjoyed it.

  Thank you.

• At August 31, 2008, lostandconfused's favorite web pages, page 4 - StumbleUpon wrote:

  [...] [...]

• At August 31, 2008, ELT wrote:

  You can't just say it's $5K and not describe it. We want details.

  BTW, Theta-Krell-Silverline Audio-Escient.

  There. I started it.

• At August 31, 2008, Erin wrote:

  I'm a student in college studying writing, and I really enjoyed this article. I'll be waiting for the rest! Any chance you'll be moving on to Shakespeare soon?

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  I'll play. PAVV (Korean) HDTV, Denon AVR-3805, Elac 5-speaker surround hi-fi. (But don't mistake me for an audiofile. I'm not techy enough, or patient enough - yet. :P )

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks Chet - but here's the irony: between the self-censorship that goes on because of the prudes and religious fanatics in the classroom, and because of the concentration-breaking giggles or gasps that break out every time sex or secularism are mentioned, classroom discussions never felt as good as writing these things here does.

  Thanks again for the kind words.

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Gee, that was nice. Thanks :) Laughter is good stuff.

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Thanks Rodgeman, and by all means voice your disagreements. Things get more interesting that way!

  I'm going to sound like an English teacher here, but I would answer your question differently. To me, a story is never just a story: it's a mirror of its times and culture, and sometimes a lamp to enlighten them as well. Blake says we can "see infinity in a grain of sand." I add we can do the same in any story.

  Granted, that can get boring when done bloodlessly.

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Erin, I'm so happy to see new students pitching in. Thanks for the support.

  And Shakespeare? Good god yes. Romeo and Juliet is so much more subversive than my teacher in the Bible belt ever hinted, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

  And then there's Lear, which is so perfect to me I'm afraid to touch it.

  (But since I'm going to go chronologically, I have to stop at Homer, the Bible, Lucretius' _On the Nature of Things_ (an epic poem on atomic theory and its religiously liberating implications, of all the amazing things, coming from a time before Jesus). And I love Plato - though not his philosophy - too much to skip him. Jeez, I'm an idiot to think I can ever finish.)

• At August 31, 2008, Blain wrote:

  Interesting. I am all for the Unsucky English thing, although I'm thinking that Unsucky Literature might be a more accurate label for what you're doing -- Gilgamesh isn't really English, except in translation, and things are lost in translation.

  And some things are overlaid over translation as well, perhaps filling the empty spaces from the things that are lost. In history, we would call it "presentism," and I'm seeing some in your rather romanticized expression of ritual prostitution in a way that sounds more like 1960s free-love advocate fantasy than a description of how Sumerians would have understood that aspect of their religions expression. Particularly when you leave the fertility aspect of sexuality entirely out of the conversation of a time that predates reliable birth control technology (which doesn't even take into account the value Sumerian culture placed on fertility, as compared to modern western liberal culture's value of fertility).

  Ancient societies were not noted for their egalitarianism, nor were they noted for their value of personal empowerment and free expression of any kind. Civilization of that time had much more to do with learning and complying with community standards which were enforced with strictness that gave reason for compliance through fear as much as anything else. Personal liberation of the time was the freedom to leave the protection of the city and run the significant risk of starving to death.

  And I suspect you could probably receive a wider audience with a touch less hostility toward traditional Christian belief. Just a thought.

  As to the lack of a wife for the Christian god, it is not the case that every branch of Christianity accepts that, although, to be sure, God's wife is not to be found anywhere in mainstream Christianity. It is not based in the married nature of pagan gods -- it is a logical extension of the title Father, which implies a Mother.

  Just a few thoughts at the end of a long day.

  Blains last blog post..A Mormon Talk

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Good comments, Blaine, and good challenges.

  That "unsucky" thing was a whim in a silly mood. I'll probably drop it altogether in subsequent posts. The "English" part referred to "English classes," though your point is well-taken. "Unsucky Literature" doesn't have the same ring to it that the original does, and I'm a sucker for sound.

  The charge of presentism is fair enough too. I'm not sure I positively characterized it with any objective voice as much as I tried to speculate, infer, and question some of the effects of a cult like Ishtar's on a society. Comparisons to other ancient cults still alive today, like Judaism and Christianity, are inevitable and relevant - and the great thing about blogging all of this is that it allows readers to negotiate what it all means precisely as you're doing by commenting. I'm all for it.

  Do we - can we - understand "how Sumerians would have understood . . . . ritual prostitution"? If you have references (or links) to other primary sources shedding light on this, please share them. Ditto with any primary evidence regarding any practices related to the temple prostitutes and pregnancy, etc.

  As for egalitarianism and such, there are at least hints in this text - one we've already seen in the gods' disapproval of Gilgamesh's infringement of the marriage rites of his subjects - that suggest a concern with something like individual rights. (And this is the tradition that produced Hammurabi's code long before the Mosaic, after all.) But I'm again unaware of claiming egalitarianism anywhere so far, first of all, and second, of claiming there was no fear as a measure to control the people. My comparison was more specific - between Anu's implicit approach to dealing with ethically wayward mortals versus what we see in Genesis and elsewhere.

  If I show hostility anywhere, I'm unaware of it. Critical disagreement, yes; skepticism, absolutely. But hostility? (And my aim is not to attract a wider audience at the expense of free expression; priestly beliefs deserve no immunity from skeptics, though they've received it for centuries and still do. It's the third millennium. We've come a long way since these beliefs formed, and discovered much that challenges them.)

  And I'm aware of the "gnostic" (early) Christian cults' belief that the Judeo-Christian god had a mother, and find that fascinating. But that would require some homework to refresh the memory. And as you say, it's not so relevant today, since it's practically non-existent now.

  Thanks again for the comments, and hope tomorrow's shorter ;-)

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Sorry to be late on this one, Craig.

  I love your first paragraph. It needs nothing else from me.

  And yes, agreed, social scientists do offer interpretations, but based on the evidence at hand, not on unfounded metaphysics. Are we agreed on that?

  I'm certainly agreed on your last point about weenie-wacks and half-wits, and also smiling at the language. Levity is next to godliness in my book (ever read or see Eco's In the Name of the Rose?

  Thanks for the nuggets.

• At August 31, 2008, 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] [Gilgamesh, Part One, here] [...]

• At August 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Okay, Gilgamesh 2 is up: "The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job."

• At September 1, 2008, Penelope M wrote:

  Clay-

  A bit of interesting reading on the topic of male/female gods, god's wife and early Judaism would be "In the Wake of the Goddesses" by Tivka Frymer-Kensky. I read it a while ago, but I thought her tracing from Sumerian myth to early Judaism of gender issues and the idea God having a wife was pretty fascinating.

• At September 1, 2008, Jazzyblueteach wrote:

  I am a student AND a teacher, AND an adult! So I suppose I count, right?

  I read Gilgamesh in HS a long, long time ago. Without the sex parts thrown in for interest.

  I read it again this year on my own.

  Totally different experience.

  You are doing a great service here. I am sending some students young and old your way.

  You don't do The Republic in a Nutshell by any chance?

• At September 1, 2008, Jazzyblueteach wrote:

  I also completely agree with your choice to teach rather than work for schools. It's sad that it has come to this.

• At September 1, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Penelope, that's an excellent tip. I googled her, hoping to arrange a Skype interview for a podcast - but discovered she died recently :(

  Would you be up for a Skype interview yourself? Maybe skim the book to refresh your memory, and tell us the parts relevant to this discussion?

  Again, living in Korea makes getting books like this almost impossible :(

• At September 1, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  Oh yes you count :)

  It's a beautiful translation, isn't it?

  The Republic? Arg. I prefer the Symposium and the Lysis, among others....

• At September 1, 2008, Seano wrote:

  Wow, you win. This is a great idea. I am a student doing journalism major and trying to decide between American studies, and literature as a minor, and you definitely push me towards lit. The way you look at these old stories is very analytical and questioning (as if you were a reporter) and I absolutely love it. As far as Gilgamesh itself goes I do believe I have read parts of it, but I'm not really sure what/where, but I'm positively going to go to the library tomorrow and borrow it. I cant wait for you to get into more recent texts i.e. Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, as that's where most of the studies Ive had are. I do have one question though, what brought you to Korea?

• At September 1, 2008, Blain wrote:

  You're welcome and thanks for getting my tone. It doesn't always happen.

  It's hard to beat the ring of "Unsucky English" with something more accurate. Just needed to explore the interesting gap from complete accuracy and the great title.

  Presentism is inevitable, as is ethnocentrism. We can n