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The Chaldean Account of Genesis

by George Smith

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572453,320 (3.1)None
The Assyriologist George Smith (1840-76) was trained originally as an engraver, but was enthralled by the discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson. He taught himself cuneiform script, and joined the British Museum as a 'repairer' or matcher of broken cuneiform tablets. Promotion followed, and after one of Smith's most significant discoveries among the material sent to the Museum - a Babylonian story of a great flood - he was sent to the Middle East, where he found more inscriptions which contained other parts of the epic tale of Gilgamesh. In 1876, shortly before his early death, Smith published this work, which drew extraordinary parallels between much earlier cuneiform documents and the biblical book of Genesis. The book was both controversial and very successful. The second edition, reissued here, was published in 1880, with corrections and additional material provided by Archibald Sayce (1846-1933), which reflected recent advances in Middle Eastern studies.… (more)
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This is a tough book to rate because of what it is: a work-in-progress from the late 1800s when there were only the first signs and findings of non-Judaic ancient near eastern cultures. Smith thought he had really knocked it out of the park, though: Genesis was a plagiarism, a monotheized rendition of other Mesopotamian myths. The scholarship on this hypothesis largely fell into suspicion by 1910 (Thorkild Jacobsen) and is now largely dismissed (David Tsumura). Instead, it's now clear that these ancient near eastern myths and stories (this includes the Bible) were all operating within a shared set of genres, themes, styles, and oral traditions that predated any of the cultures we know about and even significantly predated written language.

There's also this BS idea someone keeps bringing me that the Biblical character of Nimrod is based on the Babylonian Gilgamesh (or vise-versa). Thankfully, I now know that this idea originates (it seems) with this book and maybe I can finally put this idiotic idea to rest and get this person to leave me alone about Nimrod.

I skimmed this book, but I'll be coming back to it (unfortunately). ( )
  AKBWrites | Jul 19, 2022 |
I wanted more info on the corrupted sumerian legends as told from the babylonian, and what I got was preliminary and incomplete reporting. I guess it can't be helped, for the time of its writing and the amount of scholarship already put into the subject, not even mentioning the cultural bias and hopeful recounting of myths. Still, I did get some insights, although not as much as I had hoped. ( )
  bradleyhorner | Jun 1, 2020 |
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The Assyriologist George Smith (1840-76) was trained originally as an engraver, but was enthralled by the discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson. He taught himself cuneiform script, and joined the British Museum as a 'repairer' or matcher of broken cuneiform tablets. Promotion followed, and after one of Smith's most significant discoveries among the material sent to the Museum - a Babylonian story of a great flood - he was sent to the Middle East, where he found more inscriptions which contained other parts of the epic tale of Gilgamesh. In 1876, shortly before his early death, Smith published this work, which drew extraordinary parallels between much earlier cuneiform documents and the biblical book of Genesis. The book was both controversial and very successful. The second edition, reissued here, was published in 1880, with corrections and additional material provided by Archibald Sayce (1846-1933), which reflected recent advances in Middle Eastern studies.

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