Gilgamesh God-Animal Relationship Essay

Standing proudly as two of the great pillars of world literature, particularly ancient world literature, the Book of Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh provide a great deal of insight into the nature of early human-animal relationships. In particular, the documentary hypothesis, which persuasively postulates that the Pentateuch is comprised of the writings of four different sources, means that the place and date of authorship of parts within the text (e.g. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2) vary significantly from each other. That said, it is a safe estimate that Genesis 1, which was written by the Priestly source, was composed in approximately 500 BCE by Jewish priests exiled in Babylon (Encyclopedia Britannica). Likewise, Genesis 2, written by the Yahwistic source, dates to around 950 BCE and was produced in Judaea (Encyclopedia
Analyzing god-animal relationships, the distinct differences between ancient Hebrew and Babylonian beliefs concerning the fluidity of creation become clearly evident. While there are certainly not enough texts surveyed in this paper to demonstrate any sense of causation, there does appear to be, within the context of analyzing Genesis and Gilgamesh, a positive correlation between the date-of-authorship and the rigidity of the hierarchy of creation. Thus, more recently composed texts, such as Genesis 1, present a better-defined hierarchy in which God is superior to mankind, and mankind is superior to animals. So, whereas the God presented in Genesis 2 as walking and talking in the Garden of Eden is considerably anthropomorphized, the God presented in Genesis 1 exhibits no signs of corporeality or other such traits. Yet even the anthropomorphized God of Genesis 2 is dwarfed in comparison to the gods portrayed in the Epic of