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How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

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Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#91

Post by shanhaiguan »

handrous wrote: post #34
soco wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.

AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated. Another factor in my naming it the probably…

Modern English doesn't have the thou-you singular/plural distinction. My preference is to keep these details in reading translations of religious texts, and I personally prefer to keep "thou" over having to say "you all" for plurals, and especially over collapsing them all to "you". The old stuffy style consideration is not as important to me. Maybe I'm just used to it now

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#92

Post by x3iv130f »

InitialLastName wrote: post #78
lalos wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the Bible and Gilgamesh comes from the need to pass on important lessons and facts to the next chunk of humans i.e. this is why it's important to learn how to make boats, sometimes climate changes and you need a backup plan, don't eat pork because God says so -- and also because if not properly cooked you'll get trichinosis (they didn't know this but throwing a label of pork = evil is good enough). If you re…

A large portion of the Pentateuch boils down to: > Some people came to the chief with a conflict. He went into a special tent, "communed with the storm-god", and came out with some new rules for how to manage a tribe of herders that has grown beyond Dunbar's number. Repeat that, mix in an origin story, some king lists, and tribal-unification propaganda and (modulo some path dependency) you'll have a book that people…

I would phrase the Bible as a whole to be about something entirely different then what you have described.

It is the description of a people's experience of their God, stretching across thousands of years and dozens of generations.

Reading it gives the feeling that you have lived many many lifetimes seeing cities, dynasties, and empires rise and fall.

Who that God is, is something puzzled throughout and not done justice by comparison to any single nature spirit or polytheistic deity.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#93

Post by the_gipsy »

lordleft wrote: post #50

I find Gilgamesh deeply moving. Near the end of the epic, Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for immortality, impelled by grief over the death of his friend Enkidu. After travails and adventures, immortality escapes him, and he is consoled with the following verse: "What you seek you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality to themselves. Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let Days be ful…

Uncountable generations have passed and every man, to this day, still asks the same exact questions.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#95

Post by dartharva »

idoubtit wrote: post #45
narrator wrote: post #26

I read Gilgamesh a few times over the years. Two things I found interesting: 1. Sex is viewed as a civilizing force. It brings Enkidu in to city life after being a wild man living among animals for example. 2. It feels as if there aren't a lot of people around and humanity only has a very small island like footprint in this vast unknown world. It's almost like how we feel about outer space today.

> 1. Sex is viewed as a civilizing force. It brings Enkidu in to city life after being a wild man living among animals for example. I partly disagree. Sex is what cut Enkidu from its wildlife friends, but it was not enough to bring him to the city life. After he spent a week soaring in sex, the animals would't recognize him as one of them, that's all. IIRC, to enter the community of humans, once rejected by the anima…

I interpreted that almost all of Enkidu's civilization can be attributed to Shamhat. She doesn't just endow him with sex; she also literally taught him the ways and nuances of the human world (iirc) and guided him till he met Gilgamesh.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#96

Post by bobthechef »

ekidd wrote: post #84
handrous wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated. Another factor in my naming it the probably…

> The Eloquent Peasant The Eloquent Peasant is a fascinating little work. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's the story of a peasant who owns a donkey. There's a farmer alongside the road who has allowed his crops to grow right up to the path, knowing that passing draft animals will occasionally eat his crops. This allows him to take the owners of the animals to court, including the peasant in the story. But…

Thanks, that sounds entertaining. Sounds like a tract a court jester might write.

(I think we have a progressive tendency to overestimate the sophistication of our age relative to those of the past. And not to be pedantic, but I wouldn't call what you described as subversive. Subversion would involve destroying or undermining a just political order. But offering a gentle reminder of the importance of justice is counterrevolutionary because it seeks to restore something good. We must not relativize revolution as merely that which is opposed to some prevailing status quo.

Socrates was not subversive; the sophists were.)

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#97

Post by dartharva »

newbamboo wrote: post #33
AlwaysRock wrote: post #19

I had a class in college that focused in large part on Gilgamesh. It was one of the few classes I enjoyed in college. I loved that my very religious teacher said the flood story in Gilgamesh added to the validity of the Bible since it is another historical account of a large flood. I thought it did the opposite and showed that the Bible is just another book of myths with some historical events peppered in, like Gilga…

Because it’s a bad take and conveys a shallow, simplistic understanding of literature as either fact or myth. Viewing literary artifacts in such a way is too black and white, overly modern and just not very useful when it comes to serious study.

How exactly should literature be viewed then? I am having difficulty understanding what exactly your complaint is about the objective filters about something being fact or myth when it's (by definition) an unambiguous state of being for most ideas and legends, literary or otherwise. How does talking about it damage "serious study"?

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#98

Post by murukesh_s »

nindalf wrote: post #59
randoglando wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I say the main character of the Ramayana is a bit dull, one dimensional and treats his wife terribly. On the mark there. What about the character of Krishna (an amalgamation of 3 tribal gods)? Especially the little child Krishna? From the perspective of the story Mahabharata is superior, but the Ramayana has some great characters (Hanuman, Lakshmana, Sita, Ravana). The Mahabharata's heroes are weaker character…

What conflict did any of the characters in the Ramayana face? Hanuman for example, decides to do Rama’s bidding and then does it. The only major dilemma he faces is whether he should bring the cure for Lakshmana or the entire mountain containing the cure. He goes with the latter. Same with Lakshmana. Only conflict I can recall is when he is told to abandon Sita in the woods. He is torn, but decides to anyway. Compare…

Meghanada, Mandodari, Vibhishana to name few.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#99

Post by emodendroket »

snambi wrote: post #64
emodendroket wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ramayana sounded like fun though it's hard to figure out which version you're supposed to read.

There is only one Ramayana written by Valmiki Ramayana. All others are based on "Valmiki's Ramayana".

I meant more in the sense that there a lot of purported translations of wildly varying length.

Re: How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

#100

Post by Amezarak »

handrous wrote: post #60
soco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in those epochs?

Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no "reading public". Very few people could read and write. I assume all the repetition has to do with making the stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling. I don't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated to the difficulty, of limit…

I think the main issue is simply that most modern readers have a relatively small vocabulary and are markedly acclimatized to shorter, simpler sentences. 21st century readers often struggle with works written for the reading publics of a mere one or two centuries ago. And even 100 years ago, the KJV (for example) was not regarded as a difficult read.

Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared - there's only the spoken register in text form. But even that has declined in complexity: consider what Presidential addresses use to look like. Go compare Lincoln's Second Inaugural address with Obama's, for example.

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