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Topic Gilgamesh.
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Original Post
medjai Posted at 8:34 pm on June 30, 2009
How, how could you bring about a Flood without consideration
Charge the violation to the violator,
charge the offense to the offender,
but be compassionate lest (mankind) be cut off,
be patient lest they be killed.
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that a lion had appeared to diminish the people!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that a wolf had appeared to diminish the people!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that famine had occurred to slay the land!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that (Pestilent) Erra had appeared to ravage the land!
It was not I who revealed the secret of the Great Gods,
I (only) made a dream appear to Atrahasis, and (thus) he
                 heard the secret of the gods.

Replies
exceedinglyrare Posted at 7:39 am on July 6, 2009
I am in fact. I think the idea of getting this butthurt because two ancient texts may have copied each other is incredibly stupid, as stupid as getting butthurt that West Side Story is a retelling of Romeo + Juliet.
medjai Posted at 4:20 am on July 6, 2009
No because West Side Story is very clear about its origins, I mean are you seriously comparing the two?
exceedinglyrare Posted at 4:44 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 6:33 pm on July 5, 2009

Like if I write a song and then Eminem steals my song but he only performs it for a charity and makes no money off of it I can still sue the fuck out of eminem provided I can prove he stole it.

You can, if he's claiming it as his own, but I don't see why someone would sue someone over a song that's only been performed for charity, unless that person was an asshole.

If you're really this butthurt, btw, you should also be writing angry letters to Disney and the producers of West Side Story, for the record, on behalf of poor Shakespeare who can't fight for his widdle self.

medjai Posted at 3:33 pm on July 5, 2009
Like if I write a song and then Eminem steals my song but he only performs it for a charity and makes no money off of it I can still sue the fuck out of eminem provided I can prove he stole it.
medjai Posted at 3:32 pm on July 5, 2009
I don't think you're qualified to tell me what I'd have to prove, but it was an absurd hypothetical joke so I'll just let you have that.

You are claiming a motive which is unsupported. From a legal perspective, the story of Noah gives no indication of being taken directly from another story. Instead, it is both implied and stated that it was a story written by the biblical author as he was divined it by god.

Additionally, you can't "adapt" a story for "modern audiences" and then claim it's not theft.

It IS still theft of the work. Many stories have been "adapted" for a modern audience, all of the ones that weren't stolen reference the original and explain that the story is an adaptation, as is required regardless of whether or not they make a "profit."

Additionally, regardless of if the offending party is making a profit (they are but whatever), you can sue for losses.

In other words, I could argue that the story of Gilgamesh suffered heavy losses both monetarily and as an establishment of literature and as a religious foundation when another religion came in and stole its stories resulting in one of the world's richest and biggest religions in history.

It'd be extremely easy to argue that if the Old Testament is stolen, whoever it was stolen for had the same potential for insane profit as the Christian religion did, being as it's original stories were counterfeits.

exceedinglyrare Posted at 3:24 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 5:52 pm on July 5, 2009

Stealing a fictional story and publishing as your own original is plagiarism.

I can't write the Lord of the Rings but just not copy it word for word and then claim it was all my own inspiration or god told me to what to pen, I'd still get sued for plagiarism.


Except that's entirely different. We're not talking about copying something word-for-word and changing up a few here and there so that people don't cry foul; we're talking about "hey, that plot's interesting, let me revise it for today's audiences" if any copying was happening at all. Kind of like turning Hamlet into Simba and Juliet into Maria.

Also, frankly, for a legal claim to have any weight, you'd have to actually prove that the original writer of the Bible is profiting by stealing the work of the original writer of Gilgamesh, which...good luck with that, kid.

medjai Posted at 2:58 pm on July 5, 2009
Believe me, if I could both establish myself as the power of attorney for the story of Gilgamesh my first action would be to file plagiarism lawsuits against every single version of the bible written and all the publishers who knowingly published a plagiarized work.
KathyN Posted at 2:55 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 12:52 am on July 6, 2009

Stealing a fictional story and publishing as your own original is plagiarism.

I can't write the Lord of the Rings but just not copy it word for word and then claim it was all my own inspiration or god told me to what to pen, I'd still get sued for plagiarism.


Go sue Moses or whoever actually wrote this part (I'm sure it wasn't Moses who wrote it but you got the idea)...
medjai Posted at 2:52 pm on July 5, 2009
Stealing a fictional story and publishing as your own original is plagiarism.

I can't write the Lord of the Rings but just not copy it word for word and then claim it was all my own inspiration or god told me to what to pen, I'd still get sued for plagiarism.

exceedinglyrare Posted at 2:45 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 5:33 pm on July 5, 2009

When you consider that Gilgamesh was written one thousand years before the Biblical flood story it is extremely far fetched to assume that it just coincidentally had the same story and that the entire Hebrew culture just didn't write it down for a thousand years especially considering the fact that Gilgamesh itself started out as just oral retellings, then it was written down on stone tablets as Gilgamesh, then a thousand years later the Hebrews were inspired  by god to write the same story.

Obviously it's "possible" that they just legitimately took one thousand years longer to record the story but it's extremely unlikely.

It's fun to excuse plagiarism for Christianity but if anyone else just started blatantly stealing shakespeare's shit people wouldn't say "well it was just based on the same traditions and the stories were orally told until 2009 when someone decided to write them out!"


*shrug* I'm just going off the Biblical history courses I've taken, though I wouldn't call it necessarily plagiarism, considering I've yet to read anything in the Bible that actually looks like it was stolen in anything but story from any other work.

I mean, nobody's flipping their shit about The Lion King or West Side Story, and both of those had stories blatantly stolen from Shakespeare.

KathyN Posted at 2:40 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 12:33 am on July 6, 2009

When you consider that Gilgamesh was written one thousand years before the Biblical flood story it is extremely far fetched to assume that it just coincidentally had the same story and that the entire Hebrew culture just didn't write it down for a thousand years especially considering the fact that Gilgamesh itself started out as just oral retellings, then it was written down on stone tablets as Gilgamesh, then a thousand years later the Hebrews were inspired  by god to write the same story.

Obviously it's "possible" that they just legitimately took one thousand years longer to record the story but it's extremely unlikely.

It's fun to excuse plagiarism for Christianity but if anyone else just started blatantly stealing shakespeare's shit people wouldn't say "well it was just based on the same traditions and the stories were orally told until 2009 when someone decided to write them out!"


In addition the Hebrews where in deep touch with Shummers and had a lot of stories to learn from them during these 1000 years...
medjai Posted at 2:33 pm on July 5, 2009
When you consider that Gilgamesh was written one thousand years before the Biblical flood story it is extremely far fetched to assume that it just coincidentally had the same story and that the entire Hebrew culture just didn't write it down for a thousand years especially considering the fact that Gilgamesh itself started out as just oral retellings, then it was written down on stone tablets as Gilgamesh, then a thousand years later the Hebrews were inspired by god to write the same story.

Obviously it's "possible" that they just legitimately took one thousand years longer to record the story but it's extremely unlikely.

It's fun to excuse plagiarism for Christianity but if anyone else just started blatantly stealing shakespeare's shit people wouldn't say "well it was just based on the same traditions and the stories were orally told until 2009 when someone decided to write them out!"

exceedinglyrare Posted at 2:27 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 5:03 pm on July 5, 2009

It stole the story of the Arc. I can understand "flood stories" but a lone man who was basically inspired by "god" to build a big ass boat and put his family and all the animals on it.

I agree with you, the story itself stemmed from a huge flood that's known to have happened but the fable of the arc etc was stolen from gilgamesh.


It's possible, but it's also possible that the story originated from the people group from which both civilizations were descended, and the Hebrews just had the bad luck of coming up with writing second out of the two.

medjai Posted at 2:03 pm on July 5, 2009
It stole the story of the Arc. I can understand "flood stories" but a lone man who was basically inspired by "god" to build a big ass boat and put his family and all the animals on it.

I agree with you, the story itself stemmed from a huge flood that's known to have happened but the fable of the arc etc was stolen from gilgamesh.

exceedinglyrare Posted at 12:01 pm on July 5, 2009
Quote: from medjai at 6:54 am on July 1, 2009

In fact many argue that much from the texts of this Akkadian poem was blatantly stolen and used in the Old Testament, which was written long after the epic of Gilgamesh and had very similar stories.

I don't know if I'd agree with the blatant stealing...it's far more plausible to me that there was an enormous flood in Mesopotamia and various civilizations came up with similar stories to explain what happened.

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