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God In The Code Of Gilgamesh And The Hebrew Bible

Decent Essays
God in The Hebrew Bible is quite difficult to span, often being quite incongruous in nature, as there are “…odd contradictions and repetitions in the narrative…” (The Hebrew Bible 151) especially in relation to God. However, God is quite similar to the gods from The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Code of Hammurabi as “…like the humans made in his image… [he is] … willing to scheme and make deals…” (153). Specifically, in relation to The Code of Hammurabi, “…Moses goes to hear the word of God… and the Ten Commandments are revealed to him” (155), these commandments are “…rules of ethical and religious conduct” (155). The Ten Commandments, God’s words, seem to be inspired, at least in part, by Hammurabi’s code, as they both seem to try to “…further the well-being of mankind” (The Code of Hammurabi 1). Not only are God’s words reminiscent of that of the deities in The Code of Hammurabi and The Epic of Gilgamesh, God is also destructive in many ways, even excluding the great flood that appears in both The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Hebrew Bible. God creates “the serpent…most cunning of all the beasts of the field…” (The Hebrew Bible 160). The Hebrew Bible is riddled with common themes and tropes. The broadest theme presented throughout the text is the “role God plays in shaping human lives…” (152) and the resultant of the actions God takes as being the lesson. However, the role God plays is not static, often the “…relation between human behavior and divine favor…” (152) shifts and
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