An Author's Interest

While there are many glaring differences between The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis, only two stand out to me as being significant. The first important difference I saw is that The Epic of Gilgamesh is told like a narrative, with a plethora of descriptive words and phrases like, “He began to rage like a lion, like a lioness robbed of her whelps” (Gilgamesh 95). Genesis lacks these superfluous phrases, preferring to state things much more obviously. A favorite recurring quote of mine from Genesis is, “Then he died.” In my viewpoint, the lack of overly descriptive language in Genesis points to a less involved author than the authors of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The author’s involvement in the story is important to me because it points to a true belief in what they are writing. The other important difference I found between The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis is that the two use completely different sentence structures. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the sentences may sometimes be repetitive, but they are still of complex structure and most are compound sentences. However, in Genesis, the sentences tend to be short and choppy. While this may not seem important, I believe that it indicates a difference in the aptitude of the authors of each story. The Epic of Gilgamesh is well crafted, therefore telling us that the authors were not only more involved in their story, but it was also extremely well though-out. Genesis does not present the same well-crafted story line. The author or authors did not seem to take the time to develop the story in their minds before writing it causing many cases where Genesis has to back-track in order to tell another part of the story.