The Bible and Western Culture - Part 1 - The Gilgamesh Epic

Hey, I'd rather have an indifferent polytheistic god rather than "the Boss," who makes dirty backroom deals with two-bit thugs to the detriment of good, innocent family men 😉.

Myths do not truth make.

I enjoy your lecture as much as the epic. Thank you.

Listening to these fantastic lectures, can’t find lecture 2 of this series though. The next video on the playlist is lecture 4.

What a gifted person he is. Amazing flow of thoughts and speech 🎉

Thank you

<3 when were these recorded?

Babylonian not Sumerian???

Can we have a talk on the Ramayana

Just found this channel and it's bloody amazing, this dude is top notch

You are a blessing to the world Dr. Sugrue. I hope you cherish and realize that your life has run it's immense course, affecting and inspiring thousands of learners, the humble self included. Now that's an affirmation i would love to have before i die.

Do you think these larger than life figures correspond to the Biblical narrative of Giants in Genesis 6? The Bible also mentions "men of renown" in Genesis 6 as well.

School's now in session! The journey begins.

1. Myth is same religion, ethic...
2. The Gilgamesh Epic
3. Moral self invention
Grateful ❤

@Dr. Sugrue - I've noticed you've been replying to comments lately. If you have a moment, I would sincerely enjoy corresponding with you a bit, as I've recently taken up the study of ethics and philosophy as a hobby. As I'm sure you're aware, common sense is all to uncommon these days, and I have too few intelligent conversations. I will absolutely understand if you dont have the time, and would just like to take one more opportunity to thank you for your contributions to academia.

Hector....you mean mike Larry... Scorpion king... hilarious.

What would you say are the elements of epic?

Dr. Sugrue may I ask what your own religious beliefs are and how your study of religion and philosophy has affected them?

Bible has nothing to do with western civilisation, profesore please go back to the Greek philisophers.

Got it

I normally enjoy his lectures but I found this one to be a bit too dismissive. I’m not blaming Sugrue as much as the critical scholarship he is repeating. To what extent myths are true can’t be known but people thought Troy was a fictional city until they found it. “Experts” declared that David didn’t exist until they found tablets which were evidence of his grandson’s existence saying of the ‘House of David’ upon them.

Thank you Dr. for your insights. You’re appreciated!

^BERISHEET 2023-2030 !! TIME HAS RUN OUT !! Tribulation ! John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.^

Self-analysis? Never explained at end as promised, at least no here. Is it available elsewhere?

This guy is just a freak of nature. I absolutely love your channel. Thank you!

A good lecture but quite unfair in regards to assessing the quality of the epic in many regards, insofar as Mr. Sugrue lampoons the various "redactions" that appear towards the end of the epic. Im not sure why this term "redaction" is hit upon anyway, seeing as what Sugrue is referring to are really *interpolations*. Either way, the idea that they are clumsily handled is unjust, and outdated in fact--see Stephanie Dalley's recent translation for a better, more generous and more precise interpretation of the Utnapishtum / plant of life / snake episodes. Though i suppose Sugrue can be forgiven for judging erronously the (un)sophistication of the epic, given scholarship has gone further in elucidating its import and structural consistency since he gave this lecture. But all the same, the idea that the Epic of Gilgamesh--the oldest and most long-lived of any story on Earth--is "crude" or underdeveloped in some way is farcical. A good lecture with many interesting parallels drawn to the Bible, nonetheless.

It's cool how much epics still influence the ethics of people to this day! How many of you feel like The Lord of The Rings, or even Harry Potter has influenced your worldview? I do! Michael Sugrue, thank you, you are one of the best professors of our time : - )

"You can't have an epic at home."
Well not with that attitude

This was the Jordan Peterson of this era. Top top man, this one!

Like connection with the epic form as a tool to indentify motifs in the Bible: a chosen people as a collective hero involved in a covenant relationship with Yahweh, a unified god who secures them on a journey, not without obstacles mostly due to their own infidelities, back home to city of Jerusalem.

My dream is to finish up like this.

תודה רבה רבה רבה
Thanks for this information ❤❤

True for what? Should have been a salesman with that kind of grift 😂

I started speaking like this guy when I explain things to my kids lol. Thank you!

Part 2?!

Every time I finish one playlist I remember that there's like ten more. Honestly... fifty times better than Netflix.

In summary, an epic mish mesh.

The Bible as “an epic of moral self invention.” Self invention, yes. Moral? Well I guess you had to be there, but it’s the Bible’s rampant immorality (from a 21st century thinking and feeling person’s perspective) that saddens me; that THIS is the best we can come up with? Or are stuck with?

Is Michael Sugrue part Black. I would say 25%

And that how the so called Torah was written and whoever think otherwise well, here is the proof from the much superior epic of Gilgamesh and the relationship between it and the Torah.

Not just very very old ideas but also, to my way of reading it, was able to deal with human conditions very early and gave us a kind of solution to the problem of death by recognizing the individual death and that there would be no escape from this reality and more importantly the problem of life itself and that is to say it is the suffering leaving life itself not the afterlife and the meaningless idea of leaving for ever because we can not handle leaving this life let alone to leave more after death. I think, their recognition is a final decision on the human conditions and in a way precisely set a limits on what life is and what we can and we can't afford to do ornot do.

Epic lecture,
epic lecturer,
epic tie.

These 45 min lectures are more like 2 hours for me cus I always feel the need to stop and search up certain words or ideas that I’m not familiar with. Otherwise I feel like I’m doing myself an injustice continuing on not knowing what he’s actually saying

I enjoyed this lecture a lot but prof Rufus fears tells The Epic of Gilgamesh better. Respect ✊

Allow me to correct this speaker's ignorance about history. The global flood was a real event that preceded the Epic of Gilgamesh. The writer of the Epic of Gilgamesh took the story from the Bible, not the other way around. Try learning before speaking next time. EDIT alert! (Let me be a bit more precise with my statements: the writer of the Epic of Gilgamesh did not get his information from the "Bible", since the Bible had not yet been written down in a formal way for a book. It is more accurate to say that the Epic of Gilgamesh is a very distorted version of the eyewitness account of the global flood, that Moses would EVENTUALLY write down in the Bible. I probably should have expressed my statement this way in the comment above to avoid some confusion from those interested in replying to this comment). Now I have.

Where is Lecture 2? I don't understand the order of these lectures..

I'm glad this guy knows that the Epic of Gilgamesh is from several later fragments...oh...wait, he doesn't. I'm glad he knows how dissimilar they are and that it seems to describe an actual flood
.....nvm, evolution has to be true and he skips past the many irregularities