Dr. Dylan Johnson

Once it's portent that he's going to die, he blames everyone.

He blames Gilgamesh.

He blames Shamhat.

Of course.

Which raises a question.

Well, if he'd never done any of this,

Was he going to die?

It doesn't tell us, but it becomes the major plot point.

The turning point in the epic of Gilgamesh is Enkidu's death.

So there again, I think this question emerges, part of the shared conceptual world that these authors are working in.

I would say the connecting thread for all of the early chapters of Genesis, what we call the primeval history, basically up to the Tower of Babel, are genealogies.

So-and-so begat so-and-so, so-and-so begat so-and-so, so-and-so begat so-and-so.

So there's no reason to try to think outside the normal bounds of human reproduction.

It's the connecting link between all of these stories.

How do we get from Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Seth to Noah?

Long lists of genealogy.

So I mean, if it was in the garden or after the garden, I don't know that we're bound to what the text says.

They have other things going on at that moment.

So maybe they were a bit busy.

So I don't know.