Forgive me where I generally refer to highly degreed archaeologists and other highly educated folks as morons and refer to some findings as stupid without further qualification. To me this is one of those rare issues that are extremely cut and dried.
C.S. Lewis wrote that it's important to read things from other generations and other centuries because their errors and the errors of the thought of their time will be immediately obvious to you, while things written right now will have many bias's and errors that will be hard to see because they are taken for granted. Christianesque theorism has gone down the same road with the religions of Egypt, now that that is over there is an attack from literately the other direction. That is, there was a time when liberal Christian "historical theorists" told people it was all based on the religions of Egypt, because Egypt is close and was well established by the time of Moses (obviously).
If you represent you're teacher properly (which I trust you do) the arguments for an Egyptian basis for scripture is exactly the same as the arguments for a Sumerian\EoG basis. First, there are similarities, and second the Egyptian\Sumerian works are older (given the Pentateuch is Mosaic, Job would still be older, but that is besides the point). I have not read the entire Epic of Gilgamesh, but of course no one alive today has, its fragmented.
I can't say there is any conceivable similarity between most of the Epic of Gilgamesh and anything in the Genesis account other than that there are floods in both of them. Let's look at just a few things:
1. When the EoG starts everything already exists. Not a creation account.
2. Gilgamesh is a king famous for sleeping with women before they are allowed to be married. Nothing and no one anywhere in Scripture is like that.
3. Enkidu the wild man becomes civilized by visiting a temple prostitute then fights Gilgamesh then becomes his friend. No correlation at all, zero.
4. Way later on Gilgamesh has dreams he cannot understand and Enkidu interprets them. Idiots would say this is like Joseph and Pharaoh, but other than the dream interpreter thing the similarities are zero. Dream interpretation is not a copyrighted concept, every culture I know of has some form of it. Enkidu's interpretations where various good omens, not really useful like Josephs actual interpretations.
5. There is a large section of war between deieties ect and monstor fighting like you would see in Grecio\Roman mythologies, or any pagan mythology, or any modern video game. No scriptural similarities at all for a large section.
6. There is a mention of a great flood of whom no one but Utnapishtim and his wife survived, and they where granted immortality, and the only reason they are even in the story is because Gilgamesh and Enkidu want immortality too. Despite the lack of importance to the EoG itself, this is probably the main reason morons want to say that Scripture is based on the EoG.
7. Lots of blah blah blah about Gilgamesh failing a few tests for immortality, another mention of the great flood, blah blah blah nothing whatsoever to do with anything anywhere in scripture.
This is based on my understanding of the Akkadian Babylonian version. As far as I know the older Babylonian edition is generally similar but highly fragmented. The Sumerian version is what a lot of the stir is about because someone fancied to date it as stupid old. There is no real way to translate Sumerian, its a long dead language without any concordance or translation encyclopedia, there are some ways to get a general idea of this equates to that. But think, we have tonnes of old Greek references and there are disputed translations. I've heard Sumerian translators say things like 'well that guy from 20 years ago thought it meant that, but now we think this." and then go on and belittle the person of 20 years ago for not being mainstream. It's academic either way as to my knowledge there is very little difference between the Sumerian and Babylonian versions, other than that there is another tablet or two in the Sumerian ones. You've heard a run down, if you whern't being led could you see similarity?
So, the serious points of similarity are in dream interpretation and a great flood. Now, more points of similarity could be assumed, but only in the same way I could say "Duke of Marshall is sympathetic to polygamy so obviously he based his thinking on Islam and is secretly a Muslim." Seriously, look at just point's 2 and 3 and ask yourself "¿Are these people like anyone in Scripture?" So, dream interpretation, every culture does it, not a substantial similarity. Great flood, well, almost every culture has one. Tlaloc, by the way, is the Aztec god of the world Before the Flood, if having a flood means one is based on the other then there is a LOT of explaining to do there. The only realistic assumption is that the whole world had a flood, but thats another story. That leaves us with what? There where people in both scripture and the EoG? I'll grant them that similarity. Bah... Seriously. Scripture based on EoG is about as viable as Blood Libel. They all have 0 realism and 90% popular support.
Hopefully that is about what you where looking for in a reply. I would be extremely angry at anyone trying to push that bull. It is one of the heresies of the now, people have tried it in the past and they got beat, so people try to say 'well its really based in this then.' to start it all over again. The EoG basis idea should go out of vogue in about 40-60 years, then there will be something else.
It really bites me is that a lot of it comes from pushing the idea of a localized flood. You may not have heard that in you're course, but thats what secularists have been doing in the last decade or so. They've started dating Sumerian things 6000 or so BC (because they can date whatever they want as long as its popular, this is how archaeology works if the date is before 200B.C. Even when they have calenders to correlate things its NOT straightforward. There are three lines of though as to what the date is in the Aztec calender, and we have a date that correlates directly to our calender {Fall of Tenoticlan, Mexico City}, anything that predates our calender gets very iffy. Once they get to pottery dating it's outright wild speculation, and a LOT is based on pottery and stone dating. Personally I take Jewish dates for anything B.C.E., and our calender agrees with te Jewish one for everything after that.) to attack theists. They do do it to attack theists, there isn't any viable reason for their dates other than that. Then they say there is a localized flood at the time of EoG. So, Sumeria is important to atheists. As I said before, Aztecs had a flood, so if it was localized it was everywhere from Sumeria (Iran) to the Aztec Kingdom (Central America), and I can only assume it travelled both ways. So I agree, there was a localized flood, it only hit the whole world, the moon and stars where entirely unaffected.
There is claim that Ur of the Chadians was a Sumerian city, well, it could have been, but Abraham certainly left it and its culture behind.
Bah, sorry if that was too long, the EoG stuff gets me. Talk to you Later.
