Pie in the Sky

What I think I hear you saying is that this KBW thing is just a pie in the sky fantasy of yours. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but here I've been wracking my brain trying to help you accomplish it, and you don't really want to accomplish it, do you. The thing about a fantasy is, if you try to actually do it, whether you succeed or fail, it takes the fun out of it and you have to go looking for another fantasy with which to entertain yourself. So I won't bother you any more with my helpful hints, because I certainly don't want to spoil your fun.

I remember that story about Naked Noah. See the Hebrews had this hang up about nakedness, they thought it was disgraceful or something. I think the guy who found Noah naked was one of his sons, and all he did was run and tell his brother about it, thinking that they could both have a good laugh about it. The brother, however, had more respect for his father than that, so he backed up to Noah and dropped a blanket over him without actually seeing him naked, which was the proper thing to do. There may more to it, but that's all I remember.

You can tell a lot about people from the stories they tell. My hypothetical wife, who is better at finding things than I am, found the Epic of Gilgamesh for me today. After I confirmed the part about Utnapishtim, I leafed through the book and remembered some other things about it. This is supposed to be a religious text because it's all full of gods and heroes, but there is nothing in it about right and wrong or good and evil. This tells me that the concept of right and wrong that we have today was not developed among the people who told this story. Even in our own Bible, the Old Testament displays a way different concept of good and evil than the New Testament does. I remember, when I first started reading the O.T. as a child, that I thought it didn't seem like it was talking about the same God that I had learned about at Elsdon Methodist Church.

In a manner of speaking, it wasn't. I found out later that some of those O.T. stories were borrowed from the Mesopotamian culture from whence the Hebrews came. They consolidated all the Mesopotamian gods into the one God that we have today. Well, not exactly. The role of the mean gods was consolidated into the character of Satan, which is kind of strange because we are supposed to be monotheists. Then God and Satan each had their own angels, so the pretext of monotheism was actually pretty thin.

Okay, one example, and then I'll try to get off this Noah's Ark kick. In our Bible, God decided to flood the world because the people had become evildoers. In Gilgamesh, the god Enlil wanted to flood the world because the people had become too noisy and were disturbing his sleep. Apparently Enlil didn't have the power to do it himself because he persuaded all the other gods to help him. Only the god Ea, who had a soft spot in his heart for the human race, dissented from Enlil's plan, but he didn't have the courage or the power to directly oppose it. Instead, he went behind Enlil's back and warned Utnapishtim about the impending flood, suggesting that he build a really big boat to ride it out, and save the animals while he was at it. After the flood, Enlil was pissed to find out that some of the humans had survived, but the other gods felt remorse over their part in the deal and took Ea's side. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Enlil made Utnapishtim immortal as a reward for his work instead of punishing him like he wanted to. Now Enlil was about the highest god on Earth, second only to Anu, who mostly kept to himself in Heaven and didn't usually intervene in Earthly matters. Nevertheless, Enlil knew that he would have a hard time ruling the Earth if all his subordinate gods  refused to cooperate with him. The book didn't say this, but I think it sounds like the ancient Mesopotamians were pretty savvy about politics, even if they didn't know the difference between right and wrong. And so it has been with politicians even unto this day.