Büyük Tufan Mitleri ve Atra-Hasis
Flood Mtyths and Atra-Hasis

Summary/Abstract: The Flood comprises and signposts one of the most significant archetypes of human history: Divine retribution. It has been explored so far in a myriad of myths as the supernatural punishment of people. In the Flood narratives, people who have grown corrupted or committed an offense against gods, are destroyed by the deities. However, a few people are made to survive so that humankind would find a way to breed again. The first known great Flood narrative is the myth of Atra-hasis, a biblical story. Atra-hasis is the first literary piece emphasising the belief that the class struggle ends up almost always in the favour and reinforcement of the up-per-class. However, the discourse generated by the Flood narratives, unlike Atra-hasis, mostly stress the centrality of an all-encompassing and self-oriented ab-solute authority. In this respect, many of the flood narratives spread the idea that it is necessary to side with the gods or that which receive their power from gods, thereby legalizing the emergence of the clergy or continuation of its presence. However, the Flood narratives produced in the Chinese and Islamic cultures are different than those of the others: the former fore-grounds science (knowledge and truth) and the latter does not produce a class-conscious discourse.

• Details
• Contents