¹ Given that “intertextuality,” a literary theory initiated by Julia Kristeva in the 1960s, claims that all texts and even all of life consists of words already said, “meta-intertextuality” would be impossible. However, this theory is often applied as a method for textual comparison, which would invite such meta-analysis. The argument made here examines the ways intertextuality is employed as a method by which to compare texts and draw new meaning from them, rather than only as a theory about human understanding, given that the theory is applied in this way both in biblical studies and literary studies more broadly (for discussion, see John Barton, “Déjà lu: Intertextuality, Method or Theory?,” in Reading Job Intertextually [ed. Katharine Dell and Will Kynes; LHBOTS 574; New York: T&T Clark, 2013] 1–16; Will Kynes, “Intertextuality: Method and Theory in Job and Psalm 119,” in Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of Professor John Barton [ed. Katharine J. Dell and Paul M. Joyce; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013] 201–13).

² See William L. Moran, “The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Document of Ancient Humanism,” The Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Bulletin 22 (1991) 15–22. Due to the significance of these texts for addressing this vital question, the literature on each individually, as well as the comparison between them, is voluminous. I have endeavored to engage with relevant studies from a broad range of perspectives, but space limitations have restricted how deeply I could do so.

³ For “Shamhat” as a personal name, though with an “obvious allusion” to ̌samḫatu, the common noun for prostitute, see Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (2 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 1:148.

⁴ Against Phyllis Trible’s view that the initial human in Eden only becomes male when the female is created, see, e.g., S. S. Lanser, “Feminist Criticism in the Garden: Inferring Genesis 2–3,” Semeia 41 (1988) 67–84, at 69–72; David J. A. Clines, “What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Irredeemably Androcentric Orientations in Genesis 1–3,” in What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament (JSOTSup 94; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) 25–48, at 40–41; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1–11 (LHBOTS 592; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013) 33; cf. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 80. The first unambiguous appearance of the name “Adam” appears at Gen 4:25.

⁵ For the likelihood that the authors of Genesis, regardless of one’s historical reconstruction, were familiar with oral if not written versions of the story of Gilgamesh, see Esther J. Hamori, “Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Jacob Story,” JBL 130 (2011) 625–42, at 639–41. See also Friedhelm Hartenstein, “ ‘Und weit war seine Einsicht’ (Gilgamesch I,202). Menschwerdung im Gilgamesch-Epos und in der Paradieserzählung Genesis 2-3,” in Essen und Trinken in der Bibel. Ein literarisches Festmahl für Rainer Kessler zur 65. Geburtstag (ed. Michaela Geiger, Christl M. Maier, and Uta Schmidt; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2009) 101–15, at 103–4. For Gen 1–11 similarly demonstrating knowledge of and intentionally creating a “counter-story” to Enuma elish, see Eckart Frahm, “Counter-texts, Commentaries, and Adaptations: Politically Motivated Responses to the Babylonian Epic of Creation in Mesopotamia, the Biblical World, and Elsewhere,” Orient 45 (2010) 3–33, at 14–17.

⁶ See, e.g., nn. 24 and 27 below.

⁷ Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf; New York: Basic Books, 1963) 228.

⁸ Aryeh Amihay, “Biblical Myths and the Inversion Principle: A Neostructuralist Approach,” JBL 137 (2018) 555–79, at 559–60; see Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, 210–11.

⁹ Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology: Volume 2 (trans. Monique Layton; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) 259–60; cf. idem, Structural Anthropology, 206–31.

¹⁰ Ibid., 226. See Amihay, “Biblical Myths,” 560.

¹¹ Yair Zakovitch, “Inner-Biblical Interpretation,” in Reading Genesis: Ten Methods (ed. Ronald S. Hendel; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 92–118, at 95. See also idem, Through the Looking Glass: Mirror Narratives in the Bible (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1995) (Hebrew); Amihay, “Biblical Myths,” 560–61.

¹² Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch, From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends (trans. Valerie Zakovitch; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012) 131–37.

¹³ Amihay, “Biblical Myths,” 579; cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (Massey Lectures 1977; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978; repr. New York: Schocken, 1995) 38.

¹⁴ For the distinctions between these approaches, see Kynes, “Intertextuality,” 202.

¹⁵ Thus, the argument made here does not take a side regarding the debate over whether intertextuality may legitimately be applied to the analysis of specific allusions between texts.

¹⁶ Amihay, “Biblical Myths,” 565–69.

¹⁷ In this article, I focus on the Standard Version of the epic. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from George’s translation of that version (see n. 3 above). The Old Babylonian version of the epic differs at points in its aim and assumptions, and, where relevant, I acknowledge those differences (see, e.g., nn. 50, 102 below), but I leave a thorough analysis of the relationship between the versions to others.

¹⁸ Hamori, “Echoes of Gilgamesh,” 641.

¹⁹ Abraham Winitzer, “Etana in Eden: New Light on the Mesopotamian and Biblical Tales in Their Semitic Context,” JAOS 133 (2013) 441–65, at 464–65.

²⁰ David Jobling, “Myth and Its Limits in Genesis 2.4b–3.24,” in idem, The Sense of Biblical Narrative: Structural Analysis in the Hebrew Bible (2 vols.; JSOTSup 39; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986) 2:17–42.

²¹ Ibid., 18; citing Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Reponse à quelques questions,” Esprit 31 (1963) 628–53, at 631–32.

²² Morris Jastrow, “Adam and Eve in Babylonian Literature,” AJSL 15 (1899) 193–214, at 211–12. He refers to Enkidu as “Eabani” and Shamhat as “Ukhat.”

²³ Jastrow (“Adam and Eve”) argues that Shamhat’s words (I 207) should be read in the future tense as a promise, a view that is no longer held (e.g., George, Gilgamesh, 1:551). Tense aside, interpreters continue to note this connection. See, e.g., Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (trans. John Scullion; London: SPCK, 1984) 248.

²⁴ E.g., Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 204, 226, 235, 240, 247–48, 270; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (2nd ed.; AB 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 26–27; J. Alberto Soggin, Das Buch Genesis (trans. Thomas Frauenlob; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997) 75–76; John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh: Clark, 1910) 91. Hermann Gunkel, however, rejects Jastrow’s reading (Genesis [trans. Mark E. Biddle; Mercer Library of Biblical Studies; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997] 38).

²⁵ John A. Bailey, “Initiation and the Primal Woman in Gilgamesh and Genesis 2–3,” JBL 89 (1970) 137–50, at 147–48.

²⁶ It is a testament to the widespread influence of the Eve-Shamhat framework in biblical scholarship that the closest parallel to the Eve-Enkidu framework described below that I have found appears in a popular treatment by someone outside the guild: Stephen Greenblatt in The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (New York: Norton, 2017). Though Greenblatt notices several of the connections below, the genre of his work prevents him from exploring them in depth. Addressing a similar audience, Mark Jarman also notes the similarity between Enkidu and Eve as figures created to provide companionship but does not explore the link further (Mark Jarman, “When the Light Came On: The Epic Gilgamesh,” Hudson Review 58 [2005] 329–34, at 330).

²⁷ Ronald A. Veenker, “Forbidden Fruit: Ancient Near Eastern Sexual Metaphors,” HUCA 70 (1999) 57–73, at 73; italics in original. See also, e.g., Robert Gordis, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Old Testament and the Qumran Scrolls,” JBL 76 (1957) 123–38, at 135; S. G. F. Brandon, “The Origin of Death in Some Ancient Near Eastern Religions,” RelS 1 (1966) 217–28, at 226; Herbert Chanan Brichto, The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 86–94; Ronald A. Simkins, “Gender Construction in the Yahwist Creation Myth,” in Genesis (ed. Athalya Brenner; FCB 2/1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998) 32–52, at 48; Hartenstein, “Menschwerdung im Gilgamesch-Epos,” 101–15; Arthur George and Elena George, The Mythology of Eden (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) 234–37; Mark S. Smith, The Genesis of Good and Evil: The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2018) 39.

²⁸ Thomas Van Nortwick, “The Wild Man: The Epic of Gilgamesh,” in Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) 8–38, at 12–13.

²⁹ Ibid., 12–13

³⁰ Unless otherwise noted, all biblical translations are from the NRSV. Whether being “alone” also implies that the man is “lonely” or simply insufficient to his charge is also a matter of debate. See Karalina Matskevich, Construction of Gender and Identity in Genesis: The Subject and the Other (LHBOTS 647; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019) 13.

³¹ Filling a lacuna in the standard text, George reads a fragment from an exercise tablet in Nippur as the goddess Aururu’s charge: “[Let her create] his [equal]” (George, Gilgamesh, 1:290–91). Following George, italics indicate uncertainty in translation.

³² John Maier, “Gilgamesh: Anonymous Tradition and Authorial Value,” Neohelicon 14 (1987) 83–95, at 88; Van Nortwick, “Wild Man,” 8–38.

³³ See I 214, 268, 291, 296–97; II 186, 189, 194, 199, 241; III 5, 8, 15, 219, 224, 230; IV 17–18, 21, 27–28, 30, 50–51, 54, 95–96, 99, 108–9, 137–38, 141, 155, 178–79, 182, 212, 215, 218, 233, 237, 243; V 66, 96, 100, 102, 157, 182, 241, 257, 259, 262, 293; VI 130, 132, 183; VII 1, 30, 67, 69, 71, 84, 88, 95–96, 139, 164–65, 176, 252–53, 263, 266; VIII 2, 44, 50–51, 59, 68–70, 97–102, 105–6, 108, 110, 112–15, 117–18, 120–22, 124, 126, 130–32, 138, 142, 147, 151, 156, 161, 166–67, 173–74, 183, 188, 199, 203; IX 1; X 30, 53–56, 63, 65, 68–69, 126–27, 132–33, 140, 142, 145–46, 226–27, 232–33, 240, 242, 245–46; XII 90, 92, 96.

³⁴ Georges Dossin, “Enkidou dans l’‘Épopée de Gilgames,’ ” Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques 42 (1956) 580–93, at 582.

³⁵ Carol L. Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) 73; similarly, Speiser, Genesis, 17; Trible, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 90.

³⁶ Pace Clines, “What Does Eve Do?” 27–37; see Trible, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 89–90; Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 232; Helen Schüngel-Straumann, “On the Creation of Man and Woman in Genesis 1–3: The History and Reception of the Texts Reconsidered,” in A Feminist Companion to Genesis (ed. Athalya Brenner; FCB 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993) 53–76, at 66; Day, Creation to Babel, 34.

³⁷ Demonstrating the interpretive influence of the Eve-Shamhat framework, Stephen Mitchell also mentions the parallel between the matches, but, rather than associating Enkidu with Eve, he only connects Enkidu to Adam further, since both find a match (Gilgamesh [New York: Free Press, 2004] 10, 15, 17). This overlooks that Enkidu was created to be a match rather than to find one. Hartenstein similarly notes that Enkidu was created to be a corresponding companion, but then, instead of noting that the same is true of Eve, claims that Adam similarly finds fulfillment in the woman (“Menschwerdung im Gilgamesch-Epos,” 114).

³⁸ L. M. Bechtel, “Genesis 2.4B–3.24: A Myth about Human Maturation,” JSOT 20 (1995) 3–26, at 15.

³⁹ R. David Freedman, “Woman, a Power Equal to Man: Translation of Woman as a ‘Fit Helpmate’ for Man Is Questioned,” BAR 9 (1983) 56–58. Ziony Zevit employs the comparison with Gilgamesh to dispute this interpretation, claiming that, since a male is chosen to match Gilgamesh’s power in the epic and a female to pacify the impetuous goddess Ishata in an Old Babylonian hymn, the woman in Genesis, as a different gender, could not be a “powerful counterpart” to Adam (What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden [Yale University Press, 2013] 133–34). This overlooks the “inversion principle” discussed above.

⁴⁰ Ann K. Guinan and Peter Morris, “Mesopotamia Before and After Sodom: Colleagues, Crack Troops, Comrades-in-arms,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity (ed. Ilona Zsolnay; London: Routledge, 2016) 150–75, at 163–64.

⁴¹ Van Nortwick, “Wild Man,” 14–15. Enkidu, he claims, “is, in tune with the natural world, while Gilgamesh is a man of the city; his ties are to animals, Gilgamesh’s to humans; he dresses in animal skins, Gilgamesh (we suppose) in the finery of a king.”

⁴² Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 74. See, similarly, Greenblatt, Rise and Fall, 61.

⁴³ Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 115 (italics in original).

⁴⁴ Benjamin Foster, “Gilgamesh: Sex, Love and the Ascent of Knowledge,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope (ed. John H. Marks and Robert M. Good; Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987) 21–42, at 22.

⁴⁵ For discussion of the translation of this passage, see Neal H. Walls, Desire, Discord and Death: Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2001) 27.

⁴⁶ The reading of this phrase is uncertain. It may be damqata (you are handsome), as George reads it here, but the reading enqāta (second person singular stative of emēqu, “to be wise”) is also frequently attested, leading to the translation, “you are wise.” For discussion, see Rainer Albertz, “ ‘Ihr werdet sein wie Gott.’ Gen 3, 1–7 auf dem Hintergrund des alttestamentlichen und des sumerisch-babylonischen Menschenbildes,” WO (1993) 89–111, at 103–4. Albertz concludes that however this phrase is translated, the context, which describes Enkidu gaining reason and entering civilization (cf. I 214), ties wisdom with being like God as in Gen 3:5.

⁴⁷ See Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982) 210. This could also be translated, “became like a man.”

⁴⁸ E.g., Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 26–27.

⁴⁹ Christian Zgoll, “From Wild Being to Human to Friend: Reflections on Anthropology in the Gilgamesh Epic and in Homer’s Odyssey,” Kaskal 9 (2012) 137–55, at 142–49.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 149.

⁵¹ Aage Westenholz and Ulla Koch-Westenholz, “Enkidu—the Noble Savage?,” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert (ed. A. R. George and I. L. Finkel; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000) 437–51, at 444.

⁵² See Daniel E. Fleming and Sara J. Milstein, The Buried Foundation of the Gilgamesh Epic: The Akkadian Huwawa Narrative (CM 39; Leiden: Brill, 2010). They argue that two different Enkidus lie behind the Standard Version: the shepherd of the Yale tablet and the wild man of the Pennsylvania tablet. For criticism of this reconstruction, see Benjamin R. Foster, review of The Buried Foundation of the Gilgamesh Epic: The Akkadian Huwawa Narrative, by Daniel E. Fleming and Sara J. Milstein, JAOS 131 (2011) 146–48.

⁵³ For early hints at this view, see Morris Jastrow and Albert Tobias Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920) 25. See also, e.g., Dossin, who suggests the Epic was written to advocate for the coexistence of the urban and nomadic populations (“Enkidou,” 589, 592–93).

⁵⁴ Tigay rejects the Amorite comparison due to the close association of Enkidu with animals, which is not found in descriptions of the Amorites, and the “extensive physical changes” Enkidu’s intercourse with Shamhat causes (I 199–202) (Gilgamesh Epic, 200–203). George translates lullû amēlu “man-savage” (Gilgamesh, 1:450).

⁵⁵ Tigay, Gilgamesh Epic, 202.

⁵⁶ Keith Dickson, “Looking at the Other in ‘Gilgamesh,’ ” JAOS 127 (2007) 171–82, at 173–74.

⁵⁷ This verse offers another possible parallel between Enkidu and Eve, once again emphasizing her equality to the man, since Enkidu is described as “in build … the equal of Gilgamesh, (but) shorter in stature, sturdier of bone” in the Pennsylvania tablet (OB II 80–81, 183–84).

⁵⁸ Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 75. The text repeats three times that the woman is “taken” (לקח) from the man (vv. 21, 22, 23) (Alan Jon Hauser, “Genesis 2–3: The Theme of Intimacy and Alienation,” in Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature [ed. D. J. A. Clines, D. M. Gunn, and A. J. Hauser; JSOTSup 19; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982] 20–36, at 24). Joel Baden has argued that the creation of woman from the man draws on a horticultural metaphor of taking a cutting from one plant to produce another. This only reinforces the “shared species” of the resulting organism (Joel Baden, “An Unnoted Nuance in Genesis 2:21–22,” VT 69 [2019] 167–72, at 170).

⁵⁹ Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15 (WBC 1; Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 70; cf. Gen 29:14; Judg 9:2; 2 Sam 5:1; 19:12–13. See also Hauser, “Genesis 2–3,” 24; David M. Carr, “Competing Construals of Human Relations with ‘Animal’ Others in the Primeval History (Genesis 1–11),” JBL 140 (2021) 251–69, at 257.

⁶⁰ Trible, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 99.

⁶¹ Hope Nash Wolff, “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Heroic Life,” JAOS 89 (1969) 392–98, at 394.

⁶² Sara Mandell, “Liminality, Altered States, and the Gilgamesh Epic,” in Gilgamesh: A Reader (ed. John Maier; Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1997) 122–30; Susan Ackerman, When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) 106–8.

⁶³ “Wisdom” is associated with the gods, when Anu, Enlil, and Ea are said to have broadened Gilgamesh’s wisdom even before Enkidu meets him (I 242). However, his wisdom subsequently increases, because the epic opens by praising Gilgamesh, who “[learnt] the totality of wisdom about everything,” including secrets from the antediluvian age (I 6–8), which he only gains after meeting Enkidu.

⁶⁴ See the Old Babylonian tablet of the epic reportedly from Sippar (OB VA+BM) (iii. 3–5) (George, Gilgamesh, 1:279).

⁶⁵ Brichto, Names of God, 87. Dossin, similarly, calls him “mi-homme, mi-bête” (half-man, half-beast) and emphasizes that he was “plus de la bête que de l’être humain” (more beast than human) in his original animal-like existence (“Enkidou,” 583, 588–89).

⁶⁶ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 28.

⁶⁷ Maier, “Gilgamesh,” 92.

⁶⁸ Dickson, “Looking at the Other,” 176.

⁶⁹ Wolff, “Gilgamesh,” 394. Further, Walls notes how “divine-human, divine-animal, and human-animal engagements” contribute to the epic’s construction of a “poetics of desire” (Desire, Discord and Death, 48).

⁷⁰ Paul D. Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6–11,” JBL 96 (1977) 195–233, at 214; see also Robert A. Oden, “Divine Aspirations in Atrahasis and in Genesis 1–11,” ZAW 93 (1981) 197–216, at 215–16; Gale A. Yee, “Gender, Class, and the Social-Scientific Study of Genesis 2–3,” Semeia 87 (1999) 177–92, at 182.

⁷¹ Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Eden Narrative: A Literary and Religio-Historical Study of Genesis 2–3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 126; cf. 99–122; see also Day, Creation to Babel, 25. See, e.g., the two trees in Eden (Gen 2:16–17; 3:5–6, 22), and Adapa, which indicates these two divine prerogatives: “To [Adapa] [Ea] gave wisdom, but did not give eternal life” (Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989] 182).

⁷² Mettinger, Eden Narrative, 126. Uta-napishti and his wife are the exception that proves this rule. When they receive immortality, the god Enlil proclaims they “shall be like us gods” (XI 204). See Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 272.

⁷³ See Carol Newsom, “Gen 2–3 and 1 Enoch 6–16: Two Myths of Origins and Their Ethical Implications,” in Shaking Heaven and Earth: Essays in Honor of Walter Brueggemann and Charles B. Cousar (ed. Christine Roy Yoder et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005) 7–22, at 9–10. For the speaking serpent’s violation of this boundary, which “challenges the hierarchical order of the universe,” see George Savran, “Beastly Speech: Intertextuality, Balaam’s Ass and the Garden of Eden,” JSOT 19 (1994) 33–55, at 34, 39. For further reflection on this boundary in Dan 4, see Matthias Henze, The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar: The Ancient Near Eastern Origins and Early History of Interpretation of Daniel 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

⁷⁴ Veenker, “Forbidden Fruit,” 73, 70 n. 50 (italics in original). For similar attempts to associate Adam initially with the animals, frequently in comparison with Enkidu, see Karen Randolph Joines, “The Serpent in Gen 3,” ZAW 87 (1975) 1–11, at 7; Moran, “Epic of Gilgamesh,” 121–22; Bechtel, “Genesis 2.4B–3.24,” 11 n. 21, 15–16; Gregory Mobley, “The Wild Man in the Bible and the Ancient Near East,” JBL 116 (1997) 217–33, at 227; Brichto, Names of God, 86–90; Robert S. Kawashima, “Homo Faber in J’s Primeval History,” ZAW 116 (2004) 483–501, at 484; Carr, “Competing Construals,” 256.

⁷⁵ Contra Kawashima, “Homo Faber,” 487; Richard Bauckham, “Humans, Animals, and the Environment in Genesis 1–3,” in Genesis and Christian Theology (ed. Nathan MacDonald, Mark W. Elliott, and Grant Macaskill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) 175–89, at 187; Carr, “Competing Construals,” 256. See Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis = Be-reshit (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 17.

⁷⁶ Greenblatt, Rise and Fall, 57.

⁷⁷ Jastrow, “Adam and Eve,” 210.

⁷⁸ Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 226.

⁷⁹ Bailey, “Primal Woman,” 150, 140; see also Mandell, “Liminality,” 124; Rivkah Harris, Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia: The Gilgamesh Epic and Other Ancient Literature (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000) 120; Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 29; Julia Assante, “Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity (ed. Ilona Zsolnay; London: Routledge, 2016) 52–92, at 47.

⁸⁰ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 52; Hartenstein, “Menschwerdung im Gilgamesch-Epos,” 108, 114.

⁸¹ Bailey, “Primal Woman,” 150. See also Schüngel-Straumann, “On the Creation,” 66–67.

⁸² Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 226; Schüngel-Straumann, “On the Creation,” 66–67.

⁸³ Further, in earlier Sumerian texts, Enkidu initially plays the role of Gilgamesh’s servant and is only later elevated to equal companionship (George, Gilgamesh, 1:140–43). David Halperin argues that, despite the emphasis on Enkidu’s equality in the later versions, narrative features, such as Gilgamesh’s continued protagonist role, maintain the hierarchical relationship between them, consistent with other ancient friendship narratives (“Heroes and Their Pals,” in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love [New York: Routledge, 1990] 75–87). That social inequality does not, however, invalidate the emphasis on (initial or eventual) ontological equality in both texts. For this “complex” tension in 1 Cor 11:8–12, see Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 1997) 188.

⁸⁴ George W. Coats, Genesis, with an Introduction to Narrative Literature (FOTL 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 53; Jobling, “Myth and Its Limits,” 35; Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001) 45; Matskevich, Construction of Gender, 16.

⁸⁵ James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (London: SCM, 1992) 71–72.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 72. Similarly, Richard Whitekettle, “Oxen Can Plow, But Women Can Ruminate: Animal Classification and the Helper in Genesis 2,18–24,” SJOT 23 (2009) 243–56, at 254–56; Smith, Genesis of Good and Evil, 54.

⁸⁷ Hauser, “Genesis 2–3,” 23.

⁸⁸ Jobling, “Myth and Its Limits,” 35–36.

⁸⁹ Trible, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 92.

⁹⁰ Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 74.

⁹¹ See, e.g., Lanser, “Feminist Criticism,” 76; Clines, “What Does Eve Do?,” 25–41; Yee, “Genesis 2–3,” 182. However, Trible argues that the text “presages a break with patriarchy” (Phyllis Trible, “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation,” JAAR 41 (1973) 30–48, at 42; cf. idem, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 72–143).

⁹² Schüngel-Straumann, “On the Creation,” 66.

⁹³ See ibid., 66, 72.

⁹⁴ See section D, “The Boundaries of Humanity” above.

⁹⁵ See Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and the Bible (CBQMS 26; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1994) 148–49. For a defense of a reference to marriage in Gen 2:24 rather than simply to “love” as a “natural drive” or “elemental power,” see Angelo Tosato, “On Genesis 2:24,” CBQ 52 (1990) 389–409, at 398–404.

⁹⁶ The Hebrew word אשׁה is the same word previously used for “woman,” but the context justifies the NRSV translation here, particularly with a pronomial suffix. See Tosato, “On Genesis 2:24,” 402.

⁹⁷ Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) 218. See also Benno Landsberger, “Jungfräulichkeit. Ein Beitrag zum Thema ‘Beilager und Eheschliessung,’ ” in Symbolae Iuridicae et Historicae Martino David Dedicatae (2 vols.; ed. J. A. Ankum, Robert Feenstra, and William F. Leemans; Leiden: Brill, 1968) 2:41–105, at 83–84.

⁹⁸ E.g., J. J. Finkelstein, “On Some Recent Studies in Cuneiform Law,” JAOS 90 (1970) 243–56, at 251–52; Tigay, Gilgamesh Epic, 182–84; Foster, “Gilgamesh,” 31; George, Gilgamesh, 1:455.

⁹⁹ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 30.

¹⁰⁰ Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, 218.

¹⁰¹ Foster, “Gilgamesh,” 31.

¹⁰² Ibid., 33.

¹⁰³ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 28, 36. Foster sees this as a rejection of sexual attraction as an “outside threat” to the heroes’ unity (“Gilgamesh,” 34).

¹⁰⁴ See Harris, Gender and Aging, 127. For further textual details playing on Enkidu as the wife of Gilgamesh, see Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “A Note on an Overlooked Word-Play in the Akkadian Gilgamesh,” in ZIKIR ŠUMIM: Assyriological Studies Presented to F. R. Kraus on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. George van Driel et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1982) 128–32, at 130.

¹⁰⁵ Diane M. Sharon, “The Doom of Paradise: Literary Patterns in Accounts of Paradise and Mortality in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East,” in Genesis (ed. Brenner) 53–80, at 77.

¹⁰⁶ Though the postmortem comfort associated with having multiple sons in the later-added tablet XII (102–16) may implicitly endorse marriage and procreation, this potential message is overshadowed by the text’s misogynistic depiction of “the superiority of male homosocial experience to heterosexual relations” (Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 77).

¹⁰⁷ Assante, for example, argues that the epic reflects a broader preference for same-sex bonds over conjugal and kinship relations among the power elite in first millennium Assyria (Assante, “Men Looking at Men,” 47). Ackerman attributes this sexual relationship to a liminal state of rite of passage, in which social norms were suspended or reversed (Ackerman, When Heroes Love, 47–87). See also Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 9–92, though he acknowledges the heroes’ erotic attachment is “never unambiguous” (62). Foster and Halperin, however, read the Epic’s use of conjugal and kinship imagery as a means of displaying the strength of the heroes’ nonsexual bond (Foster, “Gilgamesh,” 33; Halperin, “Heroes and Their Pals,” 85). For a dismissal of sexual allusions in Gilgamesh’s initial dreams of Enkidu, see Martin Worthington, Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism (Boston: de Gruyter, 2012) 204–8.

¹⁰⁸ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 70–71.

¹⁰⁹ Hermann Spieckermann, “Ambivalenzen. Ermöglichte und verwirklichte Schöpfung in Genesis 2f,” in Verbindungslinien. Festschrift für Werner H. Schmidt zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Axel Grauper, Holger Delkurt, and Alexander B. Ernst; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000) 363–76, at 368.

¹¹⁰ Greenblatt, Rise and Fall, 61.

¹¹¹ See Barr, Garden of Eden, 6; Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 63. Maier also rejects the idea of a “fall” in Enkidu’s story, since in the epic death has no ethical significance (Maier, “Gilgamesh,” 86–87).

¹¹² Day, Creation to Babel, 44–45. Though Mark Smith claims, “Genesis 3 never characterizes the eating of the fruit as evil or as sin, disobedience, or transgression,” he acknowledges that the tale involves “divine commands” and “the divine responses to the human couple not following them” (Smith, Genesis of Good and Evil, 59, 49).

¹¹³ E.g., Veenker, “Forbidden Fruit,” 57. For surveys of the many interpretive proposals for this phrase, see Oden, “Divine Aspirations,” 213; Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 250–51. After Shamash reminds Enkidu that Shamhat gave him food, wine, clothing, and his companion, Gilgamesh, Enkidu adds a blessing for Shamhat (VII 134–38, 148–61). By giving Enkidu these gifts of civilization, Shamhat plays a similar role to YHWH, who provides food, clothing, and companionship in the Eden Narrative.

¹¹⁴ Westenholz and Koch-Westenholz, “Enkidu,” 444.

¹¹⁵ See n. 23 above.

¹¹⁶ See Greenblatt, Rise and Fall, 63.

¹¹⁷ See the next section and n. 123.

¹¹⁸ Hartenstein, “Menschwerdung im Gilgamesch-Epos,” 110–11.

¹¹⁹ George, Gilgamesh, 469.

¹²⁰ Ibid.

¹²¹ Walls, Desire, Discord and Death, 44. For his summary of various proposals for the significance of this rejection, see 34–44.

¹²² Ibid., 60.

¹²³ See George, Gilgamesh, 1:468, 478. Facing his fate, Enkidu curses the hunter before Shamhat (VII 94–99) as “the first link in the chain of events that led inexorably to his doom,” and Shamash does not correct him for doing so (ibid., 1:479). Additionally, these curses appear to be Enkidu’s attempt to pass the blame for his own faults (cf. Gen 3:12).

¹²⁴ Dossin, “Enkidou,” 588.

¹²⁵ Trible, Rhetoric of Sexuality, 122.

¹²⁶ Carr argues that the couple are only fully distinguished from animals when they feel shame at their nakedness and are clothed, though he acknowledges the distinction is already evident in the creation of the woman from the man (Carr, “Competing Construals,” 257–58, 260).

¹²⁷ For this interpretation, though without the support of comparison with the epic, see, e.g., Bailey, “Primal Woman,” 144–47; Joines, “Serpent in Gen 3,” 10; Oden, “Divine Aspirations,” 213; Schüngel-Straumann, “On the Creation,” 69–70; Mettinger, Eden Narrative, 56, 129–30; Day, Creation to Babel, 44.

¹²⁸ Kawashima, “Homo Faber,” 489.

¹²⁹ Pace John Van Seters, “The Creation of Man and the Creation of the King,” ZAW 101 (1989) 333–42, at 340. As Van Seters observes, in both Ezek 28:2–10 and Gen 3, the acquisition of god-like wisdom is associated with the judgment of death.

¹³⁰ Pace Konrad Schmid, “The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2–3 as a Sapiential Text,” in “When the Morning Stars Sang”: Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday (ed. Scott C. Jones and Christine Roy Yoder; BZAW 500; 2018) 275–86, at 284.

¹³¹ See Albertz, “Gen 3, 1–7,” 89–111.

¹³² Newsom, “Gen 2–3 and 1 Enoch 6-16,” 13; see also Kawashima, “Homo Faber,” 499.

¹³³ Wolff, “Gilgamesh,” 394.