Introduction to World Literature class when my class read the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian poem purportedly written before the book of Genesis, which tells the story of a worldwide flood, a favored family, and an ark full of animals, only with Sumerian gods and heroes at its center instead of the familiar Yahweh. Why would a good and loving God call for the slaughter of little children?Ī tipping point occurred during a sleepy, 9-a.m. In any other context, this would be condemned as genocide. In high school, in the midst of yet another noble attempt to read the Bible in a year, I remember drawing breath upon reaching the story of the Battle of Jericho and realizing that after the walls came a-tumblin’ down, the Israelites “destroyed with the sword ever living thing in it-men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys,” all on God’s orders. (She told me to go home and ask my father.) Once, in Sunday school, I raised a slap-bracelet-bedecked hand to ask why God drowned all the world’s animals in the Great Flood-save those on the ark-when it was people who had sinned, not innocent penguins and kangaroos.
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