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88 " who was singled out to be saved with his family, as "a righteous man, of perfect genealogy; with the Elohim did Noah walk." The Mesopotamian texts paint a more compre- hensive picture of the man, suggesting that he was the off- spring of a demigod and possibly (as Lamech had suspected) a demigod himself. It fills out the details of what "walking with the Elohim" had really entailed. Among the many de- tails that the Mesopotamian texts provide, the role played by dreams as an important form of Divine Encounter becomes evident. There is also a precedent for a deity's refusal to show his face to a beseeching mortal—God is heard but is not seen. And there is a vivid, first person report of a Divine Encounter unique in all the annals of the ancient Near East— the blessing of humans by the deity by the physical touching of the forehead. In the biblical version it is the same deity who resolves to wipe Mankind off the face of the Earth and, contradictorily, acts to prevent the demise of Mankind by devising a way to save the hero of the tale and his family. In the Sumerian original text and its subsequent Mesopotamian recensions, more than one deity is involved; and as in other instances, Enlil and Enki emerge as the chief protagonists: the stricter Enlil, upset by the intermarriages with the daughters of Man, calling for putting an end to Mankind; but the lenient Enki, fee EE Figure 21 DIVINE ENCOUNTERS original text and _ its cee thee ee de