In line with Talmon’s description of the biblical text in transmission, Tigay charts four
stages in the development towards an authoritative text of the Gilgamesh Epic.^30 Like
Talmon, Tigay’s first two stages allow for widespread collation, conflation and re-editing
of the source texts, eventually resulting in the formation of certain standardised (but not
fixed) versions of the text, that stood at the beginning of the third stage. By this time,
“though the editors ... made their own contributions to the epic ... they were clearly
transmitting in revised form a text that was essentially the work of an earlier author.”^31
Tigay’s final stage is broadly identifiable as the fixation of the text into a standardised
form, where there is little reformulation of the text, and minimal lexical interchanges. Ti-
gay describes the version of the Gilgamesh Epic that stood at the end of the four staged
process as “nearly a textus receptus or ‘authorised version’ in wording or content, and
different copies or editions differed from each other almost exclusively in matters of or-
thography, grammar, and format.”^32
In contrast, Cross envisions a development of the biblical text according to a presupposi-
tion of local access to specific archetypes which in turn undergo defined stages of devel-
opment. In his theory of local texts, Cross outlines the development of biblical texts into
(^30) See J.H. Tigay, "Evolution of the Pentateuchal Narratives.” A major difference should be underlined here
between Tigay’s and Talmon’s theories. Tigay’s earliest stage is represented by the Sumerian written evi-
dence, rather than an unattested oral phase that is the first phase in the development of the biblical text ac-
cording to Talmon. 31
32 J.H. Tigay, "Evolution of the Pentateuchal Narratives," 38-39.
J.H. Tigay, "Evolution of the Pentateuchal Narratives," 43. See esp. n. 91 where it is emphasised that the
final form of Gilgamesh represents a text close to a ‘received’ text, but ultimately less stable in comparison
to the final form of the biblical text.