Noah's Flood vs the Epic of Gilgamesh

Genesis Apologetics

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Let's compare the biblical flood to the leading flood myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

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In 1853, archaeologists found a series of 12 tablets dated to around 650

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BC, although parts of the story existed in earlier fragmentary versions. Because the story had many of the same elements as the

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Genesis account, skeptics believed that Gilgamesh preceded the biblical account, negating the

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Genesis account as just a spin -off. Fortunately, for Christians, however, there are major clues that point to the biblical account as the accurate one, and Gilgamesh as a later work of fiction that incorporated legendary elements of a flood within a cultural fantasy.

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Here are the reasons why. First, we have the feasibility of the Gilgamesh version of the Ark, described as a massive, unstable cube that was about 200 feet on each side with 6 decks that divided it into 7 parts.

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Along with help from the community and craftsmen, he supposedly built this vessel, which was over 3 times the size of the biblical

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Ark, in just a week. How would something like this fare during a catastrophic worldwide flood?

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It would obviously tumble, killing or maiming its passengers. That's obviously quite different than the biblical

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Ark which had a 7 to 1 length to width ratio, which is very similar to many of today's ocean barges, making a feasible design for staying afloat during the flood.

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Scripture provides clues that Noah and helpers likely had between 55 and 75 years to build the

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Ark. The second key for determining which of these flood accounts is the original is the duration of the flood provided by each.

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The Gilgamesh flood lasted a mere 6 days, whereas the Genesis flood lasted 371 days.

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Both accounts claim the flood was worldwide, but how could water cover Earth in just 6 days? A floating 200 by 200 foot cube and 6 days for worldwide inundation certainly stretch credulity.

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The next consideration is the reasons for the flood given by each of the two accounts. In the Genesis account,

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God's judgment is just. He was patient with utterly wicked mankind for 120 years before sending the flood and showed mercy to the last righteous family.

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In the Gilgamesh account, the flood was ordered by multiple self -centered squabbling gods that were starving without humans to feed them sacrifices.

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These two are quite different. Finally, there are several other parts of the Gilgamesh account that are obviously mythical, such as Gilgamesh being two -thirds divine and one -third mortal.

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After oppressing his people, Gilgamesh and others called upon the gods and the sky god

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Anu creates a wild man named Enkidu to fight Gilgamesh. The battle is a draw, and they become friends.

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Gilgamesh apparently also encounters talking monsters and a scorpion man in his journeys. Many myths are based on historical accounts, but they get embellished over time, becoming more and more mythical as the story is repeated over generations.

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This is exactly what we see with flood myths like Gilgamesh. They take the original historical account, the biblical flood, and grow it into a mythical, interesting story over time.

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For example, the earlier version of the Gilgamesh flood account clearly identifies the flood as a local river flood, with the dead bodies of humans filling the river like dragonflies, and moving to the edge of the boat like a raft, and moving to the riverbank like a raft.

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Centuries later, this gets exaggerated into a global worldwide flood, where humans killed in the flood fill the sea like a spawn of fish.

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Both accounts have a god or gods that are sending judgment, describe a worldwide inundation, have an arc built to specific dimensions that are loaded with surviving humans and animals, and land just a few hundred miles apart from each other after using birds as a test to find dry land.

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Myths often grow from being historical to being more mythical, but they almost never develop in the reverse, becoming more truthful and accurate over time.

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While these accounts mirror each other in so many ways, which account is the original historical one?

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The feasible one, of course. While both accounts describe plenty of divine intervention, only the biblical arc's size, shape, function, build time, and flood duration make sense.

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Let's see what Dr. Randall Price, distinguished research professor and curator at Liberty Biblical Museum has to say about this topic.

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What extra biblical text would you say substantiate the flood account in Genesis 6 -9?

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Well, let's work our way backwards. We can start with all the church fathers. Every one of them mentioned the flood, and it's always a global flood.

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There's no example in any of them of a local flood. And then, as we move back to a first century writer like Flavius Josephus, who wrote for the

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Romans, he's writing a history of the Jewish people, primarily to impress the

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Romans because they defeated the Jewish people. It makes them look greater if they defeated a great people. But he's going into the details, and he talks about that in this place where the ark landed, they call it

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Armenia, they say that there are people who show relics of the ark.

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There's at least four different accounts of Josephus where he says people chip off pieces of the bitumen and make amulets of it, or people are shown these things who are curious to see them, or that all the history of the barbarians, he says, he talks about Egyptian and Chaldean and Greek, all of these have similar accounts of the flood, and he said this was the same as the legislator

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Moses, he talks about, who wrote. Now we go back in time, and these are those barbarian accounts.

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We have Sumerian accounts, the Iridu, Genesis. We have the

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Enuma Elish, we have Atrahasis, we have the

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Gilgamesh Epic, we now have the Simmons Cuneiform Tablet, or the

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Ark Tablet, and we have the Sumerian King List. All of these mention the flood and have various details.

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Some talk about, all of them talk about the God's punishing man, and one man being chosen to bring either himself or his family or alternately, and certainly in every case, all the animals onto a vessel to survive this flood, this punishment, and then afterward we have various details.

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He sent out a dove or a raven, which is likely mentioned in the biblical text, or he, and almost all of them, when he gets off the ark, offers a sacrifice to please the gods.

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Well, this is not only in the same chronological order as you have in the Bible, but it's the same unique events and details that are in the

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Bible. Now all these predate the Bible, and you could accuse the

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Bible of copying from them, but as we mentioned earlier, the problem is the Bible comes across more simple, more historical, more believable, while these are complex myths, and they differ among themselves in those details.

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But where they all agree is a similar core history that must have been passed on after the flood, and as civilization spread out and generations begin to go their own way, they develop their own myths, which keep that core common history, but add to it in their own direction.

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The Bible doesn't do it that way. It's not a perception. They're saying, this is the way it happened in an orderly event, and they don't do like you said.

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They give you clear genealogies. They give you historical time frames. They give you dimensions and structures that are quite literal, and actually work.

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So when you look at some of the weird proportions and things of some of these ancient Easter accounts, the ark is a square box that couldn't float, it's a round type of basket that might have done this.

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They all have the idea of a boat, but they're too far from the information, whereas the biblical account gives you exact dimensions of something that is hydrodynamically stable, that will fit what it claims.

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It's just not, it's no comparison when it comes to those things. Jesus taught about a real flood and compared it to what the end times will be like.

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Jesus warned, but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my

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Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

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For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the

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Son of Man be. Because Jesus stood firmly on the historicity of the flood and likened it to end times, the two go hand in hand.

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If the Genesis flood never happened, we have no foundation for believing in the rest of what Jesus said, including his second coming.

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At least for Christians, Matthew alone should destroy the flood as myth idea. Looking back through history, there are actually hundreds of flood accounts and the similarity between these accounts and the

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Genesis flood are uncanny. Most of them seem to draw from the same common themes, judgment from God, a family chosen to preserve humanity, and loading animals.

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The early Chinese certainly seemed to have Genesis and the flood in mind when they invented written language.

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And the oldest enduring civilizations. It has a 4 ,500 years of unbroken history.

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Every Chinese word not only expresses a meaning, it captures a history.

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Every character tells a story. And that the Chinese people were the descendants of the

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Tower of Babel. They were the descendants of Noah. Surely they want to record all these global cataclysmic events.

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I'm going to show you that all these global events were documented in Chinese history.

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Now notice. Watch, everybody. God took clay to He breathed with his mouth on two people.

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One is a man. Out of his sight came forth a woman and put them in a garden.

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That's how you got the word garden. And the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

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So God stopped them. Prohibited them. Now to forbid in Chinese is this word jing.

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Now how do you write the word jing? Now look. God gave them

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God put them in a garden. You have trees. He gave them a revelation.

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God gave them revelation about the tree. Don't you eat it.

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If you eat it you will die. Why were there two trees? Because there was a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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Genesis chapter 3 verse 1 now. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the

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Lord God had made. Now what is the word tempter in Chinese?

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The person who gives temptation. Is this word. Look. Now how do you write the word more? One guy came to man.

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Secretly. This is the word secret. This word secret means secret.

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So this word devil. Where did he come? He came among the trees.

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Undercover. He came as a tempter. So he tried to seduce

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Eve. Eve eat the fruit. Eve the

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Bible say lusted after the fruit. Got greedy for it. How do you write the word to lust?

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Notice it is again those three over a woman. All the story of creation was recorded in their writings.

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Now we come to the flood in Genesis chapter 7. So Noah with his sons, his wife and his son's wife swam into the ark because of the waters of the flood.

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What is the Chinese word for a big boat? How do you write 船?

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Look look. A 舟 a boat. 这就是一艘船 ,舟.

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With eight people, 八. You say why eight people in the boat?

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Because chapter 7 and verse 7 says Noah and his wife, two people. Three sons, that makes it five.

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And three daughter -in -laws, that's eight. The first time boat was used, eight people were inside.

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Where did the Chinese picture concepts come from? Why do these figures match Genesis history so clearly?

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Isn't it also interesting that all human history disappears about the same time as the biblical flood?

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Even secular school textbooks admit this. This is exactly what we would expect with civilization starting again after the flood.

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In summary, the Bible clearly lays out a flood account that, while miraculous, fits into history with much more believability than the mythical accounts.

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The ark is the only vessel in the ancient flood accounts that could have actually survived the flood. It was seaworthy and watertight, fit dimensions of many similar ships today, and could certainly hold the thousands of animal kinds necessary to blossom into the variety of animal life we see today.

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The obvious scars around the world also coincide well with the Bible's account, matching both the mega -sequences in the geologic record and the massive worldwide fossil record, consisting of billions upon billions of animals buried in the muddy catastrophe that killed them.

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Looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs? Download the

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Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.