Is The Genesis Flood Copied From The Epic Of Gilgamesh?
- Jason Pluebell
- Mar 1
- 19 min read
Bible critics always point to the Epic of Gilgamesh and claim that the writer of Genesis copied directly from it to write the Genesis flood narrative. They point to the subtle similarities between the two narratives, such as the hero building a large vessel to survive the oncoming waters, the releasing of birds, making sacrifices afterwards, and the gods or God blessing him. The truth is that scholars of the Ancient Near East see this from a much different point of view, as Genesis represents a more preserved record of a shared memory between global cultures. The claims that the Bible copied Gilgamesh only exist on the surface.
Some scholars in the past have held the position that the Jewish exiles in Babylonia are what led to the influence of the Babylonian myth in the writing of Genesis. These people would cite the similarities in an attempt to prove that Genesis is a copy of the Epic, but the tables have flipped, and high tide is on its way as scholars began focusing on the differences between them. Apologist and Theologian Wes Huff puts it in a good way. Just because there are similarities does not mean that one copied from the other. The Vikings and Aztecs have similarities in their ritual traditions, but it is obvious that one did not copy them from the other. It's easy to ignore the different details and capitalize on the resemblances between them; when it is the differences that make them different. In other words, correlation does not equal causation. And scholars have pointed out that the linguistic parallels between the two narratives are more superficial than they appear to be. Moreover, there isn't one single story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as there are several fragmentary accounts that all differ from one another in dating and details. The fragment that most people talk about is the late 7th-century BC version that is held in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.1 The accounts of the Mesopotamian myths all differ from each other, and there was no canonized version of the flood; it was solely an oral epic meant to be changed to further develop the entertainment.
Regardless, people still claim that Genesis was copied from three ancient texts: the Atrahasis, the Eridu Genesis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The first two were written around 1600 BC, while the Epic of Gilgamesh was written around 1100 BC. For some perspective with regard to Genesis, it was most likely written in the 1400s BC. I will now provide a quick overview of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis Flood, and then we will review the differences between them and why Genesis did not borrow from the epic.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
We will begin with a summary of the Epic of Gilgamesh. As you will see, the Epic is full of mythical details, while Genesis represents a sober record of an actual event (whether the event actually happened or not). The Epic is about a strong and wise man named Gilgamesh, the demigod king of Uruk, who is two-thirds god and one-third man. But Gilgamesh was a very oppressive ruler, and it caused his people to cry out to the gods for help. The gods heard their cries and answered by creating a wild man named Enkidu, who was sent to challenge Gilgamesh. Being a wild man, Enkidu remained with the animals outside of Uruk. Faced with this man who isn't approaching the city, Gilgamesh sends a prostitute out to seduce him. In sleeping with the woman, Enkidu gains consciousness and becomes a man. He is then sent into Uruk, where Gilgamesh and Enkidu find themselves in a brutal wrestling match.
While fighting, the two mighty men realize they have both met their physical equals, thus ending the quarrel and birthing a close-knit friendship. From this point, Gilgamesh and Enkidu venture out into the wilderness and defeat many monsters, but on one adventure, Enkidu is cursed and succumbs to his fate. Now that Gilgamesh just witnessed his best friend die, he decides to go on a quest to search for immortality. He traveled across the sea and was met with a man named Utanipshti, who told him about his past. This is where the flood story begins. Utanipshti informs Gilgamesh that long ago, mankind became far too noisy to allow the gods to sleep. So Enlil sent a flood to rid the Earth of them. In response, Utanipshti builds an enormous cube boat that is 120x120x120 cubits with seven levels (a very unstable and unrealistic ship design). He hired a captain and many skilled crew members to man the ship. Once the ship was finished, it was launched into the sea right before the flood came. To tell if the flood ended, Utanipshti released a dove and a swallow, which returned because there was no land. He then releases a raven that does not return, indicating land was present somewhere.
The landing of the boat is described in heavy poetic language: "One day she held, and a second day on the mountain of Nisir she held fast and did not budge. A third day, and a fourth day, she held fast on the mountain and did not budge." 2 After they landed and departed, the gods began to argue with one another about how now that there are no humans, there are no sacrifices to be made to feed them. They were starving until they noticed Utanipshti making burnt sacrifices. They huddle around the smoke as it rose, pleased by the smell they have been longing for. Because they fed the gods in such a moment of despair, Utanapishtu and his wife were granted immortality and made gods as their reward.
The Gilgamesh flood narrative is full of obvious fictional elements and unrealistic events and details (such as the giant cube boat). We can clearly see that this is not a historical narrative, but an epic poem made to entertain people. In 1872, Assyriologist George Smith published a translation of a large cuneiform tablet found at the Library of Ashburnipal in Nineveh. It contained a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the flood narrative just mentioned. After the publication, many scholars began to doubt the reliability of the Biblical flood record, as many saw various flood legends as derived from the Biblical one before this discovery. But now that there was ample evidence that the Epic was written down before the Genesis record was (but not compiled into a full work until afterwards, with the Akkadian tablets). Does this mean that Moses was copying from Sumerian myths?
The Genesis Flood
Now we can compare the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Genesis record of the flood. We will be able to clearly see the dramatized elements of the Epic in direct comparison to the sober and meticulous narrative Genesis provides.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. (Genesis 7:11-12)
The flood wasn't sent because mankind was too loud for God to sleep; it was sent because the hearts of mankind grew so wicked that "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil" (Genesis 6:5). The reason is logical and not as arbitrary and trivial as "man was loud". If God's nature embodies the perfect standard of righteousness, then God should respond to evil with judgment, just as He does here. It also records that God regretted creating mankind because of how widespread their sin had become. Genesis also records this element before the flood, not after the flood. Better yet, the Epic says the gods regretted the flood because they were hungry. We then receive an exact date for the start of the flood, the seventeenth day of the second month of the six-hundredth year of Noah's life. We are also informed of where the waters came from, the fountains of the great deep in the seas. There are huge cracks in the Earth's crust and mantle in the middle of the oceans. These long stretches, called oceanic rises or ridges, are nearly continuous and interconnected, and exist in every ocean basin. Could these be the fountains of the great deep that burst open at the onset of the flood?
...and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. (Genesis 8:4-5)
We are given another specific date once again, laying out an entire timeline of the events of the flood. The mountains that are recorded as the landing site are also not common to the geography around the Israelites. The mountains of Arat are located over 1,000 miles northeast of Jerusalem, much too far away compared to other Mesopotamian myths that record a local mountain. Moreover, the Epic of Gilgamesh states that Utanisphti stayed in his boat for about four days before he left. Noah had to stay in the ark for another 3-months before the tops of other mountains were seen. Noah also releases a different order of birds with different details. He sends a raven first, then a dove that returns, another that comes back with an olive leaf, and then another that doesn't return (v6-12). Now knowing the waters have subsided, he begins preparing for departure.
In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. (Genesis 8:13-14)
Once again, we are met with the exact day of the events mentioned. When you open the Bible, therein lies a record that offers a distinct account that gives the impression of seriousness and credibility. So much so that it almost reads like separate journal entries of Noah himself, as Moses very well could have received written records from previous scribes or preserved tablets. Genesis lacks the sensationalistic elements that fill the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Is Moses A Copycat?
The grand question is whether Genesis is borrowing elements from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Most Ancient Near Eastern scholars don't think so; some believe the Epic's flood originated from an older Akkadian writing from the 18th century BC called the Atrahasis. The Epic of Gilgamesh contains entire sections from the Atrahasis almost word-for-word. So we can be rather confident that the Genesis writer was not copying from the Epic of Gilgamesh (7th century BC). Wes Huff lets us know that the long history that we have of Jewish scribes being repulsed by pagan stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh makes the case even stronger. As positing that a Jewish scribe read the Epic of Gilgamesh about a wild man created by a pantheon of gods; sending a prostitute to seduce him that makes him a man, and then morphing them into a perfect man and woman endowed with freedom of choice created to be a representatives of God in His special garden territory and care for it and the Earth "seems for a lack of a better way of putting it silly to me." 1 Along with seeing Gilgamesh on a search for immortality, just to meet a man who tells him about a flood (the only parallel) and that he can obtain immortality by swimming to the bottom of the ocean to receive a magical plant that is stolen by a snake, moving this part to the beginning of the story and changing it to a serpent that deceives Eve instead of stealing the plant. It's just so far-fetched and speculative with a bloated ontology that it cannot be the best explanation by a long shot!
The issue with claiming that Moses copied from the Epic of Gilgamesh is that you have to make some assumptions and ignore the details that differentiate each narrative, along with making non-historical presuppositions about how the similarities came to be. In other words, focusing on the similarities and ignoring the differences. This is a dishonest approach and is only serving to cherry-pick the evidence that supports a certain presupposition about how Genesis was written, instead of actually analyzing the narratives to see if they display any evidence of borrowing. And the Epic and Genesis both do not. If Moses copied from the Babylonian Epic, then why did Moses only copy the flood? The Babylonian origin story is called the Enuma Elish, and it differs heavily from the first chapters of Genesis in both intention and narrative. 1 The claim of borrowing also ignores the fact that Moses himself lets us know that he had other sources (Numbers 21:14 with the Book of the Wars of the LORD, Genesis 2:4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 27, 25:12, 19, 36:1, 9, 37:2 with the Teledot sequences). Textual details of the Teledot sequences within the Book of Genesis suggest there were previous sources from [perhaps] the Patriarchs themselves. Which is why the flood narrative reads like journal entries of Noah.
The copycat claim also contradicts the known Ancient Near Eastern phenomenon where simpler accounts give rise to more sensational and embellished accounts. This is why some scholars think Gilgamesh was an actual king of Uruk who was, over time, turned into a legend with the Epic.
“The common assumption that the Hebrew account is simply a purged and simplified version of the Babylonian legend (applied also to the Flood stories) is fallacious on methodological grounds. In the Ancient Near East, the rule is that simple accounts or traditions may give rise (by accretion and embellishment) to elaborate legends, but not vice versa. In the Ancient Orient, legends were not simplified or turned into pseudo-history (historicized) as has been assumed for early Genesis” 3
We have clear testimony of history, which informs us that historical accounts may give rise to legends, but legends never lead to a historical narrative. There is a direction to myths; it goes one way. That way is from simple accounts of maybe real events, to embellished legends. This unmistakably points to Genesis as containing a more original and preserved account, and the Epic as a later derivative.
Flood Traditions Agree With The Bible
A fact that many people are not aware of is that there are tribes and nations globally that record an ancient flood. 4 Do these traditions agree with Genesis or the Epic of Gilgamesh? Surely if Genesis was derived from the Epic, then these global flood traditions should agree with the Epic much more than they do with Genesis, as the leading claim here is that Genesis is a younger record than the Epic. Many details in each narrative differ, like the order of the sending of birds, the reason for the flood, the number of survivors, and even the overall shape of the boat. They all differ heavily. With this method of comparison, we can determine which one represents a more historical or original account. The accounts that the global flood phenomena most agree with represent a more original account, and the other an embellished legend.
Genesis has the order of a raven, and then a dove that comes back with a leaf. Utanipshti releases a dove, a swallow, and then a raven, and none of them return with any objects. Out of the 42 flood traditions recording the release of birds, all of them agree with the order of birds released in Genesis.
Genesis says that God sent the flood because mankind's intentions and thoughts had grown too wicked for Him not enact justice (Genesis 6:5). The Epic of Gilgamesh says that the god Enlil sent the flood because humans were too loud for the gods to sleep! Out of the 91 traditions that record a reason, once again, all of them agree with Genesis.
Genesis records a vessel that measures 300x50x30 cubits, with the length much longer than the height and width. The Epic of Gilgamesh says that Utanapishtim built a large cube that was 120x120x120 cubits with seven stories and many skilled crew members. Of the 83 traditions that record the shape of the boat, all of them agree with the general shape provided in the Book of Genesis. These accounts exist all across the world, from China to Alaska, Native Americans, and South America, and they all agree more with Genesis than the Epic. Indeed, it is very clear that the Book of Genesis represents a more ancient and preserved record of a flood than the embellished and sensationalistic legend of the Epic.
The Surviving Ships
We can also take a look at the measurements of the ships built by Noah and Utnapishtim and see which one contains a more realistic ship construction. The results may surprise you.
The Cube Rig
The vessel that Utanisphti built to survive the flood was a giant cube of unrealistic proportions. The Epic's ark was 120x120x120 cubits (or about 180 feet) with seven levels inside. It was an enormous wooden cube with no structural incentive to stay vertical. The ship would just tumble through the water (and it's fun to imagine the scene within the ship during this), with no way to stay stable enough for the people within to stay alive, let alone stand up! Sharp edges are also more vulnerable to damage during initial launch, the force of the waves, and the final landing. Blunt ends would also produce a rougher ride, allowing it to roll or tumble on the water. It's not a very seaworthy design, unlike the ark of the Bible.
Noah's Ark
Noah was instructed by God to build a ship that had a length of 300 cubits, a width of 50 cubits, and a height of 30 cubits (450 feet x 75 feet x 45 feet), with a total volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet, compared to the massive 5,832,000 cubic feet of Utanisphti's ark. In 1992, a major scientific study was done, led by Dr. Seon Hong at the ship research center KRISO in Daejeon, South Korea. They put to the test twelve different hull dimensions, including the one provided by the Biblical flood account, and no hull outperformed that of Noah's Ark. In fact, the ark's balance is easily thrown off by the smallest changes to the dimensions. The team found that the proportions of the ark balance the demands of stability, resisting capsizing, comfort, and strength. The ark has the same proportions that modern cargo ships exhibit today! The ark could have handled waves as high as 100 feet (30m). 5, 6 The Book of Genesis provides a very real and proven ship construction, which lends more credibility to it being a more preserved account of an actual event.
Genesis Represents A Historical Narrative
The Book of Genesis reads like a historical narrative, which makes sense since the Jewish community saw it as history and inspired scripture. This means that scribes were mostly concerned with faithfully transmitting the texts with no embellishment. The best textual evidence indicates a very stable text that hasn't changed in any significant way. Genesis also contains moral elements that are absent from the Epic of Gilgamesh and mesopotamian myths. It also emphasizes the spreading of man's wickedness, whereas the Epic records the flooding starting for trivial reasons like humans being too noisy. God regretted making man because of their sin, and the gods regretted sending the flood because they were hungry. Genesis also exhibits a meticulous style that is focused on recording names, dates, geography, and locations, all of which mark it as a historical narrative. The myths emphasize dramatic elements of the flood, like the sound of the waters, the terror that humans felt, and the overall excitement of the catastrophe. Their purpose is to entertain their hearers, while Genesis obviously seems to be attempting to preserve something, at least the writer believed to be an actual event that carries a lot of meaning. 7 On the other hand, Gilgamesh reads like epic poetry.
“The Book of Genesis is viewed for the most part as an historical work, even by many liberal scholars, while the Epic of Gilgamesh is viewed as mythological.” 8
The Genesis flood also lacks the common characteristic of naming geography that's local to the people group. These Mesopotamian myths all localize the mountain on which the ark landed. Yet Genesis does no such thing. It would have been extremely convenient for Jewish scribes to just say the ark landed on their own great mountain, Mount Hermon, but instead they list a mountain range located several hundred miles northeast, likely in modern-day Turkey. Only a record that has not been embellished lacks this very common characteristic of other myths around the world. Besides, the claim that Genesis was composed over a long period of time by different editors is called the Documentary Hypothesis. If this model of how the Old Testament was compiled is true, then it would make sense that these stories were influenced by the Babylonian myth, as the Epic in its 7th-century form didn't exist when Moses actually lived. But the Documentary Hypothesis is a leftover from old scholarship, and almost no modern leading scholars hold this position today.
The writer of Genesis seems to be extremely familiar with the customs of ancient peoples during the time era it claims to take place in. "The names of the patriarchs were typical names of the early second millennium, and the migrations and semi-nomadic lifestyle of the patriarchs also fitted this period, and many of the legal rites and family customs mentioned in Genesis (e.g., giving dowries) were also attested in old non-biblical texts." 9 Since the claim is that the Epic was written hundreds of years before Genesis was written, surely in the Akkadian form, does that mean Moses copied it? Yet the copycat claim is committing the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (before this, therefore because of this). They operate under a hidden premise that Moses did not claim to use other sources among the Hebrew people to write the Pentateuch. They had to find this assumption somewhere, but they certainly did not find it by reading the Bible.
As previously shown, Moses had the sources when writing the Pentateuch, and archaeology also supports this. In 11 places in Genesis, Moses uses the Hebrew word Teledot, which means genealogy or family record. These mark the beginning of a new section, where Moses begins by stating the genealogical records exactly like other Ancient Near Eastern nations did at the time (The Nuzi Texts, Amarna Letters, Babylonian Chronicles, King Lists, etc.). Moses was using some form of a prior record, either an oral record or [perhaps] tablets passed down from the Patriarchs themselves. Yet, according to the Documentary Hypothesis, Moses lived at a time when men did not write yet, so he could not have composed Genesis. But this position has had some major problems in the last century as more discoveries were made. In the 1800s, several scholars were gathered by Julius Wellhausen to attempt to make a model of how the Bible was compiled over time, leading to his foundational work, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (1878). And it wasn't very long before the majority of scholars adopted his theory. Wellhausen began with the Pentateuch, which scholars struggled with beforehand with areas such as the style changed, different names for God, and the Teledot sequences. His school saw these as multiple authors and editors over many centuries who eventually wrote down four different oral traditions that began hundreds of years earlier. All of these oral traditions would be written during the reigns of King Josiah and Ezra (650-450 BC); in other words, Moses did not write Genesis.
Another important factor is that Archaeology was just starting at the time Wellhausen made his theory, and it began to challenge a lot of his assumptions, most of which have been almost completely abandoned by modern scholarship (even though some still hold to this theory despite zero evidence supporting it). The assumptions that have been proven wrong include that (1) Moses lived before writing began; therefore, it is impossible that he could have written the Pentateuch. Yet Archaeology has shown that humans have been writing for about two-thousand years before Moses. (2) The different names for God reveal a different author continuing the writing, but each name for God reveals a different aspect of His nature to man, with concern to the event happening, and several studies have refuted the idea that it means different authors. (3) Repetition or duplication implies separate oral sources, but repetition is generally common in ancient writing, including Hebrew writing, and is thus too general to draw that conclusion. (4) Religion evolved from polytheism to monotheism, but a clear process of degeneration of religion from monotheism into polytheism is discernible throughout global cultures. 10, 11 The Documentary Hypothesis (often called the JEPD theory) is obviously a leftover from old scholarship, a time before we knew more about ancient men and their history, customs, and writing techniques. With what we know now, Moses could have very well been able to write the Pentateuch, especially since he was educated in Egypt; Moses would have had the ability to write and record history.
Moses also includes multiple lists of kings and chiefs, records of transactions, and detailed historical accounts. The amount of detail that matches the customs of ancient Near Eastern men suggests that Moses was using eyewitness or family records/memories. We also observe very emotional and detailed personal accounts of events from the Patriarch's lives that are told in a way only the Patriarch himself would tell or record them (Genesis 50:23, for example). The style of Genesis makes sense if Moses was dealing with prior family and historical records about the past. He very well could have dealt with oral traditions, but since we know that the Patriarchs would have been able to write, it would not be surprising if he had his hands on records from previous people.
“However, the probability exists that the Biblical account had been preserved either as an oral tradition, or in written form handed down from Noah, through the patriarchs and eventually to Moses, thereby making it actually older than the Sumerian accounts which were restatements (with alterations) to the original.” 8
Deuteronomy 31:24 informs us that Moses wrote the entire law "from beginning to end." A later group of scribes would not have had the familiarity required to "make up" a record that so faithfully represents the customs and traditions of ancient men thousands of years before they were writing.12
These Myths Point To A Global Memory
The popularity of flood stories both in the Mesopotamian region and around the world seems to indicate there is some sort of cultural memory of a historical flood. Why else would people groups all around the globe record a catastrophic flood that agrees with Genesis in many details? Though important details of the story were lost or changed as the cultures became polytheistic and perverted the original story, we can still see traces of the more original Biblical version in all. As time went on, and more cultures began to follow false gods, their oral traditions were perverted and changed into entertainment for the common man. While the Hebrews saw the record as divinely inspired, thus being far too important to embellish, textual criticism shows us that the text has been preserved extremely well over the millennia. Compared to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which has many versions, Genesis has very little deviation from the manuscript evidence we have. This suggests that the Epic is simply a dramatic retelling of what the culture remembered/knew at the time. For the majority of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, poetic writing predates historical writing, but the Hebrews were different. They have their historical books written before their poetry.
This makes sense, since the Hebrews were a different people, led by the living God who led them to preserve the text ina faithful manner for us to explore and learn from today. God inspired Moses to record the early history of humanity, ensuring that he had access to the right records to accurately preserve dates, names, genealogies, geography, and locations that are still aiding Archaeologists today. It is abundantly clear that Genesis is not borrowing from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and this belief is simply a misplaced trust in outdated scholarship from almost 200 years ago. May the LORD Jesus Christ open your eyes and bless you with insight into His ways, His truth, and His life. Amen.
(3) (Kenneth A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, Pg 89)
(5) (Answers in Genesis, Noah’s Ark: A biblical and scientific look at the Genesis account, Pg 32-35)
(9) (Gordon J. Wenham, “The Pentateuch” in New Bible Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham, Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004, Pg 49)
(10) (Michael A. Harbin, To Serve Other Gods: An Evangelical History of Religion)
(11) (Michael A. Harbin, The Promise and the Blessing: A Historical Survey of the Old and New Testaments, Pg 32)
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