Did Noah's Ark Steal From Gilgamesh?

Noah's Ark in Genesis 6-9 shares striking similarities to ancient Flood stories like Gilgamesh, Atrahasis and the Sumerian Flood Story. Ever since George Smith discovered Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh at the British Museum in the 1800's we've been able to compare these flood stories and their similarities to the Bible. Why are the stories so similar? Did Noah's Ark steal from these stories?

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This channel is now known as Tablets and Temples, unpacking ancient history and religion. Formerly known as Bible Unboxed.

Sources on the similarities between Noah and other ANE Flood Stories:

- Amanda Norsker, “Genesis 6,5-9.17: A Rewritten Babylonian Flood Myth,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 29:1 (2015)
- Bernard Batto's Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition
- John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament
- A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Hays

It's worth at least mentioning some older articles, some of the ideas are a bit dated:
- "GILGAMESH" AND GENESIS: THE FLOOD STORY IN CONTEXT, Eugene Fisher (1970)
- The Atrahasis Epic and Its Significance for Our Understanding of Genesis 1-9, Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1977)
- The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic, Jeffrey Tigay (1982)

Dates are primarily sourced from the universities and institutions which house the tablets:

Translations:
- Andrew George, Gilgamesh (Critical edition)
- Critical edition of Atrahasis by Wilfred G. Lambert, Alan R. Millard, and Miguel Civil
- ANET, Pritchart
- Context of Scripture, 2 Vols

Other useful links:
- Literary Analysis of the Flood St y Analysis of the Flood Story as a Semitic Type-Scene, Jared Pfost (Note: This is a doctoral student essay, it won a Near Eastern essay competition, and I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion that the story is a straight up polemic, but there's some good literary comparison)

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[jtdesverdad]

40 days of rain, and 150 days of water coming up... those are different things are they not?

[tidepodyearsago]

Noah's ark: shapes like a boat

Gilgamesh ark: *S Q U A R E*

[wannabe_scholar]

This was good timing. I was just editing a video on the Flood and then this popped up haha.

[harijotkhalsa]

Here's what I think:
-There actually were gods and every culture in the world originally worshipped them and divine representatives. They had their own petty politics but they were also able to bless people. The gods were aware of the one God above themselves, but they were generally satisfied convincing people they were the highest.
-Yahweh of the old testament is a Thor or Marduk character who is a younger god and full of ambition. Each god is given domain over a certain area of land and is allowed the worship of the people of that area. Yahweh was given reign over the Hebrews but he wanted more so he used the real idea of a One God and took that label for himself with his global ambitions. He spread the idea that he's the only god, even The One God, as he waged a physical and theological war with the other gods.
-The Hebrews under him carried this idea that Yahweh was the One God in their tradition and adapted all the Adam, flood and Moses stories accordingly.
-At some point there was a contract and the gods agreed to leave the humans to their own devices. As civilizations rose and fell the stories of these gods remained as a more distant memory of a memory. Stories were exaggerated and molded through time according to the culture. The Hebrews retaining the view that they have the one and only God.
-Part of the divine contract for the gods to leave humans alone was to also send human prophets to help humans to see the bigger picture, that while there are gods, we should not see them as the ultimate, we should always look to the One God. The prophets spread monotheism taking birth through the ages to help guide humanity.
-The Hebrews had no problem with this monotheism idea. They already believed in One God. The only problem: Their stories of the One God Yahweh were clearly describing a vengeful, regretful, petty, irrational (and also benevolent) deity.
-When Jesus came he debunked certain events associated with Yahweh. Namely when the Jews asked Moses to get Yahweh to send them bread and water. Instead Yahweh sends snakes which kill a bunch of them. Jesus says that a loving father would never do such a thing. Which is a direct refutation of Moses' Yahweh. But not all things from the Jewish scriptures were worth refuting so Jesus approved most of it.
-Jews and Christians who use the old testament will never have a good answer why Yahweh would send snakes to the starving and they will not change their belief that their scripture is perfect.

[everseekingwisdom]

Its much more than Noah's ark that's borrowed mythology..
Samson is the Jewish Hercules, the book of Esther is the story of Ishtar, Ishtar becomes Esther, the god marduk becomes Mordecai.. the psalms are taken primarily from ugaritic poetry (see "the Bible abs the ugaritic texts" by Jerry Neal) and various other sources in fact of you bring up the Egyptian "hymm to Aten" and place it side by side with psalm 104 you'll see thru are almost identical..
Moses is the Jewish lawgiver based on the original baby in a basket sargon the great of akkad and that's just the rip of the iceberg

[verge]

Rain falling for 40 days and 40 nights is not ''contradictory'' to ''waters rising'' for 150 days. Read the Genesis account, please. It mentions that the foundations of the Earth were broken (first) and waters issued from under those, then there was the rain. So. No contradiction.

[HangrySaturn]

I don't want to sound ignorant, but how do we know exactly that Ut-napishtim's ark was a cube and Atrahasis' was coracle? The descriptions for both of them are almost the exact same thing, at least according to the translated versions I'm reading from (Myths from Mesopotamia, translated by Stephanie Dalley, published by Oxford World's Classics). Only difference there seems to be is some gaps in the Atrahasis story as compared to the Ut-napishtim one.

[Michiel]

Fantastic video again! Your number of subscribers is criminally low :(

[InquisitiveBible]

I thought the idea with the reeds is that Ea pretends to tell the reeds about the coming flood with the intention that Utnapishtim will overhear "by accident", giving Ea plausible deniability in divulging Enlil's plan. Did I understand it wrong?

[jellyrollthunder]

This means that Genesis was completely made up. That is the reasonable takeaway. Much of the Old Testament follows this same template of re-telling earlier mesopotamian myths throught the lense of monotheism. How could anyone just assume that the last telling of a story is really the accurate one???

[BibleClever-qo]

Is there a possibility that these ancient people had an in common knowledge of a great flood legend and tradition floating around?

[TubeOnRichard]

Other cultures tell of the great flood as well - Chinese, Indian, Greek, Aztec, Inuit, Native American - etc So are the all copies of each other, or did it really happen? If it did then each culture would re-tell the account with their own cultural flavor, which is what we see.

[stephenmalovski]

People that have read the epic of Gilgamesh and say how it was the OG flood myth actually don't know or disregard the fact that every culture from the Hopi Indians to the Australian Aboriginees had a flood myth...
If you think about it maybe if every culture had a flood myth that is a proof that an actual flood happened rather it being invented by a writer and plagiarized as some people claim.
Anyway there's different versions of the Gilgamesh myth, mainly the Sumerian version dated around 2000 years BC and it differs from the Assyrian version read here which was discovered in 1850 and dated around 650 BC... Not quite as a old as you were referring.

The 650 BC Assyrian version or the "complete version" is more of a collection of myths and legends centered around the same character rather than a cohesive narrative.
Some of those myths are older and some are newer.

The older Sumerian version didn't contained the flood myth so it's safe to assume that it could have been added later as it was briefly alluded to it in the text

Also, many ancient nations had oral storytelling tradition as old as the city of Uruk for example so just that someone wrote down their version of a certain myth first doesn't prove that they were the original author

[jhonmichaellaggui]

Paano nagkaroon ng tubig na halos sakupin lahat ng lupa kung ang photosynthesys is evaporation? Para umulan ng malakas
Ano yun pati mga tubig sa ilalim ng lupa lumabas

[HappyPrometheus]

Regarding the 40 days of rain vs 150 days of water coming up: After the rain has stopped why would the water levels still rise? Another better question is if the whole world was flooded, where did all the flood water go?
There is only one possible answer: the aliens have stolen our water! (humor)

[RetracingAncientPathways]

What do you mean borrowed? They are all talking about a real event that happened but each from their own perspective. It's like me in Zimbabwe talking about the attempted assassination of Trump and the NYT writing the same story, of course the accounts will be very much similar because we are narrating a real event, doesn't mean anyone borrowed from the other. If it was a fictional story however, then it would make sense to talk about plagiarism, borrowing etc.

[fordprefect]

Is it the 40 day or the 150 day flood?
J Text

/ 6 At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. // 8 And he sent out the dove to see whether the waters had decreased from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could not find a resting place for its foot, and returned to him to the ark, for there was water over all the earth. So putting out his hand, he took it into the ark with him. 10 He waited another seven days, and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 The dove came back to him toward evening, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the waters had decreased on the earth. 12 He waited still another seven days and sent the dove forth; and it did not return to him anymore. // *Noah removed the covering of the ark, and he saw that the surface of the ground was drying* .

P text

// 24 And when the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days, 1 God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were stopped up, // 3 the waters then receded steadily from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters diminished,

/ 7 *He sent out the raven; it went to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth* .

2 different stories. And yes, the entire J and P texts have been extracted.

[mnageh-bomm]

Saved, The Video Is top Notch, I can't believe how this channel isn't on trending.

[dviljoen]

Virtually ever culture has a flood story. These various accounts are not preserved to tell us THAT a flood happened. Everyone knew a flood happened. They were preserved to tell us WHY a flood happened. And in that, the Genesis account is very different, and stands out. Instead of a pantheon of fickle gods arguing among themselves, you have a single God who is judging wickedness in mankind. So either the gods are evil, or man is evil. Instead of randomly picking a hero, or choosing one because he's a king we have a God who chooses an honorable man because he is righteous. The half-breed deities were also heroes (the Apkallu) teaching mankind technology and restoring it after the flood. But in Genesis the half-breed deities were one of the causes of the flood and were evil. The Genesis account is actually a moral inversion of the other accounts. It is a polemic. It is very different on purpose.

[Frenchylikeshikes]

I guess if it's only one story that is similar, we can't really call it plagiarism, mainly if a flood truly happened back then, then of course different cultures will mention it. Plagiarism would be more anecdotes or stories being similar, not just one.