Apart from the internal problems with the story, there is another kind of evidence that tells us the source of this biblical story of the worldwide deluge. In the middle of the nineteenth century an excavation on the banks of the River Tigris, archaeologists unearthed twelve clay tablets which were written in the then mysterious cuneiform script. Then around the turn of the twentieth century, archaeologists finally managed to decipher the script. They discovered that it was written in Akkadian, the language of ancient royalty and diplomacy. The tablets tell of the story of Gilgamesh.

What interest us here is the story told on the eleventh tablet. In this tablet we are told that Gilgamesh, in his quest for immortality set out on a long journey to look for his ancestor, Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim was already bestowed with eternal life by the gods. Upon reaching the island of Utnapishtim’s abode, Gilgamesh was told a story by his ancestor of a great flood that once swept the world. The similarity between this story and that of Genesis is astounding.



The method of destroying all living things of the world was with a great worldwide flood
There was a single person singled out by the gods to be saved.
This person was commanded to build a massive ark or ship.
The ark is to house him, his kinfolk and all kinds of beasts.
After the flood receded, the ark came to rest on a mountain.
Both arks have windows which were opened after the rain had subsided.
A bird was released from the ark once it came to rest on the mountain.
The obvious similarities could not have been, not by any stretch of imagination, due to coincidence. One of the account is clearly dependent on the other. So the question is, which is the original and which is the copy? There are many reasons to believe that the Babylonian version is the original:


The first is antiquity. The writing of the epic of Gilgamesh has been dated by archaeologists to around 2000 BCE. Thus it predates the Genesis account by at least a few centuries.
The second is the presence of loan words. The Akkadian word for pitch (or bitumen): kofer. This is precisely the word used in the Genesis story. Nowhere else in the Bible does the word kofer appears except in the story of the flood. [4]
The third is the general flow of influence. We would expect the greater civilization to have a greater cultural influence on a lesser one. Compared to Babylonia, Israel was, as Cyrus Gordon said, a "backwater of sorts".
The fourth reason is from the original source of the myth. Floods are common in the Mesopotamian plains, it is unusual in usually arid Israel. It is easy to see how the flood myth could have originated from some stories told in the Babylonian plains, it is not so easy to see how anyone from Israel could have thought of that myth originally.


Finally, the location of the story gives a clue to its origins. The geography of the ark story points towards its Mesopotamian origin. Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat, which is at the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.
It is therefore conclusive that the story in Genesis is a direct descendent of the Babylonian story.


The Akkadian tablets, like the story in Genesis, are collections of myths. There was, however, a brief period of respectability, in the first half of the twentieth century, given to the notion of the occurrence of an actual catastrophic flood. An archaeological expedition in 1929 led by Sir Charles Leonard Wooley (1880-1960) found at the site of the ancient city of Ur, a stratum of clean clay about eight feet thick. Wooley originally estimated the layer of silt to be about four hundred miles long and about one hundred miles wide. The layer was dated at around 4000BC. Had this been true, a flood of such a magnitude would certainly has qualified as "world-wide" to the ancient Babylonians, for the area estimated by Wooley represented the whole of the known world to them. However, subsequent expeditions has shown that the thick layer of silt is localized and was nowhere as widespread as Wooley first thought it to be.



Was Noah actually a historical person? Again archaeological evidence supplied the answer. In 1933 clay tablets were discovered in Mari, an ancient city in the Mesopotamian plain. In these tablets (there were about 20,000 discovered), the name Noah appeared many times; as the name of a god. In fact Noah’s name is actually a musculanisation of the goddess of rain, Nuah.

Notes

a. The story of the twelve tablets were estimated to have been written about 2000 BCE. Even assuming "best case" biblical chronology, i.e. that Genesis was written by Moses himself, this brings the writing of Genesis to only about 1400 BCE. Thus the Akkadian tablet is earlier than the Genesis story. According to critical theologians, the earliest form of the Hebrew flood story was written only around 900 BCE. But the version as we have it in the Bible was not complete until the period of the exile c. 6th century BCE.
b. The flood story is a myth, of course, as we have shown earlier.

"Prehistory to 1850 B.C.E. -- Borrowed [by Genesis] from the Epic of Gilgamesh are stories of the creation of man in a wondrous garden, the introduction of evil into a naive world, and the story of a great flood brought on by the wickedness of man, that flooded the whole world. This is the standard line, but the consensus outside of Bidstrup's limited circle of agreeable writers is that the Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis represent parallel developments from a common core -- not that one borrowed from another. See here."

The only point I would like to make, is that a world wide flood never happened.

The difficulty with your argument - is the assumed premise that all of the information available is exhaustive. There's no way to demonstrate that, as it may well be that there are buried, somewhere on the planet, documenting the Genesis account from an earlier period. Also, there is no way to adequately determine that either account existed orally, long before they were physically documented.

To say that anything preceeded Genesis, or Gilgamesh for that matter - is conjecture at best, since there is no record of supporting documentation outside of that which has been discovered, and no way of knowing if there in fact exists an even older account which predates both of these.

The truth of these matters relies more on one's world view than it ever will of empirical evidence.

and the same can be said for most of the bible.

I have posted about this over the past few months but kind of sporadically. Of course it was met with a bunch of argument. This is the way I see it and then the Christians can offer their counter arguments.

It is not simply the flood story but several different myths that originally appeared on these Sumerian tablets and then later nearly identical versions made their way into the bible. The other one that is truly amazing is "The Tree of Knowledge" tale from Genesis. That is arguably one of the most important fables in the bible.

When did the Sumerians exist? Their culture lasted from the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period (late 6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th millennium BC) and the Dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC) until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC.

When was Genesis written? Well we don’t know that for certain but it is attributed during the forty years that the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness (1450 - 1410 B.C.)

Hmm.

So that is already a problem right there. Now you might ask well how in the hell would Moses a Jew have come in contact with the Sumerians. The Sumerians called themselves sag-giga, literally meaning "the black-headed people." The term Sumerian was actually given to them by the Akkadians who were their successors. The Sumerians were sacked by the Akkadians who were a Semitic people in origin. A ha! It is very common for a conquered people to have much of their culture "absorbed" by their successors. There are texts written entirely in Old Akkadian dating from ca. 2500 BC. Use of Old Akkadian was at its peak during the rule of Sargon the Great (Moses based on this king?) (2270 – 2215 BC), but even then most administrative tablets continued to be written in Sumerian, the language used by the scribes.

This is the vital link between cultures. This would help us understand the reason why these Sumerian tales made their way into the bible and are scattered throughout. Moses more than likely is based on the very real King Sargon.

Correct. However, that doesn't make your post any more credible.

My post is much more credible I would say.

check this one out:

http://www.imninalu.net/maps.htm

Thats awesome! Thanks. I will have to read all of those sections but the maps are fantastic.

Great maps... I agree.


Krimsa...was worried what happened to you...

glad to see you are ok and back to your usual fiesty self...

Thanks. No, I live on a farm with livestock and in the winter its a lot of work. I have to pry myself off the computer sometimes and actually get things done. Its nice to be missed though.