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How does the Noah's Ark narrative relate to other the Gilgamesh flood account?
For reference, the Biblical flood account is in Genesis 6-10 and the Gilgamesh flood account is on Tablet XI. The British Museum holds a tablet with the Atrahasis Epic which is a more ancient flood account, but I don't know of an online translation.
According to evidence presented by P.J. Wiseman concerning the toledoth, the Genesis account was written by eyewitnesses to the events and therefor is the primary and older source.
The word translated 'generations' in the repeated formula "these are the generations of" should be considered the signature line on a clay tablet, and Genesis read as a string of clay tablets transcribed on to papyrus with their respective colophons intact.
The tablets would have been passed Father to son until they were carried into Egypt with Jacob and likely put into the Pharaoh's library by Joseph where Moses would have had access to them.
The archeology was rather late (1940's) and so modern source theories were already fairly well established. Wiseman's evidence has been considered favorably by Harrison.
There are some very close similarities but also some drastic differences. For similarities, there are a hero who builds a boat to preserve those chosen by a god. They build the boat with levels inside and seal it with bitumen. Both gather his family and animals in the Ark. The floods come. After the flood, they dismebark and sacrifice to the gods. Those are the broad similarities.
The differences, however, are more striking.
There is a comparison of multiple flood accounts from the ANE here. However, in the Bible column, they mention a revolt of giants (with a question mark) and that it was both sin and giants that prompted Elohim to send the flood. The giants are briefly mentioned in Gen 6 but the flood is stated to be because mankind has sinned continually.
According to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the flood in Genesis is
"rooted in actual historical events, even if the narrative is not couched in the language of descriptive history. Mesopotamia had many flood myths, all of which testify to the memory of disastrous inundations, especially on the flat lands of the Tigris-Euphrates valley (See Commentary of R. David Zvi Hoffman to Genesis 6 [Hebrew, 140] who suggests that the Flood may have been limited to centres of human habitation, rather than covering the whole earth). Excavations at Shurrupak, Kish, Uruk and Ur – Abraham’s birthplace – reveal evidence of clay flood deposits."
I hold to the view that the Genesis story of the Flood derives either from the Epic of Gilgamesh itself or from similar myth/s. In so saying I agree with the Bible commentary of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, which says:
The biblical story ultimately draws upon an ancient Mesopotamian tradition of a great flood, preserved in the Sumerian flood story, the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, and (embedded in a longer creation story) the Atrahasis Epic.
I propose the following narrative as a way to harmonize the Mesopotamian origin of the story with the biblical account: Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldeans, before coming to Canaan. This was a major religious center, where he would certainly have known the story of Gilgamesh. Abraham retained this knowledge and either he or his descendants recast the story, with variations, in a monotheistic form. Eventually, the gods who played various roles in Gilgamesh (one sends the flood, another warns Utnapishtim, while later the goddess Ishtar weeps for her lost children, and a whole crowd of gods gather at the end) are combined into one. The God of Abraham thus becomes the only divine character in the drama. Much later, the story would be incorporated into the text of Genesis.
The questioner of the OP says he does not not of there is an online version of the Atrahasis legend. This one is quite readable.
