How does the Noah's Ark narrative relate to the Gilgamesh flood account?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

1. Genesis is monotheistic. It is Elohim who sends the flood and tells Noah to build the Ark. In Atrahasis, the nasty and capricious god Enlil sends the flood while his opponent Enki warns Atrahasis.
2. The reason for the Genesis flood is that man is very wicked. In Gilgamesh, Enlil decides to flood the world because men are disrupting his sleep.
3. In Genesis, Elohim tells Noah directly what to do. Enki whispers to Atrahasis through a wall of reeds because he swore to Enlil that he would not warn people.
4. Throughout the flood, Elohim is depicted as in charge and in control. The gods of Atrahasis fear the flood waters and sit in hunger and thirst.
5. The flood in Genesis lasts 40 days and nights and takes time to recede. Atrahasis' flood lasts 7 days.
6. The sacrifice in Genesis is to give thanks that they were chosen to be preserved. In Atrahasis, they sacrifice to feed the gods, who forgot that without man to sacrifice animals to them, they would starve.

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.

Answer 3

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."