The story of a great flood, a hero, a boat full of animals, and birds sent out to find land was told in ancient Iraq long before the Bible was written down. Stories travel and change. Many Bible stories have older relatives.
Several Genesis stories have older Mesopotamian relatives. The flood is the clearest case. Scholars disagree about how the stories are connected (direct copying, a common older tradition, or deliberate answers to the neighbors' stories). Few dispute that a connection exists. But some popular "Jesus copied Horus" claims on the internet are weak, and this page tells you which to skip.
"The Bible is the oldest and original account, and other cultures' flood stories are corrupted memories of what really happened."
1. The flood
The timeline of the story
- Sumerian flood story (Eridu Genesis). The oldest known Mesopotamian flood text, preserved on a small damaged tablet found at Nippur.1
- Atrahasis epic. An Old Babylonian poem in which the god Enki warns the hero Atrahasis ("exceedingly wise") of a flood.2
- Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI. The hero is now called Utnapishtim. In 1872 George Smith read this tablet in the British Museum and famously shocked Victorian England: it looked like Noah. The tablet is catalogued K.3375.3
- Genesis 6–9. Most critical scholars treat Genesis as drawing on the Mesopotamian tradition. Oxford's John Day concludes that the biblical flood most likely depends on Atrahasis, and that Gilgamesh itself draws on Atrahasis.2
What they share
- A flood sent by a god or gods, and one hero warned to survive.
- Instructions to build a boat, and to bring animals aboard.
- The boat lands on a mountain.
- Birds are sent out to find land (a dove, a swallow, and a raven in Gilgamesh; a dove and a raven in Genesis).
- The hero offers a sacrifice afterward, and the god(s) smell the offering.
- A seven-day warning (Genesis J; Atrahasis says "the seventh night").2
Irving Finkel of the British Museum later published a tablet that describes a round, coracle-like boat instead of a box-shaped one, which shows how much ancient flood traditions varied.3
What's different
| Genesis | Atrahasis |
|---|---|
| One God | Many gods |
| Flood is punishment for human wickedness and violence | Flood is sent because humans are too noisy and numerous |
| God controls the flood and ends it by "remembering" Noah | The gods lose control and panic |
| God feeds humans | Humans feed the gods |
| Humans told to multiply afterward | Population limited afterward |
| Humans start good and turn bad | Survivor is rewarded with eternal life |
Differences as summarized by a Christian apologetics site, Evidence Unseen.4
Christian scholars point to those differences and make two arguments. First, similar flood stories could be shared memories of a real catastrophe, which different peoples remembered in different ways. Second, Genesis may be a deliberate answer to Mesopotamian polytheism: same story, but with one just God instead of squabbling gods.4 Critics reply that "shared memory" doesn't explain the specific, detailed overlaps (seven days, the birds, the smell of the sacrifice), and that an older story being reworked is exactly what "borrowing" means. Note, too, that both views admit the connection; the argument is about what it means.
Whatever the source, a worldwide flood covering the mountains doesn't fit the physical evidence. See the young-earth page. Real floods did happen, including a refilling of the Black Sea basin roughly 7500–5500 BCE, which may have inspired some tales.5
2. Creation
The Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish was found among the clay tablets in King Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh (he reigned 668–627 BCE). Early scholars called it the "Babylonian Genesis."6
Shared features
- Pre-existing watery chaos (the Hebrew tehom "the deep" is related to the name of the goddess Tiamat).
- Darkness, then light before the sun.
- Waters divided, with a dome holding back the upper waters.
- A similar sequence: sky, land, luminaries, humanity, rest.
Big differences
- In Enuma Elish the god Marduk kills Tiamat and forms the world from her body. Genesis has no battle.
- Genesis 1 is 31 verses; Enuma Elish runs about 900 lines.
- Genesis is monotheistic and treats the Sun and Moon as created lights, not gods.
Later scholarship moved away from "Genesis copied Babylon" toward a view that both texts "breathe the same air": they come from a shared ancient Near Eastern world of ideas. Genesis 1 appears to be, in part, a polemic: the God of Israel, not the gods of Babylon or Egypt, is responsible for creation.6
The same pattern holds for other Genesis stories. The Eden story's tree of life echoes Gilgamesh, where a serpent steals a plant of life. Genesis 2's garden and man formed from earth echo Atrahasis.7 Scholars date Genesis 1 largely to the 6th century BCE, and Genesis 2 to the 10th–9th century BCE under the traditional documentary hypothesis (later by some).7
3. Claims to skip
Online lists say that Horus, Mithra, Krishna, or Dionysus were all born of virgins on December 25, had twelve disciples, died, and rose after three days, and that Jesus is copied from them. Most of these specifics do not appear in the ancient sources for those gods; many come from 19th-century writers or the 2007 film Zeitgeist. Using these claims weakens the case, because a believer can easily check and refute them. This site doesn't use them. The flood and creation parallels above are based on actual ancient texts you can read.
What is reasonable to say: religions don't appear from nowhere. They borrow, answer, and reshape earlier religions. Early Israelite religion appears to have grown out of the wider Canaanite world (the very name Isra-el contains the Canaanite high god El), and many scholars think that ideas from Persian Zoroastrianism influenced Jewish ideas about angels, a devil figure, and the afterlife after the Babylonian exile. Those are debated topics, not settled ones. See the timeline to see how the dates stack up.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia, Eridu Genesis: the oldest Mesopotamian text relating the Great Flood, found at Nippur.
- John Day (Oxford), TheTorah.com, The Mesopotamian Origin of the Biblical Flood Story: list of parallels, and the case that Genesis depends on Atrahasis rather than directly on Gilgamesh.
- HistorySkills, The ancient story of Noah's Ark that is older than the Bible itself: George Smith's 1872 discovery, K.3375, Andrew George's view that few scholars doubt a connection, and Irving Finkel's round-ark tablet.
- Evidence Unseen, Did Genesis Borrow the Creation and Flood from Mesopotamian Myths? (Christian apologetics; source of the differences table and the "shared memory" and "polemic" arguments).
- Science Meets Religion, Are Noah's ark and flood literal scientific facts?: regional floods including the Black Sea inundation c. 7500–5500 BCE.
- BioLogos, Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story: parallels, differences, discovery in Ashurbanipal's library (668–627 BCE), and the shift away from "pan-Babylonianism".
- Wikipedia, Genesis creation narrative: dating of the Priestly and Yahwist sources and Near Eastern parallels (Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, Memphite Theology, Baal Cycle).
- Marked for a second source: the Zoroastrian-influence and early-Israelite-religion statements are mainstream scholarly views but are debated, and still need a linked citation.