The Pre-Biblical Origins of Noah's Flood

in the Book of Genesis God instructs Noah how to build a rectangular Ark which artists over the years have envisioned in various ways sometimes Noah's Arc looks like an imposing ship like this 19th century painting sometimes a funny looking box on stilts like this Mosaic from a late Roman synagogue in Southeastern turkey or this Whimsical cartoon on the cover of Super 3D Noah Arc for the Super Nintendo but there are ancient Mesopotamian flood stories predating Genesis that describe an arc that looks very different back in 2014 the assyriologist Irving finle transl ated a flood story

found on this the ark tablet an ancient Babylonian tablet dating somewhere between 1900 and 1700 BC it describes a familiar sounding story a story about an ancient flood and a man who built a huge boat to survive it yeah you don't need a PhD and a serology to realize that this sounds a lot like the story of Noah's Ark this story however was composed in Acadian not Hebrew it featured a hero named atrasis not Noah and his boat well it was circular not rectangular Dr finle theorized that a real world watercraft inspired this early version

of The Ark a circular boat called a coracle basically it's a big floating basket made out of Twisted reads that ancient Mesopotamian people used to float up and down the marshy Waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers Scholars have long known that the flood story in Genesis draws from earlier stories like the atrasis Epic but beyond the shape of the arc what are the key differences between these stories what did the ancient biblical narrative change in the case of Noah's flood seeing which elements the biblical authors kept changed and discarded can give us a new

perspective on this familiar story and its cultural context we're going to examine four versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth in rough chronological order the Sumerian flood story The atrasis Epic that we just mentioned the Epic of Gilgamesh and of course the story of Noah in the Book of Genesis there are a few other versions that we could mention there's a third Century Babylonian priest named bosis who wrote a Greek version of the flood story that survives in Snippets there's also a very fragmentary Syrian version of the myth that was found in the ancient city of

ugarit but if that seems like a lot to keep track of don't worry today we're just going to focus on Genesis and the stories that predate it the oldest known version of the Mesopotamian flood story is the so-called Sumerian flood story which dates to the second millennium BCE it's extremely fragmentary preserved on this clay tablet on display at The Pen Museum of archaeology in Philadelphia a relatively recent literary study has traced the story's Origins back to around 1900 BCE though the tablet itself dates to around 1600 the hero of the story is named Zeos sudra

which means something like he of long life according to the story zos sudra was King of the Sumerian city of shupac and a priest of The God enki Who as we'll see plays a major salvific role in these stories only the lower third portion of the tablet survives so there are a lot of missing plot points but the Story begins with the creation of humans and the founding of the first cities after this there's a big missing Chunk in the story but apparently the gods led by the god en leil conspire to wipe out Humanity

with a flood however the god Ani goes and warns Zeos sudra a decision that the seed of mankind is to be destroyed has been made the verdict the word of the Divine assembly cannot be revoked then there's another missing chunk but presumably Anki tells Theos sudra how to make an ark to survive the flood because the story picks up again with a flood thrashing a big boat around after the flood had swept over the land for 7 days and seven nights and the destructive wind had rocked the huge boat in the high water the sun

god came out Illuminating Heaven and Earth Zeos sudra made an opening in the huge boat and the sun god with his Rays entered the huge boat the story ends with zos sudra disembarking with a bunch of other animals that he rescued and enlil granting him immortality apparently having a change of heart after he had just tried to destroy Humanity next is the atrasis Epic that I mentioned in the intro it survives in several versions in the Acadian language including that Arc tablet but the most famous copy of the Epic is found in a three tablet

cycle from southern Mesopotamia dating to the 1600s bce. the story is named after its hero atrasis whose name means exceedingly wise like zos sudra he's portrayed as a servant of the god Ani the atrasa Epic also begins with the creation of humanity and the plot to destroy them with a flood again featuring enlil as the villain and enki as the Savior according to the story eventually Humanity multiplies and becomes so noisy that they disturb enl sleep the noise of mankind has become too intense for me with their uproar I am deprived of sleep so to

get a little extra shy enil decides to wipe them all out which sounds to me like Overkill first he tries a plague and then he tries withholding rain to kill Humanity with a famine but anky thwarts him both times enlil then decides to send a flood so anky goes and warns atrasis in a dream and instructs him to build a big boat and load it with all the animals according to one version this dream came to atrasis after he spent the night in the God's Temple atrasis pay heed to my advice that you may live

forever destroy your house build a boat spurn property and save life as in the Sumerian version the flood in the atrasis Epic lasts for 7 Days in seven nights the story ends with osus making a sacrifice for the gods the third tradition is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh the most complete version of this flood story is quite a bit later than the versions We just looked at inscribed on the so-called flood tablet of the Gilgamesh epic dating to around the 600s BCE this tablet was composed around 1,000 years after the atrasa tablet though other

fragments of the Gilgamesh epic have been found that date back earlier to around 1200 bce. so even though this artifact dates to the 600s BCE the story is much much older while the Epic of Gilgamesh is mostly about the demigod King Gilgamesh the 11th tablet of this multi-part narrative contains a flood story told by the hero UTA pisham his name means he found life which is more or less an Acadian translation of the Sumerian name zos sudra and like zos sudra utnapishtim is the king of shupak and his is portrayed as a servant of the

godia the Babylonian version of Ani in the Gilgamesh Epic no reason is given for the flood at first but we find out at the end of the story that enlil decided to send a flood as a culling to diminish the number of people on Earth though not necessarily to destroy them entirely as in the other versions eia warns the hero to build an ark in this scene we see an almost word for word copy and paste from the atrasa Epic oh man of shupac demolish the house build a boat abandon riches and seek survival spurn

property and save life put on board the boat the seed of all living creatures the near verbatim borrowing shows that the Epic of Gilgamesh was based on atrasis in fact the Gilgamesh flood story even contains the name atrasis in one place where the author didn't change it the flood subsides on the seventh day and the story ends with the ark settling on Mount nisser utap team sending out a few Birds to search for dry land and him offering a sacrifice all of which sounds very familiar if you know your Bible proceeding in ological order we

finally arrive at Noah in the Book of Genesis which shares some striking parallels with the Epic of Gilgamesh both in the broad plot points and in the finer details this version of the flood myth as it's found in Genesis dates to around the 5th Century bcee that The Genesis Flood story is generally understood to be a mix of at least two earlier sources melded into one what Biblical Scholars often call the J source and the P Source or the yahwist and Priestly versions respectively the J source is usually considered to be older in Genesis both

the the J and P sources begin with the creation of humans and animals but Jay adheres more closely to Mesopotamian Traditions with God crafting the first man out of clay and like the Sumerian story The Jay narrative also includes the establishment of the first cities and then God decides to destroy Humanity with the flood according to the J Source it is the wickedness of humans that motivates the flood the Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually but

the man Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord and is instructed to build an ark to survive the flood unlike the other versions in which the flood lasts only a week the flood in Genesis lasts 40 days and 40 nights though similar to The Epic of Gilgamesh the story ends with the ark settling on some mountains Noah sending out a few Birds to search for dry land and offering a sacrifice so here we have four stories with the same basic plot a hero who survives a flood by building a boat though there's a

whole tangle of striking similarities and differences there are four different Heroes three of the stories feature the same villain and savior enlil and anky respectively with one featuring a singular God all four of them involve saving animals from the flood two of them Gilgamesh and Genesis feature the hero releasing Birds to look for dry land clearly the Mesopotamian flood story was a wide ranging tradition that was shared and reworked again and again by ancient near Eastern cultures over the centuries so let's dig a little deeper into those similarities and differences starting with the feet of

architect tal engineering found in all four Stories the ark our copy of the Sumerian flood story unfortunately is missing the portion about building the ark so we don't know how it appeared in this story it simply uses the Sumerian word translated as huge boat however the tablets do include an interesting detail after the rain stops zos sudra makes a window to let the light in zos sudra then drilled an opening in the big boat and the Gallant utu the sunod sent his light into the interior of the big boat a window scene also appears in

Gil mes the ugaritic flood story and Genesis in the Epic of Gilgamesh it says I opened a window and light fell on my cheeks in the ugaritic flood story take a wooden spade and a copper Axe and make a window at the top release a bird let it find for you a Shore and Genesis chapter 8 says at the end of 40 days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and he sent out a raven so the details are a bit different but apparently a window scene was a shared plot point

in each version we only get specific details about the design and construction of the Ark in atra Gilgamesh and Genesis as we've seen in the atrasis Epic the God eni gives atrasis specific instructions on how to build a circular Arc draw out the boat that you will make on a circular plan let her length and breadth be equal the Ark of atrasis is made with coiled reads it has multiple decks with compartments and a roof and it was coated with a tar-like petroleum product called bitumin that occurs naturally in Mesopotamia and has been used since

Antiquity for waterproofing boats like I said earlier this is essentially a huge coracle a type of round boat that throughout human history was exceptionally popular among societies living around Rivers coracles were still used in the Mesopotamian regions of Iraq until modern times what you're looking at are historical photographs of coral type boats called kufa in southern Iraq Neo Assyrian artwork depicts boats like these paddled by multiple men and the Greek historian Herodotus writing the 5ifth century bcee also mentions seeing them in Babylonia he says they have boats plying the river down to Babylon which are

completely round and are made of leather although these sources are much much later than the atrasis Epic it's likely that Mesopotamian people were using coracles for thousands of years Dr fle theorizes that this type of boat inspired the ark and atrasis and would have made a lot of sense to the original audience they were exceptionally buoyant boats often created with coiled rope or reads and covered in bitumen and though they were potentially difficult to steer this wouldn't matter so much if all you're trying to do is ride out a storm by bobbing around and though

The Arc in atrasis is fantastically huge the these coracle boats were sometimes pretty big ranging from Tiny one- seaters to larger ones that could hold multiple people or even livestock so the idea of carrying multiple people and animals on board would not have been a particularly outlandish idea to the original audience the Epic of Gilgamesh on the other hand seems to describe a giant cube-shaped Arc the godia Tells utap pish team the boat that you are going to build her Dimensions should all correspond her breadth and length should be the same like atrasis the Gilgamesh

epic specifies a a reed vessel with multiple decks a bunch of compartments and a roof and like Zeos sudra in the Sumerian flood story utnapishtim creates a window to let the sunlight in after the rain stops the story in Genesis also provides specific details about how to build the ark but describes a rectangular Arc like the other arcs it's coded with bitumin and here the Hebrew text uses an Acadian lone word that may have been inspired by atrasis or Gilgamesh the Hebrew word used here kofer meaning bitumin May derive from the Acadian word kpru the

chapter describing Noah's Arc is odd for a few reasons it says it's made from gopherwood an unknown species but probably not made out of gophers it may also be a lone word from Acadian and related to that word kofer the Hebrew word translated as Arc tea is also of unknown meaning and origin it appears only one other time in the Hebrew Bible describing the floating Reed Basket in which Baby Moses is placed in the book of Exodus Dr fle speculates that tea may be a tubu which was a rectangular barge used for River Crossings so

although the three versions of the arc differ from story to story circular cubic and rectangular there are some striking similarities all three are nearly identical in their base area despite being different shapes atrasis gilgames and Genesis all give specific dimensions The Arc of atrasis and unap pish team are both 14,400 cubits while Noah's Arc rounds this up to 15,000 cubits all three stories draw attention to bitchin being used to waterproof the ark all three stories draw attention to a window multiple decks and compartments and all three describe the hero saving both domestic and wild animals

aboard the Ark in the atrasis Epic the god Anki sends the animals to atrasa so that they're waiting for him when he loads the boat remarkably it states that the animals entered 2 by two a detail that is very familiar to us from Genesis the atrasis Epic says but the wild animals from the Step 2 by two they entered the Ark compare this to Genesis 7: 8 and 9 of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground two and two male and female went

into the ark as for the humans on board the ark the atrasis Epic includes the hero his wife his family and a number of skilled workers the Gilgamesh epic which seems to be more concerned with the preservation of civilization specifies that people of every skill and craft are to be brought on board in Genesis only NOA and his immediate family have a place on the ark everyone else is left out to dry so to speak the release of birds is one of the most compelling examples of the Bible's dependence on earlier flood traditions in Gilgamesh

after the storm has subsided utap team releases first a dove and then a swallow and finally a raven to search for dry land when the Raven doesn't return utnapishtim knows that he can safely leave the Ark in the ugaritic fragment a dove and a crane are sent out and in Genesis Noah releases a raven and when it doesn't come back he releases a dove three different times it's interesting that Noah's raven like in Gilgamesh doesn't return though an interesting feature in the Genesis story is that dove brings back an olive leaf a plant native to

the Levant but not Mesopotamia so the flood story in Genesis clearly draws on these earlier narratives and is most closely related to the story found in the Epic of gilgames Scholars theorize that this cultural transmission may have occurred during the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE the neo-babylonian Empire invaded the kingdom of Judah and carried a bunch of its population back to Mesopotamia notably it was the judahite elite and educated that were most likely to be captured Dr finle theorizes that that these judahite scribes eventually learned CA form and became directly familiar with the Babylonian stories

in their original Acadian language but these judahite scribes were not passive recipients of the flood myth these stories were reworked to fit a judahite audience and to fit judahite religion so far we focused on relatively surface level similarities and differences The atrasa Arc is circular Noah's Arc is rectangular utap Pam sends out a raven swallow and Dove Noah only sends out a raven and Dove nothing Earth shattering here but there's one way that Genesis differs significantly from the other versions a difference that fundamentally changes the moral of the story and the morals of the story

in Genesis a single deity called Yahweh by J and Elohim by P is responsible for both the decision to eradicate humans and the counter decision to save them this introduces a fascinating difference between Genesis and the other three versions with respect to Divine Justice the three earlier versions feature multiple gods and with multiple gods there are multiple Divine characters who can play different roles most notably the villainous God enlil and the Savior God anky this leaves room to criticize the gods because some of them are misbehaving or acting capriciously in the atrahasis Epic enlil decides

to send a flood because Humanity was too noisy and he was losing sleep over it you might think that this is wildly disproportionate Overkill kill all humans because you're having trouble sleeping isn't that capricious and cruel and you wouldn't be alone in thinking that because the atrahasis epic seems to agree with that sentiment the gods by no means are portrayed in a positive light for sending the flood the Creator goddess ninu weeps when she witnesses her people dying in the flood she wept she gave vent to her feelings the gods wept with her for the

country the other gods are self-aware that they're witnessing a gross Injustice we also see this in the end of the atrasis Epic when atrasis makes a sacrifice to the gods there's a satirical scene when the gods swarm the sacrificial meat like a bunch of flies presumably because were so hungry from the lack of sacrifice the gods sniffed the Savor they were gathered like flies around the offering after they've consumed the food the Creator goddess stands up and condemns the other gods they who irrationally brought about the flood and relegated the peoples to catastrophe one version

of the atrasa Epic goes so far as to condemn enlil for acting wickedly the gods commanded an Annihilation a wicked thing that enlil will do to the people a similar scene is shared in the Epic of Gilgamesh in Gilgamesh the Gods smell the aroma of utnapishtim sacrifice and are pleased by it but the Creator goddess stands up and explicitly condemns enil but let not enlil come to the offering for he unreasoning brought on the Deluge and my people consigned to destruction the sacrifice prompts a discussion among the gods about the unfairness of the flood EA

declares from now on the gods should punish individuals for their own sins not collectively the flood story in both atrahasis and Gilgamesh is a theological critique of the Gods as one scholar puts it a theological critique that the gods only jeopardize their own livelihood in destroying their human sources of support the stories wrestle with concepts of Senseless suffering familiar topics for philosophers and theologians to this day but these themes of theological critique and divine Injustice are completely reworked in Genesis because God is both the instigator of the flood and the Savior from it since God

can't be the villain Genesis focuses on the wickedness of humanity and the righteousness of the main character Noah humans are so evil that the god of Israel is Justified to destroy them and Noah is so righteous he is worthy to be saved the scholar Christine Hayes suggests that the writers of Genesis are determined to depict God not as capricious but as operating with clear standards of Justice making the flood a deserved punishment another important difference is the story's attitude toward the growth of humanity in Gilgamesh and the other Mesopotamian Stories the gods see the proliferation

of humans as a problem that needs to be solved but Genesis commands humans to multiply and repopulate the the world according to the biblical scholar Thomas RoR this emphasis is a direct response to the Babylonian myths in Gilgamesh the problem with the flood is that it was too extreme but even eia doesn't disagree that limiting the growth of humanity is a worthy goal After the flood IIA tells enlil instead of sending the flood the lion should have risen to decimate the human Mass instead of sending the flood there could be a famine to afflict the

country instead of sending the flood era the plague God should have risen to bruise the country IIA is is more angry about the disproportionate Method Of Destruction not necessarily the goal of limiting human population growth Dr RoR argues that by Shifting the focus to the wickedness of humanity Genesis actually attempts a more ethical rereading of the Babylonian Story evil and not population growth is the cause of the wrath of God despite their many differences the many versions of the ne Eastern flood myth contain Universal themes that ancient people found compelling regardless of where they lived

and what gods they worshiped Divine Justice versus Divine capriciousness righteousness versus evil and these themes may help to explain the story's remarkable staying power as it was passed on generation after generation for hundreds of years this video is sponsored by 80,000 hours there a nonprofit that helps people find careers that solve the world's most pressing problems so what's with that name 880,000 hours well it's a rough estimate for the length of your career 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year for 40 years 880,000 hours and that's a lot of time but how do you

make the most of it you've probably heard a lot of career advice like Follow Your Passion or do what you love or maybe you've taken one of those career aptitude tests that asks you hey do you like working outside and then it's like oh therefore you should like being a structural engineer okay sure but careers are weird and winding roads cookie cutter advice just is not enough when I started my religious studies PhD program back in 2012 I would have never guessed in a million years that I would be a full-time YouTuber 12 years later

so what is the best available evidence we have for what actually makes a high impact career that also does good in the world for the last 10 years 880,000 hours has been researching that exact question they have a website with a ton of research on high impact careers a job board listing currently open roles that will have a positive impact and a podcast featuring experts on big problems facing humanity and how we might solve them everything they publish is based on evidence-based research and everything they publish is free forever because they're nonprofit their only aim

is to help solve Global Problems by helping you find an impactful career so if you want real career advice that goes beyond empty cliches and start planning a career that works on tough Global problems join their newsletter at 8000 hour.org RFB if you sign up now you'll get a free copy of their in-depth research-led career guide sent straight to your inbox again that's 80,000 hour.org RFB thanks everyone