Greek Flood Legends

Legends have surfaced in hundreds of cultures throughout the world that tell of a huge, catastrophic flood that destroyed most of man kind and was survived only by a few individuals and animals. Although most historians that have studied this matter, estimate these legends number in the two hundreds, other subject matter experts claim the number to be as great as five hundred accounts of the flood through out the world. There have been approximately two hundred flood myths found in the world. The similarity between much of their content is equally amazing. In addition, these stories have been found on every inhabited continent. These legends come from different ages and civilizations that could not possibly have copied any of the similar legends.

At this time, these tablets sent a shock wave around the world. People everywhere began speculating depending on their religious disposition. Some folks sympathetic to the biblical message claimed this document confirms the truth about the bible’s great flood. On the other hand, biblical critics, claimed that it proves the Hebrews simply borrowed the epic, reworked it, and used it for their own purposes. Since the time of the discovery, there have been many, many accounts of a great deluge. The Sumerians, the Mesopotamians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, even the Hittites all have an account of a long distant memory of a great flood. Whether they all share a common source or are independent memories of a great cataclysm remains a wide open debate. The actuality this event occurring is very hard to deny due to the over whelming amount of

God destroyed humankind, and in both stories, the gods promised to never harm human beings again. They both then commanded Noah and repopulate the earth. Any casual reader has to be impressed that there are these points of similarity between these two. On the same token, the reader has to be impressed with the fact that there are some conspicuous and obvious differences. In the Gilgamesh epic, the author has the gods that are squabbling. They are infections, jealous, immoral and so on. In contrast, there is a great, holy dignity in the bible that brings this judgment to bear. There is a real danger that the powers of chaos and destruction will get out of hand. Things do in fact go too far. Even the gods are shocked by the results of their own action, but nothing shows more strikingly the difference in outlook and purpose than the conclusion. In place of God’s solid pledge to Noah, while the earth remains seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day shall not cease. In contrast, there is the nauseating picture of gods swarming like flies over the sacrifice. Here, on the one hand, in Genesis, God is in perfect control of what’s happening, not in any sense is he terrified by the flood that has been released, but in Gilgamesh epic, the gods are on the run to the highest level of the heavens, trying to escape the uncontrolled powers that have been released by