The story of Noah’s Ark, as told in the Old Testament, tells how God punished the world because it had become corrupt. God stopped this corruption by flooding the world, killing everyone except Noah, his family and the animals on the ark. Based on many years of research, it can be argued that the story of Noah’s Ark was based on The Epic of Gilgamesh. However, other research supports that the two stories differ in many ways. It is remarkable that two stories written so many years apart share obvious similarities while being so different. Although the stories did not influence one another, the Biblical flood and the flood of Gilgamesh share many differences. The differences in the stories are why the two stories don’t influence each other. Even though the story of Noah’s Ark was written before The Epic of …show more content…
God shows signs of remorse in Noah’s story, but the gods show little involvement beyond the instructions of the flood itself. It is Utnapishtim himself who shows sorrow for the loss of his people. Utnapishtim also showed the Jewish and Christian belief of a loving and forgiving God who would only destroy the world if it were necessary. “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood” (Heidel 23). The remorse in Noah’s story is in direct contrast to the gods in Gilgamesh’s story. Gilgamesh is very determined to find immortality. A major difference in Genesis story compared to The Epic of Gilgamesh is that in Genesis the flood lasted forty days and forty nights compared to Gilgamesh’s that only lasted six days and six nights (Sandars 9). The Epic of Gilgamesh started to appear around 2,800 B.C. and the Genesis version of the flood wasn’t documented until 1,000 B.C. (Bowler 7). The Gods in the Epic of Gilgamesh are nothing like the God in Noah’s Flood. The Gods are another major