Gilgamesh and the Flood

We were talking the other day about creation stories in the book of Genesis and I happened to mention the story of the flood. I asked the students to look up the epic of Gilgamesh and discover how it could have been a source for Genesis. The following links tell the story and analyse its impact on the story of the biblical flood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM

The following table has been copied from the Institute for Creation Research. You need to be careful when researching biblical origins and influences as fundamentalists, who have a very widespread web presence, use stories such as Gilgamesh to prove the historical veracity of biblical texts. However, this gives a quick summary of the similarities and differences in the two stories.

COMPARISON OF GENESIS AND GILGAMESH
	GENESIS	GILGAMESH
Extent of flood	Global	Global
Cause	Man's wickedness	Man's sins
Intended for whom?	All mankind	One city & all mankind
Sender	Yahweh	Assembly of "gods"
Name of hero	Noah	Utnapishtim
Hero's character	Righteous	Righteous
Means of announcement	Direct from God	In a dream
Ordered to build boat?	Yes	Yes
Did hero complain?	Yes	Yes
Height of boat	Several stories (3)	Several stories (6)
Compartments inside?	Many	Many
Doors	One	One
Windows	At least one	At least one
Outside coating	Pitch	Pitch
Shape of boat	Rectangular	Square
Human passengers	Family members only	Family & few others
Other passengers	All species of animals	All species of animals
Means of flood	Ground water & heavy rain	Heavy rain
Duration of flood	Long (40 days & nights plus)	Short (6 days & nights)
Test to find land	Release of birds	Release of birds
Types of birds	Raven & three doves	Dove, swallow, raven
Ark landing spot	Mountain -- Mt. Ararat	Mountain -- Mt. Nisir
Sacrificed after flood?	Yes, by Noah	Yes, by Utnapishtim
Blessed after flood?	Yes	Yes