[DiogenesKynikos]

The similarities between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis flood story are far too extensive to be due to chance.

For example, compare the following passages, describing how Noah / Utnapishtim let out birds to search for dry land, after their boats get grounded on a tall mountain.

Genesis 8:6-12:

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

Epic of Gilgamesh:

> When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting-place she returned. Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting-place she returned. I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back.

Historically, much of Genesis was likely written during the Babylonian exile. It's not surprising at all that the authors of Genesis borrowed a story that was extremely well known in Babylon.

[ars]

> Historically, much of Genesis was likely written during the Babylonian exile.

That's very very unlikely, there's too much other stuff linked with it that is older than that. You might be able to claim that when it was set to paper, but there's no way Genesis itself is only from then.

According to Genesis Abraham lived at the time that Gilgamesh was recorded, with Noah living a little before then. It's quote possible Gilgamesh was written down from their stories, rather than the other way around. Genesis records how Abraham traveled widely telling his story, including to kings.

[DiogenesKynikos]

There are many linguistic and historical hints that the early chapters of Genesis were written during or after the Babylonian captivity: things like mentions of "great" cities that only became great during that era, borrowed Babylonian phrases, various stories borrowed from the Babylonians, etc.

There were certainly earlier stories that were included in Genesis, but the actual writing occurred long after those stories supposedly took place.

> It's quote possible Gilgamesh was written down from their stories, rather than the other way around.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written down long before there was even a Hebrew language. It's one of the most ancient written works.

[Amezarak]

At least portions of the Pentateuch certainly date prior to the Exile, because we have direct archeological evidence in the form of dated, physical scrolls.

At any rate both the Babylonians and the ancient Israelites were Semitic peoples, so obviously they had a shared background long before the Exile.

There are also many references in early Genesis that do suggest it originates in traditions much older, including references to great cities and powers that were long, long gone by the Exile. This actually sent me quite recently down some rabbit holes.

[DiogenesKynikos]

I wrote specifically that the early chapters of Genesis date to the exile.

The Bible is not a single book. It's really a collection of different works, written over the course of centuries by different people. Different parts date from different eras (and then were subsequently edited over the centuries).

> we have direct archeological evidence in the form of dated, physical scrolls.

From what I know, only very short fragments of a few prayers survive from before the exile.

[Amezarak]

Sure, I don’t think anybody disputes that the Bible is a not single book written at once.

But the claim that any part of Genesis dates to the Exile is a weak historiographical claim, based primarily on a few pillars of very weak circumstantial evidence: a) we don’t have many physical examples dated to a prior time - but that’s not at all surprising; the vast supermajority of texts don’t survive, and many of the most ancient copies we do have are relatively recent discoveries; b) it makes sense to some people to argue this based on (reasonable) speculation about the development of the Jewish religion and the pressures at different periods of its development and c) as a corollary to b, one mainstream opinion is that Genesis can mostly be attributed to two different sources by a stylistic analysis and one of them is simply believed to date around the Exile.

This corresponds to the general current fads in historiography and history but it is by no means definite, and we shouldn’t be surprised if it is all overturned in a night by a single discovery, as these things very often are. This type of historiography is not really rigorous in a meaningful sense and is based essentially on current academic trends and a few authorities.

So we can safely consider the arguments underlying the dating ourselves without getting in too much trouble, but we don’t even have to do that to address your particular claim that the portions of Genesis must have been devised by an Exilic writer due to Babylonian influence. This essentially requires engaging in a deliberate pious fraud, which then was taken up by the other Israelites without question and who accepted the new stories with no recorded debate, and which also received no pushback when the Israelites who did not go into Exile. We would expect the possibility of diverging traditions on this point, but for example, the Samaritans have precisely the same story on this point, although the dating of that is also a point of contention. Either way, we should keep in mind that only some Israelites went into Exile, and plenty remained in Israel and Judah and maintained their traditions through the 70 year Exile.

It’s possible that this did happen. But it’s also the case that Babylonian contact was not new in the Exile period. The Israelites didn’t exist in a vacuum, they were part of the tapestry of the wider Semitic world for their entire existence and would have had familiarity with all these stories and beliefs the entire time. Indeed, it’s most commonly believed that the Israelite religion was not unique, but a simple development into monotheism from a normal localized Canaanite religion. And indeed, at some point, they all shared a common origin. Rather than adapting a Sumerian-via-Babylon story in a very late period, it’s a much more parsimonious explanation that some version of the story always existed amongst the Israelites in their oral tradition regardless of when it was committed to writing.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Whenever you date the writing down of the early chapters of Genesis, it's clear that the flood story heavily copied directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh. The parallels, down to little details, are too strong to be simply due to similar stories floating around.

I don't see why this should be called a "pious fraud." Babylon was a massive cultural center of that time, and the land of Israel was a relative backwater on its periphery. Babylon would have exerted an enormous cultural influence on the surrounding peoples, including the Israelites.