Which is written first Gilgamesh's flood story or the flood story in the Bible?

The Sumerian and Babylonian versions were written down before the Biblical version of the flood but they may have the same cultural memory to thank as a point of origin. The stories were passed down for hundreds of years as oral retelling so there's no positive way to say which one edged out the others. Through literary analysis it is assumed in Middle Eastern scholarship that Gilgamesh's Utnapishtim preceded the Bible's Noah.

See the Related Links for "Noah's Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic" The origin of the idea that the Gilgamesh epic came first was through the promoters of the now discredited Documentary Hypothesis which contained anti-biblical evolutionary presuppositions. As the above link details it is more likely that Gilgamesh was a corrupted version of the Biblical account rather than the other way around. The other possibility (which can be also simultaneously correct) is of course that Gilgamesh is a corrupted version of the true event.

Every culture has their own ancient flood legends, many with uncanny similarities to the Biblical account. These cannot all have copied , as Gilgamesh may have, from the Biblical record, but certainly they reflect 'cultural memory' of a true event in the distant past. _______________________________________ Actually, I have to disagree with the answer provided above.

The Gilgamesh flood story is clearly dependent upon the Atrahasis epic, or a common precursor or variant of this tale (See The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic by Tigay). Although we cannot be certain, the flood story was probably added to the Gilgamesh epic when it was standardised in the early 2nd millennium BCE. The oldest extant copu of Atrahasis is dated to the old Babylonian period - around 1700 BCE.

Consequently, it is ludicrous to argue that there is any literary dependence by either Atrahasis or Gilgamesh on Genesis. Genesis is closer in content to Atrahasis than Gilgamesh, so even if Mosaic authorship of Genesis was granted (nearly all scholars, however, date Genesis to the 5th or 6th centuries BCE) it would still be at least two hundred years too late.

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