Gen 7 : The Flood: The Bible vs. Mesopotamia
Guest: Dr. Gary Rendsburg. In this episode, we step into one of the most well-known—and most debated—stories in Scripture: the flood of Genesis 7. But we’re not reading it in isolation. Ancient Mesopotamian texts like The Epic of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis also tell flood stories… and at first glance, the similarities are hard to ignore. So what do we do with that?
- Are these stories essentially the same?
- Did one borrow from the other?
- Or are the differences more important than the similarities?
We walk carefully through both the parallels and the contrasts—because while the stories may sound alike, they are not saying the same thing. We also consider what these parallels might mean for how we understand the unity and composition of the flood narrative in Genesis itself.
Along the way, we explore:
- Why the flood account would have sounded familiar in the ancient world
- Where Genesis closely mirrors Mesopotamian traditions
- The critical ways the biblical story pushes back against those traditions
- What Genesis reveals about God that these other stories do not
Link to the table of parallels between the biblical and Mesopotamian flood accounts - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QT2uXtINTF0ZKtsAL71ydaADx8KwUzVI/view?usp=sharing
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