1 November 2024
Question
How can you believe the Torah is from G-d when it is full of plagiarism? Bible critics have shown that the story of Noah’s Flood is a copy-paste from the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, that speaks of a flood with only one family surviving. Doesn’t this debunk the divinity of the Torah?
Answer
Your attack on the Torah only strengthens its veracity.
If you’d tell me that no other culture has any record of a flood destroying the world, you’d have a good question. Surely if such a massive global event really happened, someone somewhere would have noticed.
The fact is, there are many extra-Biblical accounts of the flood. Indeed, indigenous cultures worldwide have one thing in common, they all have flood stories. Some bear striking similarities to the biblical version, with some radical variations. Here are a few examples.
The Mesopotamian story you mention tells of a man called Utnapishtim, a name that for some reason is no longer very common. He brought his entire family and every animal species onto an ark to avoid the flood.
The Aztecs spoke of a flood that covered the earth and turned all people into fish, except for one couple, Nata and his wife Nema (compare to our Noah and his wife Naama), who hid in a hollowed-out cypress tree.
The Chinese version has a brother and sister survive the flood to recreate humankind out of clay, while the Greeks told of a man and his cousin who survived a nine-day deluge in an ark that eventually landed on Mount Parnassus.
Many versions speak of the survivor bringing a sacrifice after the flood like Noah did. In the Indian tale, there was only one man who survived. The problem of procreation was solved when he poured a sacrifice of milk and butter into the sea, which caused a woman to arise from the waves.
Indigenous Australians have a very different legend of a frog that drank all the water of the land, causing a drought. Only when the frog was made to laugh did it spew out the water, causing the great flood.
From Africa to Asia to Australia, there’s a common theme. A flood covered the earth, and humankind rebuilt from its few survivors. The ubiquity of this story across such diverse and far-flung civilizations is remarkable. That’s not a refutation of the Torah’s truth, it’s a vindication.
But one feature distinguishes the Torah account from all the others: the reason why Noah survived. The other stories say he was stronger, taller, smarter, or give no reason at all. Only the Torah presents Noah as a hero due to his character. He was righteous in a corrupt generation. Noah and his family were saved because they were good people.
That detail makes all the difference. This is not a story about bad weather. It’s about bad people. The lesson is not to build flood-proof houses. It is to build corruption-proof values. That’s exactly what the Torah is, an ark of ethical teachings that stands against the tide, a divine value system
as true today as it was in ancient times.
Every human alive today is a descendant of Noah and Naama, the couple who defied depraved popular opinion and chose the path of goodness. We can do the same.
