Did Noah's Flood Happen? Genesis, Gilgamesh and How the Fathers Read It

Three questions usually arrive together. Did Noah's Flood really happen? Isn't the story copied from the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh? And does a Christian have to believe that water covered the whole planet? They are different questions, and the Church answers them differently. The first she answers with a firm yes. The second has real, documented evidence behind it, which we set out below. On the third, the Church has never issued a ruling, and honest Christians have held more than one view.

This article reads Genesis 6-9 as Christ, the apostles and the Fathers read it, puts the Mesopotamian flood stories beside it, and says plainly what the evidence shows and what it does not. A shorter answer on this site, Genesis and the Age of the Earth, deals with the days of creation; this one deals with the Flood.

In brief

Genesis tells of a judgment by water in the days of a righteous man, Noah, who built an ark by God's command and saved his family and the animals. Our Lord speaks of "the days of Noe" as history (Matthew 24:37-39), and so do St Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Mesopotamians told flood stories as well, three of which are close enough to Genesis that many scholars say Genesis took them over. They are also far apart in what they say about God, sin and man. The Fathers who write on the subject take the Flood as a real event, see the ark as the Church and the Flood as a type of baptism, and the one Father we found who addresses the extent of the water takes it to be universal. The Church has not defined how far the water went.

Thesis: the Flood happened, as Scripture, Christ and the Fathers say; the Babylonian stories are better read as distorted memories of it than as its source; and the geography of the Flood is an open question, whereas the truth of the narrative is not.

What Genesis says

The cause is moral. "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." (Genesis 6:11) Noah, by contrast, "was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9).¹ God commands an ark of "three hundred cubits" in length, "fifty cubits" in breadth and "thirty cubits" in height (Genesis 6:15). The water rises: "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened" (Genesis 7:11). It "prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered" (Genesis 7:19). The ark rests "upon the mountains of Ararat" (Genesis 8:4). Noah sends out a raven and then a dove, which comes back with "an olive leaf" (Genesis 8:11). He builds an altar, and the LORD smells "a sweet savour" (Genesis 8:20-21). The story ends with a covenant: "neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth" (Genesis 9:11), sealed with the bow in the cloud.

The language of extent is strong: "every man" died (7:21), "Noah only remained alive" (7:23), and the covenant speaks of "all flesh". Yet Scripture also uses "all" and "the whole" of what the writer's world could see. "All countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn, because that the famine was so sore in all lands." (Genesis 41:57) Moses is told that God will put the fear of Israel "upon the nations that are under the whole heaven" (Deuteronomy 2:25), and "all the earth sought to Solomon" (1 Kings 10:24). The phrase "under the whole heaven", which Genesis 7:19 uses of the hills, is used in Deuteronomy 2:25 of nations the writer could name. That is why some Christians read the Flood as vast but regional. Others answer that Genesis 7 adds details, such as that "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life" on dry land died (7:22), which the idiom of Genesis 41 does not require. We lay out both below.

What Christ and the apostles say

Our Lord names Noah as a figure of history: "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away." (Matthew 24:37-39) Luke records the same words (17:26-27). The point of the comparison depends on the Flood having happened: people lived as usual until the day it came.

The apostles say the same. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house." (Hebrews 11:7) St Peter speaks of the days of Noah "while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water" (1 Peter 3:20), and adds: "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us" (1 Peter 3:21). In his second letter God "spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly" (2 Peter 2:5), and "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished" (2 Peter 3:6).¹ A Christian who calls the Flood a myth must say that the Lord and His apostles spoke of a myth as of a fact and drew from it a warning for the Last Day. That is not an Orthodox position.

The Mesopotamian flood stories

Three old Mesopotamian texts tell of a great flood. We read them in published translations.

• The Eridu Genesis is a Sumerian text on a damaged tablet from Nippur, dated to about 1600 BC.² The god Enki warns Ziusudra, "a flood will sweep over the cities", which comes "for seven days and seven nights".³
• Atrahasis is an Akkadian epic whose oldest dated copy belongs to the reign of Ammi-saduqa (about 1646-1626 BC).² The gods are disturbed by the noise of the humans they made, and Enlil sends the Flood. Enki speaks to Atrahasis through the wall of a reed house: "Wall, listen to me! Reed wall, pay attention to all my words!"⁴
• Gilgamesh, Tablet XI belongs to the Standard Babylonian version of the epic, which scholars place between the thirteenth and tenth centuries BC, with the best copies from the library of Ashurbanipal in the seventh.⁵ Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that Ea warned him in the same way, and he is told: "Tear down the house and build a boat!"⁶

A later Babylonian priest, Berossus, wrote a history in about 278 BC in which Xisuthrus survives a flood and the ship comes to rest in Armenia. His book is lost, and we know it from quotations by Josephus and by George Syncellus.⁷

Where they agree

The likenesses are real. A divine decision to destroy mankind; a warning to one man; a boat built to a plan, sealed with pitch; the family and animals brought aboard; a flood of days; a landing on a mountain; birds sent out (a dove, a swallow and a raven in Gilgamesh; a raven and a dove in Genesis); a sacrifice afterwards. Genesis says "the LORD smelled a sweet savour"; Gilgamesh says "the gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor, and collected like flies over a sacrifice." The ship lodges on Mount Nimuš in Gilgamesh and on "the mountains of Ararat" in Genesis (the name is the Babylonian Urartu, the Armenian highlands), and Berossus too has it come to rest in Armenia. Many scholars conclude that Genesis took over and reshaped these older stories.⁸

Where they differ

The differences are as great as the likenesses.

• The reason. In Atrahasis the gods act because humans make too much noise. In Gilgamesh, Enlil acts, as Ea says to him, "without consideration", and later rages that "No man was to survive the annihilation!" In Genesis the cause is "violence" and corruption (6:11-12), and one man is spared because he is righteous.
• The gods. In the Babylonian stories the gods quarrel, are afraid of the Flood they sent, "cowering like dogs", and are hungry afterwards because no one is left to feed them. In Genesis one LORD speaks, acts and keeps promises.
• The ship. Gilgamesh gives a cube whose sides are each 120 cubits; Genesis gives a long box, 300 by 50 by 30.
• The end. Utnapishtim and his wife are made "like us, the gods". Noah receives a blessing, a command to "be fruitful, and multiply", and a covenant with every living creature (9:1, 9-17).

What the likenesses mean

There are three ways to read the facts.

1. Genesis borrowed. Many critical scholars hold this. It does not by itself touch the truth of Scripture, since an inspired writer may use a known story, correct it and teach with it. But the theology of Genesis is so unlike Atrahasis and Gilgamesh that "borrowed" cannot be the whole account: what Genesis keeps is the frame, and everything that matters is changed.
2. All remember one event. After the Flood, the sons of Noah "overspread" the earth (Genesis 9:19), and the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod, "Babel, and Erech", stands "in the land of Shinar" (Genesis 10:10; 11:2), the country of the Mesopotamian floods. Peoples who descended from the survivors would keep the memory, and the polytheistic nations would tell it in their own way. Early writers took this view. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch in the later second century, says that the Greeks tell of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and that Moses, by contrast, relates "in what manner the flood came upon the earth" without fable.⁹ Josephus notes that "all the writers of barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark", and quotes Berossus.¹⁰
3. The Flood is a myth everywhere. This conflicts with Matthew 24 and 2 Peter 3, as we saw.

We hold the second reading, and it can include part of the first. Moses, or the tradition he received, did not need to learn the Flood from Babylon; he is taught by God what a Babylonian tablet distorts. The older date of the tablets does not settle this, since the written form of Genesis is itself disputed (see Who Wrote the Pentateuch?), and an older copy of a story shows only that the story was told, not that it was true.

According to Livius, the hero of all three Mesopotamian accounts is a king of Shuruppak, a city of southern Iraq. Excavations in the 1920s and 1930s found layers of river clay at Ur, Kish, Shuruppak and Uruk, of different dates, from the end of the fourth millennium to the middle of the third millennium BC. Leonard Woolley announced in 1929 that the clay at Ur was laid down by the Flood, but no similar deposit was found at Eridu, and the layers at the other sites differ in date. They do show that devastating river floods struck southern Iraq.¹¹ That fits a Flood in the region, though it does not prove it.

How far did the water go?

Christians have held several positions, and we state each fairly.

• A universal flood. This is the traditional view and the one that most naturally fits the words "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven" and St Peter's "the world that then was" (2 Peter 3:6). John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, in The Genesis Flood (1961), argued that the rock record is evidence of it. Mainstream geologists do not accept their reading of the rocks; the early nineteenth-century "diluvial" geologists who looked for a worldwide flood concluded by about 1830 that the evidence pointed to local floods.¹² We do not claim to settle a scientific dispute in an article on the Faith. We say that Scripture does not need Whitcomb and Morris, and that a believer who weighs the rocks as geologists do is not thereby denying the Flood.
• A regional flood. The Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology (1830-1833), argued against a worldwide deluge and allowed only a regional one, and many Christians since have agreed.¹² The old-earth writer Hugh Ross argues that "all" and "the whole" in Scripture are often limited, and defends a local flood. John Walton and Tremper Longman, in The Lost World of the Flood (2018), argue that a local catastrophe is described in the language of a world-wide one, in the way ancient writers did.¹² We know these authors from reviews and summaries, not from their books.
• A flood of the Black Sea. In 1997 William Ryan, Walter Pitman and colleagues proposed that the Mediterranean broke into a freshwater Black Sea about 7,600 years ago. Ryan and Pitman linked it to Noah in their book Noah's Flood (1998). The hypothesis is disputed, and scientists who study the Black Sea disagree about whether the flooding was sudden or gradual.¹³ It is a possibility, not a result.

The Fathers do not ask our modern question in our terms. What we found is this. Theophilus of Antioch says that Plato "said that it extended not over the whole earth, but only over the plains", and then that Moses tells "no fable of Pyrrha nor of Deucalion or Clymenus; nor, forsooth, that only the plains were submerged"; the water, he says, "overtopped every high hill 15 cubits".⁹ That is a plain statement that the Flood was universal. St Augustine, writing in the West more than two centuries later, takes it for granted that the water stood above the highest mountains and defends the ark's size at length.¹⁴ We did not find a Father who proposed a local flood, though we have not searched all of them. What the Fathers share, whatever they think about extent, is that the Flood happened, that Noah was a real man, and that the event teaches Christ.

The Ark and the Font

St Peter's word "figure" (1 Peter 3:21) opened the way to a reading that runs through the whole Church. St Clement of Rome, writing about AD 96, says that "Noah, being found faithful, preached regeneration to the world through his ministry; and the Lord saved by him the animals which, with one accord, entered into the ark".¹⁵ Tertullian sees in the dove of Genesis 8 the type of the Holy Spirit at the font, "bringing us the peace of God".¹⁶ St Augustine says the ark is "a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator". Yet he warns against reading the ark as allegory alone: "no one ought to suppose... that there were no such facts at all".¹⁴ That is the Orthodox method in one sentence: the history stands, and it is full of Christ.

St John of Damascus, in the standard Orthodox summary of the faith, lists the baptisms before Christ: "The first baptism was that of the flood for the eradication of sin." And of the oil used at baptism he writes: "it was the fruit of the olive that the dove brought to those who were saved from the flood."¹⁷ In the baptismal service the priest says over the oil: "O Lord and Master, the God of our fathers, who didst send unto them that were in the ark of Noah thy dove, bearing in its beak a twig of olive, the token of reconciliation and of salvation from the flood, the foreshadowing of the mystery of grace".¹⁸ For a longer treatment of baptism see Baptism: More Than a Symbol and Does Baptism Save?.

What an Orthodox Christian must hold, and what is open

Held by the Faith. That Noah was a real man; that God judged a corrupt world by water and saved eight people in an ark; that He made a covenant never to destroy the earth by flood again; that Christ spoke truly of Noah; that the Flood is a figure of baptism and the ark of the Church.

Open. How far the water reached; the date; how the animals were gathered and kept (Augustine himself offers several suggestions on such questions, and says that the gathering of the animals was "not the care of Noah or his sons, but of God"); whether the Black Sea or Mesopotamia was the centre of the catastrophe. As far as we know, none of the Seven Ecumenical Councils addresses the matter. See Can the Church Fathers Disagree? for how the Church tells doctrine from opinion, and How Should Christians Read the Old Testament? for typology and history together.

What we can say confidently

• Christ and the apostles speak of Noah and the Flood as history (Matthew 24:37-39; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:6). Very Strong.
• Mesopotamia has older flood stories (Eridu Genesis, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh XI) that resemble Genesis closely in plot and differ greatly in theology. Very Strong.
• The Fathers who write on it take the Flood as real history and as a type of baptism and the ark as a type of the Church. Strong, since we read a selection of them and not every Father.
• The Fathers' one explicit statement on extent that we found (Theophilus) is universal. Moderate, because we did not survey every Father.
• Southern Iraq had devastating river floods in the third millennium BC, but no excavation proves the Flood. Strong.

What remains disputed

• The geographic extent of the Flood, among Christians who all accept its truth.
• How the Mesopotamian and biblical accounts are related: borrowing, shared memory, or both. The date at which Genesis took its present form is argued (see the Pentateuch article).
• Whether the Black Sea flooding of about 5600 BC or a Mesopotamian river flood lies behind the memory. Neither is established.
• The remains of the ark. Josephus says that its remains were shown in Armenia, and Theophilus that they were to be seen "in the Arabian mountains"; the two places differ and neither report can be checked now.

Conclusion

The Flood is not a fairy tale the Church puts up with, and it is not a scientific hypothesis she needs to defend at all costs. It is an event the Lord named, the apostles preached and the Fathers prayed, and the Church keeps its meaning in the font where she baptizes. The tablets of Babylon show that mankind remembered a great water and told it badly. Scripture tells it truly. "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us."

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version as served by this site's Bible API (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv), checked on 6 November 2026. Italic words are printed without brackets.
2. Wikipedia, "Eridu Genesis" (the Nippur tablet, about 1600 BC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu_Genesis; "Atra-Hasis" (colophon of Ammi-saduqa, 1646-1626 BC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atra-Hasis. Secondary summaries.
3. The Eridu Genesis, trans. adapted from Thorkild Jacobsen, on Livius.org, https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood2-t/. We could not open the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, which was unreachable.
4. The Epic of Atrahasis, adapted from B. R. Foster's translation, on Livius.org, https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood3_t-arahasis/ and https://www.livius.org/sources/content/anet/104-106-the-epic-of-atrahasis/. We have not seen Lambert and Millard's edition (Oxford, 1969).
5. Wikipedia, "Epic of Gilgamesh" (the Standard Babylonian version of Sîn-lēqi-unninni, between the thirteenth and tenth centuries BC; copies from the library of Ashurbanipal), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh.
6. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI, trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs (as adapted on Livius.org), https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood3_t-gilgamesh/. Line references in the Livius text: 11.19-25, 11.93-135, 11.141-160, 11.171-176, 11.180-185, 11.202-203. We did not see Andrew George's translation (Penguin, 2003).
7. Berossus, Babyloniaca, fragment 4 (quoted by George Syncellus), trans. Verbrugghe and Wickersham, on Livius.org, https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood3_t-berossus/.
8. Wikipedia, "Genesis flood narrative", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative, which summarises that scholars generally think Genesis was adapted from older Mesopotamian traditions, especially the Epic of Gilgamesh. A secondary summary; we did not open the specialist literature.
9. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.18-19, trans. Marcus Dods, ANF vol. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02043.htm.
10. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.3.5-6, trans. William Whiston, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2848/pg2848.txt.
11. Livius.org, "The Great Flood: Archaeology?", by Jona Lendering, https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood5/.
12. Wikipedia, "Flood geology", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology (the 1961 book by Whitcomb and Morris; the early nineteenth-century diluvialists), and "Local flood theory", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_flood_theory (Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1833; Hugh Ross, Navigating Genesis). Secondary. John H. Walton and Tremper Longman III, The Lost World of the Flood (InterVarsity, 2018), is described as reviewers describe it. We did not open any of these books.
13. Wikipedia, "Black Sea deluge hypothesis", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis. Ryan and Pitman's book is Noah's Flood (1998), not opened.
14. St Augustine, City of God 15.26-27, trans. Marcus Dods, NPNF1 vol. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm.
15. St Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians 7 and 9, trans. John Keith, ANF vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm.
16. Tertullian, On Baptism 8, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm.
17. St John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.9, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33044.htm.
18. The prayer over the oil in the Office of Holy Baptism, in Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church (Boston, 1906), p. 280, https://archive.org/details/cu31924029363128.

Bibliography

Scripture and early Christian writings

• The Holy Bible, King James Version.
• Clement of Rome. First Epistle to the Corinthians. ANF vol. 9.
• Theophilus of Antioch. To Autolycus. ANF vol. 2.
• Tertullian. On Baptism. ANF vol. 3.
• Augustine of Hippo. City of God. NPNF1 vol. 2.
• John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. NPNF2 vol. 9.
• Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Trans. W. Whiston.
• Hapgood, Isabel F., trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston, 1906.

Mesopotamian texts

• The Eridu Genesis; Atrahasis; The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI; Berossus, fragment 4. Translations as given on Livius.org.

Modern works

• Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris. The Genesis Flood. 1961.
• Walton, John H., and Tremper Longman III. The Lost World of the Flood. InterVarsity, 2018.
• Ryan, William, and Walter Pitman. Noah's Flood. 1998.