How do creation myths from various cultures compare and contrast to the story of Noah's ark in the Bible?

Answer 1

There seem to have been several, even more ancient flood stories in the ancient Near East, that were quite similar to the story of Noah's Ark. Apart from claiming that the gods wanted to destroy mankind for various reasons, they often include many of the same details, such as the raven and the hero of the story inventing wine (Genesis 9:20-21), thus proving a common legendary origin.

Apart from the biblical tradition, the most famous flood story is no doubt in the Epic of Gilgamesh, wherein the hero of the flood story is Utanapishti. In the Old, Middle and Neo-Babylonian periods, the Babylonians had a version independent of the Gilgamesh epic, but telling much the same story, in the Atrahasis epic. In this, the gods were again named Enlil and Enki, but the Noah/Utanapishti equivalent was now named Atrahasis.

Amongst the Sumerians, the equivalent of Noah, Utanapishti and Atrahasis was a pious king called Ziusudra, whose name meant "he saw life".

The early Hurrian inhabitants of what is now the Kurdish region of Turkey, an area repeatedly associated with where the ark came to rest, are now thought to have moved into the area no later than the early third millennium BCE. Their 'Noah' was called Nahmizuli. As has been pointed out by the Egyptologist John Romer, this particular name very notably bears the Hebrew word for Noah, Nhm in its first three consonants. Furthermore the Hurrians particularly venerated Mount Ararat as the sacred centre of their kingdom.

Ian Wilson (Before the Flood) believes that all these stories and many other legends point to the origin of the great Flood stories. He says that the Black Sea had formerly been a low-lying fresh-water lake, entirely cut off from the Mediterranean Sea. Recent archaeological research shows that the rising sea levels that carved out the British Isles and created the Bering Strait, also in 5600 BCE (approximately) breached the land bridge that stood between the Bosporus and the Black Sea region. This fertile, well-populated region flooded rapidly, no doubt causing survivors to think that the whole world had been flooded and to believe that only the gods could have wrought this event.