The biblical global Flood happened about 4,350 years ago. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains a distorted account of the Flood, was written down in Mesopotamia, in the general region from which Abraham came. And it was probably written down on clay tablets at a time closer to Abraham’s day than to Moses’ time. Moses, inspired by God (2 Peter 1:21), wrote down the authentic account of the Flood, and it is preserved in the book of Genesis. Tyson asserts that the Akkadian epic, because it was written earlier than the Mosaic account, was the source of the Old Testament account. However, the source was the shared history of a real global Flood, not a shared piece of literature.

The biblical historical account, recorded under the inspiration of God by Moses, is completely believable in all its details. This genuine history in Genesis 6–9 and the distorted version adapted from Sumerian legends and preserved in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh report on the same historical event. Therefore, the fact that there are some similarities is easily understood.

In contrast to the Gilgamesh epic, the authenticity of the biblical account is supported by internal consistency of the Scriptural account, the consistency of the Scriptural account with the worldwide geological evidence of the Flood, the scientific confirmation of the biblical global Flood in every detail, and the consistency of the Scriptural account of the Flood’s survivors with other recorded history. The capricious and unseemly nature of the gods in the Gilgamesh epic stand in sharp contrast to the just, holy, and merciful character of God in the authentic biblical account. There is no justification for supposing the true history in the Bible to be a spin-off of the Gilgamesh epic.