e depicted, and literary structures.
Thus, in analyzing the similarities and variations between the Gilgamesh and Genesis 6-8, it is important to begin with the immense difference in the apparent purpose of the Gilgamesh flood account and the Bible's story of Noah. As Ryan and Pitman have said, the flood accounts from the Mesopotamian regions seem to be primarily recountings of a great natural disaster that was, however, "clearly perceived as a traumatic divide in human history" (246). Yet while all these versions are "colored somewhat by local tradition" the deluge "seems to be a natural event caused by godly caprice" with only a "rather feeble" rationale given for the infliction of all this damage on the world (Ryan and Pitman 246). The Biblical version, while it "possesses the same basic framework as it Mesopotamian counterparts" has a clearer message and casts the entire episode as a demonstration of the fact that "there is only one God, who is almighty, purposeful, and good" (Ryan and Pitman 246). Through his special relationship with Noah--the only morally sound individual in creation--God arranges the repopulation of the earth. This re-creation of humanity through the agency of Noah, "the patriarch and progenitor of the generations [after] the flood," makes it clear that the flood had a purpose and that it was a demonstration of God's intimate involvement in human history and God's insistence that humanity adhere to divine law (Ryan and Pitman 246).
The other principal difference between the Gilgamesh and the Biblical accounts is that the Babylonian epic includes the story as an episode that is set apart from the main narrative and has no serious implications for the hero. The next section of the epic immediately reverts to the story of Gilgamesh and leaves the flood behind. In the Bible, however, the flood comes at the center of Noah's story and is followed by the consequences it brings about. In Genesis 9 God es...