On the basis of the preceding comparisons some writers attempt to
trace tentatively the history of the flood tradition current among
the peoples of southwestern Asia. A fragment of the Babylonian
flood story, coming from at least as early as 2000 B.C., has
recently been discovered. The probability is that the tradition
goes back to the earliest beginnings of Babylonian history. The
setting of the Biblical accounts of the flood is also the
Tigris-Euphrates valley rather than Palestine. The description of
the construction of the ark in Genesis 6:14-16 is not only closely
parallel to that found in the Babylonian account, but the
method--the smearing of the ark within and without with bitumen--is
peculiar to the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Many scholars believe,
therefore, that Babylonia was the original home of the Biblical
flood story.
Its exact origin, however, is not so certain. Many of its details
were doubtless suggested by the annual floods and fogs which
inundate that famous valley and recall the primeval chaos so
vividly pictured in the corresponding Babylonian story of the
creation. It may have been based on the remembrances of a great
local inundation, possibly due to the subsidence of great areas of
land. In the earliest Hebrew records there is no trace of this
tradition, although it may have been known to the Aramean ancestors
of the Hebrews. The literary evidence, however, suggests that it
was first brought to Palestine by the Assyrians. During the
reactionary reign of Manasseh, Assyrian customs and Baylonian
ideas, which these conquerors had inherited, inundated Judah. Even
in the temple at Jerusalem the Babylonians' gods, the host of
heaven, were worshipped by certain of the Hebrews. The few
literary inscriptions which come from this period, those found in
the mound at Gezer, are written in the Assyrian script and contain
the names of Assyrian officials.
Later when the Jewish exiles were carried to Babylonia, they
naturally came into contact again with the Babylonian account of
the flood, but in its later form, as the comparisons already
instituted clearly indicate. It is thus possible, these scholars
believe, to trace, in outline at least, the literary history of the
Semitic flood story in its various transformations through a period
of nearly two thousand years.