edition of the Atrahasis epic) and in Gen 6–9 are astonishingly similar. This is not to say that the writer of Genesis had ever heard or read the Gilgamesh epic: these traditions were part of the intellectual furniture of that time in the Near East, just as most people today have some idea of Darwin’s Origin of Species though they have never read it. Not only does Genesis share a common outline of primeval history with its neighbors, it also concurs with contemporary culture on various other points.