Precursors to the Flood Narrative (Gen 6:5–9:17)

Contrary to some recent proposals that the (incomplete) non-P flood narrative was a scribal extension of the Priestly flood story, this chapter begins by assembling the multiple strong arguments that the non-P flood narrative, though incompletely preserved, originated as part of a separate, pre-Priestly literary source. Both the flood narrative in this pre-Priestly source and its originally separate Priestly counterpart appear to have been modeled on earlier Mesopotamian traditions about the flood and rescue of a flood hero (especially as seen in the Atrahasis epic and tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic), even as the P flood narrative also seems to have been influenced in some respects by its pre-Priestly flood counterpart. The present complex form of Genesis 6:5–9:17 in turn is the product of the conflation of the P flood narrative with most parts of the non-P flood narrative, with both elements expanded at points with post-P conflational additions that coordinated them. At the other end of the formation process, this chapter builds a case that the non-P flood narrative was not an original part of the non-P primeval history. Rather, it appears to have been crafted as a literary extension of that history, contrasting with and yet connecting with that history in multiple respects.