The Biblical and Greek Flood Stories
By Israel Drazin - July 13, 2009

Judaism is far from alone in chronicling the flood that covered the entire earth. Virtually every culture has the story, including the ancient Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic, several Greek versions, and even one among the American Indians. The tales vary in some ways – the names of the characters are different as well as their locations – but there are remarkable similarities. One could argue that this broad universal acknowledgement of the existence of the flood proves that the biblical account is true.

However, one could also say that despite clear statements in the accounts to the contrary, none of the floods were world-wide, since this is against natural law. The deluges in each culture’s account are local overflows that undoubtedly occurred in each land at different times. For example, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (the student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great, 384-322 BCE), noted a Greek version of the world-wide inundation story, known as Deucalion’s Flood, and wrote in his Meteorologia i. 14, that it only occurred in "the district about Dodona and the Achelous River."

If we accept the idea that the biblical flood did not cover the entire earth, we are not denying the biblical account. People who are familiar with the biblical style know that the Bible frequently uses the hyperbolic "all" when it means "a lot." Thus, for example, all the Israelites did not complains to Moses on several occasions during the forty year desert journey to Canaan, only a lot of the people.

Archeologists discovered that there was a local flood that inundated several cities in Sumeria around 5000 years ago. They state that the flood was unusually large, unexpected, and it undoubtedly made a huge impression. They suggest that scribes who wrote about the flood elaborated upon and exaggerated the event. Whether one is convinced that the Bible and the other non-Sumerian cultures are discussing the same Sumerian event in different ways or that each is recording a separate flood, it is still informative to compare the diverse versions to learn how each culture understood the tragedy it was depicting.

1. What is the story of the Deucalion Flood?
2. What are the similarities of this Greek myth of the world-wide submersion to the biblical report?
3. What are the differences between the two accounts?

Greek myths, as we said, relate many tales of torrents that covered the entire earth. One is called the Deucalion Flood.

On a certain day, Zeus, the chief god of the Greeks, is, as he frequently is, angry. He hears that the impious sons of Lycaon sacrificed a boy to him. He visits them, disguised as a poor traveler, to check on the truth of the report. The sons greet him warmly and serve him a loathsome banquet in which they mix the flesh of one of their brothers. Enraged at their disrespect, Zeus turns them into wolves.

Zeus was still angry and disgusted when he returns to Olympus, the home of the gods, and takes out his anger against all humanity. He releases a flood of water to destroy everyone. But Prometheus the Titan, a semi-divine figure who loved humans and was especially helpful to them, warns his son Deucalion. Deucalion builds an ark, fills it with food, and rushes into it with his wife Pyrrha, who is also his cousin, the daughter of Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus.

The flood starts when the south winds blew, heavy rain falls. The entire world is covered with water, except for some mountain peaks. Humans below the mountain peaks are killed, except for Deucalion and Pyrrha. The ark floats for nine days until the water subsides. Then it settles on a mountain. Deucalion releases a dove to assure him that the water has subsided, and when it assures him, he and Pyrrha leave the ark.

The two offer a thanksgiving sacrifice to Zeus. Then they pray to Zeus asking that mankind should be renewed. Zeus sends his messenger Hermes to tell them to throw stones behind their backs. Every stone that Deucalion throws becomes a man and each stone thrust by Pyrrha turns into a woman.

The myth concludes with a report that some other people besides Deucalion and Pyrrha are saved from drowning because they had escaped to the mountaintops that were not flooded. They leave the mountains after the water decreases and resume despicable human sacrifices.

One of Deucalion’s son plants a vineyard. Another son was the first person to mix wine with water, making it more drinkable.

1. Both the better educated Greeks and Israelites abhorred the ancient barbaric well-meaning practice of offering a son as a sacrifice to God. Zeus’ anger in this Greek tale could be seen as a moral teaching expressing the more civilized disgust against this "religious ceremony." Genesis 22, the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac, was understood by Moses Maimonides (1038-1204) as a dream. It can be understood as Abraham’s inner struggle over this wide-spread misguided way of expressing love to God and Abraham’s final understanding that God does not want such a sacrifice.
2. In both narratives, Zeus and God bring the flood because of disgust with human behavior.
3. The human heroes in both accounts are saved in an ark that floats above the flood water.
4. In both, the ark comes to rest on a mountain, and the two, Noah and Deucalion, send out a dove to see if the water subsided.
5. Both reports end with comments about wine.

1. As in the Greek myth, Genesis 11:7 speaks of God "going down" and chapter 18 relates that God "appeared to Abraham" as three travelers. However, while the general Greek population understood their story literally, that Zeus had a body and that he travels from place to place, the sophisticated Jewish view is that God is incorporeal. As Maimonides explains, the term "going down" in Scripture is only a figurative expression for the divine action being focused on a certain area, and the visit of the three travelers was a dream.
2. Zeus decides to kill all humans because of the deed of a few. In the Bible, all of humanity acted improperly and deserved to die.
3. Zeus decides to destroy all of humanity and two people were only saved by the intervention of Prometheus the Titan. The biblical God brought the flood, but He Himself saved humanity by preserving an entire family, a total of eight people.
4. While Zeus and God are both disgusted over human behavior and react by flooding the earth, Zeus is revolted over the way he is being treated, but God is appalled by the people’s behavior to one another, "for all flesh had corrupted their way upon earth" (Genesis 6:12).
5. The Greek chronicle identifies Deucalion’s wife by name and even tells us that her father was Deucalion’s father’s brother. The Bible gives us no information about any of the four women that entered the ark.
6. Noah brings animals into the ark and saves them. Deucalion does not.
7. The Greeks mention the wind as a cause of the flood. Scripture reports it as an aid in decreasing the water: "God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged" (Genesis 8:1). This may express the Torah’s satisfaction with the forces of nature.
8. In the myth some mountain tops are uncovered by water, but in the Bible all the mountains are covered. Thus there is an inconsistency in the myth. There was no need for Deucalion to dispatch a bird to determine if the water subsided. Since the flood never reached the mountain tops, there were presumably trees there that had never been covered by water, the bird returning with a leaf revealed nothing about the receding water. Besides, to cite another problem with the myth, Deucalion and Pyrrha might have been saved without an ark; they could have gone to a mountain top.
9. The flood lasts only nine days in the myth, but the biblical flood continues for forty days and Genesis 8:3 states that it was only after "after 150 days (that) the waters decreased." (The twelfth century Bible commentator Abraham ibn Ezra, notes the unnatural length of the rain and states that the Bible probably means that it rained on and off for forty days.)
10. Noah alone offers a sacrifice to God, while both Deucalion and Pyrrha, male and female, do so.
11. The unusual story of the preserving of the human race by means of two humans tossing stones while facing in another direction does not appear in the Bible.
12. In the Greek version, some people are saved by running to the mountaintops that are not flooded. In the Bible, all but Noah and his family are killed. As with the story that states that all people are descendant of Adam and Eve, which emphasizes that all humans are equal, this lesson of human equality is repeated with Noah’s family since all races emerged from him and his wife.
13. The survival of some people other than Deucalion and Pyrrha accounts for the failure of Zeus’ plan to destroy humanity and the continuation of evil. This is probably a parable implying the existence of an evil nature in these people; they resume the practice of human sacrifices. This concept of evil is absent from mainline Judaism, which insists that everything that God creates is good. People, not God or human nature, bring about evil.
14. In the bible, it is Noah who plants the vineyard and who gets drunk, not his son, as in the myth. A son of Noah does get involved, but, unlike the myth, he acts improperly. Ham, Noah’s son, "saw the nakedness of his father" after he became drunk, a hint of some dastardly deed.

The account of a flood that covers the entire earth is found in almost every culture. There are many similarities between the stories. However, the mind-set of the different cultures determines the details of the story.

In the myth of Deucalion, the world is filled with many divine beings who are concerned with their own desires and not humanity. Zeus becomes enraged because of an unsuitable sacrifice offered by one family, and decides to destroy every human. Prometheus, a lower level divine-type being, intervenes and humanity is saved. But Prometheus only saves his own son and niece, his son’s wife.

After the flood, when Deucalion and Pyrrha pray for the birth of more humans and the preservation of people, Zeus responds through a messenger – unlike his direct action to inflict harm – and tells the two survivors to throw stones behind their backs. The stones thrown by the man become men and those tossed by the woman become women. One can only speculate about the meaning of this curious incident. What is clear is that the Greeks who authored this tale did not see God as the creator of humanity. In their creation myth, it was Prometheus who did so. Here it is humans who do so. The tossing of rocks behind one’s back suggests lack of care, of growth depending on chance, on lack of direction and purpose.

In short, the Bible promises a good life if one lives properly. However, the Greek world, as seen in this tale, but not in other Greek literature, works on blind fate with no purpose. People live a pessimistic life totally beyond their control, with evil capricious forces torturing them for no rational reason.

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