The Flood of Gilgamesh and Genesis The Epic of Gilgamesh records the story of a worldwide flood and predates Genesis. So some argue that this invalidates the Genesis record. But PJ Wiseman presents an interesting theory about this in his book Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1985). He believes that Moses did not write Genesis but rather translated it from ancient stone tablets written in cuneiform script. . Each tablet would have been originally written by eyewitnesses of particular events, or by those who received their information from eyewitnesses. He breaks Genesis into parts according to the phrase "These are the generations" (KJV; "This is the story" - NKJV; "This is the narrative" - ​​NASB; NIV; Gen 2:4; 5:1; 6:9 ; 10:1; 11:27; Compare the use of this phrase and the structure of each section to stone tablets written in cuneiform. Many of these tablets have been discovered and date back to the third millennium BC. Wiseman's theory is that Genesis is translated from individual tablets which would have contained the material before each occurrence of the phrase above. So the accounts of the creation of the universe (Gen 1) and the Garden of Eden (Gen 2) would have been written on a tablet by Adam as these events were revealed to him by the only eyewitness to the events, God Himself. The accounts of the Fall and subsequent events would have been written on another tablet by Adam as an eyewitness to the events. Adam then passed each of these tablets to his descendant Seth. Seth then recorded the events of Gen 5 and passed the tablets to his descendant Noah. Noah then recorded the events of Gen 6-9 and passed the tablets to his descendant Shem, and so on to Joseph. Joseph then recorded the last chapters of Genesis and placed all the tablets in the pharaohs' library. Moses therefore, while in Pharaoh's court, would have had access to these tablets. He then translated them into his native Hebrew. The above theory "fits" various tests in Scripture. For example, it would explain passages like Exodus 6:3: "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God almighty, but my name, Lord [YHWH], was not known to them." the Tetragrammaton appears in Genesis, creating an apparent contradiction.