IN the NEWS - National Geographic Misrepresents the Flood

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. Genesis 7:17

"The second episode of National Geographic’s series Lost Treasures of the Bible explores the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia, primarily the ancient city of Uruk. 

The narrator asks the following questions: 

Q: What did Uruk look like during the time of the flood and what did the landscape look like? 

Q: Could the Euphrates River be responsible for a “great flood”? 

Q: What were the roots of this legend?

In this episode, National Geographic opened the program with a summary of the Biblical account but quickly turned their attention from the Bible and the details it recorded and focused instead on the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian kings list, and Eridu Genesis as primary sources of information.

Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic records a massive flood that destroyed all living things except one man (Utnapishtim) and his family on a vessel that he was instructed to build. The city of Uruk, according to this tablet, was established before the great deluge and then was rebuilt with Gilgamesh being one of the many rulers after the catastrophe.

National Geographic next looked at an ancient record of the kings of

Sumer. The Sumerian kings list contains the name of Gilgamesh. If Gilgamesh was a historical figure, he would have reigned over Uruk after the flood (according to the Biblical timeline this would be shortly after 2300 BC).

The “great deluge” is mentioned in multiple ancient texts such as the Atrahasis Epic, the Eridu Genesis, and the Sumerian story of Ziusudra. National Geographic views the account in Genesis as no different than any of these other ancient myths and therefore categorizes it as a mythology with some aspects of reality embedded within.

National Geographic assumes that the biblical account of the flood was derived from earlier myths. Since National Geographic holds to a naturalistic worldview that rejects the supernatural, they seek to fit the archaeological and geological evidence into their own framework. They assume that the flood of Noah was not global because these ancient texts describe vessels that would not withstand a flood of that proportion.

However, the Biblical account is very clear and precise in its wording that the floodwaters covered the whole earth, and not a living creature was left that was outside the ark." 

AIG