ABSTRACT
Comparison between the primeval history of Genesis 1-11 and the traditions of Mesopotamia, as refl ected in Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, Gilgamesh and the Sumerian King List, have received a great deal of attention in recent years, particularly as they relate to creation, the antediluvian ancestors and the fl ood story; and rightly so, for they refl ect an important eastern infl uence upon the development in Israel, of its accounts of primeval history. But it is altogether too one-sided to suggest that this is the only signifi cant body of foreign infl uence upon such traditions. There was also an important western component to the primeval history, mediated no doubt through the Canaanite-Phoenician civilization but refl ected now in the extant texts of ancient Greece.
