0057 Hoffmeier considers the story of Noah’s flood.  It has a literary structure common to Semitic civilizations.  Typically, the structure goes ABCB’A’, where B’ and A’ mirror B and A.  Noah’s flood story, ABC…P…C’B’A’, contains 16 steps. 

0058 On top of that, during the past three centuries of the Age of Ideas, archaeologists unearth cuneiform-bearing clay tablets from long-buried libraries of ancient cities.  Some of the tablets tell a flood tale almost identical to the story of Noah’s flood.

0059 What does this imply, concerning the genres in Gen 1-11?To me, this implies a deep coherence between an elite Sumerian tradition and Abraham’s ancestors.  The idea is dramatically envisioned in the masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall.  

Gen 1-11 in an insider’s tale about the rise and the fall of Sumerian civilization.