Atrahasis

An Akkadian epic of human creation, divine restlessness, and flood survival, used in Corpus Witness as comparative Ancient Near Eastern literature.

Atrahasis is an Akkadian epic of human creation, noisy humanity, divine unrest, and a flood survivor, known from Old Babylonian and later copies, at medium confidence. It sits in this list as comparative literature for Genesis flood traditions. It was never a book of the Tanakh or of a Christian canon. The comparison is historical and literary. Manuscripts of Atrahasis are Mesopotamian copies. They are not Dead Sea Scrolls, and they are not evidence of a biblical book later dropped from a canon list.

Never a book of Jewish or Christian canons. Comparison is historical and literary, not a claim that it was “removed” from the Bible.

Date

Old Babylonian to Middle Babylonian copies (medium confidence)

Confidence

medium

Languages

Akkadian

Traditional authorship

Anonymous Akkadian scribes

Authorship note

Mesopotamian flood story; not Scripture in any Jewish or Christian tradition

• Sippar tablet · Old Babylonian Atrahasis

  Old Babylonian period, with later copies · Akkadian · Akkadian flood epic

  The Atrahasis epic is an Akkadian poem about creation, overpopulation, and a flood. An important Old Babylonian copy comes from Sippar, around the seventeenth century BCE, and later Assyrian copies also survive. The hero builds a boat and survives a flood sent by the gods. That plot is often compared with Noah in Genesis and with the Sumerian flood tradition. The tablets are not a biblical manuscript. Jewish and Christian communities did not receive Atrahasis as a canonical book. The link in this dataset is comparative, and the confidence of any literary dependence is low.

• lists noncanonical

  Jewish biblical canon

  Atrahasis is ancient Mesopotamian literature on clay tablets. Jewish communities did not receive it as a book of the Torah or of the wider Tanakh. Readers compare its creation or flood scenes with Genesis because the themes overlap. Comparison is not reception of the Mesopotamian poem as Scripture. No Jewish canon list names Atrahasis. The Hebrew Bible’s own flood and creation narratives are the texts synagogues read.

• lists noncanonical

  Early Christian canon lists

  Early Christian churches did not read Atrahasis as a biblical book. Their Old Testament was the Jewish Scriptures in Greek or, later, in Latin revision, not the Akkadian or Sumerian tablet series. No festal letter, Muratorian list, or North African council names Atrahasis. Modern scholars set the poem beside Genesis. That comparison belongs to ancient Near Eastern study. It is not early Christian canonical reception.

• ProtestantNot applicable

  Mesopotamian flood epic, never a Protestant Bible book.

• CatholicNot applicable

  Mesopotamian flood epic, never a Catholic Bible book.

• OrthodoxNot applicable

  Mesopotamian flood epic, never an Orthodox Bible book.

• EthiopianNot applicable

  Mesopotamian flood epic, never an EOTC Bible book.

• TanakhNot applicable

  Comparative Mesopotamian literature, not Tanakh.

• LXXNot applicable

  Not a Septuagint book.

• Early ChristianNot applicable

  Not a Christian scriptural book.

• Second TempleNot applicable

  Older Mesopotamian flood epic used only for comparison.

No council, confession, or canon list in this dataset names Atrahasis. Tradition status is recorded in the section above.

• Shared tradition · Genesis 6–9 ↔ Flood episode

  Low confidence — disputed or tentative.

  Both texts tell of a flood survived in a boat. Shared theme is not the same as a demonstrated line of quotation.

No dated canon event in this dataset is tied to Atrahasis.

• English translation of the Akkadian Atrahasis epic from public-domain Mesopotamian collections. Comparative Ancient Near Eastern literature, not a biblical canon book.