K.A. Kitchen, in On the Reliability of the Old Testament, writes the following in response of frequent assertion of commonality between the biblical creation story and those of other early cultures:
The individual themes of creation and flood … recur in other writings. Thus the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish (called “Babylonian Creation” in most books), completed circa 1000 from older sources, has been repeatedly compared with Genesis 1-2. But despite the reinterated claims of an older generation of biblical scholars, Enuma Elish and Gen. 1-2 share no direct relationship. … In terms of theme, creation is the massively central concern of Gen. 1-2, but it is mere tailpiece in Enuma Elish, which is dedicated to portraying the supremacy of the god Marduk of Babylon. The only clear comparisons between the two are the inevitable banalities: creation of earth and sky before the plants are put on the earth, and of plants before animals (that need to eat them) and humans; it could hardly have been otherwise! The creation of light before the luminaries is the pecularity that might indicate any link between the Hebrew and Eunma Elish narrative; but where did it earlier come from? Not known, as yet. Thus most Assyriologists have long since rejected the idea of any direct link between Gen. 1-11 and Enuma Elish, and nothing else better can be found between Gen. 1-11 and any other Mesopotamian fragments. (pp. 424-425, emphasis added)
Kitchen goes on to describe various similarities and massive differences between the different flood accounts:
Here the basic contents are common to both the Mesopotamian and Genesis accounts. So we have in both: a flood sent as divine punishment; one man enjoined to build an “ark”; he taking family and living creatures; and his survival. In detail the differences are so numerous as to preclude either the Mesopotamian or Genesis accounts having been copied directly from the other. We may list the following: (1) The Mesopotamian gods sent the flood simply becausee they could not stand the noise made by humanity … . (2) The Mesopotamian gods hid their plan from all humanity … . (3) The respective boats differ totally; … the Mesopotamian one was a cube! (4) The lengths of duration of the respective floods differ … . (5) A much greater range of folk people the Mesopotamian craft (pilot, craftsmen, etc.) … . (6) The details of sending out birds differ entirely between the two accounts. (7) The Mesopotamian hero leaves the ark on his own initiative, then offers a sacrifice to appease the gods [who were angry at his escape] … . (8) The land of Mesopotamia was replenished by direct divine activity …; but in Gen. 9 it is left to Noah, family and surviving creatures to get on the job by natural means. So, an epochally important flood in far antiquity has come down in a tradition shared by both early Mesopotamian culture and Gen. 6-9, but which found clearly separate and distinct expression in the written forms left us by the two cultures. (p. 425, emphasis added).
Kitchen goes on to state in lengths of the various accounts are considered, “Genesis … offers a more concise, simpler account, and not an eloboration of a Mesopotamian composition” (p. 425, emphasis in the original). He also notes, “Floods per se were a commonplace in the ‘Land of the Two Rivers,’ so why this fuss about a flood? Presumably because, in folk memory, there had been a particularly massive one, far more fatal than most, and the memory stuck ever after, until finally it entered the written tradition. Assyriologists have no problem on this score” (p. 426).
