"... The exact nature of the biblical flood story's journey from its distant pre–Israelite origins may be as unknowable as both its original form and its exact relationship to known Mesopotamian and connected Hellenistic traditions, but the fact that it took such a journey is beyond question ... Meaningful comparison and contrast is limited, however, to a handful of texts possessing geographical and cultural propinquity - the Mesopotamian texts being, The Epic of Atrahasis, Eridu Genesis, Epic of Gilgamesh, and Berossus's Babyloniaca, and the Hellenistic texts being, Bibliotheca, Metamorphosis, and De Syria Dea. Even without discovering Mesopotamian flood texts dating back to the 14th Century BC at Meggido and Ugarit, and back to the 13th at Emar in Syria, the existence of a connection between the biblical flood story and the Mesopotamian tradition would be obvious. The texts all follow a basic pattern, but what are far more important for validating the use of a mythopoetic lens in the reading of the biblical flood narrative are upwards of forty striking similarities in points of detail within this story pattern between the biblical account and these other texts ... Both Noah and Utnapishtim are specifically commanded to enter the ark, and Scripture, Atrahasis, and Berossus have an entrance scene ... Scripture, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh and Ovid all have a scene of flood description with the use of battle language ... Scripture, Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, and Ovid all describe the deaths of all the living ... Scripture and Eridu Genesis both track the movement of the ark across the waters, being lifted and driven in Genesis and tossed about in Eridu Genesis ..."