Did Genesis Combine Two Floods? The Priestly and Yahwist Noah Stories

Why scholars see two stories in Genesis 6 to 9

Bible scholars have long noticed that the flood story has two voices. The most common explanation is called the Documentary Hypothesis. It says the first books of the Bible were woven together from older written sources.

Julius Wellhausen gave the classic form of this idea in his book Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878, in German). Two of the sources matter here.

The first is the Priestly source, called P by scholars. It likes numbers, dates, lists and covenants. It calls God “Elohim”, which the ESV translates as “God”.

The second is the Yahwist source, called J (from the German spelling “Jahwe”). It tells stories in a more human way. It uses the personal name YHWH, which the ESV prints as “the LORD”.

Richard Elliott Friedman shows the flood split into these two strands in his book Who Wrote the Bible? (1987). The verse lists I use below follow that common split. Small details differ from scholar to scholar.

Not everyone accepts the split. Gordon Wenham argued in 1978 that the flood story is one carefully built text. In his article “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative” in the journal Vetus Testamentum, he describes it as a mirror pattern that turns around the moment when “God remembered Noah”. In his view, the repeats are part of the design.

I take both views seriously. Even if one author wrote the final text, that author may still have drawn on two older flood traditions. That is the question I want to follow.

The older flood: the Priestly strand

Here is the Priestly strand on its own, verse by verse. In this hypothesis it is the memory of the older flood, around 9600 BCE.

^6:9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. ^6:10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ^6:11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ^6:12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. ^6:13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. ^6:14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. ^6:15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. ^6:16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. ^6:17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. ^6:18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. ^6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. ^6:20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. ^6:21 Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” ^6:22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

Genesis 6:9-22, ESV

The flood in this strand is cosmic. Water comes from below and from above at the same time.

^7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. ^7:13 On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, ^7:14 they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. ^7:15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. ^7:16a And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. ^7:18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. ^7:19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. ^7:20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. ^7:21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. ^7:24 And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.

Genesis 7:11, 13-16a, 18-21, 24, ESV

The waters rise above the high mountains. They stay for 150 days.

^8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. ^8:2a The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, ^8:3b At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, ^8:4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ^8:5 And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. ^8:13a In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. ^8:14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. ^8:15 Then God said to Noah, ^8:16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. ^8:17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” ^8:18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. ^8:19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.

Genesis 8:1-2a, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19, ESV

The drying is given as a calendar. Every stage has a month and a day.

^9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ^9:2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. ^9:3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. ^9:4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. ^9:5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. ^9:6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. ^9:7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” ^9:8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ^9:9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, ^9:10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. ^9:11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” ^9:12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ^9:13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ^9:14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ^9:15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ^9:16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ^9:17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9:1-17, ESV

The strand ends with a covenant and the rainbow. God promises that a flood will never again destroy all flesh.

The more recent flood: the Yahwist strand

Here is the Yahwist strand on its own. In this hypothesis it is the memory of the younger flood, around 2900 BCE.

^6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ^6:6 And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. ^6:7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” ^6:8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

Genesis 6:5-8, ESV

The reason for the flood here is the heart of man. The LORD feels regret and grief.

^7:1 Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. ^7:2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, ^7:3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. ^7:4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” ^7:5 And Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him. ^7:7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ^7:10 And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. ^7:12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. ^7:16b And the LORD shut him in. ^7:17 The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. ^7:22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. ^7:23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.

Genesis 7:1-5, 7, 10, 12, 16b-17, 22-23, ESV

This flood is rain. It lasts forty days and forty nights.

^8:2b the rain from the heavens was restrained, ^8:3a and the waters receded from the earth continually. ^8:6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made ^8:7 and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. ^8:8 Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. ^8:9 But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. ^8:10 He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. ^8:11 And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. ^8:12 Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore. ^8:13b And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. ^8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ^8:21 And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. ^8:22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Genesis 8:2b-3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22, ESV

The birds tell Noah when the land is dry. The strand ends with an altar and a sacrifice, not a covenant.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Five differences between the two strands

When I put the strands next to each other, five differences stand out.

Detail	Priestly strand (older flood)	Yahwist strand (younger flood)
Animals	Two of every sort (6:19-20)	Seven pairs of clean animals, one pair of unclean (7:2-3)
Length	The waters prevail 150 days (7:24)	Rain for forty days and forty nights (7:4, 7:12)
Source of the water	The fountains of the great deep and the windows of the heavens (7:11)	Rain (7:4, 7:12)
How Noah knows the land is dry	A dated calendar, ending in the 601st year (8:13a, 8:14)	A raven and a dove, sent out every seven days (8:6-12)
Name of God	God (Elohim)	The LORD (YHWH)

The animals are the clearest example. One strand needs only pairs. The other needs seven pairs of clean animals, because Noah sacrifices clean animals at the end (8:20). The Priestly strand has no sacrifice, so it has no need for extra clean animals.

The time scale is also different. In the Priestly strand the whole event runs from the 600th year, second month, 17th day, to the 601st year, second month, 27th day. That is about one year. In the Yahwist strand, the story runs on cycles of seven days and forty days.

The water is the difference that matters most to me. Rain for forty days sounds like a very bad season. Water that bursts up from “the great deep” and covers all the high mountains sounds like the sea itself rising.

Evidence for an older flood around 9600 BCE

If the Priestly strand remembers something real, the end of the last Ice Age is the obvious place to look. Here is what I found.

The end of the Younger Dryas

The Younger Dryas was a sudden cold period near the end of the last Ice Age. It lasted from about 12,900 to about 11,700 years ago.

Its end was fast. Ice cores from Greenland show a sharp warming. Geologists now use that warming, about 11,700 years ago, as the official start of the Holocene, the warm age we still live in. In calendar terms, that is roughly 9700 BCE.

So the date of about 9600 BCE fits a real turning point in the climate. It is the moment the Ice Age world ended.

Meltwater pulse 1B

As the ice sheets melted, sea level rose by more than 100 meters (328 feet) in total. Some of that rise came in fast jumps called meltwater pulses.

Richard Fairbanks described two of them in 1989 from coral cores off Barbados (Nature, 1989). The second, called meltwater pulse 1B, is placed around 11,300 years ago. That is close to 9600 BCE.

I have to be honest here. Edouard Bard and his team drilled coral reefs at Tahiti and looked for the same pulse (Science, 2010). They found no clear speed-up in sea level rise at that time. So meltwater pulse 1B may have been smaller than once thought, or it may not have been a single event.

Even without a sharp pulse, the sea was still rising fast at the end of the Ice Age. Coasts where people lived were drowned over a few lifetimes. To me, that fits the image of water coming up from the deep better than rain.

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

In 2007 Richard Firestone and 25 co-authors proposed that a comet or its fragments exploded over North America about 12,900 years ago (PNAS, 2007). In their view, this caused the Younger Dryas cooling and helped wipe out the large Ice Age animals.

The idea has strong critics. Nicholas Pinter and colleagues called their 2011 review “The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem” (Earth-Science Reviews, 2011). Vance Holliday and colleagues published a “Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH)” in 2023 (Earth-Science Reviews, 2023).

The supporters answered. Martin Sweatman published “Rejection of Holliday et al.’s alleged refutation of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis” in the same journal in 2024 (Earth-Science Reviews, 2024). The debate is still open.

There is also a date problem for my hypothesis. The impact, if it happened, marks the start of the Younger Dryas, not its end. That is about 1,200 years before 9600 BCE. So the impact cannot be the 9600 BCE flood itself. At most it opens the long crisis that ends around 9600 BCE.

Göbekli Tepe begins

The first stone circles at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey were raised around 9600 BCE. It is the oldest known monumental site on Earth.

I find the timing striking. Right after the climate turned, people began to build on a hilltop on a large scale. I look at how much of the site is still buried on Why Is 95% of Göbekli Tepe Still Buried?.

Plato’s date for Atlantis

The same date appears in Plato. In the Timaeus, an Egyptian priest tells the Athenian lawmaker Solon about the early history of Athens.

Nine thousand years have elapsed since she founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our annals record.

Plato, Timaeus (translated by Benjamin Jowett)

The priest speaks about the goddess who founded Athens and the Egyptian city of Sais. “Yours” is Athens, “ours” is Sais.

In the Critias, Plato gives the same number for the war with Atlantis.

Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them

Plato, Critias (translated by Benjamin Jowett)

The “pillars of Heracles” are the Strait of Gibraltar. Solon visited Egypt around 590 BCE. Nine thousand years before that gives about 9600 BCE. Plato says Atlantis then sank into the sea in a single day and night.

How well does the older date fit?

The fit is good for the climate, the rising sea and Göbekli Tepe. It is weaker for a single flood event. The sea rose over centuries, not in one year.

A memory that old would also have to survive about 9,000 years before anyone wrote it down. I cannot prove that is possible. I only note that the Priestly strand describes the kind of flood the end of the Ice Age could produce: the sea rising over all the land.

Evidence for a more recent flood around 2900 BCE

For the younger flood I look at Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in today’s Iraq. That is where the oldest written flood stories come from.

Woolley’s flood layer at Ur

In 1929 Leonard Woolley dug a deep pit at Ur, in southern Iraq. Under the early town he found a bank of clean, water-laid clay a little over 8 feet (2.44 meters) thick. Under the clay, the remains of people appeared again.

Woolley was sure what he had found.

Taking into consideration all the facts, there could be no doubt that the flood of which we had thus found the only possible evidence was the Flood of Sumerian history and legend, the Flood on which is based the story of Noah.

Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees (1929)

Later archaeologists disagree with him. Max Mallowan and others noted that the Ur layer is too early. It lies at the end of the Ubaid period, around 4000 BCE or a little later. It is also missing in several other pits at the same site. So it looks like a big local flood, not the flood of the stories.

Shuruppak and Kish

The better match is at Shuruppak, modern Fara. In the stories, this is the city of the flood hero. Erich Schmidt excavated there in 1931. He found a flood layer of river sand and clay between the Jemdet Nasr period and the Early Dynastic period, around 2900 BCE.

At Kish, Stephen Langdon and Louis Watelin found several flood layers. The oldest falls around the same time, about 2900 BCE, at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period.

I collected the details of these three sites on Excavations in southern Mesopotamia have uncovered flood deposits.

The end of the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods

The Uruk period was the age of the first cities and the first writing in Sumer. It ended around 3100 BCE. The short Jemdet Nasr period followed and ended around 2900 BCE.

Sumerian tradition itself puts a flood at this break. The Sumerian King List lists kings in five cities. Then it says:

Then the flood swept over. After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kic.

The Sumerian King List, translation by the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

“Kic” is the ETCSL spelling of Kish. The last king before the flood ruled in Shuruppak. So the list puts the flood right where the Shuruppak and Kish layers lie.

Ziusudra, Atrahasis and Gilgamesh

Three Mesopotamian texts tell the flood story long before Genesis was written.

The Sumerian flood story names the hero Ziusudra, a king and priest. A god warns him that a flood will come.

After the flood had swept over the land, and waves and windstorms had rocked the huge boat for seven days and seven nights, Utu the sun-god came out, illuminating heaven and earth.

The Flood story, translation by the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

This is a storm flood. Wind and rain rock the boat for seven days. That is much closer to the Yahwist rain than to the cosmic waters of the Priestly strand.

The Akkadian Epic of Atrahasis, from about 1700 BCE, tells the same story with a hero called Atrahasis. The gods send the flood because humans have become too many and too noisy. I keep the full text on Atrahasis.

Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh gives the version closest to Genesis. The hero Utnapishtim comes from Shuruppak. After the storm his boat lands on a mountain. He sends out a dove, a swallow and a raven, and then he offers a sacrifice. The gods smell the sweet smell and gather around it.

The bird scene and the sacrifice are exactly the parts that belong to the Yahwist strand. The Priestly strand has neither. I compare the three heroes on What Is the Relationship Between Utnapishtim, Ziusudra, and Noah?.

The Piora oscillation

There is also a climate signal in this period. The Piora oscillation is a cool and wet phase seen in pollen records from the Alps, named after Val Piora in Switzerland. It is usually dated to about 3200 to 2900 BCE.

Some researchers link it to a wider change in climate around 5,200 years ago. A wetter phase with stronger floods in the rivers of Mesopotamia would fit the flood layers. I could not confirm a direct link between the Alpine record and Iraq. I treat it as a possible background, not as proof.

How well does the younger date fit?

My original hypothesis placed the younger flood at about 3300 BCE. The evidence moved it. The flood layers at Shuruppak and Kish, and the break in the King List, point to about 2900 BCE. That is about four hundred years later than my first guess.

The Ur layer is older than both dates, so it belongs to an earlier local flood. If I follow the evidence, the younger flood sits near 2900 BCE. The Uruk world had ended, and the Jemdet Nasr period was closing.

Two memories, one story

When I put it all together, I see a pattern. The Priestly strand describes a flood from below and above, that covers the mountains and lasts a year. That fits the end of the Ice Age and the rising sea.

The Yahwist strand describes heavy rain, a boat, birds and a sacrifice. That fits the Mesopotamian river floods and the Sumerian and Babylonian flood stories.

A simpler reading is also possible. Both strands may come from the same Mesopotamian tradition, told in two styles by two schools of writers. In that reading, there was only one remembered flood.

I find the two-flood reading more interesting because of the water. One strand speaks of the sea rising, the other of the sky. Those are two different kinds of disaster. It would make sense if they were once two different stories.

I keep a longer list of dated catastrophes on Floods, Meteor strikes and Mantel shifts. The full chapter with my verse notes is on Genesis 7: Noah and The flood. I will update this page when new dates come in for the flood layers or for the end of the Younger Dryas.