Question: A friend told me there is a story from way before the Torah was given that talks about the early days of man and then says there was a flood. Only one man and his family and animals survive the flood. He says there’s no way that G-d wrote the creation and flood part of Torah because it’s like this older story and G-d didn’t write that story too

Answer: Let’s just imagine that the flood, as described in the Torah, really did happen. Everyone was killed except one man and his family and all modern human beings are descendants of this one family. Now what would you expect? That humanity (this one man’s descendants) would entirely forget about the event except for one small branch of the family which was told about it by God? Or perhaps it’s more likely that there would have been many accounts throughout human civilization? Even if some of the other accounts are a bit garbled – these things can happen without a solid tradition.

I think it’s obvious that the existence of many flood stories provides strong evidence for the authenticity of the Torah’s story, not against it!

With my best regards,
Rabbi Boruch Clinton