Torah vs. Gilgamesh: What's The Big Deal? (*Answer Included)

I've never been able to figure out what the big deal was with the Epic of Gilgamesh and other non-Biblical flood stories. Until today, as far as I was concerned they simply corroborated the Biblical account. Well, today James Kugel treated me to a hearty dose of kefirah and explained the issue:

The similarities between the Torah account and Gilgamesh are striking, but the similarities go beyond the events described. Rather, it appears as though the two stories share a literary connection as well. They didn't only agree on what generally happened, but also on how the events should be retold, including things that could not be figured out by historical observation. The example Kugel uses is the phrase "God smelled the pleasing odor." This corresponds to the last three lines in Gilgamesh, which include the phrase, "The Gods smelled the sweet savor." Why should the Torah have mentioned that? Why not just that god "was pleased" with the sacrifice or nothing at all? How could any on-site observer of the flood or its aftermath know that God/the Gods smelled anything at all? This was the authors assertion, the very same expression, and it appears in both texts. This suggests that the texts either depended on each other or on an earlier source. But here's the problem: the earliest Gilgamesh fragments date from early in the 2nd millennium BCE, long before the Torah was given at Sinai with its flood story.

And there you have it, the reason that Gilgamesh is a problem.