Ok, very forthright of you.
Well, once one accepts the hypothesis of there having been antediluvian high civilizations, the transfer theory as you call it forces itself automatically into a prominent place, especially given that we, as Holla Forumsacks, don't trust that various brown peoples have developed much themselves.
I don't see the contradiction here. Despite having performed original fieldwork (which would automatically qualify him as at least a semi-professional archeologist) he's honest in saying that much of his stuff depends on the work of other researchers, which is of course completely normal in academics. If he would style himself as some great guru of pre-flood civs it would seriously undermine his credibility.
Props btw for not holding his Dravidian wife against him.
The Bible is the source book of Western civilization and an inexhaustible supply of theological, philosophical, historical, mythological and anthropological knowledge - independent of the fact if you believe in Jesus Christ or not.
No, for the simple reason that according to sumeriologists an estimated 90+% of the Sumerian literary corpus hasn't even been surveyed or translated yet. Of course there are some parallels, e.g. the flood myth, or the tale of the primordial twins, but there a many sui generis elements as well (e.g. figures like Enki).
The deeper you study the Bible, the more you will find that very few or even no things therein are "random" (a concept that is not applicable to ancient literature in the first place). Don't bash the book before at least a cursory study.
I need you to provide a source for that claim.
Yes, but that is not ipso facto proof that the Old Testament and especially Genesis are simply "a paraphrased retelling". It's equally possible that both go back to much older sources, especially given that the Sumerians weren't that old in a pre-/post-diluvian context (~ 15K BP vs. ~ 4K BP).