Noah
Noah appears as the last of the Antediluvian patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran and Baha'i writings, and extracanonically.
The Genesis flood narrative is among the best-known stories of the Bible. In this account, God "regrets" making mankind because they filled the world with evil. Noah then labors faithfully to build the Ark at God's command, ultimately saving not only his own family, but mankind itself and all land animals, from extinction during the Flood. Afterwards, God makes a covenant with Noah and promises never again to destroy the earth with a flood. Noah is also portrayed as a "tiller of the soil" who is the first to cultivate the vine. After the flood, God commands Noah and his sons to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
The story of Noah in the Pentateuch is similar to the flood narrative in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, composed around 1800 BC, where a hero builds an ark to survive a divinely sent flood. Scholars suggest that the biblical account was influenced by earlier Mesopotamian traditions, with notable parallels in plot elements and structure. Comparisons are also drawn between Noah and the Greek hero Deucalion, who, like Noah, is warned of a flood, builds an ark, and sends a bird to check on the flood's aftermath.
Biblical narrative
Noah's background
According to the genealogical account in Genesis 5, Noah was the tenth and final antediluvian patriarch, the son of Lamech and a mother whose name is unmentioned, Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born, and Noah was 500 years old when his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth were born. Lamech anticipated that Noah would "bring relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands".Genesis flood narrative
The Genesis flood narrative is encompassed within chapters 6–9 in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible. The narrative indicates that God intended to return the Earth to its pre-Creation state of watery chaos by flooding the Earth because of humanity's misdeeds and then remake it using the microcosm of Noah's Ark. Thus, the flood was no ordinary overflow but a reversal of Creation. The narrative discusses the evil of mankind that moved God to destroy the world by way of the flood, the preparation of the ark for certain animals, Noah, and his family, and God's guarantee for the continued existence of life under the promise that he would never send another flood.After the flood
After the flood, Noah offered burnt offerings to God. God accepted the sacrifice, and made a covenant with Noah, and through him with all mankind, that he would not waste the earth or destroy man by another deluge."And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth". As a pledge of this gracious covenant with man and beast the rainbow was set in the clouds. Injunctions were laid upon Noah: eating of animal food was permitted but not of living animals and the shedding of the blood of man by man was made a crime punishable by death at the hands of man.
Furthermore we have:
The Seven Laws of Noah as traditionally enumerated in the Babylonian Talmud and Tosefta, are the following:
- Not to worship idols.
- Not to curse God.
- Not to commit murder.
- Not to commit adultery or sexual immorality.
- Not to steal.
- Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal.
- To establish courts of justice.
Noah's drunkenness
After the flood, the Bible says that Noah became a farmer and he planted a vineyard. He drank wine made from this vineyard, and got drunk; and lay "uncovered" within his tent. Noah's son Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his brothers, which led to Ham's son Canaan being cursed by Noah.As early as the Classical era, commentators on Genesis 9:20–21 have excused Noah's excessive drinking because he was considered to be the first wine drinker; the first person to discover the effects of wine. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, and a Church Father, wrote in the 4th century that Noah's behavior is defensible: as the first human to taste wine, he would not know its effects: "Through ignorance and inexperience of the proper amount to drink, fell into a drunken stupor". Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, also excused Noah by noting that one can drink in two different manners: to drink wine in excess, a peculiar sin to the vicious evil man or to partake of wine as the wise man, Noah being the latter. In Jewish tradition and rabbinic literature on Noah, rabbis blame Satan for the intoxicating properties of the wine.
In the context of Noah's drunkenness, relates two facts: Noah became drunken and "he was uncovered within his tent", and Ham "saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without".
Because of its brevity and textual inconsistencies, it has been suggested that this narrative is a "splinter from a more substantial tale". A fuller account would explain what exactly Ham had done to his father, or why Noah directed a curse at Canaan for Ham's misdeed, or how Noah realised what had occurred. In the field of psychological biblical criticism, J. H. Ellens and W. G. Rollins have analysed the unconventional behavior that occurs between Noah and Ham as revolving around sexuality and the exposure of genitalia as compared with other Hebrew Bible texts, such as Habakkuk 2:15 and Lamentations 4:21.
Other commentaries mention that "uncovering someone's nakedness" could mean having sexual intercourse with that person or that person's spouse, as quoted in Leviticus 18:7–8 and 20. From this interpretation comes the speculation that Ham was guilty of engaging in incest and raping Noah or his own mother. The latter interpretation would clarify why Canaan, as the product of this illicit union, was cursed by Noah.John Sietze Bergsma/Scott Walker Hahn. 2005. "Noah's Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan". Journal Biblical Literature 124/1, pp. 25–40. Alternatively, Canaan could be the perpetrator himself as the Bible describes the illicit deed being committed by Noah's "youngest son", with Ham being consistently described as the middle son in other verses.
Table of nations
Genesis 10 sets forth the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom the nations branched out over the Earth after the flood. Among Japheth's descendants were the maritime nations. Ham's son Cush had a son named Nimrod, who became the first man of might on earth, a hunter, king in Babylon and the land of Shinar. From there Ashur went and built Nineveh. Canaan's descendants Sidon, Heth, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites spread out from Sidon as far as Gerar, near Gaza, and as far as Sodom and Gomorrah. Among Shem's descendants was Eber.These genealogies differ structurally from those set out in Genesis 5 and 11. It has a segmented or treelike structure, going from one father to many offspring. It is strange that the table, which assumes that the population is distributed about the Earth, precedes the account of the Tower of Babel, which says that all the population is in one place before it is dispersed.
Family tree
Genesis 5:1–32 transmits a genealogy of the Sethites down to Noah, which is taken from the priestly tradition. A genealogy of the Canites from the Jahwistic tradition is found in Genesis 4:17–26. Biblical scholars see these as variants on one and the same list. However, if we take the merged text of Genesis as a single account, we can construct the following family tree, which has come down in this form into the Jewish and Christian traditions.Narrative analysis
According to the documentary hypothesis, the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis, were collated during the 5th century BC from four main sources, which themselves date from no earlier than the 10th century BC. Two of these, the Jahwist, composed in the 10th century BC, and the Priestly source, from the late 7th century BC, make up the chapters of Genesis which concern Noah. The attempt by the 5th-century editor to accommodate two independent and sometimes conflicting sources accounts for the confusion over such matters as how many of each animal Noah took, and how long the flood lasted.The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible notes that this story echoes parts of the Garden of Eden story: Noah is the first vintner, while Adam is the first farmer; both have problems with their produce; both stories involve nakedness; and both involve a division between brothers leading to a curse. However, after the flood, the stories differ. It is Noah, not God, who plants the vineyard and utters the curse, so "God is less involved".
Other accounts
In addition to the main story in Genesis, the Hebrew Bible also refers to Noah in the First Book of Chronicles, Isaiah and Ezekiel. References in the deuterocanonical books include the books of Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, 2 Esdras and 4 Maccabees. New Testament references include the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and some of the epistles.Noah became the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including Islam and the Baháʼí Faith.
Pseudepigrapha
The Book of Jubilees refers to Noah and says that he was taught the arts of healing by an angel, so that his children could overcome "the offspring of the Watchers".In 10:1–3 of the Book of Enoch and canonical for Beta Israel, Uriel was dispatched by "the Most High" to inform Noah of the approaching "deluge".