Noah (or Noe, Noach; Hebrew: נוֹחַ or נֹחַ, Standard Nóaḥ Tiberian Nōªḥ ; Arabic:
نوح, Nūḥ ; "Rest"[1] ) was the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs according to the Bible. His story is contained in the book
of Genesis, chapters 5-9. Noah saves his family and breeding pairs of all animals from God's
Deluge. He receives a covenant from God, and his sons repopulate the earth.
While the Deluge and Noah's Ark are the
best-known elements of the story of Noah, he is also mentioned as the "first husbandman" and the
inventor of wine, as well as in an episode of his drunkenness and the subsequent Curse of Ham. The story of Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the later Abrahamic traditions, and was immensely influential in Western
culture. Jewish thinkers have debated the extent of Noah's righteousness, Christians have likened the Christian Church to
Noah's ark, and in Islam he is revered as a prophet of Allah.
Summary
According to chapters 5–9 of the book of Genesis, Noah was the son of Lamech, and the tenth
generation after Adam. "And [Lamech] called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground which the
Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands." From Noah's sons, Shem, Japheth and Ham, all the peoples
of the world would be descended.[2]
When Noah was six hundred years old, God, seeing the wickedness which had entered man's heart, was saddened, and decided to
send a great deluge to destroy mankind. But He saw that Noah was a righteous man, and instructed him to build an ark and gather
himself and his family, "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 ref>Genesis 6:19</ref> And so the Flood came, and all life was extinguished, except for those who were with Noah,
"and the waters prevailed upon the earth for one-hundred and fifty days"[3] until the Ark came to rest on the mountains of
Ararat.
There Noah built an altar to God (the first altar mentioned in the Bible) and made an offering. "And when the Lord smelled the
pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man's
heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains,
seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease'."[4]
Then God made a covenant: Noah and his descendants would henceforth be free to
eat meat ("every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything"), and
the animals would fear man; and in return, man was forbidden to eat "flesh with its life, that is, its blood." And God forbade
murder, and gave a commandment: "Be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it." And as a sign
of His covenant, He set the rainbow in the sky, "the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that
is upon the earth."[5]
After the Flood, "Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and became drunk,
and lay uncovered in his tent." Noah's son Ham saw his father naked and informed his brothers, who covered Noah while averting
their eyes. Noah awoke and cursed Ham's son Canaan with eternal slavery, while giving his
blessing to Shem and Japheth: "Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.
God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave."[6]
Noah died 350 years after the Flood, at the age of 950,[7] the last of the immensely long-lived antediluvian Patriarchs.
The maximum human lifespan, as depicted by the Bible, diminishes rapidly thereafter, from as much as 900 years to the 120 years
of Moses within just a few generations.
Jewish perspectives
see also Noah in Rabbinic Literature
The righteousness of Noah is the subject of much discussion among the rabbis.[8] The description of Noah as "righteous in his generation" implied to some that his perfection was only
relative: In his generation of wicked people, he could be considered righteous, but in the generation of a tzadik like Abraham, he would not be considered so righteous. They
point out that Noah did not pray to God on behalf of those about to be destroyed, as Abraham prayed for the wicked of
Sodom and Gomorrah. This led such commentators to offer the figure of Noah as "the
man in a fur coat," who ensured his own comfort while ignoring his neighbour. Others, such as the medieval commentator
Rashi, held on the contrary that the building of the Ark was stretched over 120 years,
deliberately in order to give sinners time to repent.
According to an apocryphal legend, Noah was born with a body white like snow and hair white as wool; light shone forth from
the newborn baby's eyes the moment he opened them and illuminated the entire house, and he immediately stood and addressed a
prayer to God. His grandfather Methuselah, afraid of what this might mean, journeyed to the
end of the earth to consult Enoch, who gave the child the name Noah and
foretold that in his days the earth would be destroyed.[9]
Christian perspectives
The Drunkenness of Noah,
Michelangelo Buonarroti, ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, the
Vatican,
Rome,
1509. Michelangelo shows Noah drunk before his sons, and simultaneously, in the background, Noah
planting his vineyard.
Noah is called a "preacher of righteousness" in 2 Peter 2:5, and the First Epistle of
Peter equates the saving power of baptism with the Ark saving those who were in it. In later Christian thought, the Ark
came to be equated with the Church: salvation was to be found only within its walls. St
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), demonstrated in The City of God that the
dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which is the body of Christ, which is the Church; the
equation of Ark and Church is still found in the Anglican rite of baptism, which asks God,
"who of thy great mercy didst save Noah," to receive into the Church the infant about to be baptised.
Noah's three sons were generally interpreted in medieval Christianity as the founders of the populations of the three known
continents, Japheth/Europe, Shem/Asia, and Ham/Africa, although a rarer variation held that they
represented the three classes of medieval society - the priests (Shem), the warriors (Japheth), and the peasants (Ham). At the
same time, some European thinkers proposed that Ham's sons in general had been literally "blackened" by sin. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, this view merged with the Protestant interpretation of the curse of Ham to provide a quasi-religious justification for slavery.
Noah is commemorated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the
Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod on November 29.
Gnostic literature
The Apocryphon of John reports that the chief archon caused the flood because he desired to destroy the world he had made, but the First Thought informed Noah of the chief archon's plans, and Noah informed the remainder of humanity. Unlike
the account of Genesis, not only are Noah's family saved, but many others also heed Noah's call. There is no ark in this account;
instead Noah and the others hide in a "luminous cloud".
Latter-day Saint perspective
Joseph Smith taught that Noah is the same as the angel Gabriel: "The Priesthood was first given to Adam; ... He is Michael the Archangel, spoken of in the Scriptures.
Then to Noah, who is Gabriel: he stands next in authority to Adam in the Priesthood" [10] Descendants of Noah's cursed son
Ham, who were African according to Brigham Young's teachings,[11] were prevented from holding LDS priesthood's until
Spencer W. Kimball's "Official Declaration 2" in 1978. [12] Also Joseph Smith's revision of the bible added that Noah taught repentance,
baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and even the coming of Jesus Christ. It was the people's rejection of these teachings and
persistence in wickedness that brought about their destruction. [13]
Islamic perspectives
-
Noah Cursing Canaan,
Gustave Doré (1832-1883), from the Dore Illustrated Bible
(1865). The Bible's account of Noah's curse upon Canaan was used in the 19th century as a justification for slavery.
Noah is a prophet in the Qur'an. References to
نوح Nūḥ, the Arabic form of Noah, are scattered throughout the Qur'an, but no
single narrative account of the entire Deluge is given. The references in the Qur'an are consistent with Genesis, and Islamic tradition generally follows the Genesis account, with one important exception: In the
Bible, the deluge is a world-wide event, while in the Qur'an, it directs to a regional event, affecting only the "people of
Noah". The Qur'an emphasizes Noah's preaching of the monotheism of God, and the ridicule
heaped on him by idolators. Noah upon the instruction of God is said to have preached for about
950 years, with only 83 people willing to submit to God, and that eventually brought the wrath of God on the unbelievers.
Below are some verses from Quran about Noah:
| “ |
We sent Noah to his people: He said, “O my people! worship God! Ye have no other god
but Him. Will ye not fear (Him)?” |
” |
| “ |
The chiefs of the Unbelievers among his people said: “He is no more than a man like
yourselves: his wish is to assert his superiority over you: if God had wished (to send messengers), He could have sent down
angels; never did we hear such a thing (as he says), among our ancestors of old.” |
” |
| “ |
(And some said): “He is only a man possessed: wait (and have patience) with him for a
time.” |
” |
| “ |
(Noah) said: “O my Lord! help me: for that they accuse me of falsehood!” |
” |
God later instructed Noah to build the ark:
| “ |
Build the ship under Our eyes and by Our inspiration, and speak not unto Me on behalf
of those who do wrong. Lo! they will be drowned.[14][15] |
” |
The Qur'anic account contains a detail not included in the Biblical account: a reference to another son who chose not to enter
the ark:
| “ |
And it sailed with them amid waves like mountains, and Noah cried unto his son - and
he was standing aloof - O my son! Come ride with us, and be not with the disbelievers. |
” |
| “ |
He said: I shall betake me to some mountain that will save me from the water. (Noah)
said: This day there is none that saveth from the commandment of God save him on whom He hath had mercy. And the wave came in
between them, so he was among the drowned.[16] |
” |
The Qur'anic account does not include several details of the Genesis account, including the account of Noah's nakedness and
the resultant cursing of his son Ham whose descendants included but were not limited to the people of Caanan.
A great number of Muslim scholars all over the World assert that the flood during Noah's time was a local event, in contrast
to the Biblical account which asserts that it was global.
See also Similarities between the Bible and the
Qur'an.
Contemporary academic perspectives
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
8th century BC. Two of these, the Jahwist, composed in the 8th 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 pairs of animals Noah took, and how long the flood lasted. (See Noah's Ark for a more detailed description of the documentary hypothesis as it relates to the Ark
story).
More broadly, Genesis seems to contain two accounts concerning Noah, the first making him the hero of the Flood, the second
representing him as a husbandman who planted a vineyard. This has led some scholars to believe that Noah was originally the
inventor of wine, in keeping with the statement at Genesis 5:29 that Lamech "called his name Noah, saying, 'Out of the ground which the Lord has cursed this one shall
bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.'" [17] It has been suggested that the Flood story may originally have belonged to Enoch, Noah's grandfather according to Genesis 5.[17]
The "Curse of Ham" has given rise to much discussion, but seems to express a hope on the part of the 6th century BC compilers
of the Torah that the Medes (Japhet) would join with the Jews (Shem) in restoring Jewish rule in the land of Canaan: "Blessed by
the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan
be his slave."
Mythological connections
- Further information: Deluge (mythology)
Many ancient flood stories share similarities to the one above:
The mysterious figure of Enoch is the beginning of a fascinating but
inconclusive web of correspondences and similarities between the story of Noah and older Mesopotamian myths. According to Genesis 5:24, at the end of his 365 years Enoch "walked with God, and was not, for God took him" - the only one of
the ten pre-Flood Patriarchs not reported to have died. Where did Enoch go when God took him? In a late Apocryphal tradition,
Methuselah is reported to have visited Enoch at the end of the Earth, where he dwelt with the angels, immortal. The details bring
to mind Utnapishtim, a figure from the Mesopotamian Epic of
Gilgamesh - the hero Gilgamesh, after long and arduous travel, finds Utnapishtim living in the paradise of
Dilmun at the end of the Earth, where he has been granted eternal life by the gods. (Gilgamesh's
reason for seeking out Utnapishtim, incidentally, is to learn the secret of immortality - like Methuselah, he comes close to the
gift but fails to achieve it). Utnapishtim then tells how he survived a great flood, and how he was afterwards granted
immortality by the gods.
Lamech's statement that Noah will be named "rest" because "out of the ground which the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us
relief from our work and from the toil of our hands," has another faint parallel in Babylonian mythology: the gods grew tired of
working, digging the channels of the rivers, and so the god Enki created man from clay and blood
and spit to do the work for them. Enki fell in love with his creation, and later warned Utnapishtim that the other gods planned to send a flood to destroy all life, and advised him on how to
construct his ark.
See also
Notes and references
- Bailey, Lloyd R. (1989). Noah, the Person and the
Story. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0-87249-637-6.
- Best, Robert M. (1999). Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra
Epic. Fort Myers, Florida: Enlil Press. ISBN 0-9667840-1-4.
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