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Noah

 
 

(West Asian mythology)

The flood myth of West Asia is Mesopotamian in origin. There survives a Sumerian king list with the statement that following the reigns of the first eight monarchs, a legendary era of 241,200 years, ‘the flood swept over the land’. These kings, reminiscent of the patriarchs before the biblical deluge, included Gilgamesh and Dumuzi. According to the fragments preserved, when the gods decided to drown mankind, the water god Enki warned the pious and god-fearing Ziusudra, King of Sippar, who built a boat in order to escape the seven-day flood. Later Ziusudra acquired ‘life like a god’. In Akkadian literature there are two versions of the flood story. The Gilgamesh Epic makes Utanapishtim the hero, while in another myth the survivor of primordial famine and flood is Atrahasis. During the Assyrian ascendancy, in the seventh century BC, the Atrahasis myth was used as an incantation at childbirth. For Christian symbolism the deliverance from the flood came to signify baptism, and Noah's ark the Church.

In Hebrew tradition the survival of Adam's seed depends on the uprightness of Noah, Methuselah's grandson. Whereas the Mesopotamian gods had wearied of the service rendered by their human servants, not least the din they made, Yahweh sent the deluge because of the curse brought upon earth by the sin of Adam. The life and conduct of Noah was a standing rebuke to his contemporaries, then incited to wickness by fallen angels. But the treatment of Noah in the Old Testament obscures his cultural role as a founder of agricultural technique. He introduced the vine. Apocryphal literature relates that his drunkenness was the result of a wine-making partnership with Satan, who poured on the roots of the vine the blood of a slaughtered lamb, lion, pig, and monkey. In this manner he conveyed to Noah what the qualities of wine are: before man tastes it, he is as innocent as a lamb; after imbibing moderately, he feels as strong as a lion; after swallowing too much, he resembles a pig; and drinking to the point of intoxication, he behaves like a monkey, talks gibberish, cavorts, and is obscene.

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Biblical character from Genesis. The son of Lamech and ninth in descent from Adam, he was a man of blameless piety, who was chosen by God to perpetuate the human race after his wicked contemporaries had perished in the flood. On God's instructions, Noah built an ark and took into it one male and one female of each of the world's animals. After the waters receded, God set a rainbow in the sky as a guarantee of his promise never again to curse the earth. Noah was the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom the entire human race is supposed to have descended. Noah is also said to have been the originator of vineyard cultivation.

For more information on Noah, visit Britannica.com.

 

Hero of the Flood story. Noah, who lived until the age of 950, had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. At a time when the rest of the world was corrupt (Gen. 6:12), Noah was the only just person who "walked with God" (Gen. 5:9). Noah was instructed to build an ark and to bring into it seven of every type of clean beast and two of every other type of living creature. In the 600th year of Noah's life, God caused a flood during which it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. All living creatures were destroyed except those in the ark. The waters remained at the same level for 150 days. Only then did they begin to subside. Forty days later, Noah sent out a raven and later a dove. The second time the dove was sent out, it returned with an olive leaf in its beak. This was a sign that the treetops were uncovered. When Noah was finally able to leave the ark, he built an altar and made an offering of the clean beasts to God. God gave the rainbow as a sign to Noah that never again would a flood destroy the entire earth. God also gave Noah a series of commandments (the Noachide Laws). In later Jewish tradition these were seen as universal laws for all mankind. Later, after having planted a vineyard, Noah drank wine and became drunk. His son, Ham, "uncovered his nakedness." Once his drunkenness had worn off, Noah cursed Ham and his son Canaan. Some commentators understood Ham's sin to be homosexuality; it has also been suggested that Ham committed incest with his mother, Canaan being the product of this union. According to critical views this story was told to point to the superiority of the Israelites over the Canaanites. The classical commentators are divided about the meaning of Genesis 6:9: "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations." According to one view, this indicates that he was great in spite of the depravity of those around him, while according to another view he was great only in comparison to those of his generation. In parallel flood stories of the Ancient Near East, there is no suggestion that a surviving individual was rescued because of his righteousness and moral superiority.

 
Bible Guide: Noah
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The hero of the Flood story. Two stories are related of Noah in the Book of Genesis – the man whose righteousness saved him from the destruction of his generation (Gen 5:28-9:19), and the drunken farmer (Gen 9:20-29).

Noah's birth is seen as an auspicious event. His father Lamech called him Noah, because "this one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed", (Gen 5:29, alluding to the curse of Gen 3:19). After the age of 500, Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Because of its ubiquitous evil, the Lord decided to blot out the human race, with the exception of Noah – the one righteous and blameless person on the face of the earth: he and his family were to be spared. Noah was commanded to construct an ark, into which he would bring his family, as well as two or seven pairs of every species of animal and bird. Entering the ark in the 600th year of his life, Noah, his family and the animals, survived the 40-day deluge, while all other human and animal life on the face of the earth was destroyed.

The waters began to abate on the 150th day, allowing the ark to rest on the mountains of Ararat (in Armenia). After sending forth a raven and a dove which returned to the ark, Noah again released the dove which did not return, indicating that dry land had reappeared. After disembarking Noah offered a sacrifice to the Lord who blessed him with the same blessing given to Adam "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" – since mankind was being created anew. God now made a covenant – symbolized by the rainbow – that a universal flood would never recur. Noah and his sons were permitted to eat meat but forbidden to drink blood or commit murder (Gen 5:32-9:17).

Similar flood stories, both in Sumerian and in Akkadian, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, were told in ancient Mesopotamia, but the Bible story contains major innovations. Noah was righteous while the rest of the world was corrupt and filled with Injustice (Gen 6:5, 11-13). The Bible stresses that it was moral corruption that led to the destruction and only the moral individual was saved. No other ancient flood story has this moral emphasis.

The second Noah story is much more brief. Returning to dry land, Noah became a "tiller of the soil" and planted a vineyard, whose produce made him inebriated. Losing his senses, he "uncovered himself". His son Ham "saw his nakedness" and told his brothers, who immediately, walking backwards for modesty, covered up their father with a blanket. Upon recovering his sobriety, Noah cursed Ham's son Canaan and blessed Japheth and Shem (Gen 9:20-29). Noah died at age 950.

Noah was remembered as one of the three prototypes of righteousness along with Daniel (probably the Danel of Ugaritic renown) and Job (Ezek 14:14, 20). The only other reference to Noah in the Bible is Isaiah 54:9, where the Flood is recalled as the "waters of Noah".

In the NT, Noah was a symbol of the righteous man, who has faith in God and obeys him, especially in comparison with the surrounding world (Matt 24:37ff; Luke 17:26ff; Heb 11:7; II Pet 2:5). See FLOOD.

2. One of the five daughters of Zelophehad, who, in the absence of brothers, received their father's inheritance.

Concordance
NOAH 1: Gen 5:29-30,32; 6:8-10, 13,22; 7:1, 5-7, 9,11, 13, 15, 23; 8:1, 6, 11, 13,15, 18, 20; 9:1, 8, 17-20,24, 28-29; 10:1, 32. I Chr 1:4. Is 54:9. Ezek 14:14,20. Matt 24:37-38. Luke 3:36; 17:26-27. Heb 11:7. I Pet 3:20. II Pet 2:5
NOAH 2: Num 26:33; 27:1; 36:11. Josh 17:3


 
Noah ('ə) [Heb.,=to rest], in the Bible, the builder of the ark. Righteous Noah and his family were the only people God saved from a world sunk in sin. At divine direction Noah built the ship that saved human and animal life from the Deluge, after which God established a covenant with him. According to biblical ethnography, Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are eponymous ancestors of races as humankind is divided in the Bible. The story has similarities with other Middle Eastern accounts of the Deluge in the Gilgamesh epic and in the Babylonian myth of Atrahasis.


 
Dictionary: No·ah   ('ə) pronunciation
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In the Bible, the patriarch who was chosen by God to build an ark, in which he, his family, and a pair of every animal were saved from the Flood.


 

Network of Animal Health (American Veterinary Medical Association); National Office of Animal Health (UK).

 
Word Tutor: Noah
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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - The Hebrew patriarch who saved himself and his family and the animals by building an ark in which they survived 40 days and 40 nights of rain.

 
Wikipedia: Noah
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The Deluge, Gustave Doré, 1832-1883. From the Dore Illustrated Bible, 1865.
Biblical longevity
Name Age LXX
Methuselah 969 969
Jared 962 962
Noah 950 950
Adam 930 930
Seth 912 912
Kenan 910 910
Enos 905 905
Mahalalel 895 895
Lamech 777 753
Shem 600 600
Eber 464 404
Cainan 460
Arpachshad 438 465
Salah 433 466
Enoch 365 365
Peleg 239 339
Reu 239 339
Serug 230 330
Job 210? 210?
Terah 205 205
Isaac 180 180
Abraham 175 175
Nahor 148 304
Jacob 147 147
Esau 147? 147?
Ishmael 137 137
Levi 137 137
Amram 137 137
Kohath 133 133
Laban 130+ 130+
Deborah 130+ 130+
Sarah 127 127
Miriam 125+ 125+
Aaron 123 123
Rebecca 120+ 120+
Moses 120 120
Joseph 110 110
Joshua 110 110

Noah (or Noe, Noyach; Hebrew: נוֹחַ or נֹחַ, Modern Nóaḥ Tiberian Nōªḥ; Nūḥ; Arabic: نوح ; "Rest"[1]) was, according to the Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs; and a prophet according to the Qur'an. The biblical story of Noah is contained in the book of Genesis, chapters 6–9; he is also found in the passage 'Noah's sons", while the Qur'an has a whole sura named after and devoted to his story, with other references elsewhere. In the Genesis account, Noah saves his family and representatives of all animals in groups of two or seven from the flood. In the Islamic account, a group of 72 others are also saved (although none reproduce after the flood).[2] He receives a covenant from God, and his sons repopulate the earth. In the Hindu account, Manu built a huge boat, which housed his family, 9 types of seeds, and animals and repopulated the earth after the deluge occurred and the oceans and seas receded.

While the Deluge and Noah's Ark are the best-known elements of the Noah tradition, Noah is also mentioned in Genesis as the "first husbandman" and possibly the inventor  of wine, as noted in an episode of his drunkenness and the subsequent Curse of Ham. The account of Noah is 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 (1 Peter 3-18:22).

Contents

Tradition

The following section is a summary of the Book of Genesis, chapters 6–9.

Noah was the son of Lamech, who had named him[3] Noah because he would bring rest from toil on the land which God had cursed (a reference to the curse God places on the earth following the expulsion from Eden).[4] In his five hundredth year Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. When Noah was six hundred years old, God, saddened at the wickedness of mankind, decided to send a great deluge to destroy all life. But he saw that Noah was a righteous man, and instructed him to build an ark and gather himself and his family with every type of animal, male and female.[5][6] 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"[7] 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 inclination 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'."[8]

Then God spoke to 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."[9]

After the Flood, "Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine."[10]

Noah died 350 years after the Flood, at the age of 950,[11] 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 twenty generations. Another few generations later, lifespans were reported to be less than 100 years on average.

Jewish perspectives

The Sacrifice of Noah, Jacopo Bassano (c.1515-1592), Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten, Potsdam-Sanssouci, c. 1574.

The righteousness of Noah is the subject of much discussion among the rabbis.[12] 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. In fact, Noah is never seen to speak; he simply listens to God and acts on his orders. 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. Rashi interprets his father's statement of the naming of Noah (in Hebrew נֹחַ) “This one will comfort (in Hebrew– yeNaHamainu יְנַחֲמֵנו) from our work and our hands sore from the land that the Lord had cursed”,[13] by saying Noah heralded a new era of prosperity, when (1) there was easing (in Hebrew – nahah - נחה) from the curse from the time of Adam when the Earth produced thorns and thistles even where men sowed wheat and (2) that Noah introduced the plow.

Christian perspectives

The Gospel of Luke, (Luke17:26), equates Noah's Flood with the coming Day of Judgement: “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.” 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 Christ and his Lordship, as in Noah's time it had been found only within the Ark. 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 corresponds to the body of Christ; 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). In the 18th and 19th centuries the view that Ham's sons in general had been literally "blackened" by the curse of Noah was cited as justification for black slavery.

Latter-day Saint perspectives

In Latter-day Saint theology, the archangel Gabriel lived in his mortal life as the patriarch Noah. Gabriel and Noah are regarded as the same individual; Noah being his mortal name and Gabriel being his heavenly name.[14] See also: Michael (archangel) ~ Adam

Gnostic perspectives

Gnosticism was an important development of (and departure from) early Christianity, blending Jewish scriptures and Christian teachings with traditional pagan religion and esoteric Greek philosophical concepts. An important Gnostic text, 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".

Islamic perspectives

The Quran contains 43 references to Noah (نوح, Nūḥ) in 28 suras (chapters), notably Sura Nuh and Sura Hud. Sura 11 (Hud) is largely an account of the Flood. Sura 71 (i.e., Sura Nuh), of 28 verses, consists of a divine injunction to Noah to preach, a short sermon of Noah’s to his idolatrous contemporaries on the monotheism of Allah (God), and Noah’s complaint to God about the hardness of the people’s hearts when his preaching is met by ridicule.

Genesis's Noah lives for a total of 950 years, with the Flood coming in his six hundredth year; (In later tradition, only 83 people are willing to submit, i.e., become Muslim, "those who seek peace" with God; these 83 are saved with Noah). It is mankind's obduracy which eventually brings the wrath of God on the unbelievers.

The theme of the Quranic story is the unity of Allah and the need to seek peace with Him. The narrative does not include the Genesis account of Noah's drunkenness, and the possibility of the Curse of Ham narrative is in fact implicitly excluded: Qur'an doesn’t mention the number of Noah’s sons. Nevertheless the traditions of Prophet Mohammed clearly mention that Noah had three sons [15], and that all the population descended from them., and a fourth son who does not join his father despite Noah's final plea to be saved ("O my son! Come ride with us, and be not with the disbelievers!"); instead he flees to the mountains, and God tells Noah that this is because he is an evildoer.[16] (In later Islamic tradition the son is given the name Kenan, "Canaan").

Shi'ah Muslims believe that Noah is buried next to Ali[17] within Imam Ali Mosque, in Najaf, Iraq.

Contemporary academic perspectives

Textual criticism

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 pairs of animals Noah took, and how long the flood lasted.

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 believed by the ancients to be 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.'"[18]

Connections to other lore

Noah's first burnt offering after the Flood - relief in Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc.

Noah's great grandfather Enoch is the beginning of a web of 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 of the ten pre-Flood Patriarchs not reported to have died. It is not explicitly stated where he is taken. 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, 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. It has been suggested that the Flood story may originally have belonged to Enoch.[18]

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.

Noah is also often compared to Deucalion, the son of Prometheus and Pronoia in Greek mythology. Like Noah, Deucalion is a wine maker or wine seller; he is forewarned of the flood (this time by Zeus); he builds an ark and staffs it with creatures - and when he completes his voyage, gives thanks and takes advice from the gods on how to repopulate the Earth. Deucalion also sends a pigeon to find out about the situation of the world and the bird return with an olive branch. This and some other examples of apparent comparison between Greek myths and the "key characters" in the Old Testament/Torah have led recent Biblical scholars to suggest a Hellenistic influence in the composition of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Bible.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Noah Meaning of Noah
  2. ^ Noah's Ark - Jewish Encyclopedia
  3. ^ Genesis 5:29
  4. ^ see Rashi's comment at [1]
  5. ^ Genesis 6:19
  6. ^ Genesis 7:2
  7. ^ Genesis 7:24
  8. ^ Genesis 8:20-22
  9. ^ Genesis 9:1-17
  10. ^ Genesis 9:20-27
  11. ^ Genesis 9:28-29
  12. ^ "JewishEncyclopedia.com - Noah". http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=318&letter=N&search=Noah#982. 
  13. ^ Genesis 5:28
  14. ^ Joseph Smith, Jr., address at Commerce (later Nauvoo), Illinois, June 2, 1839
  15. ^ Tirmidhi, Ibn Abi Hatim, and ibn Jarir
  16. ^ This section is based on Mark Hillmer, "The Book of Genesis in the Qur’an", Word & World 14/2 (1994)
  17. ^ al-Qummi, Ja'far ibn Qūlawayh (2008). Kāmil al-Ziyārāt. trans. Sayyid Mohsen al-Husaini al-Mīlāni. Shiabooks.ca Press. pp. 66-67. 
  18. ^ a b "JewishEncyclopedia.com - NOAH". http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=318&letter=N&search=noah#2. 

Further reading

  • 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. 
  • Young, Davis A. (1995). The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. ISBN 0-85364-678-3. 
  • Ryan, William (1998). Noah's Flood. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81052-2. 

External links



 
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Some good "Noah" pages on the web:


Judaism
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Copyrights:

World Mythology Dictionary. A Dictionary of World Mythology. Copyright © Arthur Cotterell 1979, 1986, 2003. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Encyclopedia of Judaism. The New Encyclopedia of Judaism. Copyright © 1989, 2002 by G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more
Bible Guide. Illustrated Dictionary & Concordance of the Bible. Copyright © 1986 by G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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