Noah adaptations p03: Sources behind the biblical account

This is part 3 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"Noah’s Ark On The Mount Ararat" (1570) the only known work of Simon de Myle. But for this painting we know nothing else about him

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the flood stories that preceded the biblical account. Or should I say accounts? I say this because for the last 270+ years scholars have been developing the idea that numerous sources lay behind the Torah/Pentateuch (as well as much of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible) ever since Jean Astruc published his book "Conjectures on the original documents that Moses appears to have used in composing the Book of Genesis" in 1753.

Documentary Hypothesis

Since then Astruc's ideas have been developed by other scholars and been discussed as the "documentary hypothesis" with perhaps its most famous incarnation called the "Graf-Wellhausen documentary hypothesis". This proposed four major sources behind the text, known as the Jahwist source (J), the Elohist (E) source, the Priestly source (P) and the Deuteronomist source (D) compiled later by a redactor who made his own changes (R). Since then the theories have dissolved into a thousand variations, from those advocating an array of oral sources, through to those suggesting the strands are variations of the same original source.

More recently, however, things have begun to coalesce again into three major theories (aside from Mosaic authorship): the fragmentary hypothesis, which argues for a series of shorter independent sources; the supplementary hypothesis which argues D is the oldest and source and that J and P were not entirely independent later sources; and, the neo-documentary hypothesis which pays closer attention to plot and narrative continuity in defining its sources.

 

In some ways, perhaps the most significant change to have occurred is the agreement now to talk about three sources rather than four main sources plus a redactor. Scholars these days tend to talk about the Priestly and non-Priestly material among the first four books of the Bible. Deuteronomy onwards was always its own thing, style and composition-wise with Deuteronomy having far more in common with the books that follow it that those before it. As its title suggests, the Priestly source is particularly interested in "the communal practice of religion, which...means a temple-based sacrificial cult".¹ The non-priestly material may be older or younger than P or it may be due to the redactor. Some argue J and E can be delineated, or see clear cases for additional sources, but essentially this is the way it tends to be talked about in academic circles.

The sources and Noah

This is of particular relevance when it comes to the Noah story, because it's a "standard example" for seeing how these theories might work in practice.² David Carr says that the "clues to the formation of Genesis are probably thickest in the flood account"³. Indeed, one of the unusual aspects of the text that first raised the idea of multiple stories is the existence of "doublets" – places where the same story seems to be repeated. So, for example, in Genesis we find Noah being told to bring two of every animal onto the ark (6:19) and then just a few verses later to bring 7 pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals (7:2). There are various other places where this kind of confusion/contradiction/repetition can be observed.

While scholars today vary about which verses belong to which source, there is a general agreement that the two sources can be delineated, as demonstrated here. I looked at how three different scholars had separated out the Noah story and while there was the occasional disagreement over a verse or part verse, overall there's strong agreement around the following separation.⁴

Priestly: Genesis 6:9-22; 7:6; 7:8-11; 7:13-16a; 7:18-22; 7:24-8:2a; 8:3b-5; 8:13a; 8:14-19; 9:1-17; 9:28-29 (link - includes full verses, not halves)

Non-Priestly: Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5; 7:7; 7:12; 7:16b-17; 7:23; 8:2b-3a; 8:6-12; 8:13b; 8:20-22; 9:18-27 (link- includes full verses, not halves)⁵

When we look at the P and non-P accounts we find there's a remarkable similarity between them.⁵ Yes, some of the details, language and theological concerns have changed, but each essentially tells the same story: God sees wrongdoing in the world, and decides to send to destroy humanity except for Noah, his family and a specific number of animals who are safe on board an ark. The flood comes and once the waters have subsided Noah leaves the boat and makes a sacrifice.

So what influenced what?

As mentioned in part 2 of this series, the Biblical story of Noah clearly has some dependence on the earlier Mesopotamian accounts of a great flood, so combining that with the idea of two pre-biblical sources raises a few further questions.

1. Is the dependence on earlier Mesopotamian accounts found in one of these two "sources" in particular? 
2. Does one of those three Mesopotamian accounts stand out as having been the most influential?
3. Can we establish a clear sequence?
   

1. Is just one source dependent?

The answer to the first question is a fairly straightforward "no". The fact that both strands stick to the same plot is a strong indicator in itself that both have either direct or indirect dependence on one or more Mesopotamian accounts. Moreover we find particular details, turns of phrase etc. from the Mesopotamian epics in both sources. For example, the details of the ark coming to rest on a mountain occurs in P whilst the use of birds to assess if it's time to disembark occurs in non-P. Indeed Carr takes things a step further arguing that "the combination of the two more fully corresponds to the Gilgamesh version than either strand alone".⁶

2. Which Mesopotamian account was most influential?

Carr's point leads us nicely onto the second question, because it seems likely that the Gilgamesh epic is the one that is most directly influential on the pre-biblical material. In fact Amanda Norsker argues that Genesis and Atrahasis "have nothing in common that is not a part of the Gilgamesh story".⁷ We find Gilgamesh introducing new elements into Atrahasis and on several occasions these then turn up in either the P material or the non-P material. The most striking one here is the tale of the birds scouting for land which does not feature in any of the fragments we have of the Atrahasis Epic and only appears in the Non-Priestly source.

Conversely, there's only one, somewhat tenuous, occasion when Gilgamesh excludes something from Atrahasis and one of the pre-biblical sources seems to include something similar, namely that the flood hero had seven days' notice of the impending deluge (Gen 7:10). There are various possible explanations for this, but the most likely is textual variations. The three epics I discussed in the last in this series are key stages in an evolutionary process, and we don't know whether the texts we have are typical of all that were circulating at that time, or if they were outliers. 

 

Furthermore, it's difficult to be precise about the time all these sources were formed. Prior to George Smith's 1872 discovery of the Gilgamesh Epic, it was held that the J source was pre-Josiah with Wellhausen dating it in the 9th century and von Rad during the reign of Solomon.⁸ These theoretical dates are earlier than the physical copies of the Gilgamesh tablets we have which date from the 7th century BCE. So how can the non-Priestly material be dependent on the Gilgasmesh epic if J pre-dates it?

There are a few key points here. Firstly it's highly unlikely the physical 7th century tablets we have represent the first time the story was ever told in that fashion. It's probably a copy of a copy of a copy etc. with the original going far back. Secondly, we are talking about an evolving tradition so the version of Gilgamesh we have might not be the parent of the biblical sources as much as a sibling of an older version. Finally (and related to that) it's worth pointing out that the flood narrative within Gilgamesh sits somewhat awkwardly within the material. It's cast as an ancient story and it's likely that it was inserted into the text at an earlier stage, having (as we know) already existed.

As Irving Finkel puts it "The argument, therefore, is not that the Genesis narrative is translated from, or directly derived from, the Assyrian version of Gilgamesh that we now have" rather that "the Hebrew text reflects an antecedent version or versions of the Flood Story in cuneiform that must itself have been strongly related to Gilgamesh XI, while not being identical".⁹

What about P?

In all that discussion of the non-Priestly material, we have rather overlooked the P source. Where does that fit in? The first thing to point out is that P has usually been considered much later than J, at least and likewise later than D and probably after the Babylonian exile. Lianne Feldman see it as reaching its final form shortly before "the formation of the Pentateuch in the fifth through fourth centuries BCE".¹⁰ 

Clearly then, the Priestly material could derive directly from the version of the Gilgamesh epic we have, or be its sibling. There is however a further option. Many scholars consider that "the P account is dependent on the non-P material".¹¹ At first glance the way the existing Genesis material is divided seems unlikely because of the 20 points of similarity that Lendering finds between Mesopotamian accounts and Genesis, 9 come from the non-Priestly material, 8 from the Priestly material with a further 3 being disputed. However, there does seem to be some evidence that the Redactor removed some repetition to improve either readability or provide a better structure.¹² If so then the 8:9 figures would probably spring more decisively in favour of P's dependence on non-P, particularly because the two sources have far more in common with each other than the combined story has with the Gilgamesh epic.

 

At the same time, Idan Dershowitz suggests that the Priestly source's "knowledge of the Babylonian story was certainly not limited to J" ¹³ Perhaps given the prevalence of these stories in Babylon at the time, this story was familiar to the P authors.

A proposed model

While it's difficult to be certain, then, about the relationship between all these sources, the following appears to be the most likely model showing a series of stages of adaptation over a period approaching sixteen hundred years from the writing of the Sumerian Flood Epic around the start of the second century. Each writer recycling and adapting the story to suit their particular context and purpose. The dates here are really just for illustration purposes.

There are a number of places where I'm uncomfortable with the illustration: the fluid relationship between the Mesopotatamian sources isn't really captures and the lost Gilgamesh antecedent seems more concrete in the above than it has any right to be. Also the separation of the J source from the Non-P source is a bit prescriptive and others might quibble with that. It's more to give clarity to how things might have worked than to other a cast iron solution.

So where does Noah come from?

All of this leaves one question untouched: where does Noah fit into things? If he was "originally" called Atrahasis or Utnapishti was there a Noah character before the flood story got assigned to him?

 

The answer to this appears to be "yes". We here about Noah in a few places in Genesis that are perhaps around the fringes of the main flood narrative. The first comes in Genesis 5:24-32 where Noah is dropped into a genealogy. Here his father says this about him: "Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands" (v29). What's interesting about Lamech's words is that they don't really fit with the story that follows. Noah is the flood hero / survivor, there's nothing to suggest he brings relief from work.

 

The second thing is that it's not implausible that just as a later version of the Gilgamesh Epic seems to have inserted a flood hero narrative into the middle of it, that an earlier version of the biblical texts might have done likewise. If we imagine this then we can see two places where 5:32 would conveniently join up with, because in both cases we get an almost word for word repetition of the same verse.

 

The first is the start of Gen 9:18-28. Having repeated the names of Noah's sons it goes on to describe Noah as a "man of the soil" and the "first to plant a vineyard" (v20) and we then get the story of him getting drunk and cursing his grandson. This verse also seems at odds with the flood narrative (Noah had to completely restart society and rebuild the world why would his wine-making be the only thing left to say about him) but, more importantly, seems to tie in a little better with 5:29.

 

The other is that the genealogy picks up again properly in 10:1 with a third reminder that the sons of Noah are Shem, Ham and Japheth. So perhaps Noah was originally known as man of the soil, who planted grapes and made wine that brought people "relief" from their toil. In other words he was a pioneering "farmer, the originator of viniculture".¹⁴

 

Interestingly Idan Dershowitz takes this a stage further arguing that Noah's main contribution was originally bringing relief from a famine rather than a flood.¹⁵ Dershowitz argues this by combining these verses with mentions of Noah in prophetic texts that pre-date the writing of Genesis, such as Isaiah 54:9 and particularly Ezekiel 14:14-20. For him "famine ravaged the earth and imperiled its inhabitants for generations until a man named Noah precipitated blessed rain and ended the curse. This original narrative was edited and supplemented so that, in J, Noah was transformed into the survivor of the legendary primeval Flood."

I'm not sure to what extent I agree with this, but interestingly it does link back to the Atrahasis Epic where the gods, so infuriated by humanity's noise, try to limit their numbers, first by sending a plague and then by sending a famine. Only when this fails do they decide to send a flood. There's a nice circularity in that.

 

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1. Feldman, Liane M. (2023) The Consuming Fire: The Complete Priestly Source from Creation to the Promised Land, (Oakland: University of California Press). Kindle edition. Loc. 348.

2. Baden, Joel S. (2012) The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press). Kindle edition. Loc 439.

3. Carr, David McLain (1996) Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press). p.48

4. The sources being: John J. Collins (2014) Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical books (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), p.53-58;  Lloyd R. Bailey (1989) Noah: The Person and the Story in History and Tradition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press); Jona Lendering "The Great Flood" https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/flood6-parallels/.

5. While I will continue to use the term non-Priestly material here, it is worth pointing out that in the Flood narratives it is usually considered to originate from the J source.

6. Carr (1996) p.60n24. 

7. Norsker, Amanda (2015) "A Rewritten Babylonian Flood Myth" in Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, Vol. 29, no.1. p.62 Available online: https://journals.scholarsportal.info/pdf/09018328/v29i0001/55_g6arbfm.xml_en.

8. Carr p.63.

9. Finkel, Irving (2014) The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, (London: Hodder), p.213.
10. Feldman loc 390.

11. Carr (1996), p.61.

12. There is a chiastic structure called a palistrophe to the material. See Bailey pp. 152-8. 

13. Dershowitz, Idan (2016) "Man of the Land: Unearthing the Original Noah" in Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Vol. 128, no.3, p. 370. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/28643812/Man_of_the_Land_Unearthing_the_Original_Noah_Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_die_alttestamentliche_Wissenschaft_ZAW_

14. Bailey p.208.

15. Lendering, Jona (2020) "The Great Flood" on Livius. Last updated 12th October 2020. Originally created in 2007. https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/great-flood/