Noah adaptations p07: Islamic Texts

This is part 5 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

Click on images to enlarge.Left: Illustration from Ishaq b. Ibrahim al-Nayshaburi's Qisas al-Anbiya (Tales of the Prophets, C.16th). Right: Hafiz-I Abru's  image from "Majma al tawarikh" (World Histories, 1425).

In the last two parts of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at Jewish variations of the flood story following the writing of Genesis. Now I want to turn to how Islamic writers tell the story from the Qur'an onwards. Firstly to be clear. I am very much a newcomer to these texts, so I speak in ignorance giving first impressions and notes rather than some of my more citable work here. Don't let any footnotes convince you otherwise! Secondly, Because I am ignorant of Islam this is not an exhaustive examination of the most important/relevant texts, it's simply a selection of some ancient texts that talk about Noah (who is called Nuh in Islam which I'll use from here on in).

The Qur'an

In contrast to the Torah where the story of Nuh only occurs in Genesis, in genealogies and two passing mentions (Is 54:9 & Ezek 14:14-20), Nuh is mentioned in (by my count) 27 of the 114 suras. Many of these references are similar to the Isaiah and Ezekiel ones – just a passing verse –  and none are as long as the Genesis one. Instead they are more varied in length. There's even a sura named after him, sura 71 Nuh. Unsurprisingly, sura 71 is the longest discussion of Nuh, but there are also fairly long sections in 7:59-64; 11:25-49; 23:23-32; 26:105-122; 29:14-22; 54:9-22 with sura 11 being the most familiar account.

Not only is the story more widely distributed but it's also quite different. Perhaps the most notable thing is that here Nuh's life more closely corresponds to that of the prophet Muhammed.(1) There is far more emphasis on Nuh as a preacher – something almost entirely absent in the Jewish texts, but which has emerged a little in Christian ones. Here the majority of references to Nuh are about him preaching and his preaching being rejected until he starts again. 

In a not dissimilar vein, the parts of the Torah version after the flood where Noah sacrifices animals and where he plants a vineyard and gets drunk and naked are downplayed. I think some discussion of the latter comes up in later texts, but not much about sacrificing animals (which was one of the original points in the Mesopotamian accounts & P/Genesis.

There are two notable additions though. The first is a tragic one. In the Bible it is only Noah's wife, three sons and their wives who are saved form the flood. In the Qur'an it is those who believe Nuh's message who are saved. While this seems to include a few non-family members, Noah has an extra son who dies having decided to try and survive the flood by going to higher ground instead of getting on the boat (11:41-46).

The second is far more minor, but connects to my environmental theme. Having spent the early part career helping decontaminate sites polluted with tar, I'm struck by the fact that in the Bible Noah waterproofs his ark with pitch (Gen 6:14), whereas in the Quran Nuh uses palm-fibre (54:13).

History of al-Tabarī

Formally known as Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk (The History of Kings and Prophets) this was completed by Abū Ja'far Muhammad in 915 CE. William M. Brinner, whose English translation is at archive.org, claimed it was "by common consent the most important universal history produced in the world of Islam" (vii). Given he was writing over 50 years ago in 1971 I think we're entitled to question quite how true that is (I'm sceptical about who was and wasn't included in his idea of "common consent").

Details of Nuh's story are fairly minor: al-Tabarī is far more concerned with detailing the descendants of Nuh's sons, where they ended up geographically, and which nations they became (as well as occasionally giving details of their ethnicities. The animals, the flood itself and the ark don't get a look in. Even the story of Noah sleeping while "his genitals were exposed" leaves out his drunkenness (11). So this is a really interesting example of how far an adaptation can be stretched in a certain direction while still recognisably belonging to the corpus.

Al-Tha'labī's Lives of the Prophets

These tales of the prophets were written down by Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Tha'labi sometime before his death in 1036 CE. It's one of many Lives of the Prophets type works, and it's anglicised Arabic name is Ara'is Al-Majalis Fl Qisas Al-Anbiya. Archive.org holds a 2002 translation of it by William M. Brinner. Brinner describes it as "Except for the work of Tabarī, this is the longest and most diverse collection of tales of the lives of the prophets" noting that is also contains "a number of extraneous tales having little or nothing to do with prophets" (xxiv).

The Nuh story (p.92 onwards in Brinner's translation) shows plenty of elaboration from the Qurannic account 400 years earlier. For one things Noah is now regularly enduring quite savage beatings for his preaching. The bit that really stood comes a little later when Nuh is commanded to build an ark. Initially he does not even know what an ark is. Then as asks where the water will come from. Finally we're told 'Noah continued: "Lord, and where is the wood?" God said: "Plant trees." And he planted teak.' (94) I've hear it was palm trees from later accounts, but that could be just down to translation. Also here Nuh is back to using pitch again to waterproof his vessel (95), but then the author does refer the reader to "the People of the Book" when it comes to  some of the technical details (94). 

I recently watched a cartoon version of this story which included a couple of details that are found here. One of which is the idea of Nuh planting the trees first, the other of which is that the flood begins by coming out of the (family) oven, meaning Nuh's wife is the one to tell him the flood has started.

There's also a whole host of stories about the animals boarding the ark. The devil manages to sneak on with the donkey (96). The snake and the scorpion are only allowed on after they promise not to harm anyone who mentions Nuh (96-7). The story records Noah as worrying about the carnivores eating the others only for him to be reassured that they will be reconciled (97) and the lion was struck with a fever which "caused him to be busied with himself rather than (with) the domesticated animals" (97). Lastly Al-Tha'labī quotes Jesus telling stories about how pigs were produced from elephants, and cats from lions in order to solve problems of too much dung and too many rats (100). There's also a mention of Og (king of the giants) surviving the flood as it only went up to his knees (100).

Majlisi’s Stories of the Prophets

Allamah Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (the Allamah means "the second") was a Shi'i Islamic writer in the 17th century whose many works included Hayat al-Qulub (literally Life of the Hearts). He died in 1699CE. Volume I of the translation of Hayat al-Qulub contains a section on Noah and Syed Athar Husain S. H. Rizvi's translation can be read here. It shows things having moved on significantly in the 650 years since Al-Tha'labī. For example, it starts with lengthy discussions about his original name before he became Nuh because he wept and mourned so much. 

The Nuh material is divided into two parts. The first is more of an account of key moments in his life. The second part is "Proclamation of Nuh" which is more of a commentary on key parts in the Qur'an.

In the first part, the story of Nuh's nakedness takes a new twist. Now it is no longer the result of his drinking but because "a strong wind blew and uncovered him". Later though the tradition of Nuh growing grapes re-emerges. But here Nuh's greatest adversary is not his people (as in the Qur'an) nor Ham (nor the wind), but Satan who is constantly pestering him leaving Nuh to make appeals to Gabriel.

There are some interesting touches from an environmental perspective. Firstly there's no mention of the animals whatsoever. Secondly we're also told "that when Nuh came down from the Ark, he planted the trees that he had brought with him" similar to some of the earlier Jewish stories such as Genesis Rabbah. 

In the Proclamation section we again get the story that Nuh planted the trees and this time it is palm trees he plants. Nuh's persecution intensifies, having stones thrown at him, being knocked unconscious for three days at a time and being knocked unconscious. 

This text also has the clearest arc in terms of Noah's attitude to the townspeople, though this is there from the start. First he preaches, then he is abused and keeps getting sent back until Nuh finally curses them, is sent back once more and then "prayed for divine punishment" which was heeded.

There's also a bit of whimsical aetiology with a story about the goat disobeying Nuh has he struggles to get the animals on board and as a result of being "thrashed" "its tail came away and the private parts were exposed". Conversely, the lamb behaved so "Nuh patted its back and tail; therefore its tail grew long and covered its private parts". Al-Tha'labī's animal stories are repeated.

Another sustainability angle, that links to Aronofsky's 2014 film is this description of Nuh "His dress was woolen, whereas prior to him, the dress of Idris was made of deer skin. Nuh lived in the mountains. His staple diet consisted of grass." Finally the writer notes different traditions about Nuh's wives. One discusses his wife Amoora herself being persecuted and proving faithful. Another says that Nuh had two wives Rabia and Haikel, the former was "an infidel" and "perished in the storm". I'm aware of another tradition that links the unsaved wife to the unsaved child (Canaan) and this is possibly linked to Sura 66:10 in the Qur'an where we're told that her and Lot's wife "were false to their husbands".

==================

(1) For more on this see Guillaume Dye and Gabriel Reynolds Le Coran des Historiens, vol 2b, (Paris, Le Cerf, 2019). pp1837-8. Thanks to @Rurouni_Phoenix from Twitter (but also convener of Reddit's r/academicquran) for this observation.

Refs:
Brinner, William M. (1971) The History of al-Tabarī (Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk). Vol II: Prophets and Patriarchs (New York: State University of New York Press)

Brinner, William M. (2002) Ara'is al-majalis fi qisas al-anbiya' or 'Lives of the Prophets' as recounted by Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Tha'labi   (Leiden, Boston and Cologne:E.J. Brill)

S.H. Rizvi, Sayyid Athar Husayn (Publication date not stated)   Hayat al-Qulub Hayat al-Qulub Vol. I: Stories of the Prophets by Muhammad Baqir Majlisi. Available online: https://www.al-islam.org/hayat-al-qulub-vol-1-stories-prophets-muhammad-baqir-majlisi/account-nuh

Noah adaptations p05: Jewish Texts After the Hebrew Bible

This is part 5 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"The Animals Entering Noah's Ark" (1570s) by Jacopo Bassano

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the variations of the flood story that were brought together to form Genesis. Now I want to turn to how Jewish writers continued to amend and adapt the flood narrative after Genesis had been written. While the number of Jewish sources that do something with the flood narrative are too numerous to track, I'm going to focus on the main ones here, written in the Second Temple (intertestamental) period, beyond into the era following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 

CE to the later part of the first millennium CE.

I've laid out the most relevant sources in a rough chronological order, though I should point out that dates are nearly always disputed, and vaguer than the dates I cite. I just find it useful to find an approximate middle of the range to help establish what is likely to have come before what. (DSS = Dead Sea Scrolls)

200 BCE - The Book of Enoch 
200 BCE - The Book of Jubilees

100 BCE - DSS - Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20/1QapGen)

50 BCE - DSS - Pesher/Commentary on Genesis (4Q252/4QPGen)

40 BCE - DSS - Flood Apocryphon/Admonition Based on the Flood (4Q370)

80 CE - Pseudo-Philo (Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum)

94 CE - Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

400 CE - Bereshit of Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah)

500 CE - Sanhedrin 108b (Babylonian Talmud)

600 CE - Sibylline Oracles

750 CE - Tanchuma Noach (Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

1000 CE - Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

Enoch

The Jewish source that is most frequently mentioned in relation to Noah (2014) is the Book of Enoch, a composite work of five smaller books that was compiled sometime "between the late fourth century B.C.E. and the turn of the era".¹ I want to get into this in a bit more detail, so I'm going to return to it in part 6.   

Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees is a rewriting of the material found in book of Genesis and the start of Exodus from the second century B.C.E.². The Dead Sea Scrolls included sections from 15 different manuscripts, roughly the same number of copies as they had of Genesis itself, so it was certainly popular among the Essene community³. The relevant passage starts with the last verse of chapter 4 and runs through to the fifteenth verse of chapter 6.  Most of the story remains intact, though the references to the animals on the ark is reduced to an afterthought. There's no mention of them entering two by two, let along seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean.

This is unusual, because Jubilees tends to elaborate on the Genesis text quite a lot and many of those additions seem quite fastidious. In stark contrast to the absent details about the animals entering the ark, the list of the animals Noah sacrifices afterwards is very specific. Indeed, in general, the new material seems to be intended to reflect cultic practice. There's a great deal of concern about consuming blood, for example. That said, more general principles such as not killing other people (shedding blood) and about justice also come through quite strongly.

In my previous piece in this series I mentioned how the gods' attempt to depopulate the earth is turned on its head in Gen 9:1 and Jubilees 6:5 repeats the command to "increase and multiply yourselves on the earth and become numerous upon it", as well as the promise that "I will put fear of you and dread of you on everything that is on the earth and in the sea" [James VanderKam's 2018 translation]. It's funny, the "fear and dread" is in Genesis too, but I've never noted it before – a widening of the rift between humanity and its environment.

Lastly, one point relating to the Aronofsky adaptation in particular. In the film, Madison Davenport plays Ham's wife, who is called Na'el. As Peter Chattaway points out the name is a shortened form of Ne-el-atamauk, which derives from Jubilees 7:14).⁴

Dead Sea Scrolls 

Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20, IQapGen) has large parts missing, but is still arguably the most interesting account of Noah amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. It dates from somewhere between 3rd century BCE and 1st century CE and was one of the seven scrolls that were first discovered, though the last to be translated because of its poor state. What we have starts with the "miraculous" birth of Noah in col.II and runs on into the life of Abram in col.XXII.⁵ Much of the Noah story is fragmentary, but of what remains we begin with his father Lamech's concern about how the yet to be born Noah will turn out. He asks his father (Methuselah) who in turns asks his father Enoch, who is held to be properly in touch "with the holy ones" (col.II:20).⁶. Collins observes how the "Genesis Apocryphon (ca. first/second century BCE) shares a number of features with both 1 Enoch and Jubilees, including the role of the Watchers".⁷ 

Cols III to XI are reduced to just a few phrases, but there's enough of col.VII to be able to figure out that now it's Noah that is speaking, recounting the events in the past tense. This is the first time since the flood hero became Noah that he has had a voice (aside from to curse Ham/Canaan). The first sentence particularly stands as Noah is recalling God's promise that he will "rule the earth and all there is in it" which feels like an expansion of what has gone before.⁸ Col. XII is better preserved and contains a few details of his family and a bit more about his vineyard. Collins notes that this is where the idea of Noah hearing God through visions, rather than words, is first found (e.g. XII:1).⁹

Fragment 4Q370, dating from around 160 BCE to 60 BCE almost has more titles than extant words (see here). It's variously called "A Flood Apocryphon", "Admonition Associated with the Flood",¹⁰ or "Exhortation Based on the Flood"  (Martinez).¹¹ The only bit that really stands out is the specific mention that "the giants did not escape". This seems to be in contrast with other traditions, that seek to explain the existence of giants/Nephilim after the flood in the Bible (not only Goliath, but those mentioned in Numbers 13:33) with a story of Og king of Bashan riding on a unicorn to stay alive (Zevachim 113b in The Talmud). See here, here and here for more on that...

Genesis Pesher (4Q252) also called a "Commentary on Genesis A". "Pesher" is a fairly terse retelling of the story, adding almost nothing and abridging the material quite significantly though typically it's employing a more disciplined word count than excising elements of the story. The most obvious actual omission seems to be that of the animals with a single dove being the only mention of animals in the whole text. It also clarifies the timings and mentions the 364-day calendar (as does "Jubilees").¹² It dates from around mid-1st century BCE to late 1st century CE.

(Pseudo) Philo

As with the Book of Jubilees the word "polluted" also crops up in Pseudo-Philo, but in an entirely different context. Pseudo-Philo, more formally called the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, was "produced in Palestine in the first century AD... (covering)... the story of Israel from Adam to David".¹³ It generally abridges the biblical text, such that the inclusion of the flood story is notable in itself given the omission of most of the rest of Genesis. The Noah (or Noe) story is found in Chapter III flanked by genealogies of Noah's ancestors and descendents. 

The most significant addition to the text is an apocalyptic section that comes immediately after God's promise not to destroy the world again (III:9). Following a pivotal "but" God launches into a promise to punish sin by famine / the sword / fire / death / scattering through the nations / earthquakes and from there moves onto a prediction what will happen when "the times are fulfilled". These are similarly apocalyptic in tone (and here I use the term in both the colloquial and the technical sense), using phrases that will bring to mind the more apocalyptic parts of the New Testament (such as Revelation).

This use of "polluted" comes in III:10 in the middle of the various predictions of destruction and judgement. God adds in that despite "none shall be polluted that hath been justified in me" before going on to promise "another earth and another heaven". Again this is clearly being used in a very different sense to how we the word would typically be used today, albeit in a way that it might be used in certain circumstances.

What is particularly interesting though is how the insertion of this apocalyptic passage fits with Aronofsky's intentions. Like Pseudo-Philo he too is retelling the story of Noah while casting an eye on a more cataclysmic future. As Pseudo-Philo sought to warn his audience of the perils of living wrongly through the language and style of the apocalyptic genre, so too Aronofsky use the language and style of the disaster movie genre to encourage his audience to live in a more environmentally conscious manner.

It's also worth mentioning that while quite a lot of the story is truncated, James Wyke finds the removal of the story about Noah's drunkenness particularly significant.¹⁴ It's a much longer piece and I'm not sure he reads the Jewish apocalyptic genre correctly, but he finds Pseudo-Philo's airbrushing of "the one flaw in his character" contrasts with how early church fathers made excuses for his drunkenness.¹⁵ Essentially though, the effect is the same, sanitising Noah's reputation to present him in more saintly fashion.

Josephus

Josephus's retelling of the story in his "Antiquities" is interesting because in a sense it does what I have been attempting to do: set out the story in a broader historical context. Not only does it offer more dates and numbers than even Genesis itself, but there's a remarkable passage where Josephus stops to discuss how "the writers of barbarian histories" (93) also mention the flood. He agrees with them that the ark's final resting place was a mountain in Armenia.

Give the eco-critical nature of my current project, I'm really struck by Josephus' use of the word "polluted" even if he is using it differently from its typical use today (of course, it's his translators -- William Whiston in my case -- that landed on that word, but you get my point). Following Noah's post-flood sacrifice, Josephus has God say that it was he (God) "who brought the destruction on a polluted world, but that they underwent that vengeance on account of their own wickedness". 

What I find interesting about this is while Josephus/Whiston mean this in the sense of sin/evil it does echo something of Aronofsky's ideas about modern-day humanity destroying its world through chemical/CO₂ pollution. And we could add that in previous versions of this story it was noise pollution that was the issue.

The other thing that links to Aronofsky's film is in v75 which says God "determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness" this is actually consistent with the thought process of Aronofsky's Noah who sees humankind's total destruction as God's plan. The difference is that in the film Noah is dissuaded from ending his race by his family, whereas in Josephus following the first flood Noah seems to talk God out of sending a flood of that magnitude ever again. 

This seems to cue up Josephus's take on humanity's power over the creatures. He extends things a little further than the Genesis account saying "I permit you to make use of all the other living creatures at your pleasure, and as your appetites lead you; for I have made you lords of them all". The sense that the rest of creation is their for humans to exploit seems to have expanded a bit.

Finally, one of Josephus' major elaborations of the text is a discussion about the length of years that Noah and those before him lived (104f). Here too he refers to writers from other nations who "agree" with him that "the ancients lived a thousand years". He also finds an astrological basis for their longevity, essentially that they had to live over 600 years to observe a full cycle of the stars.

Genesis Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah?)

Bereshit Rabbah is a midrash/"running commentary" on Genesis from around 300 CE to 500 CE of which the Noah-related material runs to about about 100 pages in Freedman's 1961 translation into English.¹⁶ This is obviously an enormous amount of material (given the NRSV text of Gen 6:1-10:1 in English is only around 2270 words). As well as the numbers of Rabba's verses, I'll also cite Freedman's page numbers alongside them as a copy of his third addition is available via Internet Archive. Page numbers for other sources are below as normal).

Actually though the relevant parts of this source come from before the Noah story even really starts in 23:3 (p.194). The name Aronofsky's film gives to Noah's wife's name is Naameh, who here is identified as both the sister of Tubal-Cain and Noah's wife.¹⁷. Not all contributions from Bereshit Rabbah are so conventional. Lee notes how 28:8 (p.22) claims “the dog [copulated] with the wolf, the fowl with the peacock” and are also deemed guilty in contrast to the film's attempt to "exonerate the animals from guilt".¹⁸ 

However, there is quite a bit here that has a potential environmental spin on it. Neril and Dee note how "Noah actually planted the trees from which he would take the wood for the Ark" (30:7, p.235).¹⁹ Sustainable forestry is easier when you live to over 600 years old, I guess. 

Neril and Dee have two other interesting observations in this vein. Firstly, they make the point several times  that the designation of one of the three levels of the ark for animal excrement (31:11, p.245 "garbage" alternately translated in n5) embodies an eco-friendly approach. Not only does it show care for the animals (providing a "clean, healthy living space" p.21), it also pioneers "organic fertilizer" (p.20) or "compost" (p.26).²⁰ A good use for this compost would have been to help "revitalize the land" after the flood,²¹ when we're told in 36:3 (p.289) Noah planted "vine shoots for planting, and young shoots for fig trees and olive trees" that he had brought onto the ark. The rabbis speculated that he'd also used those shoots as part of providing a varied and appropriate diet for the animals (31:14, p.247). 

 

The other key instruction about the construction of the ark concerns its source of light which revolves around Gen 6:16. The rabbis elaborate onn of differing understandings of the word tzohar. (which is "linguistically distinct" from the word zohar).²² It's a hapax legomenon which modern English Christian bibles tend to translate as "roof", older Christian English bibles translate as "window" and some Jewish English translations choose "light" based on the similar word zohar (literally 'shine'/'radiant').²³ Back in  200CE or thereabouts Targum Yonatan translated it as "precious stone". Here the writers elborate. Noah "did not require the light of the sun by day or the light of the moon by night, but he had a polished gem which he hung up" (31:2, p.244).

Neril and Dee bring these three elements together to conclude that "The Ark was a 'green building,' with a window for natural lighting from the sun, a whole floor dedicated to a composting of animal waste, and wood from forests Noah planted according to the midrash" a "reference to organic fertilizer".²⁴

Given all this, it's perhaps not surprising that Genesis Rabbah stresses one key difference between the text of Genesis 1:28 and the similar words in Gen 9:1-2. Despite the other similarities the word "dominion" is now missing, 34:12 (p.278) it notes "dominion did not return", even if the author(s) see(s) it as returning later.

Seth Sanders (cited on p.15 in Collins) also claims this adaptation gives Noah his first line of dialogue. "Genesis Rabbah helped make the flood filmable by giving Noah his first lines of dialogue and bringing in Tubal-Cain (as Noah’s father-in-law)".²⁵ Strictly speaking, he's wrong of course. Noah speaks even in the text of Genesis itself where having remained silent for almost the entire story, he pipes up right at the end to curse his grandson. But that's not really his point. The additional dialogue and family relationships Bereshit Rabbah introduce dramatic elements to the biblical narrative.

Sanhedrin 108 (Babylonian Talmud)

The (Babylonian) Talmud consists of six sedarim, which comprise of a total of 60 (or 63) tractates. Sanhedrin is one of these tractates. While Sanhedrin subdivides into 11 chapters, it's more common to reference the relevant folio directly, so we're looking at the 108th folio. These are still quite large Sanhedrin 108 consists of about 3000 words, though is usually divided into two parts "a" and "b". Dating is sometime between late 5th to "the formal closure of the Talmud, in about 600CE".²⁶ 

108a is mainly taken with describing the "generation of the flood" in very negative terms as you might imagine. It's hard not to think of some of Tubal-Cain's speeches in the 2014 film, when one reads words such as these

Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him? They said thus: Do we need Him for aught but the drop of rain? We have rivers and wells to supply our wants.

So Noah responds, the first time (at least in the Jewish tradition) he has done this. "Noah rebuked them, urging, 'Repent!'" and goes into more detail. Nowadays the "traditional" Jewish view is that Noah was not righteous, because "righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man."²⁷(Emphasis original)

 

The other part of 108a to stand out was a discussion between the rabbis as to whether saying Noah was "perfect in his generations", meant he would be relatively even more perfect in other generations, or less perfect. One compares him to wine in acid, the other to the scent of "spikenard oil" lying in refuse compared to lying among spices.

108b continues this evocative imagery continues in when Noah's neighbours laugh off his prediction claiming that whether the flood is of water or fire they can survive. The rabbis respond that the "waters of the flood were as severe as semen" (though R. Hisda then uses a more literal "hot water"). I'm fascinated as to what the main points of comparison were when they used this simile and quite what they thought they were doing using it. 

There's another sex-related passage later on: "Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished — the dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate's mouth] and Ham was smitten in his skin" I've touched on Ham's 'punishment' already, but the other two touch on elements that are expanded elsewhere in the text. This passage seems to be used as a conclusion to a previous story about the raven complaining that he was sent out to hunt for land when he and his mate were the only ones of their species (in contrast to the kosher birds). Hence why next time Noah sends out the dove which Neril and Dee interpret as an act of "preserving the diversity of life on earth".²⁸

That's not an explicit motivation the text makes, but elsewhere, in similar fashion, it does suggest "an intimate knowledge of and desire to learn from animals" with a lengthy story about Noah's discovery of what to feed the chameleon which also expresses the attention they gave to all the animals about how and when to feed them.²⁹ There's something particularly touching about this story and the connected one about the phoenix. 

Sibylline Oracles

The Sibylline Oracles sit awkwardly on this list, a strange mix of prophetic utterances that reflect a hotpotch of religious and cultural backgrounds: Jewish, Christian, pagan, Hellenistic, Gnostic. The majority of the flood material lies in Book I, lines 149-343, which seems to be Christian in origin.³⁰ While the Sibylline Oracles were composed over centuries, we're looking at a final dating of around the 6th or 7th century CE. Interestingly, both Book I (lines 350-54) and Book III (lines 1023-28) claims to have been written by Noah's daughter-in-law, despite them seeming to have different origins.

Book I is considered Christian in origin and certainly the way that almost a third of the total number of lines, 186-243, are given over to Noah's preaching to the people to repent, seems very different from anything we've seen so far in the Jewish takes on this story, though Josephus (1.74) does mention this briefly. We do find this idea of a preaching Noah in the New Testament though, in 2 Peter 2:5 which calls Noah "a herald of righteousness". He is also rebuked by the people who are recorded "(c)alling him mad, a frenzy-smitten man" (line 214).

Strangely, though, aside from its apocalyptic tone there's not that much of note, aside from perhaps the implication, and it is a little ambiguous, that God both shuts the door and bolts them in. So the Sibylline version of the story is perhaps best summed up by Seth Sanders "The Sibylline Noah anticipates his own misery at human suffering, tempered by awe at the flood’s sheer apocalyptic wonder".³¹

Tanchuma Noach (aka Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

Tanchuma Noach is part of Midrash Tanchuma (or Yelammedenu), a midrash on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible with its original version dating from sometime around 500-800 CE. Noach is the second of 54 sections and it consists of 19 simans. Each consists of the rabbis expanding on the biblical text like the sources above.

A few things stand out here as the tradition progresses. Siman 5 says, for example, that not only was Noah righteous, but that "(e)ven Noah's sons, the animals, the beasts, the birds and the creeping things that accompanied him onto the ark were righteous". Moreover, it considers Noah so righteous that he was born circumcised. This is an interesting development from some of the rabbis from Sanhedrin 108b who consider  his righteousness to be only relative to his time. That discussion crops up again here only with a bit of a twist, the fragrant substance is now "Balsam oil" being placed  in a "filthy area" as opposed to a "clean"/"attractive" area. Again this seems to resonate with modern ideas about pollution, albeit as a metaphor.

Again we have Noah being mocked for telling the people God has ordered him to build an ark, but here things go further in Siman 7. The giants, eventually realise their fate, and try and storm the ark only for God to send lions to protect them and prevent these "mighty" men forcing their way on board the ark. This links to the watchers protecting the ark from Tubal-Cain's people in the film as well as giving some acknowledgement to "those about whom the biblical text is silent".³² Lions appear later as well in Siman 9 where a lion bites Noah so severely that "he left the ark crippled".

Elsewhere in we hear that Noah and his family didn't sleep because of feeding duties (Siman 9), so Lilly suggests "(t)his tradition of sleep-deprivation offers a rich opportunity to explore Noah as a character on the edge of sanity".³³

The other thing that stood out for me was the story in Siman 13 about Satan making a deal with Noah while he was planting his vineyard and then slaughters four animals there to make a point about the stages of alcohol consumption: people go from being as innocent as a lamb, to feeling as strong as a lion, then behaving like a pig before finally adopting the foolishness of an ape. "All this happened to the righteous Noah".

Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

The first thing to explain with any title linked to "The Book of Jasher" is explain what it is not. This is not the Book of Jasher referred to frequently in the Hebrew Bible, which seemingly forms part of its source material, nor is it the 18th century forgery claiming to be the same. To make things even more confusing there's also another Jewish text from the middle ages called Sefer ha-Yashar/The Book of Jasher which is an ethical text. 

The one I'm looking at here is a medieval midrash, which can be read here (despite the initial pages of the scan it covers Genesis as well). The Hebrew title Sefer ha-Yashar, translates as "The Book of Righteousness". I've given a date of 1000CE above but that is probably the earliest feasible date. The latest date is 1625 when the earliest remaining copy was printed. Whereas the last few sources above have been styled around discussions between rabbis, this returns to a more "scriptural" format such that those not overly familiar with Genesis would find it difficult to distinguish between the two. It also feels like it branched off from those previous accounts at a much earlier stage, it doesn't seem to be building on those discussions. 

 
There are a few discrepancies about some of the details of Noah's descendants and different timings in places, and his wife's name is again given as Naameh (5:15). Narratively there's a quirky story about a lioness, and of animals having to humble themselves to be permitted entry, with unsuccessful ones remaining by the ark for seven days before the rain began (6:1-10). The flood itself is preceded by an earthquake and various other bits of apocalyptic imagery which actually feel similar in tone to Michael Curtiz's Noah's Ark (1929).

The bit that feels most like Aronofsky's film, and perhaps least like Genesis is 6:17-25 where 700,000 people gather round the ark having realised their error and repenting, but Noah does not relent. As part of his rebuke to them he mentions that he had spoken of this 120 years ago and they had ignored him. Infuriated the people try and 'storm' the ark but this time all the animals (not just the lions as in Tanchuma Noach) prevent them from doing so.

Those inside the ark are also frightened and anxious (6:28-33) with cries of the apex predators being detailed. Once the rain stops and the waters subside there's no sending of birds (God instructs them when to leave) and no mention of Noah planting vineyards or getting drunk. We do get an additional interesting detail about the skin garments that God had given Adam and Eve being passed down the family line to Noah who brings them on board the ark (7:24-30). Echoes here of Aronofsky's snakeskin. Moreover, Ham then steals them, passes them to Cush who clothes Nimrod in them which means God gives him strength.

Later sources

When I started writing this blog post several weeks ago now, I had hoped to follow it up with one about later Jewish mystic texts, such as those of Kabbalah e.g. Zohar, but my deadline is sooner than I had remembered and the chapter itself is only meant to be 5000 words and this blog post alone is already longer than that, so I need to focus. Perhaps I'll return at a later stage. I'm still planning to do something on Enoch, but even that might be a push now. We'll see. I say we, but I must admit I have my doubts that after 5000 words about obscure texts on a now out of the way weblog I'm not sure anyone is still reading at this point. So let me know if you made it this far!

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1. Nickelsburg, George W.E. and James C. Vanderkam (2012) 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.47.

2. Vanderkam, James C. (2020) Jubilees: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.110.

3. Kugel, James (2014) The Book Of Jubilees, The Oldest Commentary On Genesis. Audio recording. Available online: https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfJubileesTheOldestCommentaryOnGenesis

4. Chattaway, Peter (2012), "A Few New Details about Aronofsky's Noah", FilmChat Aug. 9. Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2012/08/a-few-new-details-about-darren-aronofskys-noah.html 

5. Vermes, Geza (1976) The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin). 2nd edition. p.215.

6. Martinez, Florentino García (1994) Dead Sea Scrolls: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden/New York / Cologne: E.J.Brill). p.231. (which you can read here)

7. Collins, Matthew A. (2017) "An Ongoing Tradition: Aronofsky's Noah as 21st-Century Rewritten Scripture" in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.15.

8. Martinez, p.231

9. Collins p.17

10. Vermes, Geza (1998) The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin) 4th Edition. p.518.

11. Martinez, p.224-5.

12. Collins p.15

13. Russell, D.S. (1987) The Old Testament and Pseudepigrapha: Patrirachs and Prophets in Early Judaism (London:SCM Press), p.97.
14. Wykes, James (2012) The Contextualized Noah: The Deluge Patriarch in Genesis, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo Master's. Unpublished thesis (University of Dayton). pp.55-74. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/3631710/The_Contextualized_Noah_The_Deluge_Patriarch_in_Genesis_Jubilees_and_Pseudo_Philo

15. Wykes, quote from p.74. Observation about Church Fathers from n232, p.66.

16. Freedman, H. and M. Simon (1961) Midrash Rabbah (London:Soncino Fine Arts Society). 3rd edition. p.XXVII.

17. Lee, Lydia "The Flood Narratives in Gen 6-9 and Darren Aronofsky’s Film Noah" in Old Testament Essays 29/2 (2016): 297-317. p.303 n24.

18. Lee p.302, esp. n17

19. Neril, Yonatan and Lee Dee (2020) Eco Bible: Volume 1: An Ecological Commentar on Genesis and Exodus (Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development). p.21.

20. Neril pages as cited

21. Neril p.26

22. Dennis, Geoffrey (2014) "Tzohar: Gem of Noah, Light of Heaven" at Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism (blog). 2nd April 2014 - Available online: https://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/10/tzohar-miraculous-light-of-noah-window.html

23. Dennis

24. Neril (p.20 (+21 & n118))

25. Sanders, Seth (2014) "Noah: The Movie" for Religion in the News (Hartford CT: Trinity College). November 18. Available online: https://commons.trincoll.edu/religioninthenews/2014/11/18/92/

26. Neusner, Jacob (1995) "Foreword" in Cohen, Abraham Everyman's Talmud (New York: Shockhen Books). First published 1949. p.x-xi.

27. Shmuley Boteach cited in Chattaway, Peter (2014) "The Jewish roots of — and responses to — Noah" Patheos: FilmChat 31 Mar 2014.
Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/03/the-jewish-roots-of-and-responses-to-noah.html

28. Neril p.24 

29. Lilly, Ingrid E. “Rock Giants and the Magic Stone of Torah.” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.40

30. Collins mentions the Sibylline Oracles in the same sentence as "Cave of Treasures" (p.15), but that is a more exclusively Christian text so I've not included it here.

31. Sanders

32. Collins p.17

33. Lilly p.40. She also cites Genesis Rabbah 30:6 as saying this, but really it only says that Noah fed "the whole twelve months in the Ark". This was probably the root for the rabbis elaboration here, but it's from them not Genesis Rabbah.

Noah adaptations p04: How Genesis develops the flood story

This is part 4 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"Noah’s Ark" by Greek painter Theodore Poulakis (1622–1692).

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the variations of the flood story that were brought together to form Genesis, namely the Priestly and non-Priestly material, but what I didn't go into was some of the key changes those two "sources" and the "final" text of Genesis makes to the Babylonian traditions before them.

These changes are fairly wholesale, which is partly because I'm compressing a few layers of evolution into one, but even focusing on a theoretical reconstruction of the J source and comparing it to the Gilgamesh Epic unearths a very different text. It's a radical overhaul, far more akin to an appropriation than an adaptation. However, as J is still, very much, a theoretical text I'm going to stick to comparing the text of Genesis we find in our Bibles today with the Gilgamesh epic.

Noah

One of the major difference is, of course, the change of identity of the flood hero, from Utnapishti to Noah. In the last entry in this series I looked at where Noah as a character may have emerged from (the first viniculturist), but it's also worth pointing out how that contrasts with Utnapishti.  Utnapishti is an immortal character (at least by the time he is telling his story), Noah is mundanely human. After the events of the flood Utnapishti recalls the god Ea declaring that "he and his wife shall become like us gods!" ( Noah seemingly returns to 'normal life'. Utnapishti now lives in a remote, almost entirely inaccessible place, whereas Noah lives out amongst his descendants.

There's also much more of a sense of Noah's being of no particular rank. Utnapishti is described as having (pre-flood) silver and gold, oxen and lambs, beer and ale, oil and wine and workmen (XI:71-86). Onto the ark he brings kith covering "Members of every skill and craft" (XI:86).¹ Noah just has his family and saves them alone. Yet by the time Gilgamesh meets Utnapishti, there's no mention of his children and descendants. His wife is present -- she even gets some dialogue -- but the two might even live alone. So Noah is a much more relatable, normal, family-driven character.

That said, it's striking how Genesis removes Noah's voice completely. Utnapishti speaks at length to recite his tale, yet even within that there is a sense of him speaking with the gods, back and forth. Noah, some unusually within the Hebrew Bible, does not debate with God, he gets no voice at all. 

One key line of dialogue that is dropped is XI:35 "but how do I answer my city, the crowd and the elders". This concern -- absent from Noah in Genesis -- is often perceived as a lack. As we shall see in the Qu'ran Noah goes to great lengths to preach to the crowd to try and save them even though he is unsuccessful (Sura 71). Many schools of Judaism put Noah on a lower pedestal than other biblical heroes for his lack of compassion or arguing with God, see for example this interview with Shmuley Boteach for the "Times of Israel" where he says: 

Noah is not a hero in Jewish lore. ...righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man. He doesn’t care, he has no compassion. He executes God’s commandment to the letter. So when God says “I’m going to kill everybody,” Noah says, “will you save my skin? Oh, I get an Ark? Okay, fine.” ...he failed in the greatest mission of all. He failed to protect human life. And failed to fight with God when he wanted to take human life. He refuses to wrestle with God. ²

Genesis, unusually for the Hebrew Bible, cuts the flood hero 's objections to God's plans to "blot out from the earth human beings" (6:7), but it's hard to know if this is for theological reasons, or simply because Genesis cuts Noah's voice altogether.

Monotheism

Of course, theologically speaking the biggest shift in the Genesis account is the move from a pantheon of gods, to just the one (although P names him Elohim whereas J calls him YHWH). In Gilgamesh the gods act, to some extent, independently. The decision to send the flood seems to rest largely with Enlil, albeit with the help of various weather gods (XI:97-108). Yet at the same time, some of "the gods took fright at the deluge" (XI:114) and when Utnapishti makes an offering after it's all over we're told the gods gather and are pleased by the smell of it and criticise Enlil for almost destroying humanity but for Ea's intervention (XI:157-171).

This contrasts with the Genesis where the one god deems humanity deserving of judgement and decides to send the flood, but preserves only the righteous Noah and his family, almost like some kind of theological selective breeding programme. Noah is not saved because one particular god acts to save the gods from the consequences of the reckless actions one of his colleagues. He is chosen because he is the only righteous human and his descendants represent the best chance of faithful behaviour in future.

Motivation for flood

The logical question from there is why did the gods/God want to wipe out humanity in the first place. Here we see an evolving tradition. In the Atrahasis Epic, it is because the humans have become so numerous that they are now too loud and preventing the gods from sleeping. The Gilgamesh Epic does not specify exactly why the gods want to "diminish" humanity (XI:189-91), but given its overall thematic concern about humanity's negative impact on the environment it may well be due to concern about the environmental consequences of over-population.

Genesis removes the ambiguity and changes the motivation. Now rather than being motivated by noise or environmental degradation, the issue is sinful behaviour. God is displeased by "wickedness...evil...violence" (Gen 6:5-13). Whilst there's some debate, the preceding verses (6:1-4) seem to be deliberately connected here to the rest of the story to give an example of exactly the kind of thing that God is displeased with (the "sons of God" having sex with the "daughters of man").

It's perhaps here that the authors intentions show most strongly. We move from subservient minor gods attempting to extinguish humanity so they can get better quality sleep; through to a more cautionary tale about respecting the "natural" world the gods inhabit; through to a sense of a single God with clear moral objections to human behaviour.

Fruitful and multiply 

There is another place where the author of Genesis also shows their hand fairly clearly, and in contrast to his predecessors. After the flood and Noah's subsequent sacrifice God gives Noah a new covenant, which starts in 9:1-2 with the words

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. (NRSV)

And as if to further reinforce the point later he repeats "be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it." (v7)

There's a couple of points to make here. Firstly that this is something of an about turn on both Gilgamesh and Atrahasis where the point of the story seems to be a warning that the gods want to keep human numbers in check. Ea may intervene and criticise Enlil for almost wiping them out completely, but his criticism is not that it is inherently wrong, just that it went too far and didn't consider the downside. His suggestions of options Enlil could have taken instead (lion/wolf/famine/plague) area would all still have substantially reduced the human population.

Of course, God's drastic action equally reduces the human population, but his action is to reduce evil and to start again. As soon as (he thinks) that is done, then he orders Noah and his family to get on with re-populating the Earth. Gilgamesh's environmental concerns about a growing human population are not a concern here. The opposite is positively encouraged and the genealogies that follow demonstrate how Noah and his descendants fulfilled this element of their mandate.*

'Dominion' and dread

This brings me on to the second point here, which is that this should be no surprise to anyone reading Genesis from the (literal!) beginning because in Genesis 1:28 God has already said: 

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (NRSV)

There's a lot that could be written here about the echoing of this passage, how it suggests God is rebooting; how this time God makes a slight change and allows humans to eat meat. But I mainly want to point out that these are the classic anti-environmental clobber texts -- verses that have been used in the past to justify ruthlessly exploiting the planet for our own gain.

Way back in 1967 Lynn White Jr. wrote an influential article "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" which argued that Christianity "not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends".³ White's claims have generally been taken as true, though they do lack a certain nuance. Richard Bauckham, for example, describes White's article as "bursting with confident and ill-substantiated generalizations",⁴ and claims that such an interpretation of these passages is only relatively recent. Instead he argues that it "was Francis Bacon, in the seventeenth century, who hijacked the Genesis text to authorise the project of scientific knowledge and technological exploitation whose excesses have given us the ecological crisis".⁵

In practical terms Bauckham's arguments are largely academic (so to speak). Prior to Bacon, and whether it knew it or not) humanity had comparatively little impact on its environment relative to subsequent events. Deforestation in some areas had certainly been considerable (much of the forests in Britain had been cleared during the Bronze Age,⁶ for example), but the Industrial Revolution hugely increased humanity's ability to destroy its environment. And, Bacon and those with similar views absolutely used such passages in Genesis to justify their reckless approach to the planet. 

Thus even if it would not be for another two millennia or so, the change of emphasis by the author of Genesis took a story warning of environmental harm and changed it in to a narrative that would play a significant role in bring such harms into being.

The 'Ark'

There's another change here as well that tallies with my "green issues" approach to this subject. In my introductory post to this series, I mentioned that it was going to address "adaptation in an era of changed weather patterns and human responses to that, and the idea that adaptation has parallels with recycling". I noted in post 2 that line 4 of Finkel's flood tablet (part of the Atrahasis Epic) "destroy your house, build a boat" (repeated in Gilgamesh) are essentially a command to recycle, albeit driven by necessity rather than green ethics.⁷

In Genesis that initial sense of urgency has gone. The "ark" is no longer an improvised craft but a meticulously planned construction. While a little of this transition occurs in Gilgamesh, the time scale remains at 7 days. When we come to Genesis God gives no indication when the flood will arrive leaving speculation to vary from between 7 days (as in the sources) and 75 years, based on a calculation of Noah's age when his eldest son was born and his recorded age when the flood begins.

In Gilgamesh, the boat is square (XI: 28-30), a cube even, 10 rods in each dimension, covering an area of one acre with six decks (XI:57-61). In Genesis the ark (which literally just means "box"),⁸ has become elongated -- 300 cubits long, but only 50 wide and 30 high (that's 133m x 22m x 13m, Gen 6:15), which actually works out at only 0.75 of an acre, with only three decks. 

I can't help wondering if this new shape and dimension reflect the temple or the Ark of the Covenant in some way (even though both are translated as "ark" in English, the Hebrew uses two different words, both of which mean just "box"), particularly given the likely time of composition -- perhaps just as Noah finds sanctity in the Noah, so the tribes of Israel should find it in the temple; or just as God protects and honours Noah and his family in the ark so too the Ark of the Covenant is worthy of special treatment, or something like that. For the record Solomon's temple was 60 cubits long, 20 wide and 30 high (1 Ki 6:2) and perhaps also had 3 floors (1 Ki 6:6) the Ark of the Covenant was made from "acacia wood; it was two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high" (Ex 37:1).      

Lastly we get a change in materials. In The Flood Tablet's version of the Atrahasis Epic the coracle is made from the recycled reeds and "kannu ropes and ašlu rushes... fronds and palm fibre" (lines 10 & 11).⁹ In the Gilgamesh Epic again we get reeds (XI:21-4) and "ropes of palm-fibre". In Genesis we get what the KJV translates as "gopher wood" with the NKJV and NASB following suit, but other recent versions (NEB, NRSV, NLV) translate as "cypress wood", with the NRSV noting (accurately) that "meaning of Heb uncertain". The Ark of the Covenant was made of acaia wood (Ex 37:1) and the temple was of stone construction but had cedar walls and fir/cypress floors (1 Ki 6:7,15), though there are  two Hebrew words that the NRSV translate . So while Noah's Ark is made of a more solid wood than Atramhasis' and Utnapishti's boats, which increases similarities with the temple/Ark of the Covenant we're not talking about the same material and the requirements for source preparing and building with it seem like a greater task than its Mesopotamian counterparts. The main takeaway is that it's no longer a recycled, improvised craft. but a solid, very much premeditated one.

Others

I'm aware the above are very much my selection of the ways that the story changes, and that in making that selection I have overlooked some real whoppers. I spoke in the last instalment of this series about the addition of seven pairs of clean animals coming from the non-Priestly material in 7:2, but there are a number of other major ones depending on the angle you're coming from. For example, I've not mentioned the omission of the swallow, the 2nd of the three birds Utnapishtim sends out, or the window/zohar that gets added to the roof of Noah's boat, or the name of the mountain on which they run aground. There's obviously quite a lot, but I hope what I have included gives some indication as to how the changes reflect the theology and beliefs that the story in Genesis is promoting and/or reinforcing.

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1. All quotations taken from The Gilgamesh Epic taken from Andrew George's translation [CITATION]

2. Hoffman, Jordan (2014) "Hollywood ‘Noah’ is kosher, says celebrity rabbi" in The Times of Israel 27th March. Available online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/hollywood-noah-is-kosher-says-celebrity-rabbi/

*. I actually owe this observation (inserted after initial publication) to James Wykes's thesis The Contextualized Noah: The Deluge Patriarch in Genesis, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo (2012) available from Academia.

3. White, Lynn Jr. (1967) "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" in Science, New Series, Vol. 155, No. 3767 (Mar. 10, 1967), pp. 1203-1207. p.1205. Available online: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofhumanities/theology/beyondstewardship/files/HistoricalRoots_of_EcologicalCrisis_(1).pdf

4. Bauckham, Richard (2002) God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press) p.219.

5. Bauckham, Richard (2010) Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (Waco: Baylor University Press) p.6

6. Thomson, Hugh (2012) "The Sherwood Syndrome" at Aeon 12th September. Available online: https://aeon.co/essays/who-chopped-down-britains-ancient-forests

7. Finkel, Irving (2014) The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, (London: Hodder), p.376.

8. Rachelle Gilmour as interviewed by Dave Roos and Helen Bond in "Ep. 68 A Face-Melting Look at the Ark of the Covenant" for the Biblical Time Machine podcast. Relevant clip is from 5 minutes. Available online: https://www.biblicaltimemachine.com/listen-to-episodes/b24fssktgs7yzxz-scarm-bxjxm-jr9y7-khjbb-zn9dd-w9jgd-lc4nj-w8mhr-x6662-en45b-6crbr-cw5tr-ye69n-cbkng 

9. Finkel, p.377

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.

 

===========

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/