An earlier version of the story, prior to the substitution of Ham for Canaan among Noah’s sons, described Canaan’s lack of care for his father’s honor when Noah was unconscious and naked: בראשׁית ט:כא וַיֵּשְׁתְּ מִן־הַיַּיִן וַיִּשְׁכָּר וַיִּתְגַּל בְּתוֹךְ אָהֳלֹה. The introduction of Noah as a vintner leads into an account of a breakdown in father-son relations. This story where Noah discovers wine is more deeply rooted in the surrounding narrative than the presentation of him as a flood hero. Gen 9:20 Noah, the man of the ground, was the first to plant a vineyard. Gen 5:29 called him ‘Noah’, saying “this one will provide us comfort from our labor and toil of our hands, from the ground which YHWH cursed.” The more famous persona, Noah the flood hero, occurs across much of Genesis 6–9. The presence of two distinct Noah personas in Genesis offers another clue that the flood narrative is a later addition to the text. Instead, only Noah’s “house” accompanies him onto the ark (Gen 7:1, 7), while the life-destroying flood (7:23) implicitly eliminates everyone else-including the figures who first introduce various crafts (Gen 4:20–22) and giants whom Israel will later meet in the land (e.g. This story also places most of its etiological elements (human mortality, female reproductive restrictions) after the flood (Atrahasis III.vi.41–vii.9).īy contrast, we do not see coordination of flood and creation dynamics in the Genesis primeval story. The Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, which combines creation and flood traditions, solves the problem of the survival of certain human institutions and traits after the flood by having diverse artisans come onto the ark along with the flood hero (Atrahasis DT42 W, line 8). This narrative inconsistency may explain why several later Jewish traditions imagine a pre-flood giant like Og surviving the flood by clinging to the outside of Noah’s ark. Ostensibly, all of these giants (and warriors of old) would have been destroyed when the flood waters arrived, yet the Israelites later encounter them when they enter the land (Num 13:33 also Deut 1:28 2:10–11, 20–21 Amos 2:9). They were the warriors of old, the men of the name. Gen 6:4 The giant fallen ones ( Nephilim) were on the earth in those days and also after that, when the sons of God went into the daughters of humanity, and they bore to them. And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.Īs Julius Wellhausen observed already in 1872, there would not be much point to the description of the founding of various professions by Lamech’s descendants if they did not survive the flood. 4:22 Zillah also bore Tubal-Cain, a sharpener, of all who craft bronze and iron. He was the ancestor of all who play the zither and flute. He was the ancestor of those who dwell in tents, with livestock. Evidence for this floodless account of pre-history can be found in passages that make little sense if the original narrative ended with humanity wiped out by a flood. An early version of Genesis 1–11 likely lacked a flood narrative (Gen 6–9). The book of Genesis contains two main types of stories: narratives about primeval origins (Gen 1–11) and a series of ancestral narratives (Gen 12–50).
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