word that fell from his lips was superlatively perfect, exhausting the
praises of the Lord. He had learnt nine hundred chapters of the Mischna.
At his death a frightful thunder was heard, and all beasts burst into
tears. He was mourned seven days by men, and therefore the outbreak of
the Flood was postponed till the mourning was over.”[178]
Eusebius says, “He lived longer than all who had preceded him. He,
according to all editions (of the LXX.), lived fifteen years after the
Deluge, but where he was preserved through it is uncertain.”[179]
But the general opinion of the Jews follows the Midrash. The Rabbi
Solomon says, he died seven days before the Flood; and the Pirke of
Rabbi Eliezer and the Jalkut confirm this opinion. He is said to have
pronounced three hundred and thirty parables to the honour of the Most
High. But the origin of this is to be traced to the Cabbalists, who say
that, by transposition of the letters of his name, the anagram “He who
prophesied in parables” can be read.[180]
He had a sword inscribed with the Schem hammphorasch (the Incommunicable
Name), and with it he succeeded in slaying a thousand devils.[181]
Footnote 177:
Colin de Plancy, p. 102.
Footnote 178:
Midrash, fol. 12; so also Targum of Palestine, Etheridge, i. p. 179.
Footnote 179:
Chron. Græc., ed. Scaliger, Lugd. Batav. 1606, p. 4.
Footnote 180:
Fabricius, i. p. 225.
Footnote 181:
Eisenmenger, i. p. 651.
XIV.
NOAH
The earth being filled with violence, God resolved on its destruction,
but Noah, the just, He purposed to save alive.
On the words of Genesis, “_All flesh had corrupted his way upon the
earth_,” the Rabbi Johanan taught that not only was the race of men
utterly demoralized, but also all the races of animals.[182] Noah and
his family, and one pair of all the beasts of earth, were to be saved in
the ark, but of every clean beast seven were to enter in. Falsehood
hastened to the ark and asked to be admitted; Noah refused. “I admit the
animals only in pairs,” said he.
Then Falsehood went away in wrath, and met Injustice, who said—
“Why art thou so sad?”
“I have been refused admittance into the ark, for I am single,” said
Falsehood; “be thou my companion.”
“See, now,” answered Injustice, “I take no companionship without
prospect of gain.”
“Fear not,” said Falsehood, “I will spread the toils and thou shalt have
the booty.”
So they went together to the ark, and Noah was unable to refuse them
admission. And when the Flood was passed and the beasts went forth out
of the ark, Falsehood said angrily, “I have done my work and have caused
evil, but thou hast all the plunder; share with me.”
“Thou fool!” answered Injustice, “dost thou forget the agreement? Thine
it is to spread the net, mine alone to take the spoil.”[183]
At the time of the Deluge the giants were not all drowned, for Og
planted his foot upon the fountains of the great deep, and with his
hands stopped the windows of heaven, or the water would have risen over
his head. The Rabbi Eliezer[184] said that the giants exclaimed, when
the Flood broke out, “If all the waters of the earth be gathered
together, they will only reach our waists; but if the fountains of the
great deep be broken up, we must stamp them down again.” And this they
did, but God made the waters boiling hot, and it scalded them so that
their flesh was boiled and fell off their bones.[185] But what became of
Og in the Deluge we learn from the Talmud.[186] He went into the water
along with a rhinoceros[187] beside the ark, and clung to it; now the
water round the ark was cold, but all the rest was boiling hot. Thus he
was saved alive, whereas the other giants perished.
According to another authority, Og climbed on the roof of the ark; and
on Noah attempting to dislodge him, he swore that, if allowed to remain
there, he and his posterity would be the slaves of the sons of Noah.
Thereupon the patriarch yielded. He bored a hole in the side of the
vessel, and passed through it every day the food necessary for the
giant’s consumption.[188]
It is asserted by some Rabbinic writers that the Deluge did not overflow
the land of Israel, but was partial; some say the Holy Land was alone
left dry, and a rhinoceros had taken refuge on it and so escaped being
drowned. But others say that the land of Israel was submerged, though
all agree that the rhinoceros survived without having entered the ark.
And they explain the escape of the rhinoceros in this manner. Its head
was taken into the ark, and it swam behind the vessel. Now the
rhinoceros is a very large animal, and could not be admitted into the
ark lest it should swamp it. The Rabbi Jannai says, he saw a young
rhinoceros of a day old, and it was as big as Mount Tabor; and Tabor’s
dimensions are forty miles. Its neck was three miles long, and its head
half a mile. It dropped dung, and the dung choked up Jordan. Other
commentators object that the head was too large to be admitted into the
ark, and suppose that only the tip of its nose was received. But as the
ark swayed on the waters, Noah tied the horn of the rhinoceros to the
side of the vessel, lest the beast’s nose should slip off in a lurch of
the ark, and so the creature perish.
All this is from the Talmud.
Let us now turn to some of the Mussulman legends of Noah. His history is
briefly related in the Koran, in the chapter entitled “Hud.”
“Noah built the ark with our assistance and that of the angels,
following the knowledge we revealed to him, and we said to him: Speak no
more in behalf of the sinners; they shall all be drowned.
“Whilst Noah was building his ark, all those who passed by mocked him;
but he said to them: Though you rail at me now, the time will come when
I shall rail at you; for you will learn to your cost, Who it is that
punishes the wicked in this world, and reserves for them a further
punishment in the world to come.”
In the annals of Eutychius of Alexandria, who wrote in Egypt in the
tenth century, and who probably quoted from apocryphal documents now
perished, we read that, before the Flood broke out, Noah made a bell of
plane wood, about five feet high, which he sounded every day, morning,
noon, and evening. When any one asked him why he did so, he replied, “To
warn you that God will send a deluge to destroy you all.”
Eutychius adds some further particulars.
“Before they entered the ark,” says he, “Noah and his sons went to the
cave of Elcanuz, where lay the bodies of Adam, Seth, Cainan, Mahalaleel,
Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech. He kissed his dead ancestors, and bore
off the body of Adam together with precious oblations. Shem bore gold;
Ham took myrrh; and Japheth incense. Having gone forth, as they
descended the Holy Mount they lifted their eyes to Paradise, which
crowned it, and said, with tears, ‘Farewell! Holy Paradise, farewell!’
and they kissed the stones and embraced the trees of the Holy
Mount.”[189]
Ibn Abbas, one of the commentators on the Koran, adds, that Noah being
in doubt as to the shape he was to give to the ark, God revealed to him
that it was to be modelled on the plan of a bird’s belly, and that it
was to be constructed of teak wood. Noah planted the tree, and in twenty
years it grew to such a size that out of it he was able to build the
entire ark.[190]
To return to the Koran.
“When the time prescribed for the punishment of men was arrived, and the
oven began to boil and vomit, we said to Noah: Take and bring into the
ark two couples of every kind of animal, male and female, with all your
family, except him who has been condemned by your mouth, and receive the
faithful, and even the unbelievers; but few only will enter.”
The interpreters of the Koran say that the ark was built in two years.
They give it the dimensions mentioned in Genesis:—three stages, that on
the top for the birds, the middle one for the men and the provisions,
whilst the beasts occupied the hold. The sign of the outburst of the
Flood was that water flowed out of the burning oven of Noah’s wife. Then
all the veins and arteries of the earth broke and spirted out water. He
who was excluded was Canaan, the son of Ham, whom he had cursed. But
Abulfeda says that it was Jam, a fourth son of Noah, who was excluded
from the ark.[191] The Persians say that Ham incurred his father’s
malediction as well, and, for that, he and his posterity became black
and were enslaved; but that Noah, grieved for his son’s progeny, prayed
God to have mercy on them, and God made the slave to be loved and
cherished by his master.
The Koran says, “Noah having entered the ark with his wife (Noema,
daughter of Enoch, according to the Yaschar; Noria, according to the
Gnostics; Vesta, according to the Cabbalists), and his three sons, Shem,
Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, the three daughters of Eliakim, son
of Methuselah, he said to those who dwell on the earth, ‘Embark in the
name of the Lord.’
“And whilst he thus spake, the ark advanced or halted, according to his
order, in the name of God.”
But the Yaschar says that the ungodly dwellers on the earth, finding the
Flood rising, hastened in such crowds to the ark, that they would have
overfilled it, had not the lions and other animals within defended the
entrance and repulsed them.[192]
According to some Oriental traditions, Noah embarked at Koufah;
according to others, near where Babylon was afterwards erected; but some
say in India; and some affirm that in the six months during which the
Deluge lasted, the ark made the circuit of the world.[193]
Noah, seeing that his grandson Canaan was not on board, called to him,
and said, “Embark, my child, and do not remain among the ungodly.”
But Canaan replied, “I will ascend the mountains, and shall be safe
there.”
“Nothing can save thee to-day but the mercy of God,” said Noah.
Whilst thus speaking, a wave rushed between them and submerged Canaan.
After forty days, the ark swam from one end of the earth to the other,
over the highest mountains. Over Mount Kubeis, chosen by God in which to
preserve the sacred black stone of the Kaaba, the ark revolved seven
times.[194]
Tabari says that Noah had four sons, and that of these Canaan was the
youngest, and that the three elder believed in his mission, but his wife
and Canaan laughed at his predictions. The animals that were brought
into the ark were collected and wafted to it by the wind. When the ass
was about to enter, Eblis (Satan) caught hold of its tail. The ass came
on slowly; Noah was impatient, and exclaimed, “You cursed one, come in
quick.”
When Eblis was within, Noah saw him, and said, “What right have you in
here?”
“I have entered at your invitation,” answered the Evil One. “You said,
‘Cursed one, come in;’ I am the accursed one.”
When six months had passed, the ark rested on the surface of the water
above Djondi,[195] and the rain ceased to fall, and God said to the
earth, “Suck in the water;” and to the sky, “Withhold thy rains.” The
water abated; and the ark lodged on the top of the mountain.
“There left the ark two sorts of animals which had not entered it—the
pig and the cat. These animals did not exist before the Deluge, and God
created them in the ark because it was full of filth and human
excrements, which caused a great stench. The persons in the ark, not
being able to endure any longer the smell, complained to Noah. Then Noah
passed his hand down the back of the elephant, and it evacuated the pig.
The pig ate all the dung which was in the ark, and the stench was no
more.
“Some time after the rats gave great annoyance. They ate the food, and
befouled what they did not eat. Then the voyagers went to Noah, and said
to him, You delivered us in our former difficulty, but now we are
plagued with rats, which gnaw our garments, eat our victuals, and cover
everything with their filth. Then Noah passed his hand down the back of
the lion, who sneezed, and the cat leaped out of its nose. And the cat
ate the rats.
“When Noah had left the ark, he passed forty days on the mountain, till
all the water had subsided into the sea. All the briny water that is
there is what remains from the Flood.
“Noah said to the raven, Go and place your foot on the earth and see
what is the depth of the water. The raven departed; but, having found a
carcase, it remained to devour it, and did not return. Noah was
provoked, and he cursed the raven, saying, May God make thee
contemptible among men, and let carrion be thy food!
“After that Noah sent forth the dove. The dove departed, and, without
tarrying, put her feet in the water. The water of the Flood scalded and
pickled the legs of the dove. It was hot and briny, and feathers would
not grow on her legs any more, and the skin scaled off. Now, doves which
have red and featherless legs are of the sort that Noah sent forth. The
dove returning showed her legs to Noah, who said, May God render thee
well-pleasing to men! For that reason the dove is dear to men’s
hearts.”[196]
Another version of the story is this. Noah blessed the dove, and since
then she has borne a neck-ring of green feathers; but the raven, on the
other hand, he cursed, that its flight should be crooked, and never
direct like that of other birds.[197] This is also a Jewish legend.[198]
After that, Noah descended the mountain along with the eighty persons
who had been saved with him, and he found that not a house was left
standing on the face of the earth. Noah built a town consisting of
eighty houses,—a house apiece for all who had been saved with him.[199]
Fabricius, in his collection of apocrypha of the Old Testament, has
published the prayer that Noah offered daily in the ark, beside the body
of Adam, which he bore with him, to bury it on Golgotha.
“O Lord, Thou art excellent in truth, and nothing is great beside Thee;
look upon us in mercy; deliver us from this deluge of water for the sake
of the pangs of Adam, the first man whom Thou didst make; for the sake
of the blood of Abel, the holy one; for the sake of just Seth, in whom
Thou didst delight; number us not amongst those who have broken Thy
commandments, but cover us with Thy protection, for Thou art our
deliverer, and to Thee alone are due the praises uttered by the works of
Thy hands from all eternity.” And all the children of Noah responded,
“Amen, O Lord.”[200]
Noah is said to have left the ark on the tenth day of the first month of
the Mussulman year, and to have instituted the fast which the
Mahommedans observe on that day, to thank God for his deliverance.
According to the Book of Enoch, the water of the Flood was transformed
by God into fire, which will consume the world and the ungodly, at the
consummation of all things.[201]
The Targum of Palestine says that the dove plucked the leaf she brought
to Noah from off a tree on the Mount of Olives.[202]
The Book Jasher supplies an omission in Genesis. In Genesis it is said
of Lamech, on the birth of Noah, “_He called his name Noah; saying, This
same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because
of the ground which the Lord hath cursed_;”[203] but Noah signifies
_rest_, not _comfort_. The Book Jasher says that Methuselah called the
child Noah, _rest_, because the land rested from the curse; but Lamech
called him Menahem, _comfort_, for the reason given in the text of
Genesis. The sacred writer has given one name with the signification of
the other.[204]
Footnote 182:
Talmud, Tractat. Sanhedrin, fol. 108, col. 1. So also the Book
Yaschar, p. 1097.
Footnote 183:
Jalkut, Genesis, fol. 14a.
Footnote 184:
Jalkut Shimoni, Job. fol. 121, col. 2.
Footnote 185:
Eisenmenger, i. p. 385. The Targum of Palestine says the water was hot
(i. p. 179).
Footnote 186:
Tractat. Sevachim, fol. 113, col. 2.
Footnote 187:
Or, a unicorn; the Hebrew word is Reém.
Footnote 188:
Midrash, fol. 14.
Footnote 189:
Eutych., Patriarcha Alex., ed. Selden, i. p. 36.
Footnote 190:
Tabari, p. 108.
Footnote 191:
Abulfeda, p. 17.
Footnote 192:
Yaschar, p. 1100.
Footnote 193:
Colin de Plancy, p. 110.
Footnote 194:
Weil, p. 45.
Footnote 195:
Ararat.
Footnote 196:
Tabari, c. xli.
Footnote 197:
Weil, p. 45.
Footnote 198:
Midrash, fol. 15.
Footnote 199:
Tabari, p. 113.
Footnote 200:
Fabricius, i. pp. 74, 243.
Footnote 201:
Ed. Dillmann, c. 67.
Footnote 202:
Ed. Etheridge, i. p. 182.
Footnote 203:
Gen. v. 20.
Footnote 204:
In the Midrash Rabba, this want of connection between the name and the
signification is remarked upon, and Solomon Jarki in his commentary
says that, for the meaning assigned, the name ought to have been, not
Noah, but Menahem.
XV.
HEATHEN LEGENDS OF THE DELUGE.
Ararat has borne this name for three thousand years. We read in the Book
of Genesis that “_the ark rested, in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat_.” In
passages of the Old Testament, as in Isaiah xxxvii. 38 and 2 Kings xix.
37, mention is made of a land, in Jeremiah li. 27 of a kingdom, of
Ararat; and we are likewise informed by Moses of Chorene, the first
authority among Armenian writers, that an entire country bore this name
after an ancient Armenian king, Arai the Fair, who lived about 1750
years before Christ. He fell in a bloody battle with the Babylonians on
a plain in Armenia, called after him Arai-Arat, the Fall of Arai.
Before this event the country bore the name of Amasia, from its
sovereign, Amassis, the sixth in descent from Japheth, who gave the name
of Massis to the mountain. This is still the only name by which it is
known to the Armenians; for, though it is called Ararat in the Armenian
edition of the Old Testament, yet the people call it Massis, and know no
other name for it. The Mussulmans call it Agridagh, the strong mountain.
The name by which it is known to the Persians is Kuhi-Nuh, the mountain
of Noah, or Saad-dagh, the Blessed Mountain.[205]
But tradition is not at one as to the peak on which the ark rested, or
from which Noah descended, as we shall presently see. Ararat is 17,210
feet in altitude above the sea, and 14,320 feet above the plain of the
Araxes. On the north-eastern slope of the mountain, even from a
distance, may be seen a deep, gloomy chasm, which gives the appearance
as if the mountain had been rent asunder at the top: this was probably
at some remote period the volcanic vent, for the mountain is composed of
tufa, scoria, and erupted matter. It shoots up in one rigid crest, and
then sweeps down towards Little Ararat, the second summit, which stands
13,000 feet above the sea.[206]
The people of the neighbourhood point to a step on the mountain side,
covered with perpetual snow and glacier, and where, say they, the ark
rested; and to a town near Ararat named Naktschiwan, or “the first
outgoing” of Noah from the ark. This etymological interpretation is
probably as questionable as that of Ararat given by Moses of Chorene; it
is true the city is ancient, for it was severely injured by an
earthquake in the reign of Astyages the Median, in the sixth century
before Christ. It is called Naxuana by Josephus,[207] and he says it was
so called because there Noah first descended from the ark, and that
remains of the ark were there to be seen carefully preserved. And there,
says the Armenian historian Vartan, is also the tomb of Noah. Nicolas of
Damascus, in his History of Syria, Berosus the ancient Babylonian writer
and other heathen historians, tell a similar tale; and we learn that
relics of the ark were distributed thence, and were regarded with the
utmost reverence, as amulets.
Nicolas of Damascus, who wrote in the reign of Augustus, says, “There is
beyond the Minyadian land a great mountain in Armenia, Baris by name
(perhaps for Masis), on which, as the tradition says, some one sailing
over it in an ark, lodged on the topmost peak. The remains of the wood
continued to exist long. Perhaps this may be the same as he of whom
Moses, the Jewish historian, has written.”[208]
The story quoted by Eusebius from an ancient writer named Molo, gives a
form of the Syrian tradition. “After the Deluge, the man who with his
sons escaped the flood, went out of Armenia, after he had been driven
out of his inheritance by the violence of the natives. He came thence
into the mountains of Syria, which were then uninhabited.”[209] And with
this agrees a curious allusion in Lucian, who was himself a Syrian. He
says that there was in Syria, in the city Hierapolis, a religious
festival, and a very ancient temple, connected “with the popular story
of Deucalion the Scythian, who lived at the time of the great Deluge.”
It is curious that he should give to the Syrian Noah the Greek name, and
that he should speak of him as not a native, but as coming from the
East, from Scythia. He says: “Of this Deucalion have I heard in Greece,
what the Greeks relate. The story is this: The present race of men is
not the first, for that perished. This is the second race which sprang
from Deucalion, and was very numerous. The earlier generation was very
evil, and violated the Divine law. They neither kept oaths nor showed
hospitality; they took not the stranger in, nor protected him when he
sought protection; therefore a terrible destruction fell upon them. Much
water gushed out of the earth, great rains poured down, and the sea rose
and overwhelmed the earth. Deucalion alone of all men was preserved to
another generation on account of his wisdom and piety. He was thus
saved. He went into a great ark which he had built, along with his wife
and children. Then came to him, pair by pair, cows, horses, lions,
serpents, and all kinds of animals which are nourished on earth, and he
took them all in. They did not hurt him, for Zeus ordained a great
friendship among them. So they all sailed in the ark as long as the
flood lasted. This is the Greek story of Deucalion.
“But very wonderful is the confirmation of the history as it is related
in Hierapolis. In the neighbourhood of that city a great chasm opened
which engulphed all the waters of the Flood. Thereupon Deucalion erected
altars, and dedicated a temple to Here (Atergatis) over the chasm. I
have seen this; it is very small: whether it was once large but has
since become smaller, I cannot say; but I saw that it was small. For the
confirmation of the history the following takes place: twice in the year
the sea-water is brought into the temple. Not only do the priests bear
it, but all Syria and Arabia, and many from beyond Euphrates, come and
carry water. They pour it out in the temple; then it runs down into the
chasm, and, though it may be very small, it takes in all the water
poured into it. This they do, say they, because Deucalion instituted
this rite as a memorial of his deliverance, and of the mercy of
God.”[210]