Two stitched-together sources explain why Noah's animal count doesn't add up
How many of each animal did Noah bring aboard, and how long did the waters stay? Genesis gives confusing answers to both questions, and the documentary hypothesis offers an answer: a fifth-century BC editor wove together two independent accounts, one from the 10th century BC and one from the late 7th, without smoothing the seams.
Noah's name means rest or consolation, and Genesis makes him the tenth and last patriarch before the flood, son of Lamech, who was 182 at his birth. He fathers Shem, Ham and Japheth at 500 and dies at 950, some 350 years after the waters recede. After him the lifespans in the Bible shrink steadily, down to the 120 years given for Moses.
The flood itself is presented as more than a disaster. God, angered by human wickedness, returns the world to the watery chaos that existed before Creation and then rebuilds it from the small sample preserved in the ark. Afterwards Noah makes offerings, and God promises never to destroy the earth by flood again, setting the rainbow in the clouds as a pledge. Mesopotamia's Epic of Gilgamesh, dating from around 1800 BC, tells a strikingly similar tale of an ark built to survive a god-sent deluge, and scholars think the biblical version drew on such traditions; the Greek hero Deucalion, who also builds an ark and releases a bird, offers another parallel.
Noah then becomes a farmer, plants the first vineyard, gets drunk and lies uncovered in his tent. Ham sees him and tells his brothers, and Noah curses not Ham but Ham's son Canaan. Ancient interpreters went easy on the drinking: John Chrysostom argued that the first man to taste wine could not have known its strength, and rabbis blamed Satan for wine's intoxicating effect. The episode's brevity and gaps have led scholars to suspect it is a fragment of a longer tale.
One Oxford reference work on the books of the Bible spots echoes of Eden: Adam the first farmer and Noah the first vintner both run into trouble with their produce, and both stories involve nakedness and a curse dividing brothers. Genesis 10 then traces the nations descended from the three sons, including Nimrod, described as a mighty hunter and king in Babylon.
Source: Noah
