Noah and the Flood

Seth’s descendants went on for seven generations regarding God as Master of the universe and paying full attention to virtue. But in the course of time they were corrupted and abandoned the ways of their forefathers. They no longer gave God the honors appointed for him, nor did they care at all about dealing justly with others. Whatever zeal they had once shown for virtue, they now showed twice over in wickedness by their actions, and so they made God their enemy. For many angels of God had intercourse with women and fathered sons who turned out insolent and scornful of everything good, because of the confidence they had in their own strength. Indeed, tradition says that these men did deeds like those of the beings the Greeks call giants. [a]

Noah was deeply troubled by what they did. Displeased with their conduct, he tried to persuade them to change their attitudes and their actions for the better. But when he saw that they would not give way, and were slaves to their wicked pleasures, he was afraid they would kill him, along with his wife and children and those they had married; so he left that land.

God loved this man for his righteousness. But he not only condemned those others for their wickedness; he decided to destroy the whole human race and to make another race that would be free of wickedness. He cut short their lives, making their years not as many as they had lived before but only 120, and he turned the dry land into sea; and so all these people were destroyed. Noah alone was saved, for God gave him the following plan and means of escape: he was to build an ark four stories high, 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. So he went into the ark with his wife, his sons and their wives. He put into it not only provisions to supply their needs but also, along with the rest, every kind of living creature, the male with its female, to preserve their kinds, and some of them by sevens. The ark was strong in its walls and its roof, so that it could in no way be swamped or overwhelmed by the force of the water. And so Noah and his family were saved. [c]

Noah was the tenth from Adam. He was the son of Lamech, whose father was Methuselah; Methuselah was the son of Enoch, the son of Jared; and Jared was the son of Mahalalel, who with many sisters was among the children of Kenan, the son of Enosh. And Enosh was the son of Seth, the son of Adam.

This disaster happened in the six hundredth year of Noah’s rule, in the second month, which the Macedonians call Dius and the Hebrews Marheshvan; for that is how they arranged their year in Egypt. But Moses appointed Nisan, which is the same as Xanthicus, to be the first month for the festivals, because he brought them out of Egypt in that month. So this month began the year for all the sacred observances they kept in honor of God, though he kept the original order of the months for buying and selling and other ordinary business. Moses says that the flood began on the twenty-seventh day of that month, and that this was 2,262 years after Adam, the first man. The date is written down in our sacred books, because those who lived then recorded with great accuracy both the births and the deaths of illustrious men. [g]

Seth was born when Adam was in his 230th year, and Adam lived 930 years. Seth fathered Enosh in his 205th year. Enosh, when he had lived 905 years, handed the government on to Kenan, his son, whom he had fathered in about his 190th year. Seth lived 912 years. Kenan, when he had lived 910 years, had his son Mahalalel, who was born in his 170th year. This Mahalalel lived 895 years and died, leaving his son Jared, whom he fathered in his 165th year. Jared lived 969 years, and then his son Enoch succeeded him; Enoch was born when his father was 162 years old. When Enoch had lived 365 years, he departed and went to God, and that is why his death has not been written down. Methuselah, Enoch’s son, born to him when he was 165 years old, had Lamech as his son when he was 187, and handed the government on to him after holding it for 969 years. Lamech, when he had governed for 707 years, appointed his son Noah ruler of the people; Noah was born to Lamech when he was 188 years old, and held the government for 950 years. These years added together make up the total given above. But let no one look into the deaths of these men, for their lives ran on alongside those of their children and grandchildren; let him consider only their births. [k]

When God gave the signal and the rain began, the water poured down for forty whole days, until it stood about 22½ feet higher than the earth. That is why no more people were saved: they had nowhere to flee. When the rain stopped, the water only just began to go down after 150 days — that is, on the seventh day of the seventh month — and then for a little while it stopped subsiding. After this the ark came to rest on the top of a mountain in Armenia. When Noah realized this, he opened it, and seeing a small piece of land around it, he waited quietly and began to have cheerful hopes of rescue. A few days later, when the water had gone down further, he sent out a raven, wanting to learn whether any other part of the earth had been left dry and whether he could safely leave the ark; but the raven found all the land still flooded and came back to Noah. After seven days he sent out a dove to find out the state of the ground. It came back to him covered with mud and bringing an olive branch, and from this Noah learned that the earth was clear of the flood. So after waiting seven more days, he sent the living creatures out of the ark, and he and his family went out. He also sacrificed to God and feasted with his companions. The Armenians call this place Apobaterion, “the Place of Descent”; for since the ark came safely to rest there, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day. [m]

All the writers of barbarian histories mention this flood and this ark. Among them is Berosus the Chaldean, who, in describing what happened in the flood, goes on like this: “It is said that some part of this ship is still in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans, and that people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away and use chiefly as amulets to ward off harm.” Hieronymus the Egyptian, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, mentions them as well, and so do Mnaseas and a great many others. Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, even has an account of them of his own, where he says this: “There is a great mountain in Armenia, above Minyas, called Baris, on which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the flood were saved, and that one man, carried in an ark, came ashore on its summit, and that the remains of the timber were preserved for a long time. This may be the man about whom Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, wrote.” [p]

But Noah, since God had resolved to destroy mankind, was afraid that he would flood the earth every year. So he offered burnt offerings and begged God that nature might go on from now on in its former orderly course, and that he would never again bring so great a judgment, by which the whole race of living things might be put in danger of destruction; but that, having now punished the wicked, he would in his goodness spare those who remained, whom he had so far judged fit to be rescued from so severe a disaster, since otherwise these last would be more miserable than the first, and condemned to a worse fate than the others, unless they were allowed to escape entirely — that is, if they were kept for another flood, they would both suffer the terror and the sight of the first flood and also be destroyed by a second. He also begged God to accept his sacrifice and to grant that the earth would never again suffer such effects of his anger, so that people might be allowed to go on cheerfully farming it, to build cities and live happily in them, and not be deprived of any of the good things they had enjoyed before the flood, but reach the same length of days and old age that the ancient people had reached before.

When Noah had made these petitions, God, who loved the man for his righteousness, granted his prayers in full. He said that it was not he who had brought destruction on a polluted world, but that they had suffered that vengeance because of their own wickedness; and that he would not have brought people into the world if he had himself meant to destroy them, since it would be wiser not to give them life at all than to destroy them after it had been given. “But the outrages they committed against my holiness and virtue,” he said, “forced me to bring this punishment on them. From now on I will stop demanding such punishments, the effects of so great an anger, for their future wicked deeds — and especially because of your prayers. If at any time I send storms of rain in an unusual way, do not be frightened at the size of the downpours, for the water will never again cover the earth. But I urge you to abstain from shedding human blood and to keep yourselves pure from murder, and to punish anyone who commits it. I allow you to use all the other living creatures as you please and as your appetites lead you, for I have made you masters of them all — those that walk on the land, those that swim in the waters, and those that fly in the regions of the air above — except their blood, for the life is in it. And I will give you a sign that I have ended my anger: my bow.” By this he meant the rainbow, for the people of that region held that the rainbow was the bow of God. When God had said and promised this, he went away. [q]

Noah lived 350 years after the flood, all of that time happily, and died at the age of 950. But let no one, comparing the lives of the ancients with our own lives and the few years we now live, think that what we have said about them is false, or take the shortness of our present lives as proof that they did not reach so long a span either. Those ancients were loved by God and made by God himself, and because their food was then better suited to prolonging life, they could well have lived so many years. Besides, God granted them a longer life because of their virtue and the usefulness of their discoveries in astronomy and geometry; they could not have foretold anything in these with certainty unless they had lived six hundred years, for the great year is completed in that span. [s]

I have as witnesses to what I say all who have written ancient histories, both among the Greeks and among the barbarians. Manetho, who wrote the history of Egypt, Berosus, who compiled the Chaldean records, Mochus, Hestiaeus, and besides these Hieronymus the Egyptian — the writers of the history of Phoenicia — all agree with what I say here. Hesiod too, and Hecataeus, Hellanicus and Acusilaus, and besides these Ephorus and Nicolaus, report that the ancients lived a thousand years. But as for these matters, let everyone think of them as he sees fit.