The Flood Story
The Flood
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With this post we’re beginning a new biblical episode, as indicated by the פ that follows Gen 6:8, the indicator that says, “Leave the rest of this line blank.” That means it’s time for a new subtitle for this blog, and I lost no sleep trying to figure one out. (Never fear, there are plenty of other things keeping me awake at night.) This is where the episode that we call “the Flood story” begins.
It will run from 6:9–9:17, where another פ says we’ve reached the end of this episode. There are three smaller breaks in the story, marked with a ס, which I’ll point out when we get there. (You’ll find a more detailed explanation of the פ and ס breaks, with some visuals to make things clearer, at this link.) This particular break also marks the beginning of a new parashah, the second of the 54 Jewish Torah readings, called “Noach.”
This seems like a good time, therefore, to sum up the episodes we’ve read together in the previous two years. I’ll do that with the help of the subtitles I created for them. The links will bring you to the beginning of the episode.
Reading through the story of creation (1:1–2:3)
The Hinge (2:4)
Into and Out of the Garden (2:5–3:21)
You Can’t Go Home Again (3:22–4:26)
The Genealogy of Adam (5:1–32)
Adam’s Aftermath (6:1–8)
To make things comprehensive, you can find the first five posts on the blog here, here, here, here, and here. As you’ll see, my original intention was to read just that first section and then move to a different biblical story. Instead, I kept going, for the simplest of reasons: I wanted to know what was going to happen. Suddenly I am about to find myself in over my head, in the most literal sense of those words.
“Noach,” like the first reading, “Bereshit,” appears to be named for its content but it really isn’t. We have left “the Beginning” far behind by now, just as we’ll leave “Noah” far behind by the time we reach the end of this parashah. Instead, “Noach” is named because that’s the most significant word closest to the beginning of the section. That brings up two questions:
Why don’t I call this new episode Noah’s Flood?
Why do I keep capitalizing the word Flood?
The simpler question first. There’s another word in Biblical Hebrew for “a” flood: שֶׁטֶף shétef. The same root gives Modern Hebrew its own word for “flood,” שִׁיטָפוֹן shitafon. “The” Flood — with a capital F — is מַבּוּל mabbul. Call it “the Deluge” if you like; I am staying with “the Flood.” More about this Hebrew word when we first encounter it in the text, nine verses from now.
And why don’t I call it “Noah’s Flood”? Because there are other versions of this story, in which the hero has other names. Those would be:
Ziusudra (“life of long days”) in the 2nd-millennium BCE Sumerian version of the story.
Atrahasis (“exceeding wise”) in the 2nd-millennium BCE Akkadian “Atrahasis Epic.”
Utnapishtim (“he has found life”) in the Akkadian “Gilgamesh” epic.
Xisouthros (in the 3rd-c. BCE Greek account of Berossus). Though this is the very latest of the stories, this is obviously the same name as the Sumerian Ziusudra.
It’s beyond my capacity to determine the relationships between all these different variants of the story. Fortunately, for the purpose I’m writing — understanding the text of the Bible — that’s not important. Those who want to pursue that question can read this article by John Day on thetorah.com; those who want to go deeper can follow the references there and/or look at Day’s book From Creation to Babel.
I’ll refer to these earlier sources when I find something enlightening or at least amusing to say about them. Because I am a language guy and we focus on language so much here, I’ll point out the resemblance of Utnapishtim to Hebrew נפשׁ néfesh ‘life’, which we discussed back when the earthling was created. Sumerian is not a Semitic language; apparently it’s not an Indo-European language either, but the zi- element is the “life” part of this word, and my spidey sense tells me that it’s related to Greek ζωή zoé ‘life’, Russian жизнь zhizn (the same), and so forth. These are the guys who gave new life to the word — not those who “provided us relief” or “changed our attitude” as Noah was supposed to do.
Paradoxically, as Day points out, the texts that had to be dug up out of the ground starting in the 19th century dominate the discussion nowadays rather than the one we’ve known about all along. Let’s have Josephus introduce us to it to conclude today’s post and get us in the mood to start our study of the Bible’s version of the story:
This flood and the ark are mentioned by all who have written histories of the barbarians. Among these is Berossus the Chaldaean, who in his description of the events of the flood writes somewhere as follows: “It is said, moreover, that a portion of the vessel still survives in Armenia on the mountain of the Cordyaeans [inhabitants of today’s Kurdistan], and that persons carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they use as talismans.” [Antiquities 1.93]
He says further:
This author, following the most ancient records, has, like Moses, described the flood and the destruction of mankind thereby, and told of the ark in which Noah, the founder of our race, was saved when it landed on the heights of the mountains of Armenia. [Against Apion 1.130]
A “Chaldaean” is a Babylonian (we’ll meet the word in 11:28) and Berossus was evidently familiar with this story not from the Bible but from one of the Mesopotamian sources. We’ll start reading our own version of this story together next time.