The account of a world grown corrupt, a single righteous man instructed to build a vessel to exact measurements, the pairs of every kind brought aboard, the waters that come from below as well as above, and the covenant sealed with a rainbow when the survivors step out onto dry ground. Genesis dates the rising and falling of the water precisely, sends out a raven and then a dove, and grounds the ark on the mountains of Ararat. The Qur'an tells the story of Nuh chiefly as the story of a prophet whose people would not listen across a very long life, grounds the ark on Judi, and adds an episode Genesis does not have, in which one of his own sons refuses to board and is drowned with the rest. The Mesopotamian flood traditions recorded centuries earlier are the closest known parallels and are the standard comparison in scholarship.
Facts
Disputed
Scholarly NoteThe Genesis flood account, in which a single righteous man is instructed to build a vessel to exact measurements before waters rise and recede and the survivors step onto dry ground under a covenant sealed by a rainbow, has its closest known parallels in Mesopotamian flood traditions recorded centuries earlier, the standard comparison in scholarship. Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford University Press, 2000), the standard scholarly edition of those Mesopotamian texts, is among the sources behind the ongoing dispute over whether the biblical account depends directly on the Mesopotamian versions, shares a common regional inheritance with them, or developed independently. 1 Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford University Press, 2000) examined the closest known parallels to the Genesis flood account, the Mesopotamian flood traditions recorded centuries earlier, comparing their shared narrative structure, a warned survivor, a sealed vessel, a mountain landing and released birds. Weighing direct literary dependence against a shared regional inheritance and against independent development from a comparable experience, it presents the three explanations as live positions in Assyriology and biblical studies rather than settling on one. Meaning
Central MotifWarned survivor, sealed vessel, mountain landing and released birds 1 History
Historical NoteGenesis follows the flood narrative with the Table of Nations in chapter 10, tracing the peoples of the known world to Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, a genealogical scheme later interpretive tradition used to classify entire regions and languages under one or another of the three lines. 2 Historical NoteThe rainbow covenant at the flood's end, in which God promises never again to destroy the earth by flood, is read in Jewish and Christian tradition as the first of a series of covenants preceding those made later with Abraham and Moses. 2 Sources
Primary SourceThe flood narrative survives in the Masoretic Hebrew Torah and, separately, among the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments recovered at Qumran, including portions of the Genesis Apocryphon that expand on the base biblical account. 2 Text
Source TextQur'an 11:25 to 11:49, 23:23 to 23:30 and surah 71 in full 3 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteGenesis specifies the ark's dimensions in cubits, three hundred long, fifty wide and thirty high, proportions scholars have noted are strikingly different from the round, coracle shaped vessel described in the Babylonian flood account preserved on the Ark Tablet, one of several points where the two traditions' shared flood template diverges in its particulars. 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeGenesis itself preserves two interwoven flood accounts with differing details, including how many of each animal Noah takes aboard and how long the flood lasts, which source critics attribute to distinct underlying textual traditions later combined. 2 Learn More
The Ark, the Waters, and the Bow
Genesis introduces the flood with a judgment that the earth is filled with violence and that every inclination of the human heart is only evil continually, and with a single exception. Noah is given measurements in cubits, a specification of pitch inside and out, three decks and a single door, and instructions on what to bring: pairs of every kind, and by one of the two threads running through the chapters, seven pairs of the clean animals against the sacrifice that will be needed afterward. The waters are not only rain. The fountains of the great deep burst open and the windows of the heavens are opened, which is the ordered separation of the first creation account being let go, and the world returns for a hundred and fifty days to the state it was in before the second day.
The receding is told with the same care for dates. The ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat; a raven is sent out and goes to and fro; a dove is sent three times and returns first with nothing, then with a fresh olive leaf, and finally not at all. Noah builds an altar, and God resolves never again to strike down every living thing, setting the bow in the cloud as the sign of that promise. The bow is a weapon hung up rather than a decoration, and the covenant is made not with Noah alone but with every living creature and with the earth itself, which is why the passage carries the weight it does in later Jewish and Christian reflection on obligations to the natural world.
Nuh the Unheeded Prophet, and the Older Floods
The Qur'an tells the flood as the story of a prophet rather than as the story of a boat. Nuh preaches to his people publicly and privately, by night and by day, for a span the text gives as nine hundred and fifty years, and is answered with mockery and with fingers stuffed into ears. Only when it is clear that none will believe beyond those who already have is he told to build under divine supervision, and the chiefs of his people laugh at him as he works. The waters come from an oven that gushes forth. The scene that has no biblical counterpart follows: a son standing apart, called to board, who answers that he will take himself to a mountain that will protect him from the water, and is drowned; when Nuh appeals for him as a member of his family, he is told that the son is not of his family, since his conduct was not righteous. The ark comes to rest on Judi.
Older flood narratives from Mesopotamia were recorded centuries before the biblical text and are the standard comparison in scholarship: a warned survivor, a sealed vessel, the loading of family and living creatures, a mountain landing, birds sent out to test the water, and a sacrifice on emerging. The relation between them is read by different scholars as direct dependence, as shared regional inheritance, or as independent treatment of a common experience of catastrophic flooding in the river plains, and no single account of the relation has become consensus. What is not in dispute is that the biblical writers were working in a region where the story was already old.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The ark is the central object of the flood narrative as Judaism, Christianity and Islam tell it.
Belongs to Tradition
Originated In
Related To
Noah and the Flood is one of the biblical accounts Flood myth doctrine's own description names.
The closest Mesopotamian parallel, recorded centuries earlier
Sources
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