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The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Stephen Gero
Stephen Gero
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, RI 02912
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Extract

The exact nature of Ham's crime against the drunken Noah has long fascinated exegetes, who have been left dissatisfied by the simple voyeurism described in the biblical text. One particularly interesting explanation, namely, that Ham actually castrated his father, first emerges in a Talmudic account of a debate about Gen 9:24 between Rav and Samuel, two renowned third-century Babylonian rabbis

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Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 73 , Issue 1-2 , April 1980 , pp. 321 - 330
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1980

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References

1 See, e.g., Cassuto, Umberto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964) 2. 150–54Google Scholar for a survey of opinions, ancient and modern. A recent suggestion, prima facie not implausible, argues that the wording points to incest stricte dictu, and that Canaan was the offspring of the union between Ham and his own mother. Bassett, Frederick W., “Noah's Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan: A Case of Incest?” VT 21 (1971) 232–37.Google Scholar

2 The earlier remark, by the second-century apologist Theophilus of Antioch, that “some call this man a eunuch” (Ad Autolycum 3.19, ed. Grant, Robert M., Theophilus of Antioch ad Autolycum [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970] 124, lines 23–24)Google Scholar is not pertinent, pace Ginzberg, Louis (Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern und in der apokryphischen Litteratur [Berlin: Calvary, 1900] 85)Google Scholar and more recent commentators. The Christian writer is referring with much more likelihood to the tradition of Noah's centuries-long sexual abstinence before the Flood. See Bolgiani, Franco, “L'ascesi di Noé. A proposito di Theoph., ad Autol., III, 19,” in Forma futuri: Studi in onore del cardinale Michele Pellegrino (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1975) 295–333Google Scholar, esp. 309ff. For an instance of the term eunouchia already clearly used as a synonym for sexual continence, see Athenagoras Leg. 33.3 (ed. Schoedel, William R., Athenagoras, Legatio and De Resurrectione [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972] 80Google Scholar, line 15). But Rainer Stichel's specific suggestion that in the Greek-speaking milieu which was aware of the continence or castration tradition a (hypothetical!) form of Noah's name, Nouch(os) was deformed into eu-nouchos is philologically unsound (Die Namen Noes, seines Bruders und seiner Frau [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979] 21).Google Scholar

3 srsw. It is not clear from the syntax whether Rav or Samuel holds this view, as opposed to the other proposed alternative of homosexual rape.

4 rb'w.

5 qllw.

6 qlqlw, seemingly punning on qllw.

7 b. Sanh. 70a, lines 14–16 from the bottom. The redactor harmonized the two opinions by positing that Ham first raped, then emasculated his father! In this text the reader is spared from the details of the two acts, but in a later (9th-century?) work we are told that Canaan [sic] “entered and saw the nakedness of Noah and he bound a thread (where the mark of) the covenant was, and emasulated him.” Ham then walks in, finds the whole situation merely amusing, and tells his brothers about it. Friedlander, Gerald, trans., Pirḳê de Rabbi Eliezer (New York: Hermon, 1965) 170.Google Scholar

8 R. Huna, transmitting R. Joseph's view.

9 Gen. Rab. 36.7 (Theodor, J. and Albeck, Ch., eds., Midrash Bereshit Rabba [Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965] 345, lines 4–5). Somewhat inconsistently, the same R. Huna is earlier cited as reporting (in the name of R. Eliezer, to be sure) the story that upon exit from the ark a lion struck and wounded him (šbrw), so that when he tried to perform intercourse, he spilled his seed (Gen. Rab. 36.3., Theodor-Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 338, lines 8–339, line 1). This introduction of Noah as afflicted with premature ejaculation seems to be another attempt to explain why Noah is not reported as having progeny after the flood, quite independent of the castration hypothesis, and without the polemical intent of the latter. Elsewhere the wounding of Noah by a lion is connected with his sacerdotal fitness to sacrifice.Google Scholar

10 Baumgarten, Albert J., “Myth and Midrash: Genesis 920–29,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (Leiden: Brill, 1975) 3. 70, n. 83.Google Scholar

11 Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947) 5Google Scholar. 191, n. 60.

12 Ginzberg refers to (but does not cite) the Ethiopic Book of Adam 3.13 (be. cit.). The text in question says “(The) Noah married another wife who bore him six children” (ed. Ernst Trumpp, “Gadla Adam. Der Kampf Adams (gegen die Versuchungen des Satans), oder Das christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes,” Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe der koniglich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 15/3 (Munich: Akademie, 1881) 135, lines 13–14Google Scholar. The work, which is translated from Arabic, may be late in its present form (11th century?) but depends on older sources (Denis, Albert-Marie, Introduction awe pseudepigraphes grecs d'Ancien Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1970) 9Google Scholar; on the question of sources see Graf, George, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur [Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1954] 1. 202).Google Scholar

13 Ginzberg himself, to be sure, refers to unspecified “other Christian writings” (loc. cit.). But Lewis, Jack P. (A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature [Leiden: Brill, 1968] 41)Google Scholar notes only the Book of Adam, and explicitly claims “That Noah married again and had other children is unique to this source” (41, n. 1). Baumgarten merely repeats Lewis’ statement (“Myth and Midrash,” 70, n. 83). A hitherto neglected pertinent passage in a ninth-century Syriac exegetical compilation deserves to be noted here: “For not only three sons did he beget, but [Scripture] makes mention of these because they were delivered together with him” (ed. Levene, Abraham, The Early Syriac Fathers on Genesis, from a Syriac Ms. on the Pentateuch in the Mingana Collection [London: Taylor's, 1951],57, lines 21–22.).Google Scholar

14 Bezold, Carl (ed.), Die Schatzhöhle, 2 Teil (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1888)Google Scholar; Bezold earlier published a translation under the same title (1. Teil; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1883). The Syriac text and an Arabic version are printed on opposite pages. A divergent Arabic text is also printed in Gibson, Margaret D., Apocrypha Arabica (Studia Sinaitica 8; London: Cambridge University, 1901)Google Scholar. See further Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 198–200, 289, on the Arabic version which seemingly reflects an older Syriac text than the recension represented by the extant Syriac MSS. From the Arabic an Ethiopic translation is derived (ineditum); for a French translation of the portion of the Ethiopic text of interest here see Grébaut, Sylvain in Revue de l'orient Chrétien 17 (1912) 30–31.Google Scholar

15 Baumstark, Anton, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, mil Ausschluss der christlich-palästinensischen Texte (Bonn: Marcus & Webers, 1922) 95Google Scholar; Charlesworth, James H., The Pseudepigrapha and Modern Research (Missoula: Scholars, 1976) 91.Google Scholar

16 Albrecht Götze argues at length for the existence of such an Urschatzhöhle, which was afterwards independently modified by Nestorians and Monophysites (“Die Schatzhöhle. Überlieferung und Quellen,” Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 1922, 4. Abh. [Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1922] esp. 38, 90–91). A discussion of the supposedly “Jewish-Christian” character of this Urschatzhöhle (p. 91) would necessitate a study of the relationship to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions; this cannot be undertaken here.

17 The biblical account of the flood, Noah's three sons, and the episode of Noah's drunkenness is told in conventional terms earlier; that Yonṭon is specifically the fourth son is a natural deduction, even though he is only described as “the son of Noah” in the Syriac text (ed. Bezold, 138, lines 6, 7). In at least one Arabic MS he is explicitly “the fourth son of Noah” (ed. Gibson, 36 line 9). The Syriac and Arabic textual tradition indicates that Yonṭon or Yoniṭon is the original form of the name; the form Moneton is, to my mind, secondary (contra Götze, “Die Schatzhöhle,” 59), found attested only in relatively late Greek MSS of Pseudo-Methodius (see below, n. 21) and in the Armenian textual tradition, which cannot be traced further back than the 13th-century translation of the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. The Ethiopic version refers to “Bonitor, fils de Noé à la quatrième génération” (trans. Grébaut, 30). The form “Bonitor” can be readily explained as a corruption of “Yoniṭon” in unpointed Arabic. The Georgian version, which depends (directly or via an Arabic version?) on the Syriac is also apparently a witness for the older form; see Avalichvili, Z., “Notice sur une version géorgienne de la Caverne des Trésors,” Revue de l'orient Chrétien 26 (1927–1928) 394.Google Scholar

18 The Syriac specifically says “wisdom and the book of revelation” (hekmtā asfar gelyānā, ed. Bezold, 138, line 10). Some MSS of the Arabic version render the word “revelation” has haliqa, “creation,” “nature” (ed. Bezold, 138, line 9); other MSS have ḥayl, “[military?] force” (ed. Bezold, 139, n. h; ed. Gibson, 36, line 13).

19 The Syriac author carefully distinguises the “revelation” of Yonṭon to Nimrod, which is approved and used by the orthodox teachers, being called gilyānā by the Persians and 'sṭrwmyn, “astronomy” by the Romans (i.e., Byzantines), from the 'sṭrwlwgy’, “astrology” of the magi (ed. Bezold, 140, line 16; 142, line 4; trans., 34). The Arabic version makes “astrology” the Persian designation, and tones down the anti-Chaldean polemic (ed. Gibson, 37, lines 4–5).

20 On Yonṭon's habitat, see below, n. 27.

21 The extremely complex textual tradition of his work cannot be analyzed here in detail. The Syriac text of the first part of the Apocalypse is apparently only extant in MS one only (Vat. syr. 58), still an ineditum. Other Syriac fragments of the latter half of the work exist but are of no immediate concern here. A very early (7th century?) Greek translation from Syriac was the source of both Latin and Church Slavonic versions. The Vatican MS is referred to in the following remarks by folio and line numbers. The critical edition of the four recensions of the Greek text is now available in Lolos, Anastasios, Die Apokalypse des Ps.-Methodios (Meisenheim a. G.: Hain, 1976)Google Scholar; idem, Die dritte und vierte Redaktion des Ps.-Methodios (Meisenheim a. G.: Hain, 1978)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted reference is made to the first recension. For the critical edition of the Latin version see Sackur, Ernst, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, Pseudomethodius, Adso und die Tiburtinische Sibylle (Halle, 1898Google Scholar; reprint ed., Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1963).

22 Kmosko, Michael, “Das Rätsel des Pseudomethodius,” Byzantion 6 (1931) 285–86.Google Scholar

23 Paul Alexander adduces arguments for a dating specifically between AD. 644 and 678 (“Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs: The Legend of the Last Roman Emperor,” Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 2 [1971] 65, n. 29).Google Scholar

24 Vat. syr. 58, fol. 120r, lines 3ff.

25 Fol. 120r, lines 5–6. It is not said that Noah's other three sons were also begotten in his image. The first two Greek recensions simply say that Noah's son was homoios autō or kata tēn homoiōsin autou (ed. Lolos, Apokalypse, 56, lines 6 and 57, line 2), and the Latin has “secundum ipsius similitudinem” (ed. Sackur, 63, line 11).

26 Lines 6–7. The nature of the gifts is not made clear; in particular it is not at all necessary to assume that they would have been secret books of magic or prophecy. Neither (though the reader may reasonably expect this) does the early tradition identify the gifts Noah gave to Yonṭon with the three gifts the Magi bring to the infant Jesus. Cf. Reinink, G. J., “Das Problem des Ursprungs des Testamentes Adams,” in Symposium Syriacum 1972 (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 197; Rome: Pont. Inst. Orientalium Studiorum, 1974) 393Google Scholar. In late Armenian versions of the legend Yonṭon demands part of the relics of Adam, which were kept in the Ark; he receives the shin-bones of the protoplast as his share (Michael the Syrian, Chronicle [Jerusalem, 1871] 11–12Google Scholar; copied by Mxit ‘ar of Ayrivank’, ed. Patkanov, K. [St. Petersburg, 1867] 265).Google Scholar

27 nur šems̆ā (line 13). The Greek and the Latin have “land of the sun” (hēliou chōras, ed. Lolos, 58, line 14; “usque ad mare qui vocatur hiliu chora, id est regio solis,” ed. Sackur, 63, line 19–64, line 1). The chōra of the Greek is clearly a misreading of nwr as kwr, an easy error in Syriac script; that the Syriac Vorlage of the Greek had nwr is further borne out by the different but likewise easy misreading of the same word as Nōd (ed. Lolos, 70, line 41) in another reference to nûr ŝems̆ā, the kingdom of Yonṭon (fol. 123V, line 6). Solomon of Basra, at this point clearly dependent on a Syriac Pseudo-Methodius text, also attests the reading nur ŝems̆ā (The Book of the Bee, ed. Budge, Ernest A. Wallis; Oxford: Clarendon, 1886) p. Id, line 6.Google Scholar

28 gilyānē. Cf. nn. 18 and 19.

29 To be exact “the course of the stars,” rehtā d-kawkbē (line 16). The Greek and Latin versions describe Yonṭon as the inventor of astronomia (cf. n.19).

30 Line 17.

31 At a later point the narrative describes how S̆m ‘y’ sr, “King of the East, from the race of Yonṭon, son of Noah” (fol. 122V, lines 1–2) subjugated the Ismaelites.

32 For listings of such allusions to Yonṭon, not entirely complete, see Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte, 64, n. 1; Götze, “Schatzhöhle,” 57–60, supplemented by the same author's “Die Nachwirkung der Schatzhöhle,” Zeitschrift für Semitistik 2 (1923) 52–56, 75; 3 (1924) 65, 177.Google Scholar

33 Das Buch von der Erkenntnis der Wahrheit oder der Ursache aller Ursachen, ed. Kayser, Carl (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1889) 198Google Scholar; though at an earlier point Nimrod has been mentioned in passing as a pupil of Yonṭon (32, line 11), t he close connection between the two figures is not here noted. In the Chronicon ad ann. Chr. 1234 (ed. Chabot, Jean-Baptiste, CSCO 81 [Louvain: 1920] 49–59)Google Scholar Yonṭon is only described as a pioneer hermit and an astronomer, who came to be regarded as a great prophet and a priest; no mention of his relation to the wicked idolater Nimrod is made at all!

34 The Hebrew compilation entitled “Chronicles of Yerahmeel” gives a modification of the Pseudo-Methodius story, clearly via the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor (PL 98. 1088) but attributing it to a fictitious source, “the book of Strabo of Caphtor” (trans. Gaster, Moses, The Chronicles of Jerahmeel; or the Hebrew Bible Historiale (New York: Ktav, 1971] 69–70Google Scholar; on some still later Hebrew sources see further Gaster's introduction, p. lxxvii and Gorion, Micha Josef bin, Die Sagen der Juden (Frankfurt a.M.: Rütten & Loening, 1913) 1. 240, 359.Google Scholar

35 See Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte, 10–16; Kmosko, “Das Ratsel,” 278.

36 gilyānā d-Nimrod, ed. Bezold, 234, line 7.

37 ed. Bezold, 234, lines 7–9. At an earlier point it is said that Nimrod sent emissaries to Balaam “the priest of Mount Se ‘ir” when he found out that the latter was an expert in reading the signs of the Zodiac (ed. Bezold, 178, lines 10ff.), but this story (part of an aetiology for the name of Heliopolis) is not connected to the “revelation of Nimrod.” In the 10th-century chronicle of Agapius the Nimrod prophecy is quoted in extenso, in the context of the interview of Herod with the Magi (Kitab al-‘Unvan, ed. Vasiliev, Alexandre, PO 7 [1911] 494).Google Scholar

38 Contra Albertus F. J. Klijn, who says that to explain the source of the knowledge that the Magi of the gospel story had of the coming of Jesus, “a fourth son of Noah was invented and made responsible for having spread information about the future in the East” (Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature [Leiden: Brill, 1977] 53).Google Scholar

39 The fourth-century compiler of the Urschatzhöhle? See above, n. 16. At any rate, the Syriac text of the Yonṭon episode does not mention any books of Nimrod but simply says that Nimrod “began to become familiar with this revelation” (ed. Bezold, 138, line 12); only the Arabic version notes that Nimrod produced books (ed. Bezold, 139, line 11; ed. Gibson, 36, line 14), though without claiming that these contained Christian prophecies. The medieval astrological work attributed to Nimrod (see Haskins, Charles H., “Nimrod the Astronomer,” in his Studies in the History of Medieval Science [Cambridge: Harvard University, 1924] 336–45) is not directly relevant.Google Scholar

40 Götze identifies, using some speculative emendations, the place of the encounter of Yonṭon and Nimrod as Khorasan (Schatzhöhle, 59). See further Villard, Ugo Monneret de, Le leggende orientali sui magi evangelici (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1952) 11.Google Scholar

41 On the authentic echoes of Mesopotamian tradition in Pseudo-Methodius see Stocks, H., “Pseudomethodius und die babylonische ‘Sibylle,’” Byzantinisch-neugriechische Jahrbiicher 15 (1939) 29–57; but the specific conjecture adopted by Stocks, that Yonṭon is but the mythical beneficient monster Oannes of Berossus (p. 45), to my mind, lacks cogency.Google Scholar

42 Yonṭon is the only son of Noah begotten in his father's image (see above, n. 25), just as Seth—but not Cain or Abel—was born, as “a beautiful man, in the image of Adam” (Vat. syr. 58, fol. 119V, line 9).

43 On the tradition of Seth as an astrologer, see Klijn, Seth, 48ff. In an 11th-century Latin text Yonṭon (“Hiontus astrologus”) is substituted for Seth in the mission to fetch branches from Paradise (Gotfried of Viterbo, Chronicon, ed. J. Pistorius, Scriptores rerum germanicarum [Ratisbon: Sumptibus Joannis Conradi Peezii, 1726] 2. 242). The suggestion of Esther C. Quinn that Seth is in fact a replacement for Yonṭon (The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962] 71) is most improbable.Google Scholar

44 Götze talks of “sethianische Gnosis,” in a ready fashion, as a source of the Book of the Cave of Treasures (e.g., Schatzhöhle, 60). Recent scholarship is much less optimistic than that of the past about the possibility of defining this phenomenon.

45 For a very useful compendium of the ancient Nimrod material see Widengren, Geo, Iranisch-semitische Kulturbegegnung in parthisher Zeit (Cologne/Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1960) 42–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Cf. Pearson, Birger A., “The Figure of Norea in Gnostic Literature,” in Widengren, Geo, ed., Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism, Stockholm, August 20–25, 1973 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977) 143–52.Google Scholar

47 Nimrod is identified in the Book of the Cave of Treasures as the founder of several Mesopotamian cities, including Babylon, Niniveh, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, as well as Nisibis, Edessa and Harran! (ed. Bezold, 142, lines 7–10; 154, line 13). However, it is not quite clear whether the religiously momentous identification of the figures of Nimrod and Zoroaster should be attributed to this same Jewish syncretistic milieu which produced the Yonṭon legend; Nimrod is characterized, to be sure, as a founder of fire-worship (ed. Bezold, 136, lines 16ff.). Cf. Bousset, Wilhelm, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1907) 369–78Google Scholar. But the figure of Yonṭon, at any rate, itself is less directly tied to ancient Mesopotamian tradition; the connection with Oannes is most doubtful (see n. 41), and the alternative identification with the primeval ruler Ferīdūn of the Iranian epic tradition (Widengren, Kulturbegegnung, 46, originally proposed by Götze, Schatzhbhle, 60) is, to my mind, not at all compelling, being based on nothing more than a highly doubtful etymological connection of the two names. The depiction of Ferīdūn as a universal ruler who divides the earth between his three sons (Ferdausi, , The Epic of the Kings [trans. Levy, Reuben; Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1967] 28)Google Scholar reminds one rather of Noah himself. Though no obvious Semitic etymology or connection with a biblical name can be pointed to, nonetheless, on the balance, it is most likely that Yonṭon is an original Jewish creation.

48 See Neusner, Jacob, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, vol. 1, 2d printing (Leiden: Brill, 1969) 171, and vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1966) 84–85.Google Scholar

49 On this see the evidence (admittedly indirect) adduced by Neusner, Jews in Babylonia, 2. 156–58.

50 Ibid., 141–43.

51 So Baumgarten, “Myth and Midrash,” 70. But Baumgarten is right in his argument that an ancient castration legend does not actually underlie the biblical narrative (pp. 64–65).

52 An unfavorable depiction of Nimrod is, to be sure, found already in Josephus (Ant. 1. 113–14) but without pitting him against Abraham; this, to my knowledge, is not found in equally early sources. Cf. Beer, Bernhard, Leben Abrahams nach Auffassung der jüdischen Sage (Leipzig: Oscar Leiner, 1859) esp. 7–11Google Scholar. It is significant that in the Book of the Cave of Treasures the Abraham story does not even mention Nimrod. Is the rabbinical tradition which makes Abraham an opponent of astrology, by divine command (see, e.g., Ginzberg, Legends, 5. 227, n. 18), an indirect polemical reflection of the Yonṭon legend? On the varied spectrum of Jewish attitudes to astrology see Charlesworth's, James H. useful survey, “Jewish Astrology in the Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Palestinian Synagogues,” HTR 70 (1977) 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar