Mysterious Noah

This is an old article from my now deceased blog, but it's worth reposting...

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Noah, Descendent of Cain?

This is a wierd one. In trying to follow the lineages of Cain & Seth to the Flood, we find a whole load of bizarreness. The Bible is obviously covering up the truth, for some reason... I'll try to make some sense of it...

Duplicate lineage

The two lineages are superimposed for some reason. Here's a list: (link)

Seth - Enos - Cainan - Mahaleel - Jared - Enoch - Methuselah - Lamech - Noah
Cain - Enoch - Irad - Mehujael - Methusael - Lamech - Naamah

Points to consider:

• There's a fair bit of flexibility in names. Ham was also Chem or Kemet. Seth was Set or Satanael. Cain was Qayin. etc... So even Mehujael and Mahaleel could conceivably be the same individual...
• This is at the very beginning of the human race, there were plenty of spare names available. There are no other occurrences of duplicate names in the antediluvians (that I can find). Everyone else's name was unique (as you'd expect).
• These are supposed to be enemy families! Is it likely that either would have chosen the same or even similar names for their children, as those of their enemy? I seriously doubt it. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say it just wouldn't happen.
• All these people were contemporaries - they all lived at roughly the same time, and may have appeared to be all about the same age.

"What is not often perceived is that while the Patriarchs had prodigious lifespans, they dovetailed to such an extent that, according to the chronology of Genesis, the total elapsed time adds up to no more than 1656 years."
(link)

A re-arrangement of the above list might look like this. (It's just a guess to make the point):

Seth - (no sons, only daughters)
Cain - Enoch/Enos - Mehujael/Mahaleel - Irad/Yared - Methuselah/Methusael - Lamech - Noah/Naamah

The point being that the official lineage is not credible. It looks very much like the author was trying to cover up the fact that Noah was of the line of Cain, as were his whole family, if indeed he was a he, and they were his kids... Their behaviour after leaving the ark makes it plain they weren't all good people.

There are other discrepancies too.

The 'Two' Lamechs

Leaving aside the unlikelihood of naming your son after your worst enemy's son for a moment, the 'good' Lamech doesn't seem to have existed. There's no real data, just the magick number 777. It probably means 'They were the same person!', or something...

This is the 'bad' Lamech, of the Cain lineage:

According to this lineage, Lamech had three sons - Jabal, Jubel, and Tubal-Cain. His wives were Adah and Zillah. He was thus the first admitted polygamist, and the father of the founders of nomadism, the musical arts, and metalworking. Lamech is the seventh generation according to the Cainite lineage and the numbers 7 and 77 seem to play an important part in his poem in Genesis:

"Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech; I have killed a man for wounding me, a boy for injuring me. If Cain be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-seven fold."

The reference to killing a boy and a man, leading to a curse to the 77th generation, has been a puzzle to scholars for centuries. Who then were these people who were so important as to bring such drastic retribution to Lamech?

The 'good' Lamech:

"Lamech was 182 years old when he begot a son. He named him Noah, which is to say ’This one will bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which the Lord had placed under a ban.’ After the birth of Noah, Lamech lived 595 years and begot sons and daughters. All the days of Lamech came to 777 years, then he died."

The Jewish Encyclopedia Says: One Lamech, Two 'Traditions'

LAMECH, one of the antediluvian patriarchs in Genesis. According to the list recounting the lineage of Cain (Gen. 4:17–24 – ascribed to the J tradition), Lamech was the son of Methushael (4:18) and the father of three sons, *Jabal, *Jubal, and *Tubal-Cain, and a daughter, Naamah (4:20–22). His wives were *Adah and Zillah (4:19). He was thus the first polygynist and the father of the founders of nomadism, the musical arts, and metalworking. He is also the author of a song (4:23–24), which is structurally and linguistically an example of early Hebrew poetry. Significantly, Lamech is the seventh human generation, and in his song the typological numbers 7 and 77 appear (4:24). Another genealogy of Lamech (assigned to the P tradition) is presented in a list of the descendants of Seth (5:25–31; I Chron. 1:3). In this list, Lamech is the son of Methuselah and the father of Noah.
(link)

Mysterious Noah

Noah has no brothers, sisters, or mother mentioned in the Bible. The Book of Jubilees names his mother as 'Betenos'. Very little is known about his life. The name of the place he lived is not mentioned.

This link also explains the dispersal of his sons into the various countries and nations, it's useful:
(link)

The Name 'Noah' is a Girl's Name

All the patriarch's name's in Genesis end in a consonant-sound, except Methuselah and Noah.

Maybe Methusael's name was changed for two reasons:
1) to obscure the true genealogy, as discussed,
2) to provide a precedent of a male with a 'ah' name ending, otherwise the name Noah really sticks out like a sore thumb...

Male Names - all with hard endings: Set, Cain, Irad, Enok, Lamek
Female Names - most with 'ah' ending: Naamah, Zillah, Adah, Edna. (There are a couple of exceptions)
(link)

The second Noah in the Bible is a woman...
- "Noah: a woman of Manasseh" - (link)

Did the Priesthood Bypass Noah Because He was a She?

"in the Slavonic Book of Enoch, Methuselah passes the mantle of priesthood to Nir, thereby bypassing the generation of Lamech; and what is more significant, skipping over Noah, his eldest son."
(link)

Lamech's Lament: The Accidental Murder of the Real 'Noah'?

"Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech; I have killed a man for wounding me, a boy for injuring me. If Cain be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-seven fold."

Some traditions say Lamech killed his ancestor Cain. It makes some sense, except Lamech says 'a man', not 'my ancestor', or 'grandpa', or 'Cain'. They also say he killed his son Tubal Cain (the 'boy for injuring me') but, but, Tubal Cain was Thor for fuck's sake! :)

So who did Lamech kill? Was it one or two people? If it was one (much more likely), they he's saying he killed a young man. Obviously not Cain then. He obviously feels he should be cursed, it must've been a terrible shame. So who did he kill? His own son?

Interesting...

the Noah fragment in I Enoch 106 contains the story of the birth of Noah as a wondrous, shining child. Lamech fears that this baby is not his own child, but the offspring of the Watchers and goes to ask his father Methusaleh to inquire of his father Enoch. He is reassured by Enoch. This story also occurs, with some variants, in the second column of the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran. There, the name of Enoch's wife is Batenosh, as in Jubilees 4:27 (Bêtênôs). The same story is also evidently reflected in the fragmentary text 1Q19, the so-called "Book of Noah."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11781.html

There's a whole load of supposition about this sort of thing in this link. Note: "Noah, he was circumcised from his mother's womb.", I wonder, was he circumcised to the point of being a girl, by any chance?
(link)

Noah after the flood was certainly not a shiny kinda guy... Did Lamech kill his righteous, shiny son, or was she a daughter? I'm confused.

Was Noah a Father?

Laurence Gardner says at least 2 of the boys were the sons of Tubal Cain... "Ham and Japhet, according to this Mother of All Family Trees (and in accordance with Laurence Gardner's extensive research on the subject), are NOT the sons of Noah. Sorry about that. "
(link)

Shem did seem to be a more righteous fellow than his brothers, but they were all a mixed bag, giving rise to a mixed people, some good, some bad. In any event, Noah's parentage of the 3 boys is in question...

Perhaps he adopted the three boys after his dad accidentally killed his brother?

Tubal Cain: Killed By His Dad?

Of course, if the three boys were Tubal's, and not Noah's, then you have to ask why they were with Noah, and not Tubal?

The obvious answer would be that, despite Tubal being Thor (FFS), Lamech really did kill him. Note that Tubal could have been several hundred years old, and could have taken plenty of holidays crusading around the world, pretending to be a god in that time. (I'd rather hoped, in a way, that Tubal would have learned how to make a flyin' saucer to save himself, and generally have fun in... In which case, he could've saved his own boys...)

Lamech was a rich powerful sorcerer. In the Baldr tradition, magick was involved in the death... (see below)

In which case, Noah would be Tubal's brother. Or maybe his sister Naamah. Naamah sounds a lot like Noah. Don't you think? The problem with that theory is that Naamah was beautiful. She'd never pass for a bloke. Or build a ship.

Was Noah Lamech's ugly daughter? Maybe he was from another part of the family entirely... There just isn't enough data here to make a determination...

Baldr

There are some interesting parallels in the Norse myths.

Baldr (also Balder, Baldur) is a god of light and purity in Norse mythology, and a son of the god Odin and the goddess Frigg. He has numerous brothers, such as Thor and Váli.
(link)

Baldr had the greatest ship ever built. Baldr was killed by mistake, by his brother Holdr.

The Curse of Canaan

"And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan;"
(link)

Debate 'rages' over what actually happened. "What did Ham see [or do] that he emasculated him?" Ideas include: 1) Ham sodomised Noah, 2) Ham castrated Noah, 3) Ham had sex with Noah's wife - who gave birth to Canaan.

It's not clear when Canaan is born, or of which mother. So #3 is a popular choice. Although if he really did wake up and curse Canaan immediately, he'd have to have already been born. In typically useless Bible style though, the 'And' could mean 'Years later'. Who knows.

Why would he curse Ham's son? His crime isn't mentioned... After the event happened it's noted that Noah and his wife had no more children. (Perhaps they never did, and all their kids were adopted.)

Could it be something like this: Canaan has a young child, who noticed something strange about Grandpa Noah. Maybe he said something like 'Granddad, why do you have breasts like a woman?', as kids do... Ham noticed, and went to have a look one evening when Noah was drunk, and what he found was that Noah was a woman...

Is it possible that Noah and his wife were both women?

Conclusion

The conclusion is - I can't draw any conclusion.
I hate mysteries.

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UPDATE: I just came across this which says some legends say Noah had a fourth son, after the flood. If he instructed Nimrod, then he must've been a true Cainite. Perhaps it was Canaan...

"An early Arabic work known as Kitab al-Magall or the Book of Rolls (part of Clementine literature) mentions Bouniter, the fourth son of Noah, born after the flood, who allegedly invented astronomy and instructed Nimrod.[24] Variants of this story with often similar names for Noah's fourth son are also found in..."

"Martin of Opava (c. 1250), later versions of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, and the Chronicon Bohemorum of Giovanni di Marignola (1355) make Janus (i.e., the Roman deity) the fourth son of Noah, who moved to Italy, invented astrology, and instructed Nimrod."
(link)

It it was Canaan, and he's described as Noah's son in story A, and as Ham's son in story B, then it does lend weight to the hypothesis that Noah was a woman. Although it's far from conclusive.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Noah's sex was changed in order to: a) Cover that fact that the true father of the 3 boys was in fact Tubal Cain. b) Cover the fact the the only righteous person on the planet was a woman.