NOAH, BOOKS OF

Although a Book of Noah is not referred to in the Christian canon lists, there is a good deal of evidence that such a work or works existed. In Jubilee 10:1–15 reference is made to a medical and anti-demonic work transmitted by Noah to his descendants after the Flood, when, in spite of Noah's intercession, a tenth of the demons were left on earth, causing trouble and affliction. What appears to be another form of this passage is to be found in the opening paragraphs of the medieval medical treatise Sefer Asaf ha-Rofe. Some scholars, such as Charles, would also attribute Jubilees 7:20–39 to a Book of Noah. A second body of Noah material is that discerned by Charles in i Enoch. The chapters which appear assuredly to be drawn from a Noah book are i Enoch 6–11, 60, 65–69, 106–7. Material closely associated with i Enoch 6–11 and 106–7 appears in 1Q19, the so-called "Book of Noah" from Qumran. This text does not appear to be simply the Hebrew original of the I Enoch Noah material, but to be closely associated with it. Yet another group of Noah texts associated with ritual instructions of a priestly character is referred to in Jubilees 21:10, there as part of Abraham's instructions to Isaac. This tradition was also known to the author of the Greek "Fragments of the Testament of Levi," undoubtedly a very ancient text, again directly attributed to Noah and included in Abraham's instructions to Isaac (Greek fragment 57), and in a brief form, without the attribution to Noah, in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Levi 9:11. The Jewish magical book Sefer ha-*Razim is also ascribed to Noah.

bibliography:

Charles, Apocrypha, 2 (1913), 168; M.R. James, Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament (1920), 11f.; Barthélemy-Milik, 84–86; M. Margalioth (ed.), Sefer ha-Razim (1966).

[Michael E. Stone]