Reading Notes: Noah Part B

Bibliography

Stories of Noah from The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg, Read it here

For part B of the Noah Unit readings, the stories all come from Jewish folktales/legends. Overall, reading through the stories was interesting because I got to compare them to the stories that I was told about Noah as a kid. I think my main takeaway was that the Jewish stories have a lot more detail and they aren't afraid of making "Bible heroes" look human or even foolish or wicked!

One of my favorite stories from the readings was "The Curse of Drunkenness". In this story, Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and proceeds to get very drunk and somehow is naked in his tent. One of his sons Ham then sees his father naked, and tells his siblings. When Noah finds out, he becomes very angry at Ham and curses Ham's sons and all of their children after them. 

I always thought this seemed like an unfair and extreme reaction, especially considering that Noah was the one who decided to get drunk and end up naked in the first place, but everyone in the Bible always accepted it so who am I to say.

The Jewish version of this story has several notable differences from the Christian biblical version. First, Noah plants the vineyard in a partnership with Satan, who "happened along at the very moment" Noah was starting to plant the vineyard, which is extremely good storytelling in my opinion. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but I like that this version of the story kind of has a sense of humor and doesn't take the events too seriously.

Another key difference is that it mentions that Noah's drunkenness was a similar mistake to Adam's original sin. The Christian bible doesn't ever say what fruit Adam ate, but this story says that Adam ate a grape and got drunk off of it, which is interesting because I don't think that's how grapes work. Maybe Adam's real sin was inventing the process of fermentation and creating alcohol.

The final last key difference that I noticed in this story was that Noah was unable to curse his son Ham because of the blessing Noah and his sons received after the flood. In the Christian tale, Ham and all of his descendents are cursed because Ham saw his father naked and told his brothers about it. However, in this version Ham's son Canaan is cursed, along with all of Canaan's descendents, because Canaan was the one who told Ham about Noah's nakedness.

All in all, I think these details make the Jewish version of Noah's drunkenness a more interesting story and also a more believable story. If Noah was such a pious man that God saved only him and his family from an apocalyptic event, then it doesn't really make sense that Noah would decide to sinfully get drunk only a little bit after his family was spared from the flood. However, if Satan was Noah's business partner, then we can probably read between the lines and assume Satan influenced Noah and that was a large reason why Noah abandoned his pious ways. Similarly, the continuity of Ham receiving a blessing from God and thus not being able to be cursed by his father also helps the believability of the story.

I'm not sure how I'll work these stories of Noah into a retelling, but I think there's a lot of interesting material to work with!

Noah, drunk and naked, being covered by two of his sons, as painted by Michelangelo.

(Image source: Wikimedia)