Noah

In the book of Genesis in the Bible, Noah was the hero chosen by God to survive a great flood on earth. The biblical story was probably based on similar accounts of a flood in myths from Mesopotamia*.

According to the story in Genesis, the human race had become so wicked that God was sorry he ever created it. He decided to wash away all the creatures of the earth in a great flood. However, God saw that Noah was a righteous man so he decided to save him. God told Noah of his plans and instructed him to build a great ark in which he could ride out the storm with his wife and children. Then he commanded Noah to find male and female specimens of every type of animal on the earth and bring them into the ark and also to gather plants and seeds. Noah followed God's instructions and entered the ark as the rain began to fall.

It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, until the waters covered even the tops of the highest mountains. After the rain ended, Noah released a raven and a dove to find out whether there was any dry land on earth. Both birds returned, indicating that water still covered the planet. Seven days later, Noah sent the dove out again. This time it returned with an olive branch, which meant that dry land had finally appeared. According to later Jewish legend, the ark came to rest on the top of Mount Ararat (in what is now Turkey), and Noah and his family emerged with all the animals.

Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice to God. God then made a covenant, or agreement, with Noah, promising never again to devastate the earth because of the wickedness of humans. He placed a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this covenant.

See also Floods; Gilgamesh; Semitic Mythology; Utnapishtim.

Noah (in the Bible) a Hebrew patriarch represented as tenth in descent from Adam. According to a story in Genesis he made the ark which saved his family and specimens of every animal from the Flood, and his sons Ham, Shem, and Japheth were regarded as ancestors of all the races of humankind (Genesis 5–10). The tradition of a great flood in very early times is found also in other countries.
Noah's ark the ship in which Noah, his family, and the animals were saved from the Flood, according to the biblical account (Genesis 6–8); a children's toy representing this.

Noah (nō´ə) [Heb.,=to rest], in the Bible, the builder of the ark. Righteous Noah and his family were the only people God saved from a world sunk in sin. At divine direction Noah built the ship that saved human and animal life from the Deluge, after which God established a covenant with him. According to biblical ethnography, Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, are eponymous ancestors of races as humankind is divided in the Bible. The story has similarities with other Middle Eastern accounts of the Deluge in the Gilgamesh epic and in the Babylonian myth of Atrahasis.

Noah Old Testament patriarch, the only person righteous enough to be chosen by God to survive the destruction of the Flood. In Genesis 6–9, Noah built an Ark, in accordance with God's instructions, to carry and shelter himself, all his family, and selected animals and birds. Noah and his sons and their wives were the ancestors of the human race after the Flood.

Noah. Survivor of the great flood in the Hebrew scriptures. According to Genesis, Noah was commanded to save himself, his family, and a breeding pair of each animal species in a wooden ark. After surviving the flood, Noah offered sacrifices to God who blessed him and made a covenant (see NOACHIDE LAWS) with him (Genesis 6. 9–9. 17).

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