Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/30

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THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF

lot is come up before me,'" etc. It is mainly a prophecy of the Flood.

cvi., cvii. may possibly be the beginning of the Book. They deal with the birth of Noah. But Enoch is the speaker.

The second set of passages does not contain Noah's name.

In Jubilees, the Noah-passages are vii. 20–39, x. 1–15.

The former gives Noah's commandments to his sons. At v. 26 he begins abruptly to speak in the first person: "And we were left, I and you, my sons."

The other (x. 1–15) tells how the demons afflicted Noah's posterity, and how at his prayer all but a tenth part of them were bound in the place of condemnation, and how the angels taught Noah all the remedies for the diseases which the demons had introduced, which he recorded in a book and gave it to Shem.[1] Parts of this section exist in Hebrew in a Book of Noah, printed by Jellinek and by Charles, and analyzed by Rönsch in his Buch der Jubiläen.

It will be seen that the book was of miscellaneous character; partly legendary and haggadic, partly apocalyptic: not unlike the Book of Enoch, in fact. As to its original compass, we have no indication whatsoever, and the absence of references to it in literature seems to show that it went out of sight and use at an early date. Possibly the speeches of Noah in the Sibylline Oracles (Book I.) may be derived from it, but not probably; there is little that is distinctive in them.


Noah: Noria his Wife

Epiphanius (Heresy, 26) has a good deal to say about a Book of Noria, the wife of Noah, which was used by the Borborite Gnostics. He abuses them for calling her Noria instead of Bath Enos (which in Jubilees, iv. 28 is the name of Noah's mother), and relates (presumably on the authority of the Book) that, as they say, "she

  1. There is in Syriac a book of prognostics under Shem's name recently edited by Dr. Mingana (Rylands Library Bulletin).