The Birth of Noah: The Baby Who Frightened His Father

In shortAccording to chapter 106 of 1 Enoch, Noah was born with a body white as snow and red as a rose, hair white as wool, and eyes that lit up the whole house like the sun. As soon as he was taken from the midwife's hands he opened his mouth and spoke to God.

The midwife was still holding the baby in her hands, and it was already clear that this birth was unlike any other. The house filled with light, the baby opened his eyes, opened his mouth and began to speak. The father, who had been standing by for the usual news, a boy or a girl, did not stay to hear the rest. He ran.

So begins one of the strangest stories in 1 Enoch, and readers who are used to finding angels and heavens in this book may be surprised to discover that it is mostly a family story. It has a frightened father, a worried grandfather, and a great-grandfather who lives very far away and knows everything.

What Genesis does not tell

The Book of Genesis gives the birth of Noah two verses. Lamech fathers a son, names him Noah, and explains the name: “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands.” There is no light, no fear, and no hint that anything about the baby raised an eyebrow.

The Book of Enoch fills the gap generously. The story appears in chapters 106 and 107, at the very end of the book, and the narrator is Enoch himself:

His body was white as snow and red as a lily in bloom, the hair of his head and crown was like pure white wool, and his eyes were beautiful. When he opened his eyes, he lit up the whole house like the sun, and the whole house was filled with a great light. When he was taken from the midwife's hands, he opened his mouth and spoke to the God of righteousness.

1 Enoch 106:2–3

Lamech's suspicion

Lamech is not delighted. He runs to his father Methuselah, and what he tells him is a long way from the pride of a new father:

He said to him: I have fathered a strange son. He is not like other people. He looks like the children of the angels. His appearance is different, and he is not like us: his face shines, and his eyes are like the rays of the sun. It seems to me that he is from the angels and not from me. And now I am afraid that there will be a sign on the earth in his days.

1 Enoch 106:5–6

It is easy to smile at this, but in the world of the Book of Enoch the suspicion makes perfect sense. A few generations earlier, in the days of Jared, two hundred angels had come down to earth, taken wives from among the daughters of men, and fathered giants. Someone who lives in such a world and sees a baby with a shining face does not think of a miracle. He thinks of the neighbors upstairs.

We tend to imagine that people in the ancient world welcomed wonders with enthusiasm. This story offers a more sober picture. A person's first reaction to a wonder happening in his own home is alarm, and the second is to look for an expert.

The journey to the ends of the earth

The expert, in this case, is the father's grandfather. Enoch no longer lives among human beings. His dwelling is with the angels, and Lamech knows it. So Methuselah sets out, reaches the ends of the earth and calls out. Enoch hears him, comes to him and asks simply: why have you come to me, my son?

Methuselah repeats all the details, and the story lets him repeat them almost word for word: the whiteness, the hair, the eyes, the speech. Enoch listens, and his answer begins in an unexpected place. Before he says a word about the baby, he brings up the sin of the angels. Lamech's suspicion, it turns out, had touched the right subject. Only the address was wrong.

And now tell Lamech your son that the child born to him is truly his son, and name him Noah, for he will be a remnant for you. He and his sons will be saved from the destruction that will come upon the earth because of all the sin and violence that will be done on the earth in his days.

1 Enoch 106:18

The baby, then, is Lamech's son, and that is exactly why he matters. The angels fathered giants who ruined the earth. Lamech fathered the man who would remain after it was ruined. The light that filled the house told of the son's future, not of his father's identity.

The same story, told by the father

In 1947 an Aramaic scroll was found in a cave near the Dead Sea, and it came to be known as the Genesis Apocryphon. In this scroll Lamech tells the story in the first person, and it gains a scene that the Book of Enoch does not have: a conversation between husband and wife. Lamech makes his wife, whose name is Bitenosh, swear to tell him the truth. She is upset, reminds him of the night she conceived, and swears that the child is his, and not the son of any of the sons of heaven. Only then does he run to his father.

There is something touching about this scene. In the Book of Enoch nobody asks the mother anything, and she does not appear at all. In the scroll she is the only character who knows the truth firsthand, and she is the one who has to swear in order to be believed.

The two works thus tell one story, and many scholars believe that both drew on an older tradition about Noah, perhaps written in a book that has not come down to us. Aramaic fragments of these very chapters were also found at Qumran, among the remains of the Book of Enoch.

Why special babies shine

Noah is not the only baby who lit up a house. The Talmud relates that when Moses was born, “the whole house was filled with light.” Stories about the births of heroes, founders and saviors return again and again to the same signs: light, early speech, a bewildered parent.

There is a logic to this. Whoever tells the story of a great person already knows how it ends, and finds it hard to believe that the beginning was ordinary. We do the same today, on a more modest scale: almost every biography of a scientist or a composer finds a moment in childhood when “you could already tell.” The Book of Enoch simply turns the light up higher.

And yet this story differs from most tales of wondrous births in one detail: doubt stands at its center. The reader knows the child will be Noah. Lamech does not, and the whole plot grows out of his not knowing.

A name that promises comfort

The story ends with a name. Methuselah returns from the ends of the earth, delivers Enoch's words to Lamech, and the child is called Noah, after the comfort he will bring to the earth.

That comfort deserves a second look. Enoch does not promise that the disaster will be averted. He says plainly that a flood will come, that the earth will lie desolate for a whole year, and that after the flood sin will grow even greater. The only comfort is that someone will be left.

So Lamech received an answer that was reassuring and alarming at once: the child is his, and the world he knows is about to end. Most parents look at their newborn and ask whom the baby resembles. Lamech asked that question, and got the answer to a different one altogether: what will remain after him.