05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 403 Noah, Deucalion, and the New Testament Human cultures around the world have their “flood stories”, tales of one or more catastrophic events in the distant past 1. These stories have similarities and differences, in relation to each other and in relation to the Genesis flood story; possible causes for these include (1) common experience of living near a body of water; (2) an actual event or cluster of events from a time before the cultures diverged; or (3) some combination of (1) and (2). I do not propose here to enter into the historical questions; but it comes as no sur- prise that Jewish authors from the second Temple period, as well as early Christian authors, who took for granted that Genesis has historical referents, tended toward explanations (2) and (3). Certainly the biblical story of the great flood bears interesting resemblances to the flood traditions found elsewhere in the ancient world, most notably those from Mesopotamia and to a lesser extent those from the Hellenistic world. Hence no one finds it extraordi- nary that Jewish and Christian authors drew attention to these re- semblances and, generally, identified the biblical Noah with the human heroes of the other stories, while insisting that any differ- ences should be resolved in favor of Genesis. The New Testament authors mention Noah and the great flood a handful of times, drawing one moral lesson or another from the Gen- esis narrative. In this essay I will raise the question whether the New Testament authors themselves show any awareness of the possible identification of Noah with characters in the non-biblical stories 2. For some samples, see T.H. GasTer, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament. a Comparative study with Chapters from sir James G. Fra- 1 zier ’s Folklore in the Old Testament (Gloucester, Ma 1981) 82-131. English Standard Version with Apocrypha (Oxford 2009). similarly, I have 2 as a general rule, the translations from Greek and Hebrew follow the translated passages from the Lxx with the esV (which is usually based on the MT) in mind. Unless otherwise noted, I take Graeco-roman texts from the Loeb editions; and I have adjusted translations from the editions to match translation in the series, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fa- the esV where necessary. I generally adapt the Christian Fathers from the thers (aNF, NPNF). BIBLICA 93.3 (2012) 403-426