05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 405 405 NOAH, DEUCALION, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT I. Sources for non-biblical flood stories Many of the ancient non-biblical flood stories come from fragments of the authors’ works that are cited in other authors’ works, such as Jose- phus, Eusebius, and Augustine. Further, a number of authors mention the flood and its protagonists incidentally, as well-known figures 5. There is wide agreement that the Mesopotamian flood stories pro- vide important context for reading the Genesis flood story. Neverthe- less, these tales, being written first in Sumerian, and then in Akkadian, would have little relevance for the audience of a New Testament text, unless they were put into Greek. Hence the Babylonian scholar Berossus performed a crucial service when he made a record of Baby- lonian history in Greek (early 3rd century B.C.E.). The original does not survive; Alexander Polyhistor (early 1st century B.C.E.) used Berossus as a major source, and this is probably the form that appears in the quo- tations in Josephus (Antiquities, 1,93 [1.3.6]; Against Apion, 1,128ff [1.19f]) and in Eusebius’ Chronicle (preserved in Georgius Syncellus, Chronography) 6. The “Noah” figure here is called Xisuthros, and the narrative contains a number of elements familiar from Genesis, such as the man taking animals and his family aboard the vessel, the release of birds, the vessel running aground on a mountain, the altar and sac- rifice, and the “pitch Gen 6,14 LXX). Even earlier than Berossus is Plato (428 – 348 B.C.E.), who de- scribes a great flood and its aftermath in his Laws, Book 3 (677a– 680a). Plato focuses on how the destruction would have reduced the survivors to very simple living conditions, which may well have made them morally superior to “us” their successors; eventually, peo- ple developed government and laws. For his purposes Plato uses the flood story from “the ancient tales which he takes “to contain some truth he says noth- ing about whether there was any hero, or about what might have G.A. CADUFF, Antike Sintflutsagen (Göttingen 1986), gives a full listing 5 of every text that might have some mention of the flood and its accompani- ments; I have focused on the most relevant and promising ones. The Greek appears on pages 53-56 of the PG edition of Syncellus, and 6 an English translation in G.P. VERBRUGGHE ‒ J.M. WICKERSHAM, Berossus and Manetho, Introduced and Translated. Native Traditions in Ancient Mes- opotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor, MI 1996). For the view that Josephus de- pends on Polyhistor, see L. FELDMAN, Flavius Josephus, Judean Antiquities 1–4. Translation and Commentary (Leiden 2004) 34, n. 235.