C. John Collins, «Noah, Deucalion, and the New Testament», Vol. 93 (2012) 403-426
Jewish authors in the second Temple period, as well as early Christian authors after the New Testament, made apologetically-motivated connections between the biblical story of Noah and Gentile stories of the flood, including Greek stories involving deucalion — most notably Plato’s version. Analysis of the New Testament letters attributed to Peter indicates that these also allude to the Gentile flood stories, likely in order to enhance their readers’ sense of the reality of the biblical events.
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NOAH, DEUCALION, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
hero, Deucalion, due to his piety. His “salvation†came
through a “great ark†, which carried his family and
pairs of all kinds of animals. Although he says, “This is the legend of
Deucalion as told by the Greeksâ€, it looks like Lucian depended largely
on Semitic sources 10.
A full version of the flood story, with Deucalion as the hero, ap-
pears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8 C.E.) 1,143-437. Written in
Latin, it will not help us much in looking for Greek terms, though it
draws on Greek tales. Along with the moral degradation of humans
that provoked the gods to punish humankind (an element prominent
in the Semitic versions, and almost absent from the extant Greek
ones), Ovid mentions the “giants†(1.153, gigantes, cf. Gen 6,4 LXX)
who assaulted heaven. One of Ovid’s sources was Hesiod (8th cen-
tury B.C.E.), who has the earliest known mention of Deucalion, sim-
ply telling us that he was the son of Prometheus (Catalogues of
Women, 1); Hesiod also describes the “giants†, who
grew from the ground as the blood of the castrated Ouranos hit the
earth (Theogony, 176-85). But certainly Ovid did not limit himself
to Hesiod’s bare account!
We find incidental mention of Deucalion and his flood in various
writers, such as Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.E.), Meteorology, i.14 (352a,
30-35), where he tells us that the flood was local (largely in Hellenic
lands), and that it resulted from a natural cycle 11. Plutarch (46 – c.
120 C.E.) recounts Deucalion’s flood in passing, Moralia, 968f (De
Sollertia animalium). His reference to the release of a dove indicates
that Plutarch also drew (ultimately) on Semitic sources. In his Life
of Pyrrhus, 1, he treats the flood, and Deucalion and Pyrrha, as his-
torical referents. Pausanius (2nd century C.E.), in his Description of
Greece, has a number of scattered references to Deucalion and the
flood, which likewise seem to indicate that he took them as at least
touching upon history (1.18.7-8; 1.40.1; 5.1.3; 5.8.1; 10.6.2; 10.8.1).
See the brief note in H. STRONG ‒ J. GARSTANG (eds.), The Syrian God-
10
dess (London 1913) 81, n. 98; more fully, see R.A. ODEN, Studies in Lucian’s
De Syria Dea (Missoula, MT 1977) 24-36. A. HILHORST, “The Noah Story:
Was It Known to the Greeks?â€, Interpretations of the Flood (eds. F. GARCÃA
MARTÃNEZ ‒ G.P. LUTTIKHUIZEN) (Leiden 1999) 56-65, goes so far as to sug-
gest that both Plutarch and Lucian drew on the biblical tale.
Aristotle is often thought of as being more ideologically naturalistic
11
than, say, Plato, and this would be consistent with that.