05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 408 408 C. JOHN COLLINs There are indications, most clearly in eusebius’ Preparation of the Gospel, 10.9, 10, and augustine, City of God 21.8 (preserving material from the 1st century B.C.e. roman historian Varro), that the Greeks had tales of an earlier flood associated with a king, Ogygos; but not much is known of this person, and Jewish and Christian writers place most of their attention on the better-known deucalion (who, as we can see, was also likened to the hero of the Mesopotamian story). There are other tales that associate great floods with various characters (such as dardanus), but these floods are more clearly of limited sig- nificance and do not figure in the process of drawing parallels 12. II. references to non-biblical flood stories in second Temple Jewish sources since I am looking for ways in which second Temple Jewish au- thors thought about non-biblical flood stories in the period before and roughly contemporary with the New Testament, I can safely leave out of my discussion the later rabbinic sources in Hebrew and aramaic, even though they may indeed contain materials from the time we are considering 13. Besides, being in Hebrew and aramaic, these sources will not help us in searching for Greek terms. For the most part, the specifically sectarian texts from Qumran do not have much bearing on our discussion either. The Hebrew Bible itself does not have many explicit references to the Noah story; the most straightforward are Isaiah 54,9 and ezekiel 14,14.20 14. Isaiah 54,9 uses God’s promise after the great flood as an image for God’s enduring commitment to preserve zion. ezekiel 14,14.20 mentions Noah as a member of a trio of exemplary men (Noah, daniel/dan’el, and Job) whose righteousness would not 12 e.g., from the first century B.C.e.: dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1.61.2 Cf. M. Hadas, Hellenistic Culture. Fusion and diffusion (Morningside (in arcadia); diodorus siculus, 5.47.3 (at the island of samothrace). 13 Heights, Ny 1959) 79-82, who finds traces of Judaism’s contact with Helle- nism more in the indirect realm of loan words and modes of argumentation. 14 some would add Isa 24,18 (“windows of heaven opened”, cf. Gen 7,11; typological interpretation of Noah’s flood”, Criswell Theological Review 5 8,2) to this list: e.g., d. sTreeTT, “as it was in the days of Noah: The prophets’ (2007) 33-51. If this is correct, it is an image for the unavoidable devastation that will fall.