Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including the Quran (Surahs 71, 7, 1, and 21). The primary account of Noah in the Bible is in the Book of Genesis. Noah was the tenth of the pre-flood (antediluvian) Patriarchs. His father was Lamech and his mother is not named in the biblical accounts. When Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth (). The Genesis flood narrative makes up chapters 6–9 in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible. The narrative, one of many flood myths found
Japheth ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, leading scholars to suppose that the history is a late composition, attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction to that book and to the Torah. Japheth (in Hebrew, Yaphet) is a transliteration of the Greek Iapetos, the ancestor of the Hellenic peoples. His sons and grandsons associate him with the geographic area of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia - Ionia/Javan, Rhodes/Rodanim, Cyprus/Kittim, and other points in the region of Greece and Asia Minor - approximating to one of the three kingdoms into which the generals of Alexander the Great divided his empire