Noah in rabbinic literature When Noah and his family and everything that he had taken with him were inside the ark, the people left outside asked him to admit them too, promising repentance. Noah refused to admit them, objecting that he had exhorted them to repent many years before the Flood. The people then assembled in great numbers around the ark in order to break into it; but they were destroyed by the lions and other wild animals which also surrounded it (Tanhuma., Noah, 10; Genesis Rabba 32.14; "Sefer haYashar", l.c.). Noah was constantly occupied in the ark; for he had to attend to
Generations of Noah traced their ancestry; in William of Malmesbury's version of this genealogy (c. 1120), Sceaf is instead made a descendant of "Strephius", the fourth son born aboard the Ark ("Gesta Regnum Anglorum"). An early Arabic work known as "Kitab al-Magall" "Book of Rolls" (part of Clementine literature) mentions "Bouniter", the fourth son of Noah, born after the flood, who allegedly invented astronomy and instructed Nimrod. Variants of this story with often similar names for Noah's fourth son are also found in the c. fifth century Ge'ez work "Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan" ("Barvin"), the c. sixth century Syriac book