Noah in rabbinic literature Noah in rabbinic literature Allusions in rabbinic literature to the Biblical character Noah, who saved his family and representatives of all the animals from a great flood by constructing an ark, contain various expansions, elaborations and inferences beyond what is presented in the text of the Bible itself. According to Midrash Agadah on Genesis v. 29, Noah obtained his name, which means "rest," only after he had invented implements for tilling the ground, which, owing to the lack of such implements, had yielded only thorns and thistles (comp. Genesis 3:18). In this manner Noah really brought rest to mankind and
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