Book of Noah — Fragmentary Witness Dossier

The Book of Noah — A Fragmentary Witness

[No complete Book of Noah survives. These fragments are drawn from the places where the older Noah writing was taken up and preserved within other books.]

Of the birth of Noah it was written: that the child was unlike the children of men; his flesh was white as snow and red as a rose, his hair white as wool, and his eyes shone, so that when he opened them the house was filled with light. He rose from the hands of the midwife and blessed the Lord of heaven. His father Lamech was afraid and went to his father Methuselah, and Methuselah to Enoch at the ends of the earth, and Enoch answered that the child was no stranger but a true son, and that he would be left, with his sons, when a flood came upon all the earth.

[Fragment]

Of the teaching given to Noah it was written: that after the flood, when spirits troubled the children of Noah and led them astray and made them sick, an angel taught Noah the healing of every illness by the herbs and the roots of the earth, and Noah wrote it all in a book and gave it to Shem his eldest son. [Line damaged]

[Fragment]

Of the dividing of the earth it was written: that Noah divided the whole earth among his three sons by lot, and bound them with an oath to keep each to his portion and not to seize the portion of his brother; and he warned them against the blood and against the spirits that lead astray.

[Here the witnesses fail; the Book of Noah survives only as these gathered fragments.]