- In the Qur’ān, a son of Noah dies in the flood because, the Qur’ān states, he is not actually of Noah’s family. The passage in question (Q 11:46) was puzzling to classical Muslim exegetes and modern scholars alike, and the search for parallel narratives in previous biblical and parabiblical texts has been largely unsuccessful. Another Qur’ānic passage that portrays Noah’s wife in negative terms (Q 66:10) led some early Muslim scholars to consider the possibility that she cheated on his husband but this interpretation was later dismissed on the principle of prophetic infallibility. In this paper, the story of Noah’s perished son is examined in the light of Second Temple Jewish texts, in particular the First Book of Enoch and the Genesis Apocryphon, where the sexual corruption of the fallen angels leads to cases of doubtful paternity. In these sources Noah’s own birth is recounted as a wondrous event that makes Noah’s father Lamech suspect that his wife had the child from an angel. Lamech’s grandfather Enoch eventually confirms Noah’s righteous conception and birth but the narrative motifs around antediluvian sexual decadence, conjugal disloyalty and miraculous birth stories survive into other Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts. I argue that the Qur’ān, too, was aware of these narrative motifs and the story of Noah’s son constitutes a unique Qur’ānic spin on certain of these Enochic themes. (edited)
- The Qur’ānic story of Noah, retold in different recensions throughout the Qur’ān, principally follows the biblical synopsis but diverges significantly from it on one key point: Noah loses one of his sons to the flood. There are more than thirty references to Noah in the Qur’an but his story involving the flood is told primarily in three separate places. Q 11:25–48 recounts Noah’s preaching, the refusal of Noah’s people, the flood and Noah’s plea to God about his son. Q 26: 105–122 is a shorter narrative modeled onto other prophetic stories in the chapter but with references to Noah’s preaching and the flood once again. In a dramatic scene enacted in Chapter 11, Noah calls his son, who is not given a name in the Qur’ān, to board the ark amid rising waves but his son refuses saying that he will seek protection on a mountain. Noah warns him that nothing could save him from God’s command in that catastrophe but he cannot persuade his son to join him in the ark. The son perishes in the flood. Once the flood is over, Noah calls onto God to find out why his son, a member of his family who was promised by God to survive the flood, was not saved. God responds with the following (Q11:46).
The possibility that Noah’s wife could have been unfaithful, and hence that the son could have been from someone else, was entertained by a few early scholars but the majority of Muslim exegetes abhorred the idea of a prophet being cheated on by his wife and sought other explanations. In this article, Dost argues that the Qur’ān might be, in fact, speaking about an unfaithful wife and that it reflects in this interpretation the traditions about the anxieties of conjugal disloyalty and questions of paternity in the corrupt generation of the flood as found in Jewish texts from the Second Temple literature. Qur’ān’s conscious intertextual juxtaposition of Noah’s story with traditions from Enochic texts. Dost states that “admittedly, there is no positive evidence for the presence of biblical or parabiblical texts circulating in western Arabia before Islam”.
- Muslim exegetical tradition & Noah’s drowned son
- Q 66, a chapter dealing with a domestic dispute between Muḥammad and his wives, ends with allusions to four women as positive and negative role models for Muslim women. It is not hard to understand how Mary, Pharaoh’s wife and Lot’s wife gained their reputation based on their Qur’ānic portrayals but why is Noah’s wife condemned? The connection with Q 11:46’s statement that Noah’s drowned son was not of his family could suggest that her betrayal is of a sexual nature. Al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), collector of early exegetical traditions, lists several reports to that effect many of which go back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 728) (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 426–42). In one of these reports, Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d. 735), a junior contemporary of Ḥasan, approaches the latter and challenges his interpretation saying that the People of the Book, i.e. Jews and Christians, do not doubt Noah’s paternity of his son. Hasan simply responds that they are wrong, inna ahl al-kitābi yakdhibūna. According to the latter, the son was definitely not Noah’s biological son. In another report, Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 722), a contemporary of Ḥasan and another important scholar from the second generation, suggests that it became clear to Noah that the son was not his once God told him not to ask about something he does not know (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 427–428). There is another report here related by Thuwayr b. Abī Fākhita (d. 127 AH) on the authority of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114 AH) that puts it matter-offactly: “If he were of his family, he would have been saved”, law kāna min ahlihi la-najā. Ubayd b. ʿUmayr al-Laythī, another second generation scholar from Mecca, describes Noah’s son as a child born in one’s bed but not belonging to him biologically (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 428). In another report mentioned in al-Qurṭubī’s commentary, Ibn Jurayj (d. 767) says that Noah was under the wrong impression that the son was his (hence his calling him “my son”) but his wife betrayed him on this matter, wa kānat imraʾatuhu khānathu fīhi. 6 Al-Qurtubi also cites a report with a variant reading of the phrase wa-nādā nūhun ibnahu, “Noah called upon his son” as wa-nādā nūhun ibnahā, “Noah called upon her [i.e. his wife’s] son” hinting that the son was from another man (al-Qurṭubī 2006: vol. 11, 137).
- However, most Muslim exegetes disliked the idea of a Prophet’s wife cheating, because it is offensive (Noah): Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 687), Muḥammad’s cousin and an early Qur’ān scholar, vehemently denied it by saying that “no wife of a prophet ever fornicated”, mā baghat imraʾatu nabiyyin qaṭṭ (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 429). Ibn ʿAbbās’s opinion eventually became the majority position among later exegetes even though some of them continued to mention Ḥasan’s interpretation in their works. Al-Ṭabarī, for instance, says after citing numerous reports for both opinions that the correct interpretation is that of Ibn ʿAbbās and that the son was in fact Noah’s but he rejected his father’s religion and became excluded from Noah’s family that God promised to save, innahu laysa min ahlika l-ladhīna waʿadtuka an unajjiyahum (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 433). Al-Ṭabarī’s objection to the first interpretation was not necessarily because a cheating wife for a prophet was unthinkable but because the Qur’ān would not put the words “my son” in Noah’s mouth if it were not true (al-Ṭabarī 2001: vol. 12, 433). Others, like al-Zamakhsharī (d. 1144) and al-Ṭabarsī (d. 1153), objected on the principle of a prophet’s infallibility (al-Zamakhsharī 2009: 484). Al-Zamakhsharī argued that being cheated on is a defect from which the prophets are protected, wa-hādhihi ghaḍāḍa ʿuṣimat minhā l-anbiyāʾ. Al-Zamaksharī’s opinion is already cited in Reynolds 2016: 266. Al-Ṭabarsī does mention that the Qur’ān would not call him Noah’s son if it were not true and then adds that the prophets’ elevated status would have been blemished by such a disgrace, something that God would not allow, (see al-Ṭabarsī 2006: vol. 5, 220–221). If Noah’s son was in fact his biological son as Muslim exegetes unanimously thought, the second phrase in God’s response to Noah, the one referring to an “unrighteous act”, would have to be something other than his wife’s sexual betrayal. Two opinions prevailed here: innahu ʿamalun ghayru ṣāliḥin meant either that Noah’s asking about his perished son was an act of unrighteousness or that Noah’s son did something unrighteous such as rejecting his father’s religion that earned him his exclusion from the ark. Both explanations, however, required some grammatical acrobatics to work. The first interpretation, preferred by al-Ṭabarī, 16 would mean that the enclitic third person masculine pronoun –hu had no nominal precedent or antecedent to which it could refer other than the supposed “your questioning me about your son”. The second interpretation fares slightly better thanks to a minority variant reading that turns the nominal phrase into a verbal one, innahu ʿamila ghayra ṣāliḥin, meaning “he [i.e. Noah’s son] committed an unrighteous act”. 17 Otherwise the nominal phrase would have to be amended, as some scholars argued, to innahu dhū ʿamalin ghayri ṣāliḥin to arrive at the same meaning.
- 1 Enoch and the Genesis Apocryphon Parallels
- According to the 1 Enoch, in addition to teaching mankind the secrets of heavens, magic and other crafts, the angels that descended upon the earth copulated with women and sired giant, bloodthirsty children (See 1 Enoch 7:1-6; 9:7-9). After other angels complained to God about the havoc wrought on earth in the hands of the corrupted angels and their offspring, these “children of adultery”, as 1 Enoch 10:9 calls them, got destroyed either by fighting against each other or by perishing in the flood that God planned (1 Enoch 10). The danger of Watchers having relations with married women on earth and having children whose fathers would be uncertain was there but not fully developed in the narrative of the fallen angels at the beginning of 1 Enoch. That theme, however, became part of the narrative of Noah’s birth as it is recounted at the very end of 1 Enoch in chapters 106 and 107 ( see Nickelsburg 2001: 539–40). According to 1 Enoch 106, Noah is born as a wonder child with a snow-white and rose-red complexion, white hair and glowing eyes, and as soon as he is conceived, he is able to speak and bless God. His father Lamech gets alarmed by the strangeness of the baby and rushes to his own father Methuselah to share his worries about the paternity of the baby (1 Enoch 106:5-7). Methuselah, then, goes to his father Enoch, who then was residing in the heavens, to find out the truth about the wunderkind. Enoch responds with a summary of the corruption caused by the Watchers having intercourse with earthly women and the destruction that God will incur on the unrighteous ((1 Enoch 106:16-18).
Adultery is implied but not elaborated in 1 Enoch 106 but the other Second Temple text that contains the story of Noah’s birth, the Genesis Apocryphon, provides further details on this point.
From Second Temple texts to 2 Enoch and the Qur’ān
The themes surrounding miraculous births and righteousness in the Qur’an are rich and diverse, encompassing various motifs that echo across different narratives:
These themes include, but are not limited to, the link between a legitimate birth and future righteousness of a child, awareness of the sexual corruption in the generation of the flood and the anxieties of paternity caused by it, doubtful pregnancies leading to suspicious fathers, vulnerable mothers being confronted and defending themselves, divine intervention to reveal the true paternity of the child, and the wondrous aspects of the newborn. One obvious locus in which these motifs are carried to the Qur’ān is the birth story of Jesus, told as a parallel narrative to the birth of John the Baptist in Chapter 19. According to the Qur’ān, both children are conceived in unexpected circumstances: John because his parents were old and his mother was barren like in the case of Melchizedek, Jesus because his mother was a virgin. At this point, the Qur’ān is mostly following the Lukan narrative but its depiction of Jesus as a marvel child that talks at birth shows that the Qur’ān was aware of other motifs of miraculous birth narratives outside of the canonical Gospel stories. It is also likely that Enochic material provided part of the background for the Qur’ān’s depiction of miraculous births. The equation that 1 Enoch 106 and the GA draws between a righteous birth and righteousness is found in the Qur’ān’s portrayal of miraculous births in the contexts of John the Baptist and Jesus. In the annunciation of both births, to Zechariah and Mary respectively, the angels bringing the news describe the children-to-beborn as min al-ṣāliḥīn, “from among the righteous”, anticipating the objection of the parents. In fact, a closer look at the Qur’ān’s employment of words in the narratives of Noah’s lost son, his unfaithful wife and the children of miraculous births would suggest that the word ṣāliḥ, “righteous” carries in the Qur’ān the import of the words like ṣādeq/ba-ṣedq in the Ge’ez of 1 Enoch 106 and qwštʾ/bqwšt in the Aramaic of 1 Enoch 106 and the GA.
The Qur’an presents a narrative that contrasts positive and negative models for women:
In addition to characterizing John and Jesus as righteous figures born in extraordinary, but altogether righteous, circumstances, the Qur’ān opens the section that alludes to positive and negative models for women in Q 66:10 by drawing a contrast between Noah and Lot, “two righteous servants” of God (ʿabdayni min ʿibādinā ṣāliḥayni), on the one hand, and their wives who betrayed them (khānatāhumā) on the other. These two women, who partook in the corruption of their age despite having righteous husbands, are further contrasted in the next two verses to the wife of Pharaoh and Mary, who guarded their faith and purity against overwhelming odds. Moreover, I believe it is more than a mere coincidence that the two women the Qur’ān portrays as positive role models, the wife of Pharaoh and Mary, are righteous mother figures who raised Moses and Jesus, respectively, in an environment of adversity. Mary, in particular, is referred to as a siddīqa, “righteous woman” (Q 5:75), a title that the Qur’ān uses exclusively for male prophetic figures like Enoch, Abraham and Joseph. It is under this light, cast by the narrative motifs beginning with Noah’s birth in Second Temple texts and extending to the Qur’ān via the miraculous birth stories of early Christian texts, that the Qur’ān’s story of Noah’s drowned son must be interpreted. My contention is that the Qur’ān was clearly aware of the interpretive traditions concerning the sexual corruption in the generation of Noah as well as those concerning the birth of Jesus as modeled upon the miraculous birth of Noah and, possibly, of Melchizedek. The narrative motif developed in Second Temple texts about potential cases of doubtful paternity in the age of Noah was taken up by the Qur’ān and given a unique interpretive spin in the context of Noah’s own son. The same motif, as it was transformed in Christian texts for the miraculous births of Melchizedek and Jesus, also showed up in the Qur’ān in the narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus.
More on parallels between the Qur’ān & 1 Enoch 106 and the GA:
When the Qur’ānic passage is read together with the narrative of 1 Enoch 106 and the GA, it is understood that God’s promise to save Noah’s family and wipe out the children born out of adultery would naturally lead to the drowning of the child that Noah mistakenly thought to be his biological son. As in the narratives of 1 Enoch 106, the GA and 2 Enoch, the questionable case of paternity is resolved by divine judgment in the Qur’ān: Noah is not the father and he is not supposed to ask God about something of which he has no knowledge. In other words, the betrayal of Noah’s wife, as alluded to in Q 66:10, is encapsulated in the “unrighteous act” of Q 11:46 that led to an ungrateful child. The Qur’ān, therefore, adopts the connection between a figure’s birth through decent ways and his/her future righteousness, as invented in earlier Jewish and Christian literature, but inverts that connection in the case of Noah’s drowned son while honoring it in the cases of John and Jesus. Noah’s lost son in the Qur’ān was, in fact, one of the giants born in the age of sexual corruption that led to the flood according to the accounts of Gen. 6 and, even more poignantly, of 1 Enoch and the GA. This interpretation explains the enigmatic reference to Noah’s wife in Q 66:10 as well as the statement in Q 11:46 about the son not being of Noah’s family. Admittedly, though, this argument comes with a few problems of its own. It needs to be explained, for instance, how the Second Temple narrative motif of doubtful paternity in the generation of the Watchers ended up in the Qur’ān. It has been argued recently that the Qur’ān accords some space to the age of corruption before the flood and to the episode of the fallen angels, in the same vein as these are narrated in 1 Enoch and the Jubilees. The early sections of 1 Enoch, in particular the Book of Watchers, seem to have echoes in the Qur’ān’s depiction of Adam’s creation and the story of two angels that descended on earth and became corrupted. It must be admitted that the Qur’ān’s reworking of earlier narrative motifs in the case of Noah’s presumed son led to a unique interpretation that does not have a direct parallel in previous biblical and parabiblical texts. The Qur’ān’s depiction of the son as rebellious and supercilious, in particular, has resonances in earlier sources that describe the character of the giants. Josephus, for instance, has the following remark: “For many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength” (Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, 1.73 (translation above is by William Whiston): πολλοὶ γὰρ ἄγγελοι θεοῦ γυναιξὶ συνιόντες ὑβριστὰς ἐγέννησαν παῖδας καὶ παντὸς ὑπερόπτας καλοῦ διὰ τὴν ἐπὶ τῇ δυνάμει πεποίθησιν).
