Religion: Baby Noah

From an Israeli scholar comes a new and, in itself, marvelous addition to the story of Noah, taken from the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be unrolled.

The story, reported one of its translators, Soldier-Scholar Yigael Yadin of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, was written on goatskin in Aramaic in "a very pleasant hand." It tells how Noah's father Lamech (son of Methuselah) was married to his own sister—a custom necessitated in earliest times by the shortage of women. Lamech, according to the scroll, began to suspect that Baby Noah was not his own child—apparently with good reason. At birth the child "rose up in the hands of the midwife and conversed with the Lord of Righteousness." His body was "white as snow and red as the blooming of the rose," his hair was "white as wool," and when he opened his eyes they lighted the house "like the sun." Fearing that Noah was really the child of "the Watchers, the Holy Ones or the fallen angels," Lamech spoke to his sister-wife about it in no uncertain terms, and she in turn replied "with great vigor," reminding Lamech of the intimate details of Noah's conception.

Still worried, Lamech asked his father Methuselah (who died at the age of 969) to apply to his grandfather Enoch, who had disappeared at the age of 365 and won his "dwelling-place among the angels.'' But what immortal Enoch told Lamech about the future arkitect is unknown. The rest of the story is missing.