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...