The Bible consistently points to Aram in Northern Syria as Abraham’s place of origin. However, in a prequel added during the Babylonian exile, a later biblical author introduces Abram as being born in the famous city of Ur, near Babylon in Southern Iraq, from which he then migrates to Aram. When the city of Ur faded from historical memory, readers of the Bible associated the biblical Ur with Urfa in Turkey, aligning it with the Bible’s dominant tradition regarding Abraham’s origins.

Clue: Seven pairs of kosher animals are brought to the ark so that Noah can sacrifice to YHWH after the flood.

A window into the extent of ancient Israel’s knowledge of the geography of the world.

Enuma Elish describes the Babylonian god Marduk’s plans for a city with a single tower that will serve as his seat of power and as the nexus of all gods. The story of Babel responds to this myth by having YHWH disrupt the construction and decentralize Babylon.

In 1861, Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York attempted to save the Union by declaring from his pulpit that slavery was the will of God, as per the Torah’s story of the curse of Ham. Some rabbis and Jewish scholars approved of the message, but others, such as Michael Heilprin and David Einhorn, pushed back with biting criticism.

Genesis describes Nimrod as a great hunter before YHWH and a powerful king. In late Second Temple writings, Nimrod is connected to the Tower of Babel and seen as a rebel against God. This negative view of Nimrod persisted through the centuries in the writings of the Church Fathers, and was further expanded in rabbinic midrash and medieval Islamic literature.

Before the flood story was added, the primeval history focused on human mortality, family relationships, and etiological explanations for human behaviors and professions. Only later did this primeval history develop into a broader narrative that included stories of the flood and the Tower of Babel.

In the Gilgamesh epic, Utanapishti tells Gilgamesh the story of the great flood and how he survived it. Scholars have often held that this story lies behind the biblical account of Noah and the flood. However, a good case can be made that an even more ancient tale, the Atrahasis epic, on which the flood story in Gilgamesh draws, is the source of the biblical flood story.

The Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11:1-9) is not only about the downfall of Babylon or the origin of languages. It is a reflection on how languages work differently, on the limitations of one language to convey the sense of another, and the insufficiency inherent in translation.

Nimrod’s bio begins in the 23rd century B.C.E. with King Sargon of Akkad and his grandson Naram-Sin.

When YHWH sees the evil ways of humanity, he initially decides to wipe them out, but then determines to save Noah’s family. After the flood and Noah’s sacrifice, YHWH promises that He will never again destroy the earth and all life, even though humanity will continue in its evil ways. Thus, the story chronicles not the moral and emotional advancement of humanity but of YHWH.

Noah’s name expresses his father’s hope that Noah will bring comfort from the pain of the curse of the land, and before he plants his vineyard, he is called “a man of the land” (איש האדמה). These and other verses point to an older core narrative which spoke not of a flood but of a primeval famine that Noah brings to an end.

A new solution to why Canaan (not Ham) was cursed.

What does it mean for the rainbow to be a sign of God’s covenant with life on earth, and how does this compare with other concepts of the rainbow in the ancient world?‍

The Tower of Babel story is a marvelous tale about the ambition and hubris of primal humanity, with a biting political message and dark insights into the human condition.

Unlike Adam, Noah is born like a regular human. Unlike Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian flood hero, and Noah’s great-grandfather Enoch, Noah is mortal. In Second Temple times, new retellings of his story present Noah as something more than human, but in rabbinic tradition, the biblical image of the all too human Noah prevails.

The historical association of Abraham and Nimrod with Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism

The key: Where was the author of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 located?

Does the Supplementary Hypothesis explain the existence of a fourth son that found his way back into Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Quran?

The Torah first describes a world that is created to be vegetarian. It is only after the Flood that humans were allowed to eat meat. Leviticus restricts meat consumption to the sacrificial offerings only, whereas Deuteronomy permits even non-consecrated meat. How do we understand the tension between these approaches?

Genealogical lists are often overlooked, and yet they represent a distinct biblical literary genre with ideological content. What messages are these lists meant to convey?

Noah awakens from his drunken slumber, and realizes what his youngest son, Ham, did to him. Why, then, does Noah curse his grandson Canaan? Originally, Canaan was the perpetrator and was actually Noah’s youngest son.

A closer look at the thematic and verbal parallels between the accounts of the flood and the destruction of Sodom, as well as comparison with other ANE flood/destruction stories, helps us better understand the genre and function of the Sodom story.

Whose knowledge is the most ancient? In the Hellenistic period, Egyptians and Babylonians, among others, debated the antiquity of their wisdom. Second Temple Jews claimed that their own knowledge dated from before the Flood. But how did it survive the destruction of the flood?

Before Noah became the protagonist of the Israelite flood story, his original place in Israelite historiography was as the ancient farmer who discovered wine, bringing the world relief from the toil of work caused by God’s cursing the soil.

The ancient Near East had many versions of the flood story, such as Atrahasis, Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, etc., most of which predate the Torah’s account of Noah’s flood. But what is the earliest extant version of the releasing birds motif?