Notes and Sources

Genesis supplies the narrative foundation. These notes distinguish its text from the ancient retellings and later interpretations woven into the story. A reference identifies the basis of an event or reading; it does not mean that every sensory image, transition, or turn of dialogue appears in that source. Dialogue is adapted rather than consistently quoted verbatim. The account is a literary synthesis, not a translation or a claim that its sources share one chronology or one authority.

The principal English biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible, with wording also drawn from the King James Version and Young's Literal Translation. The calendar draws on Genesis, Jubilees, and James Ussher's Annals of the World (1658), as indicated below. These schemes differ. The Hebrew word discussions draw on Brown, Driver and Briggs (BDB) and Strong; name associations in the story sometimes express a biblical wordplay rather than an uncontested derivation.

Some of the interpretive observations below have been retained here instead of interrupting the narrative. Bibliographic and data credits from the supplied manuscript are preserved.

Chapter One: The First Week (Genesis 1:1 to 2:25)

• The evening before the first Sunday; the angels made first and singing as the foundations were laid: Ussher, Annals, entry 1 (4004 BC, the night before 23 October), citing Job 38:7.
• The angels of the winds, clouds, snow, hail, frost, thunder, and the seasons; their praise: Jubilees 2:2 to 2:3.
• The dark, empty, shoreless deep: Genesis 1:2; tohu wa-bohu and tehom (BDB); "a vast body of water": International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), "Abyss."
• The Spirit hovering, like a bird brooding over its nest: Genesis 1:2; rachaph, "hover... or perh. brooding" (BDB); Deuteronomy 32:11.
• Light before the sun: Genesis 1:3 to 5, 14 to 19; Ussher, entry 1 ("on the very middle of the first day").
• The sky pictured as a roof; waters divided above and below: raqia, from "to beat" (BDB), "regarded by Hebrews as solid"; Jubilees 2:4; the two-storey world of Severian of Gabala and Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography.
• Trees coming up full-grown, with fruit: Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 1.22.
• "Each after its kind": Genesis 1:11 to 25.
• The garden planted on the third day, with the two trees: Ussher, entry 1; Jubilees 2:7.
• The grass older than the sun: Ambrose of Milan, The Six Days of Creation ("The sun is younger than the green shoot").
• The lights as keepers of time, seasons and feasts: Genesis 1:14; moadim (Strong's, "specifically, a festival"); Jubilees 2:9.
• The great sea creatures: Genesis 1:21; tannin (BDB); Jubilees 2:11.
• The blessing of the creatures of the sea and air: Genesis 1:22.
• "Let us make man"; made like God: Genesis 1:26 to 27.
• The wet ground, the red earth, God shaping the man and breathing into him: Genesis 2:6 to 7; "red earth... virgin and true earth": Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.1.2 (tr. Whiston); God's "hands": Theodoret of Cyrus; "the soul is the breath of God": Gregory of Nazianzus, Dogmatic Hymns 7.
• Adam named for the red ground: adam and adamah; Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.2.
• The garden, its trees, the river parting in four, gold, gum and precious stone: Genesis 2:8 to 14.
• "Keep it"; the one command: Genesis 2:15 to 17.
• The animals brought to be named: Genesis 2:19 to 20; Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.2. Josephus adds that the names remained in use. Jubilees 3:1 to 3:2 distributes the naming over five days; this narrative follows the arrangement that places the making of man and woman within the sixth day, rather than adopting that timetable.
• All the animals speaking one language: Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4; Jubilees 3:28; Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis I.32.
• Adam seeing every creature with its mate, and wondering: Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.2; Jubilees 3:3.
• "Not good"; a helper face to face: Genesis 2:18; ezer kenegdo.
• The deep sleep; the rib; the woman "built": Genesis 2:21 to 22; vayyiven, "built" (H1129); Jubilees 3:5.
• "Bone of my bones": Genesis 2:23.
• Naked and not ashamed: Genesis 2:25.
• The blessing and the original provision of plant food: Genesis 1:28 to 30; Novatian, Jewish Foods 2.6; Jubilees 6:6.
• "Very good"; a fair copy without a blot: Genesis 1:31; Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (1692).
• The seventh day; rest not from weariness; the first thing made holy: Genesis 2:2 to 3; Ephrem, Commentary on Genesis 1.32 to 33; Ussher, entry 1 (Saturday, 29 October).

Chapter Two: The Voice Among the Trees (Genesis 3)

• Seven years in the garden; the work of keeping; no toil: Jubilees 3:15 to 3:16; Augustine, Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichaeans 2.11.15.
• The animals talking: Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4; Jubilees 3:28; Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis I.32 to 33.
• God walking in the garden in the evening, and Adam going out to meet Him: Genesis 3:8; Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4 ("who was wont before to come and converse with him").
• The serpent upright, with legs, living close to them, a friend: Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4; Severian of Gabala, On the Creation of the World 6.2; John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 2.10.
• The serpent's envy of their happiness: Josephus; Ambrose, On Paradise 12.54 to 55.
• Something darker using the serpent: Augustine, Against the Manichaeans 2.14.20; Bede, Hexaemeron; Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1.
• The seventeenth day of the second month of the eighth year: Jubilees 3:17.
• The conversation; "or touch it"; the promise of a godlike life: Genesis 3:1 to 5; Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4 ("a life not inferior to that of a god").
• What she saw; she ate: Genesis 3:6.
• She covered herself with fig leaves first; then gave to Adam, who was with her: Jubilees 3:21; Genesis 3:6.
• Their eyes opened; ashamed; aprons of fig leaves: Genesis 3:7; Josephus.
• Hiding among the trees; "Where are you?": Genesis 3:8 to 9; Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Sermon 412, God's First Words to the First Sinner (1861).
• "Your silence is not a good sign": Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4 ("thy silence is not the sign of thy virtue").
• "The woman You gave me": Genesis 3:12; Dorotheos of Gaza, Spiritual Instructions 1.
• The serpent's legs, voice and poison taken or given: Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.4.
• The seed and the heel; the first promise: Genesis 3:15; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.21.1.
• The sentences on the woman and the man; dust to dust; the ground no longer giving of its own accord: Genesis 3:16 to 19; Josephus.
• Eve, "Life": Genesis 3:20.
• God making coats of skins and clothing them: Genesis 3:21.
• The unfinished sentence; the cherubim and the turning sword: Genesis 3:22 to 24.
• The animals falling silent when Adam leaves the garden: Jubilees 3:27 to 3:28.
• The new moon of the fourth month; Adam's offering of incense outside the gate: Jubilees 3:27, 3:32.

Chapter Three: Brothers (Genesis 4)

• The first human birth; "I have gotten a man"; the wordplay on Cain and getting: Genesis 4:1; qanah; Augustine, City of God 15.17; Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.1.
• Abel's name: Hebrew hevel, breath or vapour; the image in the story is a literary rendering of that meaning.
• Awan and the daughters: Jubilees 4:1; Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.1.
• Cain the first ploughman, "wholly intent upon getting"; Abel the righteous shepherd who lived as though God were watching: Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.1.
• "Some" of the fruit, not the first; the firstborn and the fat: Genesis 4:3 to 4; Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis I.
• God's warning; sin crouching at the door; "you must master it": Genesis 4:6 to 7.
• The field; the stone; the body hidden: Genesis 4:8; Jubilees 4:31; Josephus.
• "I haven't seen him for many days"; "I am astonished at you": Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.1.
• "Am I my brother's keeper?": Genesis 4:9.
• The blood crying from the ground that opened its mouth: Genesis 4:10 to 11.
• The sentence; Cain's fear; others in the world by then: Genesis 4:12 to 14; Ussher, entry 2.
• The mark: Genesis 4:15.
• Cain leaving because his family would no longer have him; Nod, "wandering," in fear and trembling: Ephrem, Commentary on Genesis 3.11.1; Nod from the root "to wander."
• Awan as Cain's wife: Jubilees 4:9.
• Cain's rapine, boundaries, weights and measures, walls; the city of Enoch: Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.2; Genesis 4:17; Jubilees 4:9.
• Lamech's line; two wives; Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-cain, Naamah: Genesis 4:18 to 22; Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.2.
• Lamech's song; each generation worse: Genesis 4:23 to 24; Josephus.
• Twenty-eight years of mourning; Seth: Jubilees 4:7; Genesis 4:25; Seth from "to set" (lexicon).
• Azura; Enosh, "mortal man"; calling on the name of the LORD: Jubilees 4:11; Genesis 4:26; Smith's Bible Dictionary, "Enos."
• The two ways of life, the city and the calling on the Name: Augustine, City of God 15.21; Ussher, entry 3.

Chapter Four: Nine Hundred Years (Genesis 5)

• The ages and the generations: Genesis 5; Ussher, entries 2 to 22.
• Overlapping generations: the arithmetic of Genesis 5 permits Adam and Lamech to be alive together and gives Methuselah 243 years of life overlapping Adam's. It does not record a particular meeting or conversation. The narrative therefore says Adam could have held Lamech and Methuselah could have heard him.
• Mahalalel, "the praise of God": BDB.
• Seth's family living in peace; the study of the stars; Adam's warning of water and fire; the pillars of brick and stone: Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.3. The pillar episode is placed after Enoch's account for clarity; this placement does not establish when the pillars were built.
• The Watchers descending in Jared's days to teach: Jubilees 4:15; 1 Enoch 6:6.
• Enoch the first to write; the signs of heaven; his visions; with the angels; speaking against the Watchers: Jubilees 4:17 to 4:22.
• Walking with God three hundred years; taken without death; 365 years: Genesis 5:21 to 24; Ussher, entry 11; Hebrews 11:5.
• Enoch taken into the garden to write down the deeds of men: Jubilees 4:23.
• Adam's death; "one day" of a thousand years; the first burial: Genesis 5:5; Jubilees 4:29 to 4:30; Ussher, entry 10. The thousand-year day and first burial are Jubilees' readings.
• Cain killed by the stones of his own house: Jubilees 4:31.
• Betenos, Lamech's wife: Jubilees 4:28.
• The shining child; Lamech's fear; Methuselah's journey to the ends of the earth; Enoch's answer; the naming: 1 Enoch 106:1 to 107:3.
• "This one will comfort us": Genesis 5:29; Jubilees 4:28; Noah and nuach, "rest."

Chapter Five: Those Who Came Down (Genesis 6)

• Back to the days of Jared; the filling world; cities, markets, music, metal: Genesis 4:17 to 22; Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.2; Jubilees 4:15.
• The Watchers sent to instruct and guard: Jubilees 4:15.
• Semjaza, the two hundred, the oath and the curse on Hermon: 1 Enoch 6:1 to 6:8.
• The wives; the teaching of charms and roots: 1 Enoch 7:1.
• Azazel's teaching: swords, knives, shields, breastplates; bracelets, eye-paint, dyes, stones: 1 Enoch 8:1.
• The other secrets: enchantments, astrology, the signs of clouds, sun and moon: 1 Enoch 8:3; Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women; Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 18.
• The giants, the Nephilim; their hunger; eating the harvests, the beasts, men, and each other: Genesis 6:4; 1 Enoch 7:2 to 7:5; Jubilees 5:1 to 5:2, 7:22; Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.1.
• Violence and evil thoughts filling the earth; the earth crying out: Genesis 6:5, 11; 1 Enoch 7:6.
• Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel looking down and pleading: 1 Enoch 9:1 to 9:11.
• God's grief; "I will blot out man": Genesis 6:6 to 7.
• The hundred and twenty years as the last mercy: Genesis 6:3; Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 9; Ussher, entry 18.
• Noah righteous, blameless, walking with God; favour in the eyes of the LORD: Genesis 6:8 to 9; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 23.4.
• Emzara; the three sons; the deaths of the earlier patriarchs: Jubilees 4:33; Genesis 5.
• Noah preaching, threatened, leaving that land: Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.1; 2 Peter 2:5.
• Uriel: "Hide thyself!": 1 Enoch 10:1 to 10:3.
• Raphael binding Azazel in Dudael: 1 Enoch 10:4 to 10:6.
• Gabriel turning the giants on each other: 1 Enoch 10:9; Jubilees 5:9.
• Michael binding Semjaza and the two hundred after they watch their sons die: 1 Enoch 10:11 to 10:12; Jubilees 5:10.
• The ark: a wooden chest, gopher wood, pitch, measurements, decks, opening, door; God's covenant with Noah: Genesis 6:14 to 21; tevah, "a chest, a box" (BDB).
• The years of building; the neighbours eating, drinking, marrying: Matthew 24:38; Ussher, entry 22.
• "Noah did everything": Genesis 6:22.

Chapter Six: The Door Shut From Outside (Genesis 7)

• Methuselah and Lamech dead; their ages; Noah six hundred: Genesis 5:27, 31; 7:6; Ussher, entries 21 and 22. Methuselah's 243-year overlap with Adam follows the ages in Genesis 5. The text does not establish that he was the last of all Adam's descendants who could have known Adam.
• The tenth day of the second month: Ussher, entry 22.
• "Come into the ark": Genesis 7:1 (KJV); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: Genesis.
• Seven pairs of the clean and of the birds, one pair of the rest; seven days more: Genesis 7:2 to 4 (BSB); Henry.
• The animals coming of themselves: Genesis 7:8 to 9; J. Vernon McGee, (Genesis) 6:17-22 and 7.
• The world eating, drinking, marrying: Matthew 24:38; Ussher, entry 22.
• Husbands and wives apart in the ark: Genesis 7:7, 13; John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4.24; Cyril of Jerusalem, Introductory Lecture 14.
• The LORD shut the door from outside, so Noah would not see; so none could break it: Genesis 7:16; Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.12; Ephrem, Commentary on Genesis 6.11.2; Jubilees 5:23.
• The seventeenth day of the second month: Genesis 7:11; Jubilees 3:17.
• The deep and the windows of heaven; seven mouths and seven floodgates: Genesis 7:11; Jubilees 5:24.
• Forty days of rain: Genesis 7:12. Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.11, reads the forty days as mercy: those still alive could see what was happening and "come to their senses." The story keeps his reading without claiming that anyone did.
• The ark lifted; "moved upon the face of the waters": Genesis 7:17 to 18; Jubilees 5:26; Genesis 1:2 (KJV).
• Fifteen cubits above the mountains: Genesis 7:20; Jubilees 5:26; Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.5.
• The flood kissing the foothills of paradise: Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise 1.4.
• Everything with the breath of life died; only Noah left; a hundred and fifty days: Genesis 7:21 to 24.

Chapter Seven: The Raven and the Dove (Genesis 8)

• God remembered Noah, and the animals: Genesis 8:1; "To remember with God, is to visit": John Bunyan, Of Antichrist and His Ruin.
• The wind over the waters: Genesis 8:1; ruach.
• The deep and the floodgates closed; the key to open and to shut: Genesis 8:2; Henry ("As God has a key to open, so he has a key to shut up again").
• The ark resting on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, on Lubar in Ararat: Genesis 8:4; Jubilees 5:28; Ararat as a whole high country: ISBE, "Ararat."
• Noah seeing a small piece of ground round the ark, and hoping: Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.5 ("seeing a small piece of land about it, he continued quiet, and conceived some cheerful hopes of deliverance"). Genesis 8:4 to 5 places the appearance of the mountain tops later; the story keeps both.
• The ark that carried "Rest" came to rest: nuach at Genesis 8:4.
• The mountain tops; Noah glad: Genesis 8:5; Jubilees 6:27.
• The raven going to and fro, feeding on the drowned: Genesis 8:7; Young's Literal Translation; Prudentius, Scenes from Sacred History 3.
• The dove finding no rest, coming back to Noah's hand: Genesis 8:8 to 9; manoach, "resting place."
• The fresh olive leaf; not a thistle or a thorn: Genesis 8:10 to 11; taraph, "fresh-plucked" (BDB); Luther, Second Sunday after Epiphany (Church Postil): "The dove did not bring to Noah in the ark a poisonous branch or a thistle sprig."
• The dove not returning: Genesis 8:12.
• The first day of the first month; the covering removed; a new year's day on the same date as the first day of creation: Genesis 8:13; Ussher, entry 23 ("the first day, as first of the new world," 23 October) and entry 1 (the first day of the world, 23 October).
• A year and ten days: Genesis 7:11, 8:14.
• Coming out husband and wife together: Genesis 8:16; John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4.24.
• "Be fruitful and multiply"; kind by kind: Genesis 8:17 to 19.
• The altar and the offering of ox, goat, sheep, salt, doves, oil, wine, frankincense; atonement for the earth: Genesis 8:20; Jubilees 6:1 to 6:3.
• Noah's fearful prayer: Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.7.
• God smelling the heart, not the smoke; a smell of rest: Genesis 8:21; nichoach, "a quieting, soothing," from nuach; Ephrem, Commentary on Genesis 6.13.2.
• "Even though"; God binding Himself: Genesis 8:21; Ephrem.
• "Do not be frightened when the heavy rains come": Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.8.
• Seedtime and harvest: Genesis 8:22.

Chapter Eight: The Bow in the Cloud (Genesis 9:1 to 17)

• The blessing again: Genesis 9:1.
• The animals' fear, a remnant of the old dominion: Genesis 9:2; Calvin, vol. 1, on 9:2.
• Meat permitted; the blood forbidden; the life belonging to God: Genesis 9:3 to 4; Smith's Bible Dictionary, "Blood."
• The oath on the blood: Jubilees 6:10.
• God requiring a brother's blood: Genesis 9:5; darash, "seek, require."
• Killing a man as lifting a hand against God: Genesis 9:6; ISBE, "Assassination"; ISBE, "Anthropology."
• The covenant with every living creature: Genesis 9:8 to 11.
• The bow in the cloud; qeshet, the warrior's bow: Genesis 9:12 to 13; Strong's H7198; Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.8 ("the bow of God"); Hosea 2:18.
• God looking at the bow and remembering: Genesis 9:14 to 16.

Epilogue: After the Waters (Genesis 9:18 to 29 and later traditions)

• The yearly feast of the covenant: Jubilees 6:17 to 6:18.
• Noah a man of the soil; the vineyard on Lubar; fruit in the fourth year; wine kept to the first day of the first month; the feast and sacrifice: Genesis 9:20; Jubilees 7:1 to 7:6.
• Noah's long abstinence and failure to dilute the wine, as an interpretation of his drunkenness: Ephrem, Commentary on Genesis 7.1.1; Theodoret, Questions on Genesis 56.
• Drunk and uncovered in the tent: Genesis 9:21; Jubilees 7:7.
• Ham seeing and telling; Shem and Japheth walking backward: Genesis 9:22 to 23.
• "Cursed be Canaan"; Ham suffering through his son: Genesis 9:24 to 25; Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.21.
• "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem"; Japheth enlarged; Shem "name," Japheth "wide": Genesis 9:26 to 27; the lexicon.
• Ham's anger; the three cities named for the wives, south, west and east of the mountain: Jubilees 7:13 to 7:17.
• Noah's teaching and warning: Jubilees 7:20 to 7:34.
• The spirits; Noah's prayer; Mastema; the tenth part: Jubilees 10:1 to 10:11.
• The book of medicines given to Shem: Jubilees 10:10 to 10:14.
• Three hundred and fifty years after the flood; 950; buried on Lubar; praise of Noah's righteousness, with Enoch excepted: Genesis 9:28 to 29; Josephus, Antiquities 1.3.9; Jubilees 10:15 to 10:17.
• Abram born two years later: Ussher, Annals (Noah's death 1998 BC; "In the year 2008 of the world, was Abram born").
• The sons coming down first to the plains: Josephus, Antiquities 1.4.1.

Where the Sources Disagree

The story follows one telling at each of these points. The others are:

• Who the "sons of God" were (Genesis 6:2). The story follows 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Josephus, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Tertullian: angels. Augustine, John Chrysostom, Julius Africanus, Ephrem, John Cassian, Bede, Cyril of Alexandria and Ussher read them as the line of Seth marrying the daughters of Cain. In City of God 15.23 Augustine says the sons of God "were according to the flesh the sons of Seth," and calls the Enoch stories of angel fathers apocryphal "fables." Calvin read them as men God had set apart for Himself.
• The hundred and twenty years (6:3). The story follows Jerome and Ussher: a time to repent. Jubilees reads it as the new length of human life.
• Who spoke through the serpent (3:1). The story follows Augustine, Bede and Calvin: something darker used the serpent. Ambrosiaster held it was the serpent alone.
• The seed and the heel (3:15). The Hebrew says he will crush the head; the Latin Vulgate says she; the Greek and Irenaeus read the verbs as "watch."
• Noah's wife. The story follows Jubilees: Emzara. STEPBible's list of Bible people names her Naamah, the sister of Tubal-cain, marked with a question mark, from Jewish tradition.
• The order of Noah's sons. Genesis lists Shem, Ham, Japheth and calls Ham the youngest. Ussher made Japheth the eldest; Jubilees makes Shem the eldest.
• The curse on Canaan (9:25). Irenaeus had a text in which the curse falls on Ham himself. Augustine and Justin read the curse on Canaan as a prophecy about the Canaanites.
• What became of the giants. The story follows 1 Enoch 10:9 to 12 and Jubilees 5:9 to 10: the giants destroyed one another before the flood, and their fathers were bound. Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth "in those days, and afterward as well," and in Numbers 13:33 the spies report Nephilim in Canaan; Augustine read that as giants born both before and after the sons of God sinned.
• The original mission of the Watchers. Jubilees 4:15 describes a mission to teach justice and uprightness. First Enoch 6 presents the oath and descent in connection with the desire for wives. This telling joins the two as mission followed by transgression; that combined sequence is an editorial synthesis.
• When the Watchers came. The story follows 1 Enoch 6:6, 106:13 and Jubilees 4:15: in the days of Jared, long before Noah's birth.
• Wine and the ark. The story follows Jubilees 6:3 in including wine in Noah's first offering after the flood. It retains the later explanation that Noah had gone a long time without drinking wine, while making no claim that wine was absent from the ark or unavailable during every intervening year. Ephrem's account of the prohibition on carrying wine aboard is an alternative tradition, not a detail adopted here.
• Seven pairs or seven. The story follows the Berean Standard Bible: seven pairs of every clean animal and of every bird, and one pair of the unclean. The Hebrew says "seven seven"; the King James Version reads "by sevens," and some readers counted seven animals, not seven pairs.
• Abel's body and Adam's burial. The story follows Josephus in saying Cain concealed Abel's body, without specifying burial. Adam's first burial is expressly attributed to Jubilees 4:29. The two can therefore stand together in this telling without claiming that all traditions agree about Abel's body.
• Noah's drunkenness. The story follows Ephrem and Theodoret, who excused it. Clement of Alexandria and Leander of Seville used it as a warning.
• Enoch and Adam. Ephrem tells that Adam watched Enoch taken up; the years of Genesis 5 put Adam's death fifty-seven years before. The story follows the years.
• The day of the landing (8:4) and of the flood (7:11). The Hebrew gives the seventeenth day; the Greek gives the twenty-seventh.
• The hundred and twenty years and Noah's sons. On the reprieve reading of Genesis 6:3, with the flood at Noah's age six hundred (7:6), the warning begins when he is four hundred and eighty. Genesis 5:32 places his fatherhood after five hundred. The story therefore allows time between the warning and the later scenes with his grown sons, and does not identify the entire reprieve with the duration of building.
• Leaving the ark. The narrative follows Genesis 8:14 to 19, with the earth dry on the twenty-seventh day of the second month. Jubilees 6:1 places the exit and altar on the new moon of the third month. The offerings are drawn from Jubilees without adopting its exit date.
• Paradise and the flood. Genesis 7 describes the covering of all the high mountains. The untouched height of paradise comes from Ephrem's Hymns on Paradise 1.4, a poetic sacred landscape. It appears expressly as the hymn's image rather than as an exception stated by Genesis.
• The bow. Hebrew qeshet can denote a bow used as a weapon as well as the bow in the cloud. The image of a weapon laid aside is an interpretation of the covenant, not an additional action explicitly described in Genesis.
• Where the ark rested. Genesis says "the mountains of Ararat"; Jubilees names Lubar; the encyclopedia of 1915 says no single peak was meant.

Scripture

Primary narrative: Genesis 1:1 to 9:29. Also: Exodus 31:17; Deuteronomy 32:11; Job 38:7; Hosea 2:18; Matthew 24:37 to 39; Hebrews 11:5; 2 Peter 2:5.

Beyond the 66 books: Jubilees 2 to 10 (R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 1913); 1 Enoch 6 to 10 and 106 to 107 (R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, 1917).

Translations and Texts

• Hebrew: the Masoretic text with word tagging, STEPBible TAHOT.
• Greek: the Septuagint, H. B. Swete's edition (digital edition nathans/lxx-swete), with lemmas from the Open Scriptures Septuagint Project.
• Latin: the Clementine Vulgate.
• English: Berean Standard Bible; King James Version; Young's Literal Translation.
• Lexicons: Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament; Strong's Hebrew Dictionary; STEPBible word families.

Sermons

• Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Sermon 412, God's First Words to the First Sinner (1861).
• J. Vernon McGee, (Genesis) 6:17-22 and 7.
• Martin Luther, Second Sunday after Epiphany: Gifts and Works of Christ's Members, from the Church Postil.

Writers and Works

• Ambrose of Milan: The Six Days of Creation; On Paradise.
• Augustine of Hippo: City of God; Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichaeans.
• Bede: Commentary on Genesis.
• John Bunyan: Of Antichrist and His Ruin (1692).
• John Calvin: Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1.
• John Chrysostom: Homilies on Genesis.
• Cosmas Indicopleustes: The Christian Topography.
• Cyril of Jerusalem: Introductory Lecture.
• Dorotheos of Gaza: Spiritual Instructions.
• Ephrem the Syrian: Commentary on Genesis; Hymns on Paradise.
• Gregory of Nazianzus: Dogmatic Hymns.
• Matthew Henry: Commentary on the Whole Bible: Genesis.
• Irenaeus: Against Heresies; The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.
• Jerome: Commentary on Daniel.
• John of Damascus: An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.
• Flavius Josephus: The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1 (tr. William Whiston, 1737).
• Justin Martyr: Second Apology.
• Novatian: Jewish Foods.
• Philo of Alexandria: Questions and Answers on Genesis I (tr. C. D. Yonge).
• Prudentius: Scenes from Sacred History.
• Severian of Gabala: On the Creation of the World.
• Tertullian: On the Apparel of Women.
• Theodoret of Cyrus: Questions on Genesis.
• James Ussher: The Annals of the World (London, 1658).
• Thomas Watson: A Body of Divinity (1692).
• Reference works: James Orr, general editor, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915); William Smith, Smith's Bible Dictionary (1863).

Credits

• Berean Standard Bible: public domain (as of April 30, 2023).
• King James Version, Young's Literal Translation: from SermonIndex.net Bible data, CC BY 4.0. Data courtesy of SermonIndex.net (https://www.sermonindex.net).
• Lexicons and Bible reference data: SermonIndex.net Bible Reference data, public domain or CC BY 4.0. Data courtesy of SermonIndex.net (https://www.sermonindex.net).
• Early Church Fathers: SermonIndex.net Early Church Fathers collection, CC BY 4.0. Data courtesy of SermonIndex.net (https://www.sermonindex.net).
• Sermons: SermonIndex.net sermon index, CC BY 4.0. Data courtesy of SermonIndex.net (https://www.sermonindex.net).
• Hebrew text, word tagging and Bible people (TAHOT, TIPNR): STEPBible Data, CC BY 4.0.
• Septuagint: H. B. Swete's text (public domain), digital edition nathans/lxx-swete, CC BY-SA 4.0. Credit: the Open Scriptures Septuagint Project (CC BY 4.0).
• Vulgate: Clementine Vulgate (scrollmapper), public domain.
• Jubilees: R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913), public domain.
• 1 Enoch: R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (1917), via Wikisource, public domain.
• Josephus: The Antiquities of the Jews, tr. William Whiston, Project Gutenberg, public domain.
• Philo: The Works of Philo, tr. C. D. Yonge, via Early Christian Writings, public domain.
• Ussher: The Annals of the World (1658), Text Creation Partnership edition (A64619), CC0 1.0.
• Calvin, Henry, Watson, Smith's Bible Dictionary, Spurgeon: public domain works.
• Bunyan: Works, Project Gutenberg, public domain. Luther's Church Postil: Project Gutenberg (Lenker edition), public domain.
• International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915): CrossWire SWORD module, public domain.
• Cross references: OpenBible.info, Creative Commons Attribution. Places: Pleiades, CC BY 3.0.