Noah and Odysseus: Exposed!

This essay is the third in a six-part series by Jacob Howland on Homer and the Hebrew Bible. Historians of Western intellectual culture sometimes compare “Jerusalem,” or the biblical traditions that erupt into history at Sinai, with “Athens,” the city where Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought human wisdom through the exercise of the human mind. In this series, Howland invites a different comparison. Rather than comparing later prophets to philosophers, he looks back at yet earlier cultural cornerstones set at the very foundations of Hebraic and Greek civilizations. Future installments in Howland’s series will arrive monthly. —The Editors

Who among us didn’t go at least a little stir crazy during the coronavirus lockdowns of the interminable years 2020-21? But even those of us crammed, say, into a tiny apartment full of cats, litter boxes, and in-laws could not have experienced anything like the strain and misery of imprisonment in the dismal confines of Noah’s ark. The cacophony of animal grunts and groans must have been incessant, the stench of excrement and urine almost unbearable, the pervasive gloom—with natural light entering only through a window way up high—deeply depressing.

Adrift on an endless ocean for more than a year, Noah and his extended family—wife, sons, and daughters-in-law—could hardly have kept their fears, frustrations, and frayed nerves to themselves. They must have bickered and quarreled, sometimes heatedly.