In the Book of Genesis it is not Noah but the seventh patriarch Enoch who is translated, three generations before the Flood.
There appears to have been some connection or confusion between Enoch and Noah in ancient tradition; both are holy men, and Enoch is said, like Noah, to have predicted the Flood.
It is a curious fact that the dynasty of gods, with which Egyptian mythical history commences, resembles in some respects the list of antediluvian kings of Babylonia given by Berosus as well as the list of antediluvian patriarchs in Genesis.
This dynasty has sometimes seven, sometimes ten reigns, and in the Turin Papyrus of kings, which gives ten reigns, there is the same name for the seventh and tenth kings, both being called Horus, and the seventh king is stated to have reigned 300 years, which is the length of life of the seventh patriarch Enoch after the birth of his son.
Here are the three lists of Egyptian gods, Hebrew patriarchs, and Chaldean kings.
| Egypt. | Patriarchs. | Chaldean Kings. |
|---|---|---|
| Ptah. | Adam. | Alorus. |
| Ra. | Seth. | Alaparus. |
| Su. | Enos. | Almelon. |
| Seb. | Cainan. | Ammenon. |
| Hosiri. | Mahalaleel. | Amegalarus. |
| Set. | Jared. | Daonus. (Dun in the inscriptions.) |
| Hor. | Enoch. | Ædorachus. |
| Tut. | Methuselah. | Amempsin. |
| Ma. | Lamech. | Otiartes (Opartes). |
| Hor. | Noah. | Xisuthrus. |
It is well known that Enos, like Adam, signifies “man;” hence some writers have supposed that the list of Noah’s ancestors was originally counted from Enos, so that Lamech, Noah’s father, would have been the seventh in descent. There is, moreover, a curious resemblance between the names of the descendants of Seth and those of the descendants of Cain, Methuselah, indeed, being apparently more correctly written Methusael (Gen. iv. 18), which is the Assyrian Mutu-sa-ili, “Man of God.” Now Lamech, the descendant of Cain, is the seventh from Adam. It may be noticed that Irad or Jared is the same word as the Assyrian Arad, “servant,” and Arad or Ardutu is the Assyrian rendering of the Accadian Ubara, the first part of the name of the father of Xisuthrus, who is actually called Ardates by Abydenus.
Mr. George Smith believed that the real connection between the traditions of Babylonia and Palestine would never be cleared up until the literature of the Syrian population which intervened is recovered. It is very possible that light may be thrown upon the question by the excavations now being made at Jerablus, the site of Carchemish, the capital of the ancient Hittites. Terah may be the same word as Tarkhu, who seems to have been worshipped as a god by the Hittites; and Lucian has preserved a legend of the Flood and the patriarch Sisythes, who is evidently the Xisuthrus of the Babylonians, which was current at Hierapolis or Mabug, a little to the south of Jerablus. In this legend the ark has become a coffer, Sisythes and his family are alone preserved, and the Flood was sent to punish the wickedness of mankind.
There is one point which still deserves notice: these traditions are not fixed to any localities in or near Palestine, but even on the showing of the Jews themselves, belong to the neighbourhood of the Euphrates valley, and Babylonia in particular; this of course is clearly stated in the Babylonian inscriptions and traditions.
Eden, according even to the Jews, was by the Euphrates and Tigris; the cities of Babylon, Larancha, and Sippara were supposed by the Babylonians to have been founded before the Flood. Surippak was the city of the ark, the mountains east of the Tigris were the resting-place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the Chaldees the birthplace of Abraham. These facts and the further statement that Abraham, the father and first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria, and from thence to Palestine, are all so much evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these stories, and that the Jews received them originally from the Babylonians; but on the other hand there are such striking differences in some parts of the legends, particularly in the names of the patriarchs before the Flood, that it is evident further information is required before we can determine how or when they were received by the Jews.