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Summary
- The Bible never describes Noah’s body or face. Genesis gives his age, 600 when the flood came and 950 at his death (Genesis 7:6; 9:29), and his work after the flood as “an husbandman,” a farmer (Genesis 9:20).
- Genesis does not give Noah’s height, and none of the early Jewish or Christian retellings does either. Genesis never counts him among the giants of Genesis 6:4, and 1 Enoch and Josephus set him apart from them.
- Genesis describes his character instead: “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). Ezekiel, Hebrews and 2 Peter remember his righteousness and faith, and Genesis 9:21 records his drunkenness.
- The albino idea comes from 1 Enoch 106, where the newborn Noah is “white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose,” with hair “white as wool” and eyes that light up the house; the Bible uses the same language for heavenly glory (Daniel 7:9; Revelation 1:14). The medical label appears in a 1958 British Medical Journal article by Arnold Sorsby, “Noah—an Albino.”
- 1 Enoch is Scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; Augustine accepted that Enoch wrote something but kept the book out of the canon.
- Jewish and Christian traditions picture Noah as old: in the Talmud his mockers call him “Old man,” and the Ethiopic Book of Adam and Eve says his hair “neither increased nor grew less” while he built the ark.
- The earliest Christian art, in the catacombs, shows Noah “young and beardless”; later art gave him a beard, and Michelangelo painted three Noah scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- King James Version: Genesis 5:29, 5:32; 6:4, 6:8-9, 6:22; 7:1, 7:6; 9:20-21, 9:28-29; Exodus 34:29; 1 Samuel 9:2; 16:6-7, 16:12; Ezekiel 14:14; Daniel 7:9; Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 2:5; Jude 1:14; Revelation 1:14, BibleGateway.
- Genesis 5:24 note on the writing about Enoch, New American Bible, Revised Edition, USCCB.
- 1 Enoch 106-107, tr. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913), Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
- George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Patriarchs Who Worry About Their Wives: A Haggadic Tendency in the Genesis Apocryphon”, Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- “Batenosh in the Genesis Apocryphon”, The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization (date of the Genesis Apocryphon).
- Arnold Sorsby, “Noah—an Albino”, British Medical Journal, 27 December 1958, pp. 1587-1589 (bibliographic record).
- “Oculocutaneous albinism”, MedlinePlus Genetics, U.S. National Library of Medicine.
- “The Bible”, the canonical books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, ethiopianorthodox.org.
- Augustine, City of God 15.23 and 15.26, tr. Marcus Dods, New Advent.
- John Chrysostom, Homily 23 on Hebrews, tr. Frederic Gardiner, New Advent.
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.3.1-2, tr. William Whiston, Project Gutenberg; his dates from “Flavius Josephus”, Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent.
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 108a and 108b, William Davidson Edition, Sefaria.
- Genesis Rabbah 30:7, The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022), Sefaria.
- Rashi on Genesis 6:9, tr. M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, Sefaria; date and place from Sefaria’s contents page.
- The Book of Adam and Eve, also called The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, tr. S. C. Malan (London, 1882), book 3, chapters 2-3 and preface, Internet Archive.
- Richard Stracke, “Noah & the Flood in Christian Art”, Christian Iconography, Augusta University.
- Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel: “Ceiling”, “Central Stories” and “The Flood”.
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