Did Noah Have Other Children?

 A few years ago, I presented a series of articles here based on the book of Genesis that I had originally taught as a lesson series for an Anglican Sunday School.  The series embraced a Biblical Creationist theological position, as well as subscribing to the Intelligent Design scientific position.  While for many years this particular subject matter was reserved for Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestant discourse, in reality Biblical Creation and Intelligent Design have been the historic position of the Church since antiquity.  It was only after the rogue Jesuit priest/theologian Tielhard de Chardin started promoting Darwinian evolution that some Catholics accepted without question theistic evolution, which was a huge mistake on the part of Church leaders.  Fortunately, there are champions for the actual historic Church position, which has always been affirming of Creationist theology, among whom are people such as Hugh Owen, the director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, an organization which has been an indispensable resource to me personally over the past decade.  Fortunately, there are other great voices of reason, such as the late Orthodox theologian Fr. Seraphim Rose, whose book on Genesis is also a valuable resource for study on this topic.  A more obscure resource dating back to the 11th century was also discovered by Yours Truly recently, and it was a very valuable book written by the Syriac hierarch Michael the Syrian entitled The Chronicle.  It was in this book that I honestly found the first affirmation of a long-held view I had, and this is what I wanted to talk about today.

To preface this discussion, let me remind the reader of what Scripture is meant for.  Scripture is 100% true, infallible, and it has divine authorship (albeit through human vessels).  However, contrary to some of my Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestant friends, the Bible was never meant to be a comprehensive history.  Its sole purpose is the chronicling of the story of salvation, and although every word of it is inspired and true, it gives a legacy of God's creation, redemption, and ultimate triumph in history.  This means that its focus is narrowed to those events that relate to that legacy, and therefore there are some things that Scripture is either silent on or mentions in a general way to provide context for the overall narrative. The setting for the Scriptural narrative, for instance, is confined to a certain geographic area - a large area, but a limited area nonetheless.  The story starts there, and it ends there. That being said and established, let's talk a little about something that has been a big topic of discussion and debate over the centuries.

The origin of humankind, as Scripture plainly states, is man's creation by God.  That first man had a name, Adam, and he was later given a soulmate named Eve.  These were real people, not the stuff of fable, and despite what evolutionists say (and their story is constantly changing - the evolution narrative evolves itself ironically) every human being on the planet is descended from that couple.  About 11 generations later, Noah came along, and after the cleansing flood God sent to cleanse the planet of corruption, the human race started over, but it was different this time.  Noah's three primary children - Shem, Ham, Japheth - are the progenitors of the key nations that make up the Scriptural narrative, but this is where it gets interesting.  In the "Table of Nations" in Genesis, many groups are noted, and although I won't get into that here because it would be a lengthy discussion, all of those nations had some bearing on the Biblical narrative.  However, many nations are not mentioned, such as Asians, Native Americans, and Black Sub-Saharan Africans - how do they fit into the genealogy.  Over the centuries, many odd theories have been floated, calling the Chinese people "Semites" and the Black Africans "Hamites," but there are things that don't add up about all that.  It doesn't necessarily contradict the Biblical narrative, as some may think, but rather it affirms that the Biblical narrative, like any story, has a specific setting, and certain details are not included because they have no bearing on the central truth of the story.  This is where Michael the Syrian's (or Michael Rabo, as he is often designated) Chronicle comes in.  

About a decade ago, an Evangelical minister and Bible teacher named Rob Skiba introduced a very interesting concept I found intriguing because it made sense, and it essentially revolutionized the way I had always seen Scripture.  Unfortunately Skiba passed away about 5 years ago due to complications arising from COVID-19, and prior to his death he had begun embracing some weird ideas such as "flat-earth" theory, but his earlier work is worth consideration.  Like my own conclusions, Skiba understood Scripture as being a specific story with a specific goal - the redemption of God's ultimate creation, humanity. At the center of that was the person of Jesus Christ.  But, as I likewise have concluded, the Bible is not a complete comprehensive history of the universe, nor was it intended to be.  This means that the possibility of other accounts existed, and these are sources that Skiba called (and I love the term!) "Biblically-endorsed extra-biblical books."  Some of these included The Book of Enoch, The Book of Jasher, and The Book of Jubilees.  While not part of the Western canon of Scripture, Enoch in particular is in the Ethiopian Bible.  These books are not divinely-authored, nor are the inspired in the same way as the Bible is, but many of them do contain vital historical accounts that were referenced even in Scripture.  Looking at it from a Thomistic/Bonaventure perspective, they represent Nature confirming Scripture, and as such Scripture then perfects the narrative they give by the sheer fact that God even told many of those whom he used to write the books of the Bible that they could reference those as sort of what we call primary source material as historians.  It is apparent that many of the theologians and Fathers of the Church appreciated them too, as they referred to them in many cases in their own writings.  It is in that backdrop that we introduce Michael the Syrian.

Michael Rabo (also known as Michael the Syrian or Michael the Great) lived from 1126 to 1199.  He was an ethnic Assyrian, and served as Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church for over 50 years.  His famous Chronicle was written over a 50-year period of his life, and it is a history that begins with Creation and concludes with the year 1195, just four years before his own passing.  The original text was huge, and was organized into three columns, each being its own section of the book. It was eventually translated by an Armenian-American scholar, Robert Bedrosian, into English in 2013, and that is the edition I am holding in my hand as I write this.  His account of the generations of Noah is what got my attention, as it confirmed something I had personally theorized about for many years myself, and that is what I wanted to talk about now.

Like many of these Chronicles, Michael's relies heavily on the Biblical text but also adds to it where gaps are perceived.  In his discussion about the generations of Noah, he gives the family tree almost as Scripture documents, but then he adds who he believes the nations fathered by Noah's descendants are.  There is one notable point of disagreement I have where he identifies the Franks (Germanic tribes) as Semites, and the evidence is not there for that - if they are descended from any of Noah's sons it would be Japheth, as most of the Indo-European nations are traced to him. Also, is account of the death of Nimrod is somewhat different too - while some ancient texts state that it was Esau who defeated and killed Nimrod, Michael claims that Hayk, a descendant of Japheth and believed to be the father of the Armenian nation, did this.  While that is a topic for another discussion, it proves that even among venerated writings of Church leaders throughout the centuries, there is some debate among them about minor details.  I personally still hold to the view that Esau assassinated Nimrod, and the consensus of this story is that Nimrod was a giant, a world leader, and a precursor to the future Antichrist. Michael comes to a similar conclusion about those details as well.  The focus here though is not on Nimrod, although I may do a study on that later, but rather on Noah's other children.

There is honestly no consensus on how many children Noah had in his lifetime, and there could have been dozens of them.  The same could be said of Adam as well, as Cain, Abel, and later Seth had to get their wives from somewhere in order to reproduce.  As Noah's story chronicles a sort of reset of the human race, it means that there had to be more to the story.  While his primary three sons - Shem, Ham, Japheth - all had wives already, their generations in the "Table of Nations" in no way serve as a comprehensive origin of every nation on earth.  So, that means there were other children involved.  Michael notes that Noah did indeed produce another son named Matinos, and he was given a land "beyond the far side of the sea."  What does that mean?  It could mean the Americas, or even sub-Saharan Africa, but it is listed.  A further sentence notes that he was "sent to the West," meaning that wherever he was sent it was to the west of where Noah landed and the first postdiluvian setttlements were built.  That means then that at least one other son of Noah did exist, but could there have been more?  That will be the objective of future research I plan to do on this topic.  

Where did Michael find the information about Matinos at though?  His chronicle says nothing about that, but it must have had some primary source somewhere that talked about it.  Going back to Scripture, we basically know where the three principle sons of Noah went - Japheth had a split in his progeny, as some settled in what is now Europe while others went to the steppes of the north.  The Indo-European peoples are the primary descendants of Japheth.  The descendants of Ham, we see, are the originators of some of the oldest civilizations on earth, including the Sumerians, Egyptians, the Dravidian peoples of Mohenjo-Daro, and I would even add the peoples of the Pacific Ocean.  The descendants of Shem have a special place in salvation history, and the story will eventually narrow down to them - these are the Jews, Arabs, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Amharic Ethiopians, and others.  Scripture gives evidence that those nations sprung forth from the primary three sons of Noah, but what about the rest of the world.  No mention is given of east Asians, nor of sub-Saharan Black Africans, nor of American Indians - they did not have a role in the overall story, so they are not relevant to that discussion in that instance.  It does not detract from their humanity though, as Christ came to save them too as part of the human race, and in modern history we see the fruit of that.  But, they are not part of the Biblical story.  The logical conclusion - which also makes the most sense - is that they are descendants of other children of Noah.  When you start to see it that way, then things start to fall into place.  It does not compromise the Biblical narrative, nor does it diminish Christ's plan to offer salvation to all mankind, but again, Scripture has a stage its narrative unfolds upon, and that stage is a focal geographical region.  In time, I may find out more and I will definitely update things as I learn, but it just is something I have thought about for a while, and Michael's Chronicle confirms that I am not the only one to tackle that question.

That is enough theological discourse for this week, but I will be back soon.  Thanks for allowing me to share with you.