This certainly has been a long flood we've ridden out with Noah. In bitter judgment on a world of heartbreaking evil, God had unleashed the waters of chaos, blotting out the creation with forty days of torrents from below and above, until no flesh was left alive – save what was in the life-saver, the ark, with Noah. The rain had stopped, the wind began to blow, and after many months the waters had settled this life-saving ark to rest atop one of the mountains of Ararat; from there, Noah had tenderly tested by birds the progress of the world outside.
Between the olive branch and the dove's fond farewell, Noah had boldness by New Year's Day to cast off the ark's roof and greet the world unfiltered. By that day, “the waters were dried from off the earth...; and he looked, and behold, dry was the face of the ground!” (Genesis 8:13). That is, when he surveyed what he could see of it – you know, from who-knows-how-many thousands of feet up – he couldn't spot any visible pools that remained from the flood. But Noah doesn't at this point jump out of the ark, Noah doesn't now swing open the door. He doesn't at this point even let all the birds out of their coops to soar the sky, even though he has every reason to believe it'd be safe to do so. Instead, Noah waits... nearly two more months in the open-air ark.
Eventually, “by the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out” (Genesis 8:14). This here's a different Hebrew word for 'dry' than before; it means withered, parched, dried through. On New Year's, there may have been no visible pools, but that doesn't mean the ground down there wouldn't yet be as squishy as a sopping sponge underfoot.1 Now, though, Genesis tells us that – though Noah can't see a change – the land is dried through, it's back to normal. Once again it's “dry land” (Genesis 1:9). And would you look what day it is? Month 2, day 27. The flood started “in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Genesis 7:11). But Israel counted by lunar months. This is “the appointed time, a complete year,”2 “three hundred sixty-five days” after the flood began,3 “an entire solar year” which brings the earth back to the same position around the sun where judgment began.4
And as we round out a year since the world started coming undone, we read some long-lost words: “then God spoke to Noah” (Genesis 8:15). The last time Noah heard a word from God was when “the LORD said to Noah, 'Go into the ark'” (Genesis 7:1), which was seven days before the rains began to fall (Genesis 7:4). God hasn't spoken to Noah the entire time he's been on the ark, as though the walls blocked out his voice.5 But Noah has endured patiently, waiting for the word of God. After all, it was the LORD who sealed the ark's door against the flood (Genesis 7:16), and not without God's word will Noah dare open what God has shut. Perhaps Noah reasoned that “one who had entered by a heavenly command should await a response from heaven that he exit.”6 Besides, Noah has no way to know, until it's revealed to him, that the earth is truly ready.
But now God speaks: “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you! Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh – birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth!” (Genesis 8:16-17). This structure, this ark, had always been “a means, not an end,” a shelter for the year, but always meant to deliver life back into the world.7 Noah doesn't waste another minute in complying (Genesis 8:18). As one Jewish author pictured it a couple thousand years ago, “Noah took courage and jumped to the land from the ark, and his sons with him, and his wife and daughters-in-law, and serpents and birds, the species of four-footed animals and all the other creatures went out of the wooden house in one place; and then Noah, most righteous of men, came out eighth.”8 It was their exodus.
And I don't say that lightly. Compare the two stories. Under Moses, Israel was faced with a mass of water they couldn't cross, until “the LORD drove back the sea by a strong east wind all night” (Exodus 14:21), just as here “God made a wind blow over all the earth, and the waters subsided” (Genesis 8:1). For Moses, the LORD “made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided” (Exodus 14:21), just like on Noah's New Year's Day “the waters were dried from off the earth” (Genesis 8:13). The parting of the sea exposed “dry ground” (Exodus 14:22), using the same Hebrew word as now where “the earth had dried out” (Genesis 8:14). And just like “the Children of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea” (Exodus 14:29), so “Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him” (Genesis 8:18) – their exodus story! Moses' exodus took him from Egypt through the sea until he set foot atop the mountain of God. So Noah's exodus takes him from the world through the flood until he set foot atop this mountain in Ararat – a Sinai before Sinai, holy ground!
What's more, we heard last week that the flood was a story of God rewinding to the Bible's second verse, before the world was more than darkness and a deep; but then God hit the play button again, and we've been tracing our way forward through the days of creation, with the wind over the waters, the return of light, the confinement of waters above and below, and only now, at the end of the flood year, can we say we've finished revisiting Day Three. Once again we have “dry land” (Genesis 1:9), and we've already seen that “the earth vegetated vegetation” (Genesis 1:12). The world is no longer formless. The trouble is, it's still void. But now God aims to fix that.
In answer to God's command, out comes “every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth” (Genesis 8:19). Out fly the birds of Day FIve (Genesis 1:21)! Out creep the things that slither and hop and creep, out walk the beasts, out come all the land animals of Day SIx (Genesis 1:25)!9 I wonder how long it took Noah to get them all out. In the beginning, God had blessed those creatures to “be fruitful and multiply... on the earth” (Genesis 1:22, 28). Now, God restores their blessing, calling them to “swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth” again (Genesis 8:17). It's in answer to his summons that the animals “went out by families from the ark” (Genesis 8:19), “not in the same manner in which they entered.”10 This is the only time the Bible applies this word – 'family' or 'clan' – to animals; but after the exodus, the Israelites registered in a census “by families, by fathers' houses” (Numbers 1:24). Now, like a Moses before Moses, Noah leads them all forth, acting almost as “God's partner in restoring the world to what it was.”11
And when Noah steps out for the last time, along with his own family, there stands a second Adam, feeling the terra firma beneath his feet. What must that have felt like, to stand at last in a new world? An old Jewish book, imagining what Noah might have written, has him say: “Then I, Noah, went out and walked through the land, through its length and through its breadth.... The entire land was full of grass, herbs, and grain. Then I blessed the Lord of Heaven, whose praise endures forever, and to whom be the glory!”12 With the reintroduction of the human being into the world, the replay of Day Six can finish, as “the whole of creation recovers its proper order.”13 And now we know why Noah waited to open the door to the ark. In the first creation, the earth didn't make a move to bring forth living things until it first received God's word (Genesis 1:24) – so neither, in new creation, will Noah bring forth living things until he, too, receives God's timely word (Genesis 8:15-19).
The world is neither formless nor void now. It's a new creation. So what's the first thing a person should do in a world made new? How does Noah react to his finished salvation? You might think that, finding himself in an unfamiliar land, he'd promptly start to build a house. Or maybe, with time running out, he'd hurry to sow some crops. But that's not what Noah does. He blesses the Lord of Heaven. He begins with worship.14 For “then Noah built an altar to the LORD” (Genesis 8:20), making it “from what lay at hand.”15 It's a public monument, standing in front of the ark and bearing witness to salvation accomplished, proclaiming the kingdom of God over this new world he sees before him.16 What he builds is “the first altar in Scripture,” the prototype after which every later altar is modeled, and serving at it makes Noah the “archetype” also of every priest to follow.17
Now, you'll remember from other weeks that, as we've been hearing the flood story, we've been eavesdropping also on other ways of telling it, pagan ways, since some of Israel's neighbors also spoke about the man who built the boat that saved life in the flood. They also knew that worship comes after the flood. At this point, one popular Babylonian version imagines the flood survivor Atrahasis saying: “I brought out a sacrifice to the four winds and offered incense to the mountain peak; I laid out seven offering bowls and seven more, with sweet reed, cedar, and myrtle underneath.”18 And a broken Sumerian version fleshes this out by mentioning how “the king was butchering oxen, was being lavish with the sheep, barley cakes, crescents,” and that “juniper, the pure plant of the mountains, he filled on the fire.”19 Genesis doesn't spend time detailing things like fragrant wood, sweet incense, baked goods, bowls, ritual implements – though in early Jewish retellings, they added in such things, kneaded dough, heaps of frankincense.20 Genesis shines its spotlight on one thing only: the animals.
Here, for purposes of an offering, Noah had gathered “clean animals” and “clean birds” (Genesis 8:20). As St. Augustine pointed out, “after the flood, Noah did not offer to the Lord a sacrifice from the unclean animals.”21 It goes without saying that an “unclean animal... may not be offered as an offering to the LORD” (Leviticus 27:11). In fact, so much as touching an unclean animal could have distanced an Israelite from communion with the peace-offerings of God (Leviticus 7:21). So Noah knows somehow to “separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean” (Leviticus 20:25). Noah excludes, leaves alone, any and every creature that, while having a rightful place in the world, in some way falls short of the beauty of the Lord.
Going further, Noah “took of every clean animal and of every clean bird” (Genesis 8:20). In fact, early readers wondered if the very reason God “gave orders for the preservation of more clean animals” on the ark was for the sake of giving Noah the option, though not the demand, “to offer him sacrifices.”22 Some Jewish retellings count up no more than “a calf, a goat, a lamb..., a turtledove, and a young dove,”23 and some early Christians thought that list sufficed.24 But I just don't know if that does justice to what Noah's up to. In the Law of Moses, there's no exhaustive list of clean animals; it's the unclean ones that are listed, implying that every other animal out there counts as 'clean' (Leviticus 11:3-8, 13-19). So far as livestock and birds are concerned, if it could be given to God, Noah puts at least one in the sacrifice pile. This is the only time in the whole Old Testament when every clean creature of earth and sky is combined in one single sacrifice; one scholar suggests it's because, through the flood and its end, effectively “the whole creation had been killed and resurrected.”25
Having essentially assembled a sampler platter of everything in creation that's simple and pure, Noah thereafter “offered burnt offerings on the altar” (Genesis 8:20) – or, as somebody else put it, Noah “roasts up large numbers of his animal former roommates.”26 Given the sheer scale of the offering, that's no light time commitment; just ask the teams who came to the barbecue competition last weekend how quick it is to roast whole animals. Noah's worship isn't easy-breezy; he labors at this for hours and hours, maybe days on end.
This was not a kind of offering that left anything over for Noah to enjoy – not flesh nor bone nor skin nor fur. Noah received no tangible benefits as a byproduct of what he was doing. In a whole burnt offering like this, “the most potent form of sacrifice,”27 “nothing fell to the use of those making the offering.”28 That makes it all the more stunning that Noah gathers and gives up to God, in a single act of surrender, at least 7% of all the livestock animals in his world; it's mathematically the closest he can get to an exact tithe of every clean species.29 And this comes after Noah has just been told to ensure that the animals can “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 8:17). Yet his first act, three verses later, is to round up a bunch of them and light them on fire on the altar.30 Is that really on-script, Noah? Well, in a deep and mysterious way, it is. Never is a creature more fruitful than when burning up for God. Never is the earth greater or vaster than when it rises to heaven.
For what we call a 'burnt offering' is, in Hebrew, literally 'that which ascends,'31 referring to the way the whole flesh of the offering is turned into fire and smoke that rise up, up, and away toward the sky. That's why I prefer to translate it, not as 'burnt offering,' but as 'ascension offering.'32 Essentially, to the ancient mind, this was a way of sending mail to heaven – and, just like mail, such sacrifice was a way of “establishing communication” and “nurturing the bond between humans and God.”33 Beyond that, an ascension offering was a sort of all-purpose type of sacrifice, not tied down to one specific aim.34 So what's Noah up to?
The oldest Jewish readings emphasize that Noah's idea was to “make atonement... for all the sins of the land, because everything which was on it had been blotted out.”35 Thus, by this sacrifice, Noah “atoned for all the earth in its entirety.”36 And it makes sense: Noah is effectively humanity's high priest in this moment.37 In the wake of all that corruption that's been washed down the drain, Noah aims to cover over the residue, completing what the flood accomplished. But ascension-offerings also tended to be joyful occasions, voluntary outpourings of delight in the Lord (Leviticus 22:18).38 Early Christians said that, after such a profound salvation, righteous Noah “thought it right to offer the firstfruits in gratitude to the Giver,”39 “a token of gratitude for all that God had done.”40 So naturally Noah “offers thanks to his Lord both for what happened and for what lay ahead..., giving thanks as far as possible.”41 'Twas “true thanksgiving,” through and through.42
But here we have a massive difference between what Sacred Scripture shows us, on the one hand, and the pale pagan myths, on the other. Like I said, in the pagan versions, Atrahasis – like Noah – picks this point to make an offering; but the function and reaction are very different. The thing about the pagan gods is, they're pretty needy. Instead of self-sufficient, they exist in a “great symbiosis” with their creatures.43 They made humans to be, in effect, their plantation slaves – farmers, chefs, butlers. Now, what befalls a spoiled rich family when the help goes on strike? The pagan gods, in their story, drowned the hand that fed them, and realized all too late that “the gods could not do without humankind to bring them sacrifices.”44
As a result, not only do the gods spend the flood being terrified of the storm and its dangers, but “the great gods were sitting in thirst and hunger,”45 “their lips were dry with distress, they were unceasingly convulsed from hunger.”46 And, needless to say, these 'hangry' gods have emotional breakdowns, crying in grief, turning on each other and themselves in blame.47 Then, all of a sudden, “to the four winds [Atrahasis] offered sacrifice, providing food.”48 A dinner bell rings; they sniff what's cookin'! “The gods smelled the scent, the gods smelled the sweet scent, the gods swarmed to the sacrifice like flies.”49 Just think about that picture, the way flies get all over a summer barbecue. When I was in Africa some years ago, I happened across a pride of lions settled down after a very raw lunch, and their gory faces were coated thick with flies attracted to the blood. That's the picture this pagan story gives of their supposedly 'great gods' who, frenzied by a ravenous hunger and thirst, drop their dignity to the level of mere insects at the alluring aroma. How anyone could've told that tale and still worshipped a pantheon as low as buzzing bugs is beyond me. But in the pagan yarn, this is no mere metaphor; the gods actually ate and were nourished by what Atrahasis fed them.50 Not only is the pagan sacrifice a bribe of angry gods who wanted Atrahasis dead,51 but it's an emergency medical intervention for starving gods.52
No wonder the Bible says that “all the gods of the peoples are good-for-nothings, but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalm 96:5). Early Christians preached that it's mere demons who are actually “greedy for the savor of fat and the blood of the sacrifices.”53 Neither we nor Noah may comply with their greed, for “we who are living do not sacrifice to dead gods!”54 But our God, the God of Noah, is alive! In fact, he's the Source of Life itself; he is Life, he is Existence. And because he's completely complete in himself, fully full with his infinite fullness, “the eternal God shall neither hunger nor thirst.”55 So he doesn't actually “eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats,” like the pagan gods would if they could (Psalm 50:13). But “the Master is in need of nothing... and craves nothing from anyone.”56 Like God tells the psalmist, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all its fullness is mine” (Psalm 50:12). Therefore, God “has no need of sacrifices or whole burnt offerings or regular offerings.”57 But he invites us to “offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving... I will deliver you, and you will glorify me” (Psalm 50:14-15). God “made no demand for the sacrifices offered, but for that on account of which they were offered: the honor of God.”58
It's in that spirit that, in response to Noah's sacrifice, “the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma” (Genesis 8:21). It isn't that God's just a really big barbecue fan, tantalized by the delicious smells of smoked meat like I am.59 But “the Lord smelled, not the smell of the flesh of animals or the smoke of wood, but... the simplicity of heart with which [Noah] offered the sacrifice from all and on behalf of all.”60 It's Noah's total devotion, Noah's sincere self-surrender, Noah's faith working by love, his interior worship seen through his exterior worship, that God smells and finds so absolutely appetizing, so savory and satisfying.61
Now, your Bible might say that God smelled a 'pleasant aroma.' Perhaps more accurate would be 'soothing.' It's literally 'restful,' 'rest-bringing' – and it comes, once again, from the same root as Noah's name.62 Noah's dad hoped that Noah would somehow bring rest to creation (Genesis 5:29); instead, God gave Mr. Rest's ark a rest on the mountain, and now Noah returns the favor when his worship sends a restful fragrance to the Creator. He thereby appeases God, gratifies and satisfies God, pacifies and soothes God's (apparent) wrath.63 In other words, Noah's worship brings this new creation to Day Seven, to a state of sabbath. And in that, we see again what creation is for. The creation is made for the sake of worship. Creation was made to be given back to Love by love, to rise to God, to be transfigured into a peace that transcends the gulf between Creator and created.
Later, on another mountain, God will meet with a new Noah named Moses, teaching him and all Israel how to follow in Noah's footsteps. They'll built an “altar of burnt offering” (Exodus 27:1-8), lit by a continuous fire that's never allowed to fade (Leviticus 6:13). Every morning and every evening on that altar, they'll give a lamb as a “regular ascension-offering throughout their generations” (Exodus 29:38-42), which will reproduce every day Noah's “soothing aroma... to the LORD” (Exodus 29:41). But God warned them that, if they closed their hearts and ears to his voice, he'd have to judge them like Noah's neighbors, “and I will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas” (Leviticus 26:31). Tragically, that judgment came to pass, and they were dispersed into foreign lands, a stench before the Lord.
But already through Moses, God promised that even then, they could apply the spiritual cologne of repentance; turning back to God, they could receive mercy once again (Deuteronomy 30:1-3). And so, God promises by his prophet, “when I bring you out from the peoples,” then “as a soothing aroma I will accept you” (Ezekiel 20:41), returning them to the holy “mountain height” from which God would receive their “sacred offerings” (Ezekiel 20:40). When it was fulfilled, they gathered bulls and lambs, goats and rams, as a great “ascension-offering to the LORD” (Ezra 8:35), after the example of Noah. But even as the temple was being rebuilt, God indicted their worship, how “with every work of their hands..., what they offer there is unclean” (Haggai 2:14).
And so, in eventual answer to the hopeless impurity of the world, God sent his own Son. When pure divinity and pure humanity were united, the seed was sown for a new creation. “On the altar of the holy cross,”64 Jesus “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12), “the whole burnt offering of his flesh which was offered through the wood of the cross.”65 Now that Christ has “cleansed [people's] hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9), St. Peter says, we “should no longer call any person common or unclean” (Acts 10:28), for “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all” (Hebrews 10:10).
The Apostle Paul proclaims that “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a gift and sacrifice to God for a pleasant aroma” (Ephesians 5:2). The faithful obedience and limitless love of Jesus, all the way to that cross, is far more potent in the nose of God than if Noah had the help of every angel to sacrifice more clean beasts than there are atoms in the universe. To the Father, there's simply nothing that smells as good as Jesus' love-unto-death. Nothing is so savory as the sabbath of the Savior; nothing is sweeter to secure peace for the world.
Christ then rose from the dead so that he could ascend into heaven and present this gift there (Hebrews 9:11-14). But first he appointed his apostles, and those who came after them, to baptize into Jesus' own holy word naming Father and Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), for “you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). Rising from the waters marked by that word, the creatures of this new creation could leap forth to “enter into the earth's new face.”66 The apostles and those who followed were then to “teach my people... how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean” (Ezekiel 44:23), in other words, “to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20), so as to “increase and multiply by the constant augmentation of spiritual virtues.”67 “You are my friends if you do what I command you,” our Lord told us (John 15:14), and “if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (John 15:10).
For the sake of our abiding in his love, “he established a new altar and a new rite of sacrifice,”68 such that “we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Hebrews 13:10). There we make “a pure offering... among the nations” (Malachi 1:11), prophetic words the first Christians knew meant “the sacrifices which we offer to him at every place, namely, the bread of the Eucharist and the chalice of the Eucharist.”69 Having been washed clean in the flood, it's only fitting that, as one medieval monk put it, “we are renewed at the sacred altar by the offering of holy communion.”70 For our first reaction to salvation must be worship, if we're to honestly profess that “my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (Psalm 13:5).
So long as we thus abide in Christ's love, so long as we reek of Jesus, “we are the aroma of Christ to God” (2 Corinthians 2:15). “A sweet fragrance to the Lord is a heart that glorifies the One who made it.”71 And the Apostle Paul adds that our deeds of truthful love and loving truth are not only “a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God,” but that they produce “a pleasant aroma” (Philippians 4:18), one which spiritually overwhelms what one early Christian called “the stench of the teaching of the ruler of this age.”72 In this way, by our words and works and witness of love rooted in the sacrifice of Christ, “through us God spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere,” perfuming all the earth (2 Corinthians 2:14). To those whose spiritual sniffer is burnt and dead, Paul grants that Jesus' goodness “an aroma from death to death” for them; but to those who smell as God smells, a life in Christ is “an aroma from life to life” (2 Corinthians 2:16).73 And to the extent we surrender our lives as disciples who deny ourselves for the sake of his sacrificial cross (Mark 8:34), we become “a whole burnt offering at the altar of God,” rising fragrantly toward the Lord in heaven.74
But hark, already we hear the Father calling, pledging, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17)! One day, we'll fully leave this ark that sails the stormy seas of this world. All at once, at our Savior's shout, everyone aboard will disembark into “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). And when we step foot on that new world the first time, as we begin to understand what it means that “the dwelling place of God is with man” there (Revelation 21:3), what will we do first? What will eternity mean? Nothing but what Noah showed us. To set foot in a new creation, to finish the exodus to the promised land, to stand upon the mountain height of God as all things give way to fire and glory, is to worship by offering up the whole new creation. “His servants will worship him; they will see his face..., and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3-5). Hallelujah!
1 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 58; Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 238.
2 4Q252 ii.4-5, in Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (Brill, 2005), 2:109.
3 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.12.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:141.
4 Bede, On Genesis 8:15-18, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:198.
5 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 306.
6 Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 21 §75, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:78.
7 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 239.
8 Sibylline Oracles 1.275-281, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:341.
9 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 85-86.
10 Sextus Julius Africanus, Chronographiae fr.23, in Martin Wallraff, Iulius Africanus Chronographiae: The Extant Fragments (Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 51.
11 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 89.
12 1QapGen 11.11-13, in Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 54.
13 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 26.16, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:156.
14 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 307; David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Liturgical Press, 2003), 59; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 108; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 148.
15 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 27.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:166.
16 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 149.
17 Steven C. Smith, The House of the Lord: A Catholic Biblical Theology of God's Temple Presence in the Old and New Testaments (Franciscan University Press, 2017), 40-41.
18 Gilgamesh XI.157-160, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 106.
19 Eridu Genesis 142'-146' (= D.11-16), in The Context of Scripture 1:515.
20 Jubilees 6:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:66; 1QapGen 10.16, in Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 53.
21 Augustine of Hippo, Letter 108.20, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century II/2:82.
22 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 50.2, in Library of Early Christianity 1:109; cf. Jean-Pierre Sonnet, “Between Poetic Justice and Poetic Mercy: God in the Flood Narrative (Genesis 6-7),” Nova et Vetera 18/4 (Fall 2020): 1259; Berel Dov Lerner, Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures: Covenants and Cross-Purposes (Routledge, 2023), 8.
23 Jubilees 6:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:66.
24 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 8:20, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:182; cf. Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 92.
25 James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 47.
26 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 170.
27 Jonathan Reinarz, Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell (University of Illinois Press, 2014), 30.
28 Bede, On Genesis 8:21, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:201.
29 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 109.
30 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 170.
31 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 59.
32 James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 47.
33 Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, “Spreading the Sweet Scent of the Gospel as the Cult of the Wise: On the Backdrop of the Olfactory Metaphor in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16,” in Christian A. Eberhart, Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 131.
34 Peter J. Harland, The Value of Human Life: A Study of the Story of the Flood (Genesis 6-9) (E.J. Brill, 1996), 125.
35 Jubilees 6:2, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:66.
36 1QapGen 10.13, in Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 52.
37 Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 366.
38 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 308.
39 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 8:20, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:182.
40 Johnson T.K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 173.
41 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 26.17-18, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:156-158.
42 Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 22 §78, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:80.
43 Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 81; cf. Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 102.
44 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 71.
45 Atrahasis: C1 iii.30'-31', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 34.
46 Atrahasis: C1 iv.21'-23', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 35.
47 Atrahasis: C1 iii.32'–iv.20', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 34-35.
48 Atrahasis: C1 v.30"-32", in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 35.
49 Gilgamesh XI.161-163, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 106.
50 Atrahasis: C1 v.36", in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 35.
51 Gilgamesh XI.172-176, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 106; cf. Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2003), 425.
52 Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 81.
53 Athenagoras, Legatio 27.2, in William R. Schoedel, Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione (Clarendon Press, 1972), 67.
54 2 Clement 3.1, in Loeb Classical Library 24:169.
55 Tertullian of Carthage, Against Marcion 2.22, in Ernest Evans, Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem (Oxford University Press, 1972), 147.
56 Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 52.1, in Loeb Classical Library 24:129.
57 Barnabas 2.4, in Loeb Classical Library 25:15-17.
58 Tertullian of Carthage, Against Marcion 2.22, in Ernest Evans, Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem (Oxford University Press, 1972), 147.
59 Contrary to, e.g., Anna Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, “A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh: The Smell of Sacrifices on Mount Gerizim and in the Hebrew Bible,” Body and Religion 2/1 (2018): 16.
60 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.13.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:142.
61 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 142.
62 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 308; Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 112; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 365.
63 Isabel Cranz, Atonement and Purification: Priestly and Assyro-Babylonian Perspectives on Sin and Its Consequences (Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 117-118.
64 Bede, On Genesis 8:21, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:200.
65 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 1.4.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 83:36.
66 Bede, On Genesis 8:15-18, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:198.
67 Bede, On Genesis 8:15-18, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:198.
68 Rupert of Deutz, On the Holy Trinity and Its Works 4.27, in Joy A. Schroeder, The Book of Genesis, The Bible in Medieval Tradition (Eerdmans, 2015), 120.
69 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 41.3, in Thomas B. Falls, St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho (Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 63.
70 Bede, On Genesis 8:21, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:200.
71 Barnabas 2.10, in Loeb Classical Library 25:17; cf. 11Q5 xviii.7-10, in Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (Brill, 2005), 5:191.
72 Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 17.1, in Loeb Classical Library 24:237.
73 Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (University of California Press, 2006), 19.
74 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 9.9.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 83:197.
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