Clearly, the most notable and recognized Noé (Noah) is from the Biblical book of Genesis (Chapters 6–9). Noah saves his family and all animals in groups of two from the flood. While the great flood and Noah’s Ark are the best-known elements of the Noah tradition, Noah is also mentioned in Genesis as the “first husbandman” and possibly the inventor of wine. This story has been immensely influential in Western culture. Noah was the son of Lamech who named him Noah because he would bring rest from toil on the land which God had cursed (a reference to the curse God placed on the earth following the expulsion from Eden). In his five hundredth year Noah had three sons. When Noah was six hundred years old, God, saddened at the wickedness of mankind, decided to send a great deluge to destroy all life. But he saw that Noah was a righteous man, and instructed him to build an ark and gather himself and his family with every type of animal, male and female. “Be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it.” And as a sign of his covenant, he set the rainbow in the sky.
