Customer Reviews

The Children of Noah

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The late Raphael Patai has written an interesting book on an unexpected subject - the seafaring of ancient Israelites and medieval Jews. The semi-nomadic tribes of Israel appear to have settled in the southern Levant highlands in the twelth or thirteenth century BC, while the coasts were controlled by Canaanites, Phoenicians and Philistines. The Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) comments only infrequently about the sea, so it is refreshing to read more about a topic only peripherally covered elsewhere (perhaps in specialist literature). Such an effort may be compared to the late Arthur Koesler's _The_Thirteenth_Tribe_ about the Kazarian Jewish converts yielding a source of eastern European Jewry after about the AD 10th century.

_The_Children_of_Noah_ integrates scripture, midrash and commentaries from ancient and medieval times to weave a continual if marginal participation of the Hebrews in the seafaring trade. One might be taken aback by the uncritical inclusion of citations from the Book of Mormon, but apparently Patai took his sources where he found them. (Not being Mormon myself, my skepticism of its veracity encourages me to overlook that portion.)

According to Patai, Jewish captains and sailors were plying the Mediterranean in significant numbers before and after the fall of Jerusalem. While the diaspora from the Babylonian and Roman conquests had scattered monotheistic Jews across landmasses in southwestern Asia, southern Europe and Egypt, revelation to the reader about how the Jews adapted both culturally and religiously to this nautical opportunity is a welcome experience in broadening one's historical perspective.