The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times.

• Author: Tammuz, Oded
• Position: Review

The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times. By RAPHAEL PATAI, with contributions by JAMES HORNELL and JOHN M. LUNDQUIST. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1998. Pp. xix + 227, maps, illustrations. $24.95.

Ancient Jewish scholars did not pay much attention to the sea. Most of them had very little knowledge of sea voyages or of life aboard a seagoing ship. This is the main conclusion of the book under review, but it stands in opposition to the author's introductory statement (pp. xv, 19). In fact, it was this secondary role of the sea in ancient Jewish life and writing that enabled the author to produce a conclusive book on this wide topic.

Chapter one (pp. 1-11) discusses the Ark of Noah and its reflection in Talmudic literature. Chapter two (pp. 12-21) describes seafaring in the Bible. Chapters three through twelve (pp. 22-13 1) contain a description of various aspects of the sea and seamanship in ancient times according to Jewish sources. These aspects are: "construction and pasts," "types of ships," "the crew," "maritime trade' "in the harbor;' "on the high seas," "naval warfare," "laws of the sea and river," "similes and parables" and "sea legends and sailors' tales." In cases where biblical material is also available, the author places it at the beginning of the respective chapters. Chapters thirteen and fourteen (pp. 132-69) list the port cities in the area defined as the coast of "Eretz Israel" (a small stretch of land on the northern tip of the Gulf of [subset]Aqaba, and the Mediterranean coast from EI-[supset]Arish in the south to Akhzibh in the north), and the sea of Galilee. These chapters describe each port and its history from its founding, or its earliest known written attestation. The book also includes an appendix (pp. 171- 75) on "Biblical seafaring and the book of Mormon," which was written by Lundquist and is beyond the scope of this review.

The book under review has an exceptionally long history. The original Hebrew version was conceived in 1936 when a Palestinian general strike paralyzed the port of Jaffa and compelled the Zionist leadership to build (with British approval) a jetty on the shore of Tel-Aviv. Humble as it was, the new jetty caused excitement among the Tel-Aviv citizenry, the leadership of the Zionist movement, and the local intelligentsia. This was the occasion which directed the attention of the writer to ancient Jewish seafaring. In the introduction to the first version of this book...