Monday, July 18, 2016

Moses as a ‘New Noah’


 

 
 by
Damien F. Mackey

 
Inspired by the view of scholars that the Exodus story of Moses is a miniature Flood story.

 
  
Introduction

Professor Emmanuel Anati’s emphatic view that Mount Har Karkom – and not Jebel Musa – is the true biblical Mount Sinai, received this taunt from some of his colleagues, as he tells: “We became used to sarcastic comments such as ‘Did you find the broken Tablets of the Law?’, or, ‘Next you should look for Noah’s Ark’.”
These colleagues may have been right, though unwittingly, in referring to Noah and the Exodus in the one breath, given the view of certain scholars (see below) that the Exodus story of Moses is a miniature Flood story.

A: Comparisons Between Genesis and Exodus



Moses wrote the Exodus account in terms of ‘a miniature Flood story’, portraying himself as the new Noah. This section illustrates the Flood-Exodus parallelisms.
Moses, who compiled Genesis from the series of family histories (toledôt) of his illustrious forefathers was apparently also very conscious – when writing his own story in the rest of the Pentateuch – of the content, language and structure of Genesis.
For more on this, see my two-part:

Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis
Simple examples of this are identified below, followed by a more profound, structural example.

  • Just as God saw His creative works as ‘good’ (Genesis 1:31), so did Moses’ mother see that her son ‘was a goodly child’ (Exodus 2:2);
  • The ‘Ten Words’ or creative commands of God in Genesis 1: ‘And God said’, have been found to parallel the ‘Ten Commandments’ of Exodus 20. Moreover, both series of ten are referred to in the context of the Six Days and a Seventh (cf. Genesis 1:5-31; 2:2 and Exodus 20:9-11).
  • The new Pharaoh who began the oppression of the Israelites is portrayed by Moses as something of a Nimrod figure, as found in Genesis 10 and 11, a megalomaniacal builder of cities. At Babel, the inhabitants use a phraseology: ‘Come, let us make bricks …. Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens …’ (cf. Genesis 10:8-9 and 11:3,4) that Moses would copy in Exodus: ‘… the new king over Egypt’ said ‘Come, let us deal shrewdly with [the Israelites], lest they multiply …’. So the Egyptians ‘made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick’ (Exodus 1:10, 14). The stated purpose of the Babel-onians was to build a city ‘… lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’ (11:4). Moses used a kind of ‘rival operation’ to this in the case of the Israelites, for ‘… the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad’ (1:12).
  • Abram was ordered by God to leave the land of his birth and sojourn in the foreign land of Canaan (Genesis 12:1). Moses, for his part, fled his native home, of Egypt, and sojourned in the foreign land of Midian (Exodus 2:15).
  • Pharaoh begged Abram to leave Egypt once God had begun to inflict plagues upon that country, because of Abram’s wife (Genesis 12:17-19). Likewise, the Pharaoh of the Exodus begged Moses to leave Egypt because of the Ten Plagues (Exodus 12:31-32).

Innumerable other simple comparisons may be found but there is also a more far-reaching similarity between Genesis and the other Pentateuchal books. I. Kikawada and A. Quinn (Before Abraham Was, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1985) have discerned a five-part structure shared by Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, as well as multiple chiasms, pointing to a striking unity of thought throughout the entire Pentateuch. This similarity of structure is further compelling evidence in favour of Mosaic compilation of Genesis and authorship of the last four books. Most striking of all, however, as we shall see, is the similarity between the lives of these two great Patriarchs – so much so that we find Moses portraying himself as a second Noah, his story being ‘a miniature flood story’ (p. 115).
 
B: Comparisons between Noah and Moses

According to Kikawada and Quinn,

In the spirit of good creation, the author of Exodus 2:10 borrows the words of Genesis. When Moses’ mother sees her newborn son, how good he is, she cannot help defying Pharaoh’s command by hiding her son. And then when she can no longer hide him, she seeks some other way to save her son (2:2-3). The famous story of the baby Moses in the basket of bulrushes corresponds to Noah’s Flood and to the Great Flood of Atrahasis. The story occupies the same relative position in Exodus 1-2 as did Noah’s Flood in Genesis and the Great Flood in Atrahasis. All three stories contain the motif of salvation of a hero from the water … In addition to the motif parallels between the Genesis and Exodus flood stories noted above, there are lexical-syntactical parallels that demonstrate the Moses story to be a miniature flood story. These parallels are found in the description of how Noah is to build his têbah: ark and how Moses’ mother constructs the têbah: basket for her child. Noah was commanded:

‘Make for yourself a têbah of gopher wood …. and pitch it with pitch inside and outside (Genesis 6:14)’.

Exodus describes the actions of Moses’ mother thus:

She took for him a têbah of bulrushes and she pitched it with pitch and with mortar (Exodus 2:3) [8].

Amongst numerous other similarities between the Noah and Moses stories, there are the following striking parallels.

(i) The Wicked Drowned

According to the Flood account:

… the waters prevailed … and all flesh died that moved upon the earth … and every man (Genesis 7:20, 21).

Likewise, in Exodus the Egyptians forces were drowned:

… the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh … And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore (Exodus 14:28, 30).

(ii) Blotting Out

In Genesis, God decided to ‘blot out’ humankind from the face of the earth because of its universal wickedness.

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord (6:7, 8).

In Exodus (32:10, 32), during the incident of ‘the Golden Calf’, God bade Moses:

‘… let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation’, but Moses interceded for his fellow-Israelites (that ‘rival operation’ again), saying: ‘… if Thou wilt forgive their sin – and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written’.


(iii) Ark Specifications

Noah built the Ark according to the specifications God gave him (Genesis 6:14-16).

Likewise, Moses built the Ark of the Covenant according to very precise Divine instructions (Exodus 25:10-22).

(iv) Seven Days and Forty Days/Nights

Noah and his family entered the Ark.

And after seven days the waters of the Flood came upon the earth …. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:7, 10, 12).

Moses went up onto Mount Sinai.

The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud …. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights’ (Exodus 24:15, 16, 18).
 
(v) Same Date

  1. Mackinlay, who synchronised the dates of the Flood and Exodus, tying these in with the New Testament (The Magi: How They Recognised Christ’s Star, Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), says: “[Christ] rose from the dead on the day after the Sabbath after the Passover (John 20:1); the day on which the sheaf of first-fruits, promise of the future harvest, was waved before God (Leviticus 23:10,11). Hence we are told by St. Paul that as ‘Christ the first-fruits’ (I Corinthians 15:20, 23) rose, so those who believe in Him will also rise afterwards. This day was the anniversary of Israel’s crossing through the Red Sea (Exodus 12-14), and, as in the case of the Passover, it was also a date memorable in early history, being the day when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4)”.
 
(vi) Ark at the Mountain

The Flood that destroyed humankind carried Noah and his family safely to the mountain, where the Ark landed (Genesis 8:4). Moses led his people safely through the Sea, which closed over their enemies. He had the Ark of the Covenant constructed at the sacred mountain (Ex. 25:10ff.).
 
(vii) Altar Built at the Mountain

Noah built an altar to the Lord (on the mountain?) (Genesis 8:20). Moses built an altar at the foot of the mountain (according to the design he had seen on the mountain?) (cf. Exodus 27:1, 8).
 
(viii) Covenant at the Mountain

God made a covenant with Noah at the mountain (Genesis 9:9). God made a covenant with Moses at the mountain (e.g. Exodus 24:8). The recorded laws that God gave to Noah were few by comparison with those given to Moses at Sinai.
These few, nonetheless, are strikingly similar to certain of the latter: God’s first command to Noah was: ‘… be fruitful and multiply upon the earth’ (Genesis 8:17). God tells the Israelites at Sinai: ‘And I will … make you fruitful and multiply you’ (Leviticus 26:9). ‘You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood’ (Genesis 9:4). Similarly, at Sinai: ‘… you shall eat no blood whatever’ (Leviticus 7:26).
Regarding murder: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed …’ (Genesis 9:6). This is summed up at Sinai by: ‘You shall not kill’ (Exodus 20:13).
Finally, “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father [Noah]”, and his off-spring was cursed by Noah (Genesis 9:22, 25). This was remembered at Sinai, when God told Israel: ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father …’ (Leviticus 18:7).

Finally, we might recall the tradition that Noah carried the skull (bones?) of first man, Adam, in the Ark (through the waters), and that it was later buried by Noah’s son, Shem, in Israel, at Golgotha. And Moses carried from Egypt (and through the Sea) the bones of the patriarch Joseph (Exodus 13:19), these being later buried in Israel, at Shechem (Joshua 24:32).
 


 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

Inspired by the view of scholars that the Exodus story of Moses is a miniature Flood story.

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Professor Emmanuel Anati’s emphatic view that Mount Har Karkom - and not Jebel Musa - is the true biblical Mount Sinai, received this taunt from some of his colleagues, as he tells: “We became used to sarcastic comments such as ‘Did you find the broken Tablets of the Law?’, or, 'Next you should look for Noah’s Ark’.”

These colleagues may have been right, though unwittingly, in referring to Noah and the Exodus in the one breath, given the view of certain scholars (see below) that the Exodus story of Moses is a miniature Flood story.

 

A: Comparisons Between Genesis and Exodus

 

Moses wrote the Exodus account in terms of ‘a miniature Flood story’, portraying himself as the new Noah. This section illustrates the Flood-Exodus parallelisms.

Moses, who compiled Genesis from the series of family histories (toledôt) of his illustrious forefathers was apparently also very conscious - when writing his own story in the rest of the Pentateuch - of the content, language and structure of Genesis.

For more on this, see my two-part:

 

Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis

 


 


 

Simple examples of this are identified below, followed by a more profound, structural example.

 

  • Just as God saw His creative works as ‘good’ (Genesis 1:31), so did Moses’ mother see that her son ‘was a goodly child’ (Exodus 2:2);
  • The ‘Ten Words’ or creative commands of God in Genesis 1: ‘And God said’, have been found to parallel the ‘Ten Commandments’ of Exodus 20. Moreover, both series of ten are referred to in the context of the Six Days and a Seventh (cf. Genesis 1:5-31; 2:2 and Exodus 20:9-11).
  • The new Pharaoh who began the oppression of the Israelites is portrayed by Moses as something of a Nimrod figure, as found in Genesis 10 and 11, a megalomaniacal builder of cities. At Babel, the inhabitants use a phraseology: ‘Come, let us make bricks .... Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens ...’ (cf. Genesis 10:8-9 and 11:3,4) that Moses would copy in Exodus: ‘... the new king over Egypt’ said ‘Come, let us deal shrewdly with [the Israelites], lest they multiply ...’. So the Egyptians ‘made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick’ (Exodus 1:10, 14). The stated purpose of the Babel-onians was to build a city ‘... lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’ (11:4). Moses used a kind of ‘rival operation’ to this in the case of the Israelites, for ‘... the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad’ (1:12).
  • Abram was ordered by God to leave the land of his birth and sojourn in the foreign land of Canaan (Genesis 12:1). Moses, for his part, fled his native home, of Egypt, and sojourned in the foreign land of Midian (Exodus 2:15).
  • Pharaoh begged Abram to leave Egypt once God had begun to inflict plagues upon that country, because of Abram’s wife (Genesis 12:17-19). Likewise, the Pharaoh of the Exodus begged Moses to leave Egypt because of the Ten Plagues (Exodus 12:31-32).

 

Innumerable other simple comparisons may be found but there is also a more far-reaching similarity between Genesis and the other Pentateuchal books. I. Kikawada and A. Quinn (Before Abraham Was, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1985) have discerned a five-part structure shared by Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, as well as multiple chiasms, pointing to a striking unity of thought throughout the entire Pentateuch. This similarity of structure is further compelling evidence in favour of Mosaic compilation of Genesis and authorship of the last four books. Most striking of all, however, as we shall see, is the similarity between the lives of these two great Patriarchs - so much so that we find Moses portraying himself as a second Noah, his story being ‘a miniature flood story’ (p. 115).

 

B: Comparisons between Noah and Moses

 

According to Kikawada and Quinn,

 

In the spirit of good creation, the author of Exodus 2:10 borrows the words of Genesis. When Moses’ mother sees her newborn son, how good he is, she cannot help defying Pharaoh’s command by hiding her son. And then when she can no longer hide him, she seeks some other way to save her son (2:2-3). The famous story of the baby Moses in the basket of bulrushes corresponds to Noah’s Flood and to the Great Flood of Atrahasis. The story occupies the same relative position in Exodus 1-2 as did Noah’s Flood in Genesis and the Great Flood in Atrahasis. All three stories contain the motif of salvation of a hero from the water ... In addition to the motif parallels between the Genesis and Exodus flood stories noted above, there are lexical-syntactical parallels that demonstrate the Moses story to be a miniature flood story. These parallels are found in the description of how Noah is to build his têbah: ark and how Moses’ mother constructs the têbah: basket for her child. Noah was commanded:

 

‘Make for yourself a têbah of gopher wood .... and pitch it with pitch inside and outside (Genesis 6:14)’.

 

Exodus describes the actions of Moses’ mother thus:

 

She took for him a têbah of bulrushes and she pitched it with pitch and with mortar (Exodus 2:3) [8].

 

Amongst numerous other similarities between the Noah and Moses stories, there are the following striking parallels.

 

(i) The Wicked Drowned

 

According to the Flood account:

 

... the waters prevailed ... and all flesh died that moved upon the earth ... and every man (Genesis 7:20, 21).

 

Likewise, in Exodus the Egyptians forces were drowned:

 

… the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh ... And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore (Exodus 14:28, 30).

 

(ii) Blotting Out

 

In Genesis, God decided to ‘blot out’ humankind from the face of the earth because of its universal wickedness.

 

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord (6:7, 8).

 

In Exodus (32:10, 32), during the incident of ‘the Golden Calf’, God bade Moses:

 

‘... let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation’, but Moses interceded for his fellow-Israelites (that ‘rival operation’ again), saying: ‘... if Thou wilt forgive their sin - and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written’.

 

Description: https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlm4zpGLHsrziD-WRFsjv45d-ezbcMUmJ-B9pnpERFaiQigpbz

 

(iii) Ark Specifications

 

Noah built the Ark according to the specifications God gave him (Genesis 6:14-16).

 

Likewise, Moses built the Ark of the Covenant according to very precise Divine instructions (Exodus 25:10-22).

 

(iv) Seven Days and Forty Days/Nights

 

Noah and his family entered the Ark.

 

And after seven days the waters of the Flood came upon the earth .... And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:7, 10, 12).

 

Moses went up onto Mount Sinai.

 

The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud .... And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights’ (Exodus 24:15, 16, 18).

 

(v) Same Date

 

G. Mackinlay, who synchronised the dates of the Flood and Exodus, tying these in with the New Testament (The Magi: How They Recognised Christ's Star, Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), says: “[Christ] rose from the dead on the day after the Sabbath after the Passover (John 20:1); the day on which the sheaf of first-fruits, promise of the future harvest, was waved before God (Leviticus 23:10,11). Hence we are told by St. Paul that as ‘Christ the first-fruits’ (I Corinthians 15:20, 23) rose, so those who believe in Him will also rise afterwards. This day was the anniversary of Israel's crossing through the Red Sea (Exodus 12-14), and, as in the case of the Passover, it was also a date memorable in early history, being the day when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4)”.

 

(vi) Ark at the Mountain

 

The Flood that destroyed humankind carried Noah and his family safely to the mountain, where the Ark landed (Genesis 8:4). Moses led his people safely through the Sea, which closed over their enemies. He had the Ark of the Covenant constructed at the sacred mountain (Ex. 25:10ff.).

 

(vii) Altar Built at the Mountain

 

Noah built an altar to the Lord (on the mountain?) (Genesis 8:20). Moses built an altar at the foot of the mountain (according to the design he had seen on the mountain?) (cf. Exodus 27:1, 8).

 

(viii) Covenant at the Mountain

 

God made a covenant with Noah at the mountain (Genesis 9:9). God made a covenant with Moses at the mountain (e.g. Exodus 24:8). The recorded laws that God gave to Noah were few by comparison with those given to Moses at Sinai.

These few, nonetheless, are strikingly similar to certain of the latter: God's first command to Noah was: ‘... be fruitful and multiply upon the earth’ (Genesis 8:17). God tells the Israelites at Sinai: ‘And I will ... make you fruitful and multiply you’ (Leviticus 26:9). ‘You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood’ (Genesis 9:4). Similarly, at Sinai: ‘... you shall eat no blood whatever’ (Leviticus 7:26).

Regarding murder: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed ...’ (Genesis 9:6). This is summed up at Sinai by: ‘You shall not kill’ (Exodus 20:13).

Finally, “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father [Noah]”, and his off-spring was cursed by Noah (Genesis 9:22, 25). This was remembered at Sinai, when God told Israel: ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father ...’ (Leviticus 18:7).

 

Finally, we might recall the tradition that Noah carried the skull (bones?) of first man, Adam, in the Ark (through the waters), and that it was later buried by Noah’s son, Shem, in Israel, at Golgotha. And Moses carried from Egypt (and through the Sea) the bones of the patriarch Joseph (Exodus 13:19), these being later buried in Israel, at Shechem (Joshua 24:32).

 



Noachic Flood in Egyptian Legend


 

by

 Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

Given the commonality of flood legends amongst nations great and small alike, it comes as a surprise to read the view of scholars that important Egypt did not have such a legend.  

David Fasold, however, claimed (in The Discovery of Noah's Ark) to have found such a flood legend in ancient Egyptian mythology.

 

 

 

Nations throughout the world share a legend of a universal Flood and of a righteous man saved with his family in a boat of some kind. Surely this points to a common ancestry amongst even the most diverse and far-flung peoples?

Given the prominence in early Egypt of Joseph and Moses, with their toledôt records, we should expect to find Flood legends in the sophisticated Egyptian mythology as well. Strangely, ancient Egypt is thought by some to be one of the few nations in which memory of a universal Flood has not been preserved.

David Fasold (The Discovery of Noah’s Ark, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1990) thinks otherwise, pointing out that the begetter of the ‘gods’ of Egypt was Nu [var. Nun], a name not dissimilar to Noah. Moreover, the original gods of the Egyptian pantheon were 8 in number; 8 being also the number (of primary progenitors) saved in Noah’s Ark (cf. Genesis 7:13 and 2 Peter 2:5). According to Fasold (, pp. 16-17):

 

A closer approximation to the Noah of the Genesis account is hard to imagine. In this regard Noah was the preserver of the seed of mankind .... Noah, or Nu, being one with the original eight gods of the Egyptian pantheon also accounts for Nu being the progenitor of the father of their civilization. These eight were viewed as gods by having passed through the judgment and survived as well as their longevity, which their offspring did not inherit to the same extent’.

 

Description: Detail, Relief in the temple of Hathor at Dendera showing the four couples of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis.

 

In light of Sir Wallis Budge’s view that Nu represented the watery mass from which the gods evolved, Fasold added: “It takes little imagination to view Nu as directly connected with the watery mass of the Flood, and the 'bark of millions of years’ as the Ark from ancient times, with the ‘company of gods’ as the survivors”.

The ‘goddess’ Nut, mother of all the living, who accompanied her husband Nu on the voyage, must then stand for Noah’s wife. Nut was also held in high esteem among the gods.

 

 

 

 

 

This may not be the only Egyptian version of the Flood. For another possible example, see professor A Yahuda’s The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian, Oxford UP, 1933, 209-211.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Noah’s dove obtained its olive branch from Mount of Olives




http://cs629316.vk.me/v629316854/271ba/2kyhGJff3tg.jpg

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

 

According to a Midrashic tradition, Noah’s dove brought back an olive branch from the holy Mount of Olives.

 

 

The dove is used as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, as we read, for instance, at: https://iconreader.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/the-holy-spirit-as-a-dove-in-iconography/

 

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus says of the Holy Spirit’s appearance as a dove at Christ’s baptism:

 

And the Spirit comes as a dove, for he honours the body being seen “corpreally”, since He is also God by divinization. And since long ago the dove has been accustomed to announcing the good news of the flood’s end.

– Oration on the Holy Lights, 381 A.D.

 

Here, St Gregory sees the dove sent out by Noah from the ark as a foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit’s descent as a dove at Christ’s baptism. This is unsurprising, as overwhelmingly the Holy Fathers, starting with the Apostle Peter, interpret the Flood as a prefiguration of Christian baptism: the righteous Noah and his family saved through water. St John of Damascus says more or less the same thing, and adds:

 

Olive oil is employed in baptism as a significant of our anointing, and as making us anointed, and as announcing to us through the Holy Spirit God’s pity: for it was the fruit of the olive that the dove brought to those who were saved from the flood. (Gen 8:11)

-An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Book IV)

 

Here, the physical, created, dove that Noah sent out is seen as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, carrying the anointing (olive branch). St Bede the Venerable writes:

 

The olive branch with green leaves is the grace of the Holy Spirit, rich in the words of life, the fullness of which rests on Christ… And by a most beautiful conjunction, the figure is in agreement with the fulfillment: a corporeal dove brought the olive branch to the Ark which was washed by the waters of the Flood; the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a corporeal dove upon the Lord when He was baptized in the waters of the Jordan.

-Homilies on the Gospels

 

St Cyril of Jerusalem says the same, associating Noah with a prefiguration of Christ: “the dove returned to [Noah]… thus, say they, the Holy Ghost also descended upon the true Noah [Christ].” St Cyril also teaches, when considering why the Holy Spirit might appear specifically as a dove at Christ’s baptism, a more general symbolism between the Holy Spirit and the dove:

 

…perhaps He came down in the form of a dove, as some say, to exhibit a figure of that dove who is pure and innocent and un-defiled, and also helps the prayers for the children she has begotten, and for forgiveness of sins.

-Catechetical Lecture 17

 

Now, according to a Rabbinic tradition, Noah’s dove obtained its olive branch from Mount Olivet. Thus we read: https://onej.org/touring-jewish-history-atop-the-mount-of-olives-in-jerusalem/

 

Why is the mountain holy?

When the Temple stood, the sacrifice of the Para Aduma (the Red Heifer) was done on the Mount of Olives, which – in keeping with the Biblical tradition – was “outside of the camp,” and was facing “the front of the Tent of Meeting” (Numbers 19:2-4). Also, the new month was announced by lighting a fire at its summit. Rabbinic commentators say that the olive branch that the dove brought to Noah was from the Mount of Olives. It’s interesting to note that olive trees only thrive up to the elevation of the Mount of Olives (approximately 800 meters), which was a sign to Noah that the waters had not just receded, but had receded to a particular elevation. Until the Romans sieged the city in 70 [AD] and cut down most of the trees, the entire mountain was covered with olive trees.