Noah. In Abrahamic religions, Noah was the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs. His story is contained in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Genesis, chapters 5-9. The Genesis flood narrative is among the best-known stories of the Bible. Noah is also portrayed as the first tiller of the soil and the inventor of wine. According to the Genesis account, Noah labored faithfully to build the Ark at God's command, ultimately saving not only his own family, but mankind itself and all land animals, from extinction during the Flood. Afterwards, God made a covenant with him and promised never again to destroy all the earth's creatures with a flood. The flood narrative is followed by the story of the Curse of Ham. In addition to the Book of Genesis, Noah is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the First Book of Chronicles, and the books of Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Isaiah, Ezekiel, 2 Esdras, 4 Maccabees; in the New Testament, he is mentioned in the gospels of Matthew, and Luke, the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1st Peter and 2nd Peter. Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including the Quran. The primary account of Noah in the Bible is in the Book of Genesis. Noah was the tenth of the Pre-Flood Patriarchs. His father was Lamech and his mother is not named in the biblical accounts. When Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth. Main article: Genesis flood narrative The Genesis flood narrative makes up chapters 6-9 in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible. The narrative, one of many flood myths found in human cultures, indicates that God intended to return the Earth to its pre-Creation state of watery chaos by flooding the Earth because of humanity's misdeeds and then remake it using the microcosm of Noah's ark. Thus, the flood was no ordinary overflow but a reversal of Creation. The narrative discusses the evil of mankind that moved God to destroy the world by the way of the flood, the preparation of the ark for certain animals, Noah, and his family, and God's guarantee for the continued existence of life under the promise that he would never send another flood. After the flood, Noah offered burnt offerings to God, who said: I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. They were also told that all fowls, land animals, and fishes would be afraid of them. Furthermore, as well as green plants, every moving thing would be their food with the exception that the blood was not to be eaten. Man's life blood would be required from the beasts and from man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. A rainbow, called my bow, was given as the sign of a covenant between me and you and every living creature that with you, for perpetual generations, called the Noahic covenant or the rainbow covenant. Noah died 350 years after the flood, at the age of 950, the last of the extremely long-lived Antediluvian patriarchs. The maximum human lifespan, as depicted by the Bible, gradually diminishes thereafter, from almost 1,000 years to the 120 years of Moses. After the flood, the Bible says that Noah became a husbandman and he planted a vineyard. He drank wine made from this vineyard, and got drunk; and lay uncovered within his tent. Noah's son Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his brothers, which led to Ham's son Canaan being cursed by Noah. As early as the Classical era, commentators on Genesis 9:20-21 have excused Noah's excessive drinking because he was considered to be the first wine drinker; the first person to discover the effects of wine. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, and a Church Father, wrote in the 4th century that Noah's behavior is defensible: as the first human to taste wine, he would not know its effects: Through ignorance and inexperience of the proper amount to drink, fell into a drunken stupor. Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, also excused Noah by noting that one can drink in two different manners: to drink wine in excess, a peculiar sin to the vicious evil man or to partake of wine as the wise man, Noah being the latter. In Jewish tradition and rabbinic literature on Noah, rabbis blame Satan for the intoxicating properties of the wine.