Noah:
The son of Lamech, and the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah was the hero of the biblical Flood narrative and the first vintner. After observing the corruption of all creation, God determined to cleanse and purify the earth through a flood. Noah, however, found favor with God, and he, together with his family and the seed of all living creatures, entered the ark and survived the deluge. From them the earth was then repopulated.
In many respects Noah was a second Adam. The genealogy of Genesis 5 makes his birth the first after the death of the progenitor of humanity. Like Adam, all people are his descendants. God's first command to the primordial pair to “be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1.28) is echoed in God's first command to Noah and his sons after the Flood.
Noah has traditionally been viewed as an exemplary righteous person in extensive postbiblical Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature. However, the phrase “righteous in his generation” has also been interpreted to mean that at any other time Noah's righteousness would not have been viewed as extraordinary (b. Sanh. 108a).
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The main idea to remember when analyzing the character of Noah is that he was chosen by God to be the only family to survive the flood because of his righteousness. God saw Noah as the best suited to repopulate the earth and lead humankind on the right path. Thus Noah should be acknowledged and highlighted as a central and prominent character and portrayed as the example to all humankind.
"Noah's Ark" A Dictionary of British Place-Names. A. D. Mills. Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 3 December 2010 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t40.e9845>
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