Louis Ginzberg's "Legends" appears to be the largest body of such literature ever translated into western languages. It used to be a difficult thing to find but now is freely available on the net. In book form it consists of seven volumes, altogether a bit more than a foot thick. Some of it is clearly fanciful while aspects of it provide a much better flavor for details of the times they describe than we might have had:
Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg:
http://philologos.org/__eb-lotj/
These texts flesh out some of the tales you read in the Bible, e.g.
Noah trying to save dinosaurs:
Quote:
One animal, the reem, Noah could not take into the ark. On account of its huge size it could not find room therein. Noah therefore tied it to the ark, and it ran on behind.[34] Also, he could not make space for the giant Og, the king of Bashan. He sat on top of the ark securely, and in this way escaped the flood of waters. Noah doled out his food to him daily, through a hole, because Og had promised that he and his descendants would serve him as slaves in perpetuity.[35]
Astral changes associated with the flood:
Quote:
The flood was produced by a union of the male waters, which are above the firmament, and the female waters issuing from the earth.[39] The upper waters rushed through the space left when God removed two stars out of the constellation Pleiades. Afterward, to put a stop to the flood, God had to transfer two stars from the constellation of the Bear to the constellation of the Pleiades. That is why the Bear runs after the Pleiades. She wants her two children back, but they will be restored to her only in the future world.[40]
There were other changes among the celestial spheres during the year of the flood. All the time it lasted, the sun and the moon shed no light, whence Noah was called by his name, "the resting one," for in his life the sun and the moon rested. The ark was illuminated by a precious stone, the light of which was more brilliant by night than by day, so enabling Noah to distinguish between day and night.[41]
The flood itself was part and parcel of some larger catastrophe which was almost certainly solar-system wide. It was preceeded by seven days of intense light, indicating some sort of a nova-like event or blowout of some sort:
King James Version:
Quote:
GEN 7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
GEN 7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
ISA 30:26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
The section in the index of Ginzberg's Legends (vol 7) which absolutely connects Gen 7.4 and Isaiah 30:26:
http://tinyurl.com/75lp7v
In other words, Isaiah was not talking about cramming seven days worth of light into one day as is commonly supposed but rather was referring back to the light of the week preceeding the flood.
Nor is there any reason to think anybody would make up a complex story like that or refer to something like that without bothering to explain the reference unless he assumed the reference was common knowledge at the time.