Online Encyclopedia Search Tool

Your Online Encyclopedia

 

Online Encylopedia and Dictionary Research Site

Online Encyclopedia Free Search Online Encyclopedia Search    Online Encyclopedia Browse    welcome to our free dictionary for your research of every kind

Online Encyclopedia



Noah's Ark

(Redirected from Noah's ark)
This article should be merged with Noah

In the Old Testament Book of Genesis chapters 6-9 [1], Noah's ark was the boat that God commanded Noah to build to keep him, his family and a core breeding stock of the world’s animals safe from the impending Deluge.

Contents

The ark

According to Genesis the Ark was built of gopher wood. The meaning of "gopher" is not clear, as this is the only occurrence of the word in the Bible. It has been suggested that it is related to the Hebrew word kopher (pitch), or was at one time kopher but miscopied. If so, it would mean that the Ark was made of wood treated with pitch, of an unspecified type of tree. Some modern translations of the bible replace the word gopher with cypress, but there is little evidence to support this identification.

It was covered with pitch, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. However, the actual size of the ark cannot be determined because the biblical account does not specify the type of cubit. If the Egyptian cubit was used, the Ark's dimensions could range from 129 metres long, 21.5 metres wide and 12.9 metres high to 165 metres long by 27 metres wide and 16.5 metres high. If the Sumerian cubit was used, the metric equivalents would approximate 155.2 metres in length, 25.9 metres in width and 15.5 metres in height. This proportion of length to width (6 to 1) is used by modern naval architects.

Traditional pictures of the ark typically show something shaped like a boat, though the Hebrew tebah, meaning "box", may suggest the actual shape of the ark, which would seem more practical for stability and volume as consistent with the narrative, considering the nature of the deluge.

The directions given by God appear to be for an oblong three-storey structure, with a door in the side and a window in the roof. Though, just what the window was, is debated, as there is only one dimension given to the window. The Hebrew word for window, "tsohar", merely indicates a "light aperture", giving no indication of its size or shape. God gave him the direction to "complete it to the extent of a cubit upward". The use of the words "extent" and "upward" seem to indicate much work and raising rather than building the window, which suggest the possibility that the window may have extended around the whole of the roof, which would act as an exhaust and make fresh air more available to the family and animals aboard. There is also no mention of a cover or door for the window.

The flood

The word for the Flood in the Hebrew, "mabbuwl" means "inundation" or "deluge", from a root meaning "to flow", or "run". Whilst the Bible narrative states that the Flood involved 40 days and 40 nights of rain, it also refers to the "fountains of the deep", which suggests an alternate, perhaps subterranean water source.

Genesis 1:9 refers to God commanding the water to gather to one place, implying a single large ocean and single large continent (which was a factor leading Antonio Snider in 1859 to suggest that the continents had separated during the Flood, although it was not until the 1960s that the idea of continental movement was widely accepted). Psalm 104 says that after the waters covered the mountains, the mountains rose and the valleys sank. All of this suggests that (a) the flood did not need to cover the modern-day mountains, and (b) the subterranean water added to the seas during the flood is now stored in the rearranged and deeper-than-before oceans.

In the cosmology of the ancient Hebrews and Babylonians, the earth was a flat land mass supported by pillars in the ocean of the abyss. The sky was a great dome that was connected to the seas. (Imagine you are standing on the shore looking out at the ocean at night or during the day. The Sun, Moon and stars look like they fall and rise from the sea's horizon.) The water from the sky and rain seems, with a little creative imagination, that it may be the same water from the seas. This gives us a present day clue that this is the cosmology of Noah's time and story. The flood took place around 3000 B.C.. This also gives us a clue why the measuring unit of a cubit, approximately the distance from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow of an adult, about 18 inches, is present and used in this story.

In the ark were Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. They also took seven pairs of each kind of clean animal, two pairs of each kind of unclean animal and seven pairs of each kind of bird. The ark kept them safe for the forty days of rainfall and about another year until the flood waters receded.

The Bible gives two different accounts of the number of each kind of animal that were taken on board. In chapter 6, verses 19–20, Noah is instructed to bring one pair of each kind aboard. In chapter 7, verses 2–3, an enlarged description is given in which he is told to bring aboard seven pairs of each kind of 'clean' animal, two pairs of each kind of 'unclean' animal, and seven pairs of each kind of fowl. If the Biblical account is to be self-consistent, the latter must be true, because one of the first things it is stated that Noah did after the flood was to sacrifice one pair of each kind of 'clean' animal. If there was only one pair of each on board, this would of course have resulted in their extinction.

After the flood

After several months, water began to subside, and the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4). After waiting another forty days, Noah sent out a dove to see if there was dry land for it to land on, but it returned. He waited seven more days, and sent it out again, and it returned with an olive leaf. After another week, he sent it out yet again, but this time it did not return. He knew then that the time had come to disembark.

God commanded Noah to take his family and all the animals out of the ark and concluded a covenant with him, in which he promised never to flood the Earth again, and imposed a basic set of laws on humanity, the "Noahide Laws". God symbolized his promise with a rainbow, to remind his people after each storm that there would never again be a storm as big as the one that he had caused.

The flood under scrutiny

Critics of the account suggest that the flood was (if there truly was one), though quite large, simply a local flood that affected the Persian Gulf region. The breaching of the sill at the Strait of Hormuz is proposed as the cause: as sea level rose from glacial melt following the Ice Age, and the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley was flooded to form the Persian Gulf. There is also the explanation of the breakthrough that formed the Black Sea, which possibly ties the Turkish mount Ararat with the biblical account.

The tradition that Mount Ararat itself was the resting place of Noah's Ark is widely known, but not supported by the biblical account. (The Book of Genesis states only that it came to rest "upon the mountains of Ararat.") This concept can be traced back to a hoax in 1933. In a Russian-language article from the early 1930’s, in a White Russian refugee publication called 'Mech Gedeona' (Sword of Gideon), there were pictures of what looked like a giant boat on a mountainside, said to be Mount Ararat. It was then discovered that the author of Mech Gedeona had taken the story from another refugee publication called Rubez. And Rubez had gotten the story from the German newspaper, the ‘Koelnische Illustrierte Zeitung’, which published the story on April 1, 1933. On April 8, 1933, the newspaper confessed that the article was an April Fools Day hoax. This however has not deterred expeditions from searching for the Ark on Mt. Ararat.

The details of how Noah knew to build an ark to preserve his family alive is explained as a legend built up around a momentous event in the early expansion of the human race. Skeptics also find the idea of an all-good, all-powerful God destroying humanity and all other life on the planet (except Noah, his family and the animals on the Ark of course) simply because He was displeased with them highly questionable and immoral if it were true. Modern biblical scholars suggest this story may mean the ancient hebrews taught there is a limit to evil and God's forgiveness.

It is unclear exactly how animal 'kinds' relate to modern taxonomy, but the creation narrative in Genesis indicates that a 'kind' is a category that could not then interbreed with another 'kind'. Given that speciation has been observed, it is therefore clear that one Biblical 'kind' would comprise one or more modern species.

Evolutionists argue that there is also little chance that so few humans and animals would have survived for long. With such a small genepool, they would have become extinct soon because of the negative effects of inbreeding. Creationist counter this by claiming DNA was much more perfect back then and inbreeding would not cause the problems it causes today. Even if true, this still leaves the problem of too little genetic diversity to survive plagues or sudden changes in the environment.

Many flood accounts

Although many cultures have stories of a great flood, the story of Noah’s Ark is probably the best-known of these. The next most notable is the Sumerian story of Utnapishtim (found in the Epic of Gilgamesh) which has broadly the same structure and plot as Noah’s Ark, suggesting the possibility that the Biblical depiction has drawn influence from the archaeologically older Sumerian account. But, both of these also has quite a difference. Noah also has a counterpart in Greek mythology, Deucalion. In Indian scriptures, a terrible flood was supposed to have left only one survivor - a saint named Manu, who was saved by the god Vishnu in the form of a fish. Many more extra-biblical variations of the flood account exist in cultures around the world: for fuller details, see Deluge (mythology).

Modern searches

The three most popular locations for the Ark are the Ethiopian highlands, somewhere in the mountains of Ararat and most specifically Mount Judi in the Ararat range both of which are in eastern Turkey. Ethiopia is also known as the country where the Ark of the Covenant can allegedly be found, in the care of the Coptic Church. Whether insightful or misguided, the only archaeologist to have claimed to have possibly located the Ark's final resting place was Ron Wyatt . Since his death he has been heroized by many bible-believers; a plethora of sites coming into existence concerning him, many fabricating information about him and his discoveries.

An Italian archaeological group named NARKAS is the most recent of numerous groups claiming to have pinpointed the location of Noah's Ark close to the top of Mount Ararat, which straddles the border of Turkey and Armenia. Photographs of this alleged discovery are available on their website [2]. The images of a wooden structure they found at 4.200 m height on Big Ararat can be seen on their web site Homepage.

In 2004, there is yet another expedition going to Mount Ararat in Turkey to try and locate the Ark.

Modern Allusions

In Western culture, the image of Noah's Ark with its many animals has taken on the symbolism of the effort to preserve wildlife.

References

The New American Bible : St. Joseph Edition, Illustrated, Catholic Book Publishing Co, New York, 1970. Between pages 4 and 5 is a fine illustration of the ancient Hebrews' view of the world and cosmology. Many bible readers are unfamiliar with this.

, Robert D. Ballard, Malcolm McConnell, National Geographic, Oct, 2001

External links


Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45