Noah's Ark
In the Bible, Noah's ark was a boat that God commanded Noah to build to keep him, his family and a core breeding stock of the worldÃÂÃÂs animals safe from the impending Deluge.The phrase NoahÃÂÃÂs Ark is also used as the title of the story of Noah and the Ark, found in the Biblical Book of Genesis chapters 6-9.
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2 The flood 3 After the flood 4 The flood under scrutiny 5 Many flood accounts |
The ark
The ark was built of cypress wood and covered with pitch, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. However, the actual size of the ark cannot be fully ascertained, as we do not know the size of the cubit meant. If it were like the varying Egyptian cubit, its dimensions could be as little as 129 by 21.5 by 12.9 m or even as much as 165 by 27 by 16.5 m. Or if it were more like the strict Sumerian cubit, it would be 155.2 by 25.9 by 15.5 m.
Traditional pictures of the ark typically show something shaped like a boat, though the Hebrew word, "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 Italian Archaeologic Organization (named NARKAS) claims to have located the real Noah's Ark close to the top of Mt. Ararat. Photos are available on their website [1].
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 tradition that Mt. Ararat itself was the resting place of Noah's Ark is widely known. Similarly widespread is the misconception that the Book of Genesis asserts that. (In fact it says as to location only "And the ark rested ... upon the mountains of Ararat", at Gen. 8:4, KJV.)
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
The word for the Flood in the Hebrew, "mabbuwl", although often translated as "deluge", literally means "storehouse of water" or "heavenly ocean". This suggests that a massive amount of the earth's store of water was held aloft in the atmosphere until the "springs" of the earth's ocean were somehow "broken open", and the "floodgates" of the heavens were opened, letting the water cover "all the tall mountains" "up to fifteen cubits".After the flood
When the Earth was dry again, 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 flood under scrutiny
Critics of the account, however, suggest that the flood was, though quite large, just a local one that affected the Persian Gulf region when it was possibly first flooded by means of the breaching of the sill at the Strait of Hormuz as sea level rose from glacial melt following the Ice Age, and the lower Tigris-Euphrates velley was flooded to form the Persian Gulf. 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 (except Noah of course) simply because He was displeased with them highly questionable and immoral if it were true. Their is also no evidence that all current species of animals fanned out over the planet from one spot, that is, the place where the Ark rested after the flood, wherever that was. While the flood might explain the extinction of species such as the dinosaur, it gives no explanation for the extinction of any marine life, which of course would not have drowned in a flood.Many flood accounts
Although many cultures have stories of a great flood, the story of NoahÃÂÃÂs 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 NoahÃÂÃÂs Ark, suggesting the possibility that the Sumeranian depiction has drawn influence from the Biblical account. 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).