How do you know it took Noah 120 years to build the ark?

Answer 1

A:The Bible does not say how long the Ark took to build and, since there is no evidence of the Ark or of the Flood outside the Bible, we must rely on intuition or reasoning. A boat of such great size would surely have taken about a hundred years to build if only Noah and his sons were willing to work on it. Perhaps it could have been built faster if Noah's neighbours had helped, but the Book of Genesis says that all the other people scoffed at the boat, and Noah took no one other than his immediate family onto the boat - a sure indication that no one else helped. The family would then have had to scour the entire world to collect a male and female of every species and bring them back to the Ark.

Answer

No, the Scripture does not specifically state how long Noah and his sons took to build the Ark, but one would surely assume God gave him enough time and instructions to build this WWII Aircraft Carrier size barge.

Generally, it is accepted that the period is 100 years as Genesis 5 ends with Noah being 500 years old and Genesis 6 states he was 600 years old when the Flood began.

Concerning the cargo, the Bible states only the land animals were to be taken and then due to the early stages of life from Creation, only the 'genera' of a species would be necessary to take - consider the dog family (Canidae) that has wolves, coyotes, jackal, bears, etc. There would be no need to take aquatic life. This would greatly reduce the number of creatures taken and cared for. And as many creatures go into 'topor' or slow down mode, the amounts of food/care would be reduced as well.

When a statistical approach is used, it is easy to see that the ark could have carried its intended cargo. According to John Woodmorappe (Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, 1996, p. 7), the total of the animals that Noah would have needed in the ark to meet the biblical requirements would number between 2,000 and 16,000-not in the hundreds of thousands as many might suppose.

Answer 2

A:

We know nothing from history or science, because Noah and the ark exist only as legends in the Bible. The Bible does not say how long the Ark took to build and so we must rely on intuition or reasoning. A boat of such great size would surely have taken about a great number of years to build if only Noah and his sons were willing to work on it. Perhaps it could have been built faster if Noah's neighbours had helped, but the Book of Genesis says that all the other people scoffed at the boat, and Noah took no one other than his immediate family onto the boat - a sure indication that no one else helped. The family would then have had to scour the entire world to collect a male and female of every species and bring them back to the Ark.

Generally, it is accepted that the period for construction and then the collection of animals is 100 years, as Genesis 5 ends with Noah being 500 years old and Genesis 6 states he was 600 years old when the Flood began.