How much time did Noah spend in the Ark?

Answer 1

There are two answers to this question, we can also find that one story has the flood subsiding in just forty days, while the other says that the waters prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days beforethey began to recede. In one case, he was on the Ark for perhaps 80 days, in the other for an entire year.

In the same way, Genesis 6:19-20 says that Noah is told to take two of every animal onto the Ark, clean or unclean, but in Genesis 7:1 he is told to take two of every unclean animal, but seven of every clean animal. The reason for this surprising find is that there are actually two stories of Noah's Ark in The Bible, written by two different authors and cleverly interleaved so that the result appears to be just one, rather complicated story.

We do not know the names of the two different authors of the biblical stories of Noah, and they are now called the Priestly Source and the Yahwist:

• The Flood verses attributed to the Priestly author are: Genesis 6:9-22, 7:6, 7:8-9, 7:11, 7:13-16a, 7:18-21, 7:24, 8:1-2a, 8:3b-5, 8:7, 8:13a, 8:14-19, 9:1-17.
• The verses attributed to the Yahwist are: Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 7:7, 7:10, 7:12, 7:16b-17, 7:22-23, 8:2b-3a, 8:6, 8:8-12, 8:13b, 8:20-22.