Noah's Ark

A:

If the biblical story of Noah and the great worldwide flood were true, we would all be descendants of Noah - every single one of us. However, scientists dismiss the Flood story as purely mythical, as do many theologians and biblical scholars. On this view, Noah did not really exist and therefore does not have any descendants.

A:

A cubit is too small a measure for the biblical Flood. Taken literally, the Flood would have risen kilometres above normal sea level, to cover the whole earth, including the highest mountains in Tibet. As the flood waters receded, The Ark supposedly landed on Mount Ararat, the highest peak in the Middle East.

A:

Three Old Testament characters: Moses (the Red Sea), Joshua (Jordan River) and Elijah (Jordan River).

A:

God through Moses.

Jewish answer:

The Torah states that God parted the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14:21). Moses merely gave a visible sign that God was about to part the sea. This is why God, not Moses, is praised in the song that the Israelites sang after the parting of the sea (Exodus ch.15).

The exact date is not mentioned in the bible, but as it is written early in the book of Genesis it before calenders were there to help man, we can only asume it 400,00B.C.

Answer:

Scripture doesn't state directly but gives several clues. In Genesis 5:32 it says Noah was 500 years old and had 3 sons. In Genesis 7:6 it says Noah was 600 years old when the Flood began. It lasted 1 year and 10 days. Then in Genesis 11:10 it says that Shem was 100 years old when his 1st son is born. Consider that Noah began the ark construction when 500 years old and it took him 100 years to complete.

These dates are used by some scholars for the above time period:

Noah is born 2927 BC

Youngest son Shem is born 2425 BC

Begins Ark in 2427 BC

Takes a Century to build from 2427 to 2327 BC

Flood begins 2nd Month, 17th Day, 2327 BC.

Land Dries in 2nd Month, 27 Day, 2326 BC.

Shem has 1st son Arphaxad 2 years from the Flood beginning 2325 BC

Jewish answer:

Jewish tradition places the flood in 2104 BCE.

From Genesis--no specific count given

Total numbers can't be known, but one pair of each kind of unclean animals and seven pairs of each kind of clean animals and birds were taken on board.

Genesis 6:20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

Genesis 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

Spiritual Vessel--no count possible

There is no way of counting them. Noah's Ark is a spiritual, not a scientific vessel. Its meaning is not to be found in numbers, and indeed, attempting to quantify such things is missing the point.

Real Vessel--Science may yet determine count

Noah's Ark was a real vessel; it was reported found by the Russians and seen by others and is in a glacier somewhere. If a non-biased expedition is sent to locate it, perhaps we will learn how many animals it may have carried.

It cant be decided - but certainly not 2 of every kind of animal in the world - it would never have been possible.

It is impossible for there to have been two of every animal on earth in the Ark. That is like 1.5 million species! This story is ether allegory or is just plain false, probably based on ancient folklore of a real flood that has been altered and changed over the millennia.

The story of Noah's Ark is not to be taken literally. Noah's Ark represents the human mind (Spirit). "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens," represents the 7 chakras or 7 major endocrine glands which are affected by our way of thinking. "…beasts that are not clean by two," represent the 2 affects(tree of good and evil) that those glands have on us, fear, self preservation, selfishness, (sin, evil) etc… or faith, love, giving (holiness, good) etc...We must take into consideration that when the Jews came out of Babylon and Ezra put the Bible together, they where influence from the stories from both east (India and surrounding areas) and from the west (Africa and surrounding areas). Babylon means "The Gate of the God" and was considered the gateway between both worlds (East and West). What the Jews did was take the stories of both worlds, put them together, and changed it a little to make it there own.

Genesis 6:19-22 says that Noah took two of each sort of animal into the Ark - cattle, fowl and every living thing. Genesis 7:1-5 says that Noah took seven of each clean animal, but only two of each unclean animal into the Ark. The reason for this difference is that there are actually two different Flood accounts woven together, so that unless read carefully they seem to be just one account. The 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.

Either way, the total number of animals should have run into the millions, as animals that were not taken on board would have died, and we would have no descendants of those animals today.

Based on the information contained in the Bible, it has been calculated that approximately 16,000 animals were on the ark. The numbers mentioned in the Bible refer only to 'kinds' which are broader classifications than our present day species (on which sceptical estimates are based, hence the inflated figures usually arrived at).

Biblical account probably based on a real local flood, possibly the flooding of what is now the Black Sea. Noah had time to knock together a raft and grab enough of his breeding stock to keep him going when things settled down. What happened to the plants, I'd like to know?
in the bible it says that there were 2 of every kind of animal, but we don't know how many breeds there were though.

For some people, the fact that Noah and his Ark are mentioned in the Bible is proof enough that they were real, and when the Bible mentions the mountains of Ararat, this then must be the true resting place of the Ark. For others, the failure to find evidence of the Ark on Mount Ararat could even place their entire faith at risk. For them, the Ark must have landed on Mount Ararat and all we have to do is look and we will find the evidence. Some even believe that this site was the resting place of Noah's Ark because there are those who claim to have seen evidence of it, such as:

Navarra

According to Fernand Navarra, a French industrialist and amateur mountaineer, (J'ai trouvé L'Arche de Noé ) on negotiating a gully on slightly sloping terrain high up on the Mount Ararat he saw "through the thickness of ice, some dark and intermingled outlines. These could only be fragments of the Ark." Digging his way through the ice, Navarra claimed that he "touched with numbed fingers a piece of wood, not just something from a tree branch, but wood that had been shaped and squared off." By way of 'proof' of this, Navarra brought down with him a broken-off spar. Radio-carbon dating by the University of Pennsylvania's Radiocarbon Laboratory dated this to approximately 650 CE, while the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington in Britain, arrived at approximately 760 CE. In other words, the timbers were probably from the hut of a Byzantine hermit.

Institute for Creation Research

In 1971, expeditions to Ararat were mounted under the auspices of the Institute for Creation Research. Although one such expedition, led by John Morris, investigated several claimed sightings of their supposed ark, they returned with nothing to show.

Wyatt, Fasold and Roberts

In 1960 a Turkish army captain named Ilhan Durupinar, in the course of examining aerial photos of the Ararat region that had been taken for NATO's Geodetic Survey of Turkey, happened to notice on these what appeared to be a large boat-like object lying at an altitude of some 1,900 metres. In 1977, 'biblical archaeologist' Ron Wyatt flew to Turkey to investigate. Convinced by what he saw, Wyatt published Discovered: Noah's Ark, in 1989. The same year also saw the appearance of a book by former merchant marine officer David Fasold, The Ark of Noah, following much the same argument.

A year later Australian 'Dr' Allen Roberts visited the site. In collaboration with Wyatt, he then founded an organisation called Ark Search, and like Wyatt and Fasold began widely publicising that the Akyayla boat-shaped feature was rhe true Noah's ark.

Fasold, Wyatt and Roberts have also made much of "subsurface radar surveys" of the Akyayla feature, purportedly showing it to have a ship-like structure in the interior parts to which no one has yet gained access.

Ian Plimer, Professor of Geology at Australia's Melbourne University, visited the Akyayla site with Fasold in 1994. He found it impossible to repeat any of the various radar, seismic, magnetic and electromagnetic tests claimed by Wyatt. According to Plimer's professional judgement the Akyayla boat is simply an outcrop of 120 million year old sea floor rocks (ophiolite), around which a more modern (and still moving) mud slide has flowed, this slide even having bits of plastic embedded in it. Apparently Fasold himself came to recognise that what Wyatt had argued to be "boat ribs" were no longer evident, concluding that these must have been deliberately scraped into the soil to appear as they did in Wyatt's photographs. He no longer accepts that the outcrop is really Noah's Ark.

One thought:

The scripture at Genesis 6:14 says:" . . .Make for yourself an ark out of wood of a resinous tree..". The word for 'resinous tree' is literally translated 'wood of gopher'....or 'gopher wood'. Many people feel it was a type of cypress tree which was used in that area for centuries in ship building, by the Phoenicians and Alexander the Great. It is resistant to mold, and some items made from it have been known to last over 1000 years.

No. They are very different.

An 'Ark' is a chest, so the two are similar in that they are both chest-shaped (boxlike), but that's where the similarity ends.

The Ark of the Covenant was a small (44" × 26" × 26") , beautifully decorated, God-designed chest, kept in the tabernacle during the time that the Israelites were God's chosen people. It was made of acacia wood, and covered inside and out with pure gold, and was the most important object of the camp of Israel, representing God's presence.(Exodus 25:22; Leviticus 16:2) It was used in the tabernacle (and later the temple) for the safekeeping of three very special and holy articles: The tablets containing the commandments to Israel, a jar of manna from Israels' wilderness trek, Aaron's almond branch that budded during a rebellion against Moses. (Hebrews 9:4; Exodus 16:32-34; Numbers 17:10)

Noah's Ark was the HUGE chestlike structure (437'×72 '×43 ') that Noah and his sons built at the direction of God, to save their families and a representative assortment of animals, from the coming flood and the destruction of the ungodly world of his time. Noah's Ark is often pictured as a boat, but the Bible describes a rectangular structure, built for space and stability, not steering.(Genesis 6:14-16)