Tablet Mag: What was the shape of Noah’s Ark? For millennia Jewish and Christian clerics, scholars, and academics, as well as others with too much time on their hands, have pondered this question.
What makes it tantalizing is the precision of the numbers in Genesis 6 (here, in the King James translation):
[13] And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
[14] Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
[15] And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
[16] A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
The directions seem straightforward. But those who have tried to picture an ark built according to the numbers in Genesis have often ended up with bizarre and ugly results: a long, skinny box, or a squashed pyramid stretched on two sides, among others. more h/t Brad.
It’s a Tardis.
They make them so they’re bigger on the inside.
Brings to mind Bill Cosby “what’s a cubit?”
So who was responsible for the 2 democrats?
^^^^^ And the 2 transgenders.
Sorry, King James always reminds me of this.
Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.’
Oh wait, it took only one transgender.
The instructions are pointless anyway, as God will not do it with water next time.
Plus which, if He wants you dead, you’re dead. Only a Democrat would belive he could use human cleverness to thwart the will of God.
Cmn¢¢guy
AUGUST 1, 2022 AT 1:04 PM
“So who was responsible for the 2 democrats?”
The snakes and the cockroaches bred with the rats and hyenas, so Democrats were born as soon as the Ark made landfall.
There’s a life-size Ark already built to the specifications and it’s located in Kentucky. I’d like to visit there sometime. Has anyone been there before?
https://arkencounter.com/
@ Goldenfoxx:
Yep, I’ve been there. It’s magnificent and totally worth the visit. You should also include the Creation Museum as part of your tour. Both wonderful experiences!
Goldenfox
All those peeps that have built an Arc were WRONG lol. That’s actually a fascinating article. The Arc was round. Turns out Gods pretty darn good at math.
I think the more round it is, the more structurally unsound it would be with all the animals, food and bedding needed to be stored. It makes sense to construct a layered, streamlined ship instead of a round tub. I don’t think that the beginning of the flood was smooth sailing with the rapid movement of the waters from the mountains to the valleys and sloshing back again.
But then, I’m not God, so what do I know!? I just know it happened and just the way God meant for it to be.
Claudia
A better description would be a disc. They’re pretty structurally sound.
Goldenfoxx
AUGUST 1, 2022 AT 1:38 PM
“There’s a life-size Ark already built to the specifications and it’s located in Kentucky. I’d like to visit there sometime. Has anyone been there before?”
…I have. I wasn’t impressed. The most Biblical thing was the size of the prices they charged for everything because it’s in the middle of nowhere and you’re trapped feeding the fam with them.
They also will not allow guns on the premises. Guess they don’t belive where the Bible says “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper” (Isiah 54:17).
The Ark isn’t to scale so you can’t go on the weather decks or it would blow the illusion. You walk in through a cutout in the hull so you can see the moden stainless steel screw heads holding the definitely NOT gopher wood planks together, and its bright and shiny with no pitch in sight.
I won’t do a play-by-play of the exhibits, but when I was there they seemed to use whatever version of the Bible suited the scene on the signage, here is ESV, over there is KJV, and that one has NIV right next to the one with an NAS quote. I don’t want to get into which version is best, but it’s pretty poor looking if you can’t pick ONE and defend it, it creates an intellectual inconsistency before you’re 10 feet into the building.
There’s an exhibit of Noah at an altar leading his family in worship with a book. The book has no writing and it CAN’T be the Bible in the days of Noe, so one wonders what it’s supposed to be. There’s a LOT of fill-in-the-blank like that there.
You k8nd of HAVE to hand-wave a bunch of stuff when talking about miracles because God can do literally ANYTHING because, God, so that makes me wonder why they DO try to explain things without ANY Biblical support for their explanations. For example, they have a quite clever exhibit about the engineering that COULD have dealt with the problems of ventilation and waste disposal for literally EVERY animal in the world, which is pretty good, in that it’s something a man faced with this problem might come up with, and it looks like it could work. It’s fine, from an engineering standpoint.
But there’s no support for this in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t speak to poo. Why do they?
And they have a theory that seems to be that all the animal pairs fit because there were less species then, that species diversification went wild AFTER the 40 days and nights were over. Again, sure, god *could* do it that way, He’s God, but His Book does not SAY it, so why do they?
And don’t bring kids if you’re not prepared to fend off pleas for purchasing cubit sticks and Noah’s Ark playsets in the manditory overpriced gift shop you HAVE to transit to leave. Ken got a lesson from Disney rather than God there.
It is nice to be among people who believe and this does attract them, and its fine as far as that goes, but I don’t think it’s going to win any converts. If you want spiritual renewal and getting closer to God, you’d be better served going to one of His Houses of Worship. This place is a bit too loud, a bit too brassy, a bit too congested, and much to expensive to let you hear His still, small voice within its echoey faux hull.
Just one man’s opinion on two specific days and times, your experience may vary. Try it with an open heart and God may still touch you, but He probably would anyway with or without Mr. Hamm’s help.
The article says the circular ones were before Noah’s and that he also thinks the ark was rectangular or oblong.
“Contrary to the sensational headlines that his book inspired, while Finkel argues that most of the arks of Babylonian, Akkadian, and Sumerian legend were circular, he agrees with those who believe that Noah’s Ark in Genesis is a rectangular or oblong watercraft. ”
.
I wonder if it had a bow or was square. There was no rudder because it didn’t have anywhere to go. God would take care of that. Is a bow necessary when you just need to float?
We finally decided to use my cubit – it’s longer than Noe’s – slightly.
Never happened. All over the word different ancient peoples told stories about great floods that that happened at different times and actually were localized, not world-wide (maybe THEIR limited “worlds”.) Sometimes multiple events were combined into one. Sometimes the stories were borrowed from other cultures’ myths.
Anyone who seriously has studied the Bible as part of history without the blinders of their particular religion’s creation stories knows that cherry-picked myths were written down by scribes in King David’s court and doesn’t try to interpret them literally.
SNS…” If you want spiritual renewal and getting closer to God, you’d be better served going to one of His Houses of Worship. ”
i like to get out into His creation as much as i can; which admittedly is less often than i’d like.
@Gary: I like to cherry pick quotes from the Bible. Which version do you like?
New International Version
For the director of music. Of David. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
New Living Translation
Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!
English Standard Version
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.
@Goldenfoxx:
Ephesians 5:14 — For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
(There is plenty of nonsense in the Old Testament. Jesus got fed up with it too.)
Apparently the Ark Encounter also shows that dinosaurs were on the ark.
https://worldeventsandthebible.com/ark-encounter#did-noah-bring-dinosaurs-on-the-ark
I could not make it thru the whole article. It is obvious the writer does not believe the flood happened as it is written in the Bible. The writer is citing The Atlantic, PBS, The Guardian as source material?
Couple of examples:
“In 2009, the British Museum received the donated fragment of an ancient cuneiform tablet that contained a hitherto-unknown Akkadian version of one of the Babylonian Flood myths with detailed ark-building specifications that preceded and influenced the story in Genesis.”
Many non-believers think the flood story in the Bible is just rewritten Babylonian history.
“Most contemporary scholars agree that Genesis splices together at least two versions of the flood story by different authors, which in turn modify earlier Mesopotamian myths.”
I like to believe that Moses wrote the story as was revealed to him.
“Noah is not a heroic sailor, like Odysseus or Sinbad. He is an elderly man of great piety, locked behind a door that was closed from the outside by the Lord.”
No shoot Sherlock. Nobody was a sailor. Instead of being “locked”, how about being PROTECTED behind a door….
I have been to the Creation Museum. I thought it was well worth the trip. Been to the ARK also. Not as impressed (bit too commercial for me), but I am impressed with the all the thought and planning that went into building the ARK.
And, lastly, how you get a circle from God’s clear measurements in beyond me. People should take a look at all the work Ron Wyatt has done on discovering where the ARK may have landed.
@DaveVA-
I couldn’t make it through the entire article either.
What matters is that God enabled it to accomplish what He wanted to happen.
Gary is ignoring all the evidence of a world wide flood. You can see it every day, you just have blinders on if you don’t notice.
FYI – Babylonia is a post flood civilization. The Tower of Babel is when we were dispersed and stop speaking one language.
Everyone had flood stories because it happened. Some re-tellings got corrupted.
Even ancient Chinese language reflects Genesis and the flood.
They’ve recently done a Y chromosome study and found we all can be traced back to the sons of Noah.
A “world-wide flood”… that covered everything, even mountains and volcanoes, after 40 days of rain… And then all this excess H2O on the earth… went to Mars?
I guess there’s no issue between salt water and fresh water fish. They were all cool with it…
Meanwhile, the magical Noah collected anacondas and boa constrictors from the west, and penguins from the Antarctic, and woolly mammoths from the north, and lions and bobcats and dinosaurs (right) and camels and bison and buffalo and hyenas and every weird kind of animal… snails and worms, thousands of kinds… tortoises… two of each of millions and millions of land species from all over the earth…
and fit them on what is, essentially, a little boat.
Right.
C’mon. It’s a story for children.