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Noah's Ark, according to the Book of Genesis, was a large vessel built at God's command to save Noah, his family, and stock of all the world's animals from the deluge.

The story tells how God, grieved by the wickedness of mankind, decides to destroy the corrupted world, but instructs Noah to build the Ark and take on board his family and representatives of the animals and birds. The flood rises to cover the Earth, but at its height "God remembered Noah", the waters abate, and dry land appears. The story ends with Noah offering an animal sacrifice and entering into a covenant with God. God regrets the flood, and promises never to do it again, displaying a rainbow as a guarantee.

The story has been subject to extensive elaborations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ranging from hypothetical solutions to practical problems (e.g. waste disposal and the problem of lighting the interior), through to theological interpretations (e.g. the Ark as the precursor of the Church in offering salvation to mankind). By the 19th century, the discoveries of geologists, archaeologists and biblical scholars had led most scientists and many Christians to abandon a literal interpretation of the Ark story, but Biblical literalists today continue to take the Ark as test-case for their understanding of the Bible, and explore the region of the mountains of Ararat, where Genesis says Noah's Ark came to rest.

In Genesis
The story of Noah's Ark, according to chapters 6 to 9 in the Book of Genesis, begins with God observing mankind's sinful ways and deciding to flood the earth and destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time", and decided that he would save him. God instructs Noah to make an ark for his family and for representatives of the world's animals and birds. Noah and his family and the animals entered the Ark, and "on the same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights". The flood covered even the highest mountains to a depth of more than 6 metres (20 ft), and all creatures died; only Noah and those with him on the Ark were left alive.

At the end of 150 days the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. For 150 days again the waters receded, and the hilltops emerged. Noah sent out a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth". Next, Noah sent a dove out, but it returned having found nowhere to land. After a further seven days, Noah again sent out the dove, and it returned with an olive leaf in its beak, and he knew that the waters had subsided. Noah waited seven days more and sent out the dove once more, and this time it did not return. Then he and his family and all the animals left the Ark, and Noah made a sacrifice to God, and God resolved that he would never again curse the ground because of man, nor destroy all life on it in this manner. Man in turn was instructed never to eat any animal which had not been drained of its blood.

In order to remember this promise, God put a rainbow in the clouds, saying, "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

In the Quran


Noah (Nuh) is one of the five principal prophets of Islam, generally mentioned in connection with the fate of those who refuse to listen to the teachings of Allah. References are scattered through the Qur'an, with the fullest account at surah 11:27–51, entitled "Hud". The flood was sent by Allah in answer to Noah's prayer that this evil generation should be destroyed; yet as Noah was righteous he continued to preach, and seventy idolators were converted and entered the Ark with him, bringing the total aboard to 78 humans (these seventy plus the eight members of Noah's own family). The seventy had no offspring, and all of post-flood humanity is descended from Noah's three sons. A "fourth son" (or a grandson, according to some authorities; named either 'Canaan' or 'Yam' depending on the source) was among the idolators, and was drowned when he failed to heed the warnings to board the ark.

In contrast to the Jewish tradition, which uses a term which can be translated as a "box" or "chest" to describe the Ark, surah 29:14 refers to it as a safina, an ordinary ship, and surah 54:13 as "a thing of boards and nails". `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote that Noah was in doubt as to what shape to make the Ark, and that Allah revealed to him that it was to be shaped like a bird's belly and fashioned of teak wood. Noah then planted a tree, which in 20 years had grown enough to provide him all the wood he needed.

In Rabbinic tradition
The story of Noah and the Ark was subject to much discussion in later Jewish rabbinic literature. Noah's failure to warn others of the coming flood was widely seen as casting doubt on his righteousness—was he perhaps only righteous by the lights of his own evil generation? According to one tradition, he had in fact passed on God's warning, planting cedars one hundred and twenty years before the Deluge so that the sinful could see and be urged to amend their ways. In order to protect Noah and his family, God placed lions and other ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who mocked them and offered them violence. According to one midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals to the Ark, together with their food. As there had been no need to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the Ark. A differing opinion said that the Ark itself distinguished clean from unclean, admitting seven of the first and two of the second.

Noah was engaged both day and night in feeding and caring for the animals, and did not sleep for the entire year aboard the Ark. The animals were the best of their species, and so behaved with utmost goodness. They abstained from procreation, so that the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to go out of the Ark when Noah sent it forth and accusing the Patriarch of wishing to destroy its race, but as the commentators pointed out, God wished to save the raven, for its descendants were destined to feed the prophet Elijah.

Refuse was stored on the lowest of the Ark's three decks, humans and clean beasts on the second, and the unclean animals and birds on the top. A differing opinion placed the refuse in the utmost storey, from where it was shovelled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, bright as midday, provided light, and God ensured that food was kept fresh. The giant Og, king of Bashan, was among those saved, but owing to his size had to remain outside, Noah passing him food through a hole cut into the wall of the Ark.

In Christian tradition
Early Christian writers discovered elaborate allegorical meanings for Noah and the Ark. In the First Epistle of Peter those saved by the Ark from the waters of the Flood are said to prefigure the salvation of God's Elect through baptism, and the Anglican rite of baptism still asks God, "who of thy great mercy didst save Noah", to receive into the Church the infant about to be baptised. Early Christian artists frequently depicted Noah standing in a small box on the waves, symbolising God saving the Church as it persevered through turmoil, and St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in City of God, demonstrated that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which is the body of Christ, which is the Church. St. Jerome (c. 347–420) called the raven, which was sent forth and did not return, the "foul bird of wickedness" expelled by baptism; more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and, eventually, peace.

St. Hippolytus of Rome, (d. 235), seeking to demonstrate that "the ark was a symbol of the Christ who was expected", stated that the vessel had its door on the east side, that the bones of Adam were brought aboard together with gold, frankincense and myrrh, and that the Ark floated to and fro in the four directions on the waters, making the sign of the cross, before eventually landing on Mount Kardu "in the east, in the land of the sons of Raban, and the Orientals call it Mount Godash; the Arabians and Persians call it Ararat".

On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the ark was built in three stories, the lowest for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top level for humans, and that the male animals were separated from the females by sharp stakes to help maintain the prohibition against cohabitation aboard the vessel. Similarly dwelling on practical matters, Origen (c. 182–251), responding to a critic who doubted that the Ark could contain all the animals in the world, countered with a learned argument about cubits, holding that Moses, the traditional author of the book of Genesis, had been brought up in Egypt and would therefore have used the larger Egyptian cubit. He also fixed the shape of the Ark as a truncated pyramid, rectangular rather than square at its base, and tapering to a square peak one cubit on a side; it was not until the 12th century that it came to be thought of as a rectangular box with a sloping roof.

In Islamic tradition
The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings (c. 915) includes numerous details about Noah's Ark found nowhere else; for instance, he says that the first creature aboard was the ant, and the last was the donkey, by means of whom Satan came aboard. He also relates that when Jesus' apostles expressed a desire to learn about the Ark from an eye-witness, he responded by temporarily resurrecting Noah's son Ham from the dead, who told them more: to deal with the excessive dung, Noah had miraculously caused a pair of hogs to come out of the elephant's tail, and to deal with a stowaway rat, Noah caused a pair of cats to come from the lion's nose.

Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawi, writing in the 13th century, gives the length of the Ark as 300 cubits (157 m, 515 ft) by 50 (26.2 m, 86 ft) in width, 30 (15.7 m, 52 ft) in height, and explains that in the first of the three levels wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second the human beings, and in the third the birds. On every plank was the name of a prophet. Three missing planks, symbolising three prophets, were brought from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the Flood. The body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide the men from the women. Sura 11:41 says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of God it moves and stays!'" takes this to mean that Noah said, "In the Name of God!" when he wished the Ark to move, and the same when he wished it to stand still.

Noah spent five or six months aboard the Ark, at the end of which he sent out a raven. But the raven stopped to feast on carrion, and so Noah cursed it and sent out the dove, which has been known ever since as the friend of mankind. Masudi writes that God commanded the earth to absorb the water, and certain portions which were slow in obeying received salt water in punishment and so became dry and arid. The water which was not absorbed formed the seas, so that the waters of the flood still exist.

The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (died 956) says that the Ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mekka, circling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judi, which surah 11:44 states was its final resting place. This mountain is identified by tradition with a hill near the town of Jazirat ibn Umar on the east bank of the Tigris in the province of Mosul in northern Iraq, and Masudi says that the spot where it came to rest could be seen in his time.

Noah left the Ark on the tenth day of Muharram, and he and his family and companions built a town at the foot of Mount Judi named Thamanin ("eighty"), from their number. Noah then locked the Ark and entrusted the keys to Shem. Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229) mentions a mosque built by Noah which could be seen in his day, and Ibn Batutta passed the mountain on his travels in the 14th century. Modern Muslims, although not generally active in searching for the Ark, believe that it still exists on the high slopes of the mountain.

In other traditions
The Mandaeans of the southern Iraqi marshes practice a religion that was possibly influenced in part by early followers of John the Baptist. They regard Noah as a prophet, while rejecting Abraham (and Jesus) as false prophets. In the version given in their scriptures, the ark was built of sandalwood from Jebel Harun and was cubic in shape, with a length, width and height of 30 gama (the length of an arm); its final resting place is said to be Egypt.

The religion of the Yazidi of the Sinjar mountains of northern Iraq blends indigenous and Islamic beliefs. According to their Mishefa Reş, the Deluge occurred not once, but twice. The original Deluge is said to have been survived by a certain Na'umi, father of Ham, whose ark landed at a place called Ain Sifni, in the region of Mosul. Some time after this came the second flood, upon the Yezidis only, which was survived by Noah, whose ship was pierced by a rock as it floated above Mount Sinjar, then went on to land on Mount Judi as described in Islamic tradition.

According to Irish mythology, Noah had a "fourth son" named Bith who was not allowed aboard the Ark, and who instead attempted to colonise Ireland with 54 persons, all of whom were then wiped out in the Deluge.

The Bahá'í Faith regards the Ark and the Flood as symbolic. In Bahá'í belief, only Noah's followers were spiritually alive, preserved in the ark of his teachings, as others were spiritually dead. The Bahá'í scripture Kitáb-i-Íqán endorses the Islamic belief that Noah had a large number of companions, either 40 or 72, besides his family on the Ark, and that he taught for 950 (symbolic) years before the flood.

Historicity
The story of Noah's Ark continues to be told today within the Christian community, though there exists a broad spectrum of interpretations of the narrative describing it (from literal to allegorical), as with the Genesis creation account.

Biblical literalist interpretations
Biblical literalists and Fundamentalists tend to trust in traditions regarding the composition of the Bible and generally accept the traditional belief that the Ark narrative was written by Moses some time between the 16th century BC and late 13th century BC and describes a real event which took place in the 3rd millennium before Christ.

Biblical literalists explain apparent contradiction in the Ark narrative as the result of the stylistic conventions adopted by an ancient text: thus the confusion over whether Noah took seven pairs or only one pair of each clean animal into the Ark is explained as resulting from the author (Moses) first introducing the subject in general terms&mdash;seven pairs of clean animals&mdash;and then later, with much repetition, specifying that these animals entered the Ark in twos. Literalists claim the Biblical raven could have flown over the Flood for two weeks. It could have rested on carrion floating on the waters.

Liberal and non-Fundamentalist interpretations
Non-Fundamentalist and Liberal Christians typically view the Ark and flood narrative very differently to Biblical literalists and Fundamentalists. As early as the 19th century the view that the flood was merely local and did not cover the earth was well established within mainstream Christianity. This interpretation remains popular and important among more liberal Christians who retain a belief in the historicity of the Ark and the flood narrative   as it is commonly used to explain how the Ark could have carried all the animal life necessary, and how it could have survived the flood itself.

Doublets and apparent contradictions in the text are typically explained by non-Fundamentalist Christians as the product of standard Hebrew literary forms. , whilst the sending of the raven and dove are understood as historical references to authentic ancient nautical practice.

The Story As Allegory
More liberal Christians such as the Universalist Church see the Ark narrative as essentially allegorical and non-historical.



The Development of Critical Evaluation of the Story of the Ark
The Renaissance saw a continued speculation that might have seemed familiar to Origen and Augustine. Yet at the same time, a new class of scholarship arose, one which, while never questioning the literal truth of the Ark story, began to speculate on the practical workings of Noah's vessel from within a purely naturalistic framework. Thus in the 15th century, Alfonso Tostada gave a detailed account of the logistics of the Ark, down to arrangements for the disposal of dung and the circulation of fresh air, and the noted 16th-century geometrician Johannes Buteo calculated the ship's internal dimensions, allowing room for Noah's grinding mills and smokeless ovens, a model widely adopted by other commentators.

By the 17th century, it was becoming necessary to reconcile the exploration of the New World and increased awareness of the global distribution of species with the older belief that all life had sprung from a single point of origin on the slopes of Mount Ararat. The obvious answer was that man had spread over the continents following the destruction of the Tower of Babel and taken animals with him, yet some of the results seemed peculiar: why had the natives of North America taken rattlesnakes, but not horses, wondered Sir Thomas Browne in 1646? "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature, a Horse, is very strange".

Browne, who was among the first to question the notion of spontaneous generation, was a medical doctor and amateur scientist making this observation in passing. Biblical scholars of the time such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Athanasius Kircher (c.1601–80) were also beginning to subject the Ark story to rigorous scrutiny as they attempted to harmonise the biblical account with natural historical knowledge. The resulting hypotheses were an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and indirectly spurred the emergence of biogeography in the 18th century. Natural historians began to draw connections between climates and the animals and plants adapted to them. One influential theory held that the biblical Ararat was striped with varying climatic zones, and as climate changed, the associated animals moved as well, eventually spreading to repopulate the globe. There was also the problem of an ever-expanding number of known species: for Kircher and earlier natural historians, there was little problem finding room for all known animal species in the Ark, but by the time John Ray (1627–1705) was working, just several decades after Kircher, their number had expanded beyond biblical proportions. Incorporating the full range of animal diversity into the Ark story was becoming increasingly difficult, and by the middle of the 18th century few natural historians could justify a literal interpretation of the Noah's Ark narrative.



In 1862 William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, calculated the age of the earth at between 24 and 400 million years. His calculations, based on the best scientific knowledge of the time, were based on almost a century of steady advances in the scientific study of geology, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion was not about whether Kelvin was right or wrong, but about just how many millions were involved. Scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the Biblical Flood and Ark story: without the support of the Biblical chronology, which placed the Creation and the Flood and Ark very precisely in history, the historicity of the Ark itself was undermined. The influential 1889 volume of theological essays Lux Mundi, which is usually held to mark a stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that the gospels could be relied on as completely historical, but the earlier chapters of Genesis should not be taken literally.

Biblical scholars were beginning to examine the secular origins of the Bible itself. The Noah's Ark story played a central role in the new theories, largely because it seemed to contain two stories, closely intertwined. It states twice over, for example, that God was angered with His creation, but the reasons given in each telling are slightly different; we are told that there was a single pair of each animal aboard, but also that there were seven pairs of the clean animals; that the source of the water was rain, but also that it came from the "windows of Heaven" and the "fountains of the Deep"; that the rains lasted forty days, but that the waters rose for 150. Using the newly developed tools of biblical criticism, scholars discovered in the Ark narrative two complete, coherent, parallel stories. This, they decided, was how the entire Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) had been written: the work of many authors over many centuries, combining separate sources into a single whole.

The 19th century also saw the growth of Middle Eastern archaeology. One of the most remarkable of their discoveries was a Mesopotamian story which paralleled the story of Noah's Ark in great detail. The story came in several versions, but the closest to Genesis 6-9 was found in a 7th century BC Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh: the hero Gilgamesh meets the immortal man Utnapishtim, who tells how the god Ea warned him to build a vessel in which to save his family, his friends, and his wealth and cattle from a great flood which the gods planned to use to destroy all life on earth.

Searches for Noah's Ark


Biblical literalists feel that finding the Ark would validate their views on a whole range of matters, from geology to evolution. "If the flood of Noah indeed wiped out the entire human race and its civilization, as the Bible teaches, then the Ark constitutes the one remaining major link to the pre-flood World. No significant artifact could ever be of greater antiquity or importance... [with] tremendous potential impact on the creation-evolution (including theistic evolution) controversy." Non-Fundamentalist Christians typically believe the discovery of the Ark is unimportant to the historicity of the Genesis flood narrative, and that the Ark cannot be found as it would have long since been destroyed by weather or recycled for other projects. Searches have concentrated on Mount Ararat in Turkey itself, although Genesis actually refers only to the mountains of Ararat; the Durupinar site, near but not on Ararat, and much more accessible, attracted attention in the 1980s and 1990s.

Seaworthiness
Biblical literalist websites seem to agree that the Ark was approximately 450 feet (137 m) long. This is considerably larger than the schooner Wyoming, at 329 feet (100.28 metres) the largest timber-hulled vessel built in modern times. The Wyoming and similar ships of her class suffered chronic leaking, warping, and hull separation due to hogging and sagging, despite reinforcement with iron bracing. "The construction and use histories of these [i.e. modern timber-hulled] ships indicated that they were already pushing or had exceeded the practical limits for the size of wooden ships". In response to the claim that the Ark had to be seaworthy, literalist websites cite various studies which, in their view, indicate that Noah's Ark was seaworthy, including a Korean paper demonstrating that the dimensions, shape, and structural materials of the Ark are realistic and that the Ark 'had a superior level of safety in high winds and waves compared with the other hull forms studied'. In this regard, some literalist apologists cite the Chinese Ming Dynasty 'Treasure ships', or 'baochuan' (the largest of which are claimed to be 400 to 600 ft long), as examples of large seagoing wooden vessels: however, the actual size of these ships is disputed, and one explanation for their size is that the largest treasure ships were merely used by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the relatively calm Yangtze river. Other authors have proposed that the Flood was merely a local phenomenon confined to Mesopotamia and hence the Ark would not have needed to survive wave action on a worldwide ocean. For example, historian Robert Best wrote a book proposing the theory that Noah was originally a historical king of Shuruppak named Ziusudra, who would have reigned c. 2900 BC, and that the "Ark" was a beer, livestock and grain barge on the Euphrates River.

Practicality
Could the Ark have been constructed from timber as described in the Genesis narrative, and still support its own weight? Were the technology and materials available to Noah to make the Ark's construction possible? Ark-believers claim that there is ample evidence for ancient timber vessels comparable in size and construction to the Ark: Sir Walter Raleigh was among the first to argue that the Ark was smaller than the Syracusia, a cargo ship built in the 3rd century BC during the reign of Hiero II of Syracuse (180 feet in length), and the giant warship Tessarakonteres built by Ptolemy IV Philopater. The Tessarakonteres (420 feet long, and recognized as a historical vessel by standard historical authorities), remained a common point of comparison to the Ark throughout the 19th century among Flood-apologists, naval historians, nautical engineers, and scientific journals. Other ancient ships commonly used as points of comparison by modern Ark apologists are the giant obelisk barge of Hatshepsut (206-311 ft), the Thalamegos (377 ft), Caligula's Giant Ship (341 ft), and Caligula's Nemi Ships (229 ft), the historicity of which is accepted by standard historical authorities.

Capacity and logistics
According to Ark dimensions commonly accepted by Biblical literalists, the Ark would have had a gross volume of about 1.5 million cubic feet (40,000 m³), a displacement a little less than half that of the Titanic at about 22,000 tons, and total floor space of around 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²). The question of whether it could have carried two (or more) specimens of the various species (including those now extinct), plus food and fresh water, is a matter of much debate, even bitter dispute, between Biblical literalists and their opponents. While some Biblical literalists hold that the Ark could have held all known species, a more common position today is that the Ark contained "kinds" rather than species&mdash;for instance, a male and female of the cat "kind" rather than representatives of tigers, lions, cougars, etc. The many questions associated with a Biblical literalist interpretation include whether eight humans could have cared for the animals while also sailing the Ark, how the special dietary needs of some of the more exotic animals could have been catered for, how the creatures could have been prevented from preying on each other, questions of lighting, ventilation, and temperature control, hibernation, the survival and germination of seeds, the position of freshwater and saltwater fish, the question of what the animals would have eaten immediately after leaving the Ark, how they travelled (or were gathered) from all over the world to board the Ark and how they could have returned to their far-flung habitats across the Earth's bare, flood-devastated terrain, and how two or a few members of a species could have provided enough genetic variation to avoid inbreeding and reconstitute a healthy population. Numerous Biblical literalist websites, while claiming that none of these problems is insurmountable, give varying answers on how to resolve them.