Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ARK OF NOAH

According to Gen. 6:1-8, the Deity decided to destroy the human race by means of a great flood, excepting only the family of the righteous Noah. The latter’s means of escape was to be a great boat (“ark”), the dimensions of which are precisely given (6:14-16).

Discussion of the craft, by the church fathers and modern conservatives, has concerned whether its dimensions were adequate to accommodate the immense number of animal passengers for a year-long voyage (“of every living thing . . . two of every kind,” Gen. 6:19). It has also been claimed that remnants of the ark survive to the present on a mountain in the Near East. The “adequacy” problem has arisen from interpreters’ failure to realize that ancient persons described events from primeval time with fantastic imagery and symbolic numbers.

In the parallel Mesopotamian account, the hero (named Utnapishtim) escaped the Deluge by building a boat whose dimensions are 120 cubits on each side. Since measurement at the time involved decimal-place notation in base-60 (whereas the modern system uses base-10), the boat not only followed a divine blueprint but was of near magical and “ideal” dimensions: a cube of 60 × 2 cubits per side. Thus it could not fail to ride out the waters of the Flood!

Noah’s boat is assigned the dimensions 300 × 50 × 30 cubits (roughly 127 × 23 × 14 m. [450 × 75 × 45 ft.]). Otherwise put, it is 60 × 5 cubits long, 60/2 cubits high, and has a volume of (60³ × 2) + (60² × 5) cubic cubits. Such dimensions are meant to signify an ideal construction of divine origin. Thus, for interpreters to have literalized the figures is not only to misunderstand the nature and intent of the text, but also to generate futile discission about the ark’s capacity. Other accounts of primeval time utilize “ideal” enumeration, including the length of life of pre-Flood generations (cf. Gen. 7:11; Deut 34:7). It is clear that these numbers are symbolic, else the writers would not have allowed the contradiction with Gen. 6:3.

Modern claims that remnants of the ark yet survive are based upon contradictory accounts, supposed photographs and documents that have vanished or are of questionable origin, misidentified geological formations, and misinterpretation of satellite imagery. At least nine locations have been proposed for the ark’s landing place, ranging from Asia Minor to Afghanistan. Several have produced “ark wood,” claimed to have been reliably dated to an age of 5000 years (roughly the time of Noah according to biblical chronology). However, none of the tests is scientifically creditable, and the wood instead seems to belong to the 7th century c.e.

The commonly proposed landing site, the spectacular mountain Aǵri Daǵ (Masis, “Mt. Ararat”) in Armenia (Turkey), was so identified only after the 13th century c.e. Early Christian and Jewish claims centered instead on Mt. Qardu (now called Jabal Judi).

Bibliography. L. R. Bailey, Noah (Columbia, S.C., 1989), ch. 4; Genesis, Creation, and Creationism (New York, 1993), Appendix VII.

Lloyd R. Bailey

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ARK OF NOAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)