TNDL: “THE LEGEND/HISTORY OF NOAH AND HIS ARK.”

Noah's Ark
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Not to be confused with Ark of the Covenant.
For Noah's flood, see Genesis flood narrative.
For other uses, see Noah's Ark (disambiguation).
Noah's Ark (1846), by the American folk painter Edward Hicks.
Noah's Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח‎; Biblical Hebrew: Tevat Noaḥ)[Notes 1] is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative (Genesis chapters 6–9) through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a world-engulfing flood.[1] The story in Genesis is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the ark appears as Safina Nūḥ (Arabic: سفينة نوح‎ "Noah's boat").
Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275–339 CE), and believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times. Many searches have been mounted for the ark, but no confirmable physical proof of the ark has ever been found.[2] There is no scientific evidence that Noah's Ark existed as it is described in the Bible,[3] nor is there evidence in the geologic record for the biblical global flood.[4]
Contents
1 Description
2 Origins
2.1 Mesopotamian precursors
2.2 Composition
3 In later works
3.1 Rabbinic Judaism
3.2 Christianity
3.3 The Quran and later Muslim works
3.4 Bahá'í
4 Historicity
4.1 Ark's geometry
4.2 Searches for Noah's Ark
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
7.1 Citations
7.2 Bibliography
7.3 Further reading
Description
The structure of the ark (and the chronology of the flood) are homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship.[5] Accordingly, Noah's instructions are given to him by God (Genesis 6:14–16): the ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.[6] These dimensions are based on a numerological preoccupation with the number sixty, the same number characterising the vessel of the Babylonian flood-hero.[1] Its three internal divisions reflect the three-part universe imagined by the ancient Israelites: heaven, the earth, and the underworld.[7] Each deck is the same height as the Temple in Jerusalem, itself a microcosmic model of the universe, and each is three times the area of the court of the tabernacle, leading to the suggestion that the author saw both ark and tabernacle as serving for the preservation of human life.[8][9] It has a door in the side, and a tsohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight.[6] It is to be made of Gopher wood a word which appears nowhere else in the Bible - and divided into qinnim, a word which always refers to birds' nests elsewhere in the Bible, leading some scholars to emend this to qanim, reeds.[10] The finished vessel is to be smeared with koper, meaning pitch or bitumen: in Hebrew the two words are closely related, kaparta ("smeared") ... bakopper.[10]
Origins
Mesopotamian precursors
Main article: Flood myth
For well over a century scholars have recognised that the Bible's story of Noah's ark is based on older Mesopotamian models.[11] Because all these flood stories deal with events that allegedly happened at the dawn of history, they give the impression that the myths themselves must come from very primitive origins, but the myth of the global flood that destroys all life only begins to appear in the Old Babylonian period (20th–16th centuries BCE).[12] The reasons for this emergence of the typical Mesopotamian flood myth may have been bound up with the specific circumstances of the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE and the restoration of order by the First Dynasty of Isin.[13]
There are nine known versions of the Mesopotamian flood story, each more or less adapted from an earlier version. In the oldest version, inscribed in the Sumerian city of Nippur c.1600 BCE, the hero is King Ziusudra. This is known as the Sumerian Flood Story and probably derives from an earlier version. The Ziusudra version tells how he builds a boat and rescues life when the gods decide to destroy it. This remains the basic plot for several subsequent flood-stories and heroes, including Noah. Ziusudra's Sumerian name means "He of long life". In Babylonian versions his name is Atrahasis, but the meaning is the same. In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood.[14]:20–27
The version closest to the biblical story of Noah, as well as its most likely source, is that of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh.[15] The most complete text of Utnapishtim's story is a clay tablet dating from the 7th century BCE, but fragments of the story have been found from as far back as the 19th century BCE.[15] The last known version of the Mesopotamian flood story was written in Greek in the 3rd century BCE by a Babylonian priest named Berossus. From the fragments that survive, it seems little changed from the versions of two thousand years before.[16]
The parallels between Noah's Ark and the arks of Babylonian flood-heroes Atrahasis and Utnapishtim have often been noted. Atrahasis' ark was circular, resembling an enormous quffa, and had one or two decks. Utnapishtim's ark was a cube and had six decks with seven compartments on each, each divided into nine subcompartments (for 63 subcompartments per deck and 378 total). Noah's Ark was rectangular and had three decks. There is believed to be a linear progression from circular to cubic or square to rectangular. The most striking similarity is the near-identical deck areas of the three arks: 14,400 cubits2, 14,400 cubits2, and 15,000 cubits2 for Atrahasis', Utnapishtim's, and Noah's ark, respectively (a difference of 4%). This has led professor Finkel to conclude that "the iconic story of the Flood, Noah, and the Ark as we know it today certainly originated in the landscape of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq."[17]
Linguistic parallels between Noah's ark and the ark of the Babylonian flood-hero Atrahasis have also been noted. The word used for "pitch" (sealing tar or resin) in Genesis is not the normal Hebrew word, but is closely related to the word used in the Babylonian story.[18] Likewise, the Hebrew word for "ark" (tevah) is nearly identical to the Babylonian word for an oblong boat (ṭubbû), especially given that "v" and "b" are the same letter in Hebrew: bet (ב).[17]
However, the causes for God/gods having sent the flood differ. In the Hebrew myth the flood comes as God's judgment on a wicked humanity. In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the reasons are not given and the flood appears to be the result of the caprice of the gods.[19] In the Atrahasis version of the Babylonian flood story, the flood was sent by the gods to reduce human over-population, and after the flood, other measures were introduced to prevent the problem recurring.[20][21][22]
Composition
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There is consensus among scholars that the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis) was the product of a long and complex process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile.[23] Biblical scholar Richard Friedman suggests that the Flood narrative was composed by the combination of two versions of the story, characterized by different names for God (one story uses "God", one "Yahweh").[24]
In later works
Rabbinic Judaism
The Building of Noah's Ark (painting by a French master of 1675).
Main article: Noah in rabbinic literature
The story of the flood closely parallels the story of the creation: a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the ark plays a pivotal role.[25] The universe as conceived by the ancient Hebrews comprised a flat disk-shaped habitable earth with the heavens above and Sheol, the underworld of the dead, below.[26] These three were surrounded by a watery "ocean" of chaos, protected by the firmament, a transparent but solid dome resting on the mountains which ringed the earth.[26] Noah's three-deck ark represents this three-level Hebrew cosmos in miniature: the heavens, the earth, and the waters beneath.[27] In Genesis 1, God created the three-level world as a space in the midst of the waters for humanity; in Genesis 6–8 (the flood narrative) he fills that space with waters again, saving only Noah, his family and the animals with him in the ark.[25]
Talmudic tractates Sanhedrin, Avodah Zarah, and Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. In order to protect Noah and his family, God placed lions and other ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who tried to stop them from entering the ark. 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 animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter.[citation needed]
According to Sanhedrin 108b, 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.[28] 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 leave 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.[citation needed]
According to one tradition, 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 interpretation described the refuse as being stored on the utmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, said to be as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured that food remained fresh.[29][30][31] Some more unorthodox interpretations of the ark narrative also surfaced: the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as being a vessel that remained underwater for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.[32]
Christianity
An artist's depiction of the construction of the Ark, from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).
A woodcut of Noah's Ark from Anton Koberger's German Bible
Interpretations of the ark narrative played an important role in early Christian doctrine. The First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD[33]) compared Noah's salvation through water to salvation through water in baptism.[1Pt 3:20–21]
St. Hippolytus of Rome (died 235) sought to demonstrate that "the Ark was a symbol of the Christ who was expected", stating that the vessel had its door on the east side—the direction from which Christ would appear at the Second Coming—and that the bones of Adam were brought aboard, together with gold, frankincense, and myrrh (the symbols of the Nativity of Christ). Hippolytus furthermore stated 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 Armenians call it Ararat".[34] On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the lowest of the three decks was for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top level for humans. He says that male animals were separated from the females by sharp stakes so that there would be no breeding on board.[34]
The early Church Father and theologian Origen (c. 182–251), in response to a critic who doubted that the ark could contain all the animals in the world, argued 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, 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.[35]
Early Christian artists depicted Noah standing in a small box on the waves, symbolizing God saving the Christian Church in its turbulent early years. St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work City of God, demonstrated that the dimensions of the ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which according to Christian doctrine is the body of Christ and in turn the body of the Church.[36] St. Jerome (c. 347–420) identified the raven, which was sent forth and did not return, as the "foul bird of wickedness" expelled by baptism;[37] more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and eventually, peace.[38] The olive branch remains a secular and religious symbol of peace today.
The Quran and later Muslim works