Noah's Ark (; Biblical Hebrew: )The word ark in modern English comes from Old English , meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, , occurs twice in the Torah, in the flood narrative (Book of Genesis 6–9) and in the Book of Exodus, where it refers to the basket in which Jochebed places the infant Moses. (The word for the Ark of the Covenant, , is quite different.) The Ark is built to save Noah, his family, and representatives of all animals from a divinely-sent flood intended to wipe out all life, and in both cases, the has a connection with salvation from waters. (See Levenson 2014, p.21) is the boat in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spares Noah, his family, and pairs of each land animal in the world from a global deluge.
The story in Genesis is based on earlier Mesopotamian flood myths. The myth of the global flood that destroys all life begins to appear in the Old Babylonian Empire period (20th–16th centuries BCE). 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. Scholars note shared themes, dimensions, and language but different causes for the flood. Scholars also link its structure to the Jewish Temple.
Religious traditions from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and the Baháʼí Faith each developed distinct interpretations, often assigning spiritual symbolism to the Ark, its construction, or its occupants. Early Christian and Jewish writers, such as Flavius Josephus, believed that Noah's Ark existed. Unsuccessful searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius ( CE). The story is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the Ark appears as ( 'Noah's ship') and (). Its cultural legacy endures in literature, theology, art, and large-scale modern reconstructions.
Believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times, but no scientific evidence that the Ark existed has ever been found, nor is there scientific evidence for a global flood. According to Robert Moore, the boat and the natural disaster as described in the Bible would have been contingent upon physical impossibilities. Some researchers believe that a real (though localized) flood event in West Asia could potentially have inspired the oral and later written narratives; a Persian Gulf flood, or a Black Sea Deluge 7,500 years ago, alongside the recurring river floods of ancient Mesopotamia has been proposed as such a historical candidate.
Description The structure of the Ark (and the chronology of the flood) is homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship. 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 (approximately ). These dimensions are thought by some to be based on a numerological preoccupation with the number 60, the same number characterizing the vessel of the Babylonian flood hero.
Its three internal divisions reflect the three-part universe imagined by the ancient Israelites: heaven, the earth, and the underworld. 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. It has a door in the side, and a tsohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight. It is to be made of gopher wood "goper", a word which appears nowhere else in the Bible, but thought to be a loan word from the Akkadian gupru – 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. The finished vessel is to be smeared with koper, meaning pitch or bitumen; in Hebrew the two words are closely related, kaparta ("smeared") ... bakopper. Bitumen is the more likely option, as "koper" is thought to be a loanword from the Akkadian "kupru", meaning bitumen.
The shape of the Ark is described in Genesis with the Hebrew word tevah, whose meaning is unclear and whose only other use in the Bible is to describe the rush basket of Moses; the King James Version of the Bible accordingly describes the Ark as the "ark of bulrushes". The third-century scholar Origen imagined the Ark to have been a square pyramid floating on a raft. What is now the standard visual depiction of the Ark, a ship's hull with a sloped roof and a side door, originates with Hugh of Saint Victor, an 11th century Saxon theologian, who dedicated a treatise to a description of the Ark.
Origins Mesopotamian precursors
For well over a century, scholars have said that the Bible's story of Noah's Ark is based on older Mesopotamian models. 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 a global flood that destroys all life does not appear until the Old Babylonian period (20th–16th centuries BCE). 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.
Nine versions of the Mesopotamian flood story are known, each more or less adapted from an earlier version. In the oldest version, inscribed in the Sumerian city of Nippur around 1600 BCE, the hero is King Ziusudra. This story, the Sumerian flood myth, 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 basic plot is common in 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.
The version closest to the biblical story of Noah is that of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh. A complete text of Utnapishtim's story is contained on a clay tablet dating from the seventh century BCE, but fragments of the story have been found from as far back as the 19th century BCE. The last known version of the Mesopotamian flood story was written in Greek in the third century BCE by a Babylonian priest named Berossus. From the fragments that survive, it seems little changed from the versions of 2,000 years before.
The parallels between Noah's Ark and the arks of Babylonian flood heroes Atrahasis and Utnapishtim have often been noted. Atrahasis's Ark was circular, resembling an enormous quffa, with one or two decks. Utnapishtim's ark was a cube with six decks of seven compartments, each divided into nine subcompartments (63 subcompartments per deck, 378 total). Noah's Ark was rectangular with three decks. A progression is believed to exist from a circular to a 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, and Noah, only 4% different. Irving Finkel concluded, "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."
Linguistic parallels between Noah's and Atrahasis' arks 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. Likewise, the Hebrew word for "ark" (tēvāh) 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).
However, the causes for God or the gods sending the flood differ in the various stories. In the Hebrew myth, the flood inflicts God's judgment on wicked humanity. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh gives no reasons, and the flood appears to be the result of divine caprice.May, Herbert G., and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. In the Babylonian Atrahasis version, the flood is sent to reduce human overpopulation, and after the flood, other measures were introduced to limit humanity.Alan Dundes, ed., The Flood Myth , pp. 61–71.J. David Pleins, When the Great Abyss Opened: Classic and Contemporary Readings of Noah's Flood , pp. 102–103.
Composition
A consensus among scholars indicates that the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis) was the product of a long and complicated process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile. Since the 18th century, the flood narrative has been analysed as a paradigm example of the combination of two different versions of a story into a single text, with one marker for the different versions being a consistent preference for different names "Elohim" and "Yahweh" to denote God.Richard Elliot Friedman (1997 ed.), Who Wrote the Bible, p. 51.
Religious views Rabbinic Judaism
The 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. God placed lions and other ferocious animals to protect Noah and his family from the wicked who tried to keep them from the Ark. According to one Midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals and their food to the Ark. As no need existed 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 is that the Ark itself distinguished clean animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter.
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.Avigdor Nebenzahl, Tiku Bachodesh Shofer: Thoughts for Rosh Hashanah, Feldheim Publishers, 1997, p. 208. The animals were the best of their kind and behaved with utmost goodness. They did not procreate, so 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.
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 topmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured the food remained fresh. In an unorthodox interpretation, the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as a vessel that remained underwater for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.Ibn Ezra's Commentary to Genesis 7:16 . HebrewBooks.org.
Christianity