Noah's Ark (1846), a painting by the American folk painter Edward Hicks.

Noah's Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח‎, Teyvat Noaḥ in Classical Hebrew) is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis (chapters 6–9) and the Quran (surahs Hud and Al-Mu’minoon). These narratives describe the construction of a large, seagoing ark by the Patriarch Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.

In the narrative of the ark, God sees the wickedness of man and is grieved by his creation, resolving to send a great flood to cleanse the Earth. However, God chooses a man named Noah and "counted it righteous to him" to live and preserve mankind through Noah's family. God then proceeds to give Noah detailed instructions on how to build the ark. When Noah and the animals are safe on board, God sends the Flood, which rises until all the mountains are covered and all life on Earth is destroyed. At the height of the flood, the ark rests on mountaintops, before the waters recede and dry land reappears. Noah, his family, and the animals leave the ark to repopulate the Earth. God places a symbolic rainbow in the sky and makes a covenant with Noah and all living things, by which he vows to never again send a flood to destroy the Earth.

The ark narrative has been extensively studied by adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as other Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic faiths. Such studies have ranged from hypothetical solutions to practical problems (such as the issues of waste disposal and lighting the ark's interior), to theological and metaphoric interpretations (with the ark being seen as the spiritual precursor of the Church in offering salvation to mankind).^[1] Although the account of the ark was traditionally accepted as historical, by the 19th century the growing impact of scientific investigation and biblical interpretation had led many people to abandon a literal view in favour of a more metaphoric understanding.^[2][3][4] Though there have been many alleged sightings of Noah's Ark over the years,^[5] no concrete physical evidence of the ark has been found. Biblical literalists continue to explore the mountains of Ararat in present-day Turkey, where the Bible says the ark came to rest, in search of archaeological remnants of the vessel.^[6]

Biblical narrative[link]

The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge (1829), a painting by the American painter Thomas Cole.

Quotations are taken from the English Standard Version of the Bible.

In the Genesis narrative, God observes that humanity is corrupt and decides to destroy all life. However, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, [and] Noah walked with God," and so God gives him instructions for the ark, into which he is told to bring "two of every sort [of animal]...male and female ... everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life," and their food.^[7] The dimensions of the vessel are specified: "the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits".^[8]

God instructs Noah to board the ark with his family, seven pairs of every bird and clean animal, and one pair of every unclean animal. "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," and God closes up the door of the ark. The flood begins, and the waters prevail until all the high mountains are covered fifteen cubits deep. All the people and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens are blotted out from the Earth, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remain alive.^[9]

Then "God remembered Noah," and causes his wind to blow, and the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens are closed. The rain is restrained, the waters abate, and in the seventh month the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat. In the tenth month, the tops of the mountains are seen, and Noah sends out a raven and a dove to see if the waters have subsided; the raven flies "to and fro" but the dove returns with a fresh olive leaf in her beak. Noah waits seven days more and sends out the dove again, and this time it does not return.^[10]

When the land is dry, God tells Noah to leave the ark, and Noah offers a sacrifice to God. God resolves never again to curse the Earth, "for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth."^[10] God grants to Noah and his sons the right to kill animals and eat their meat, but forbids meat which has not been drained of its blood. Blood is proclaimed to be sacred, and the unauthorised taking of life is prohibited: "For your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man...Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." God then establishes his covenant with Noah and his sons and with all living things, and places a rainbow in the clouds, "the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."^[11]

Religious traditions[link]

Rabbinic Judaism[link]

In the last centuries BC and the first centuries AD, many Jewish rabbis formed interpretations of the story of Noah's Ark. Their teachings were collected in the Talmud, which dates from between 200 and 500 AD. The individual volumes of the Talmud are known as Tractates.

Tractates Sanhedrin, Avoda 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.

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.^[12] 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.

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.^[13][14][15] 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.^[16]

Christianity[link]

An artist's depiction of the construction of the ark, from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).

Interpretations of the ark narrative played an important role in early Christian doctrine. St. Hippolytus of Rome (d. 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".^[17] On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the ark was built with three decks – 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 so that there would be no cohabitation aboard the vessel.^[17]

The early Church Father and theologian Origen (c. 182 – 251) produced a learned argument about cubits, in response to a critic who doubted that the ark could contain all the animals in the world. Origen held 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.^[18]

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.^[1] 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;^[19] more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and, eventually, peace.^[18] The olive branch remains a secular and religious symbol of peace today.

Islam[link]

Noah (Arabic: Nuh) is one of the five principal prophets of Islam. References to him are scattered through the Qur'an, with the fullest account being found in surah Hud (11:27–51). As a prophet, Noah preached to his people, but with little success; only "a few"^[11:40] of them converted (traditionally thought to be seventy). Noah prayed for deliverance, and Allah told him to build a ship in preparation for the coming flood. A son (named either 'Kan'an' or 'Yam' depending on the source) was among those drowned, despite Noah pleading with him to leave the disbelievers and join him (Surah Hud, 42–43).

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 describes the ark 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.^[20]

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 cubits (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, symbolizing three prophets, were brought from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the Flood.^{[dubious – discuss]} The body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide the men from the women.^{[dubious – discuss]} Surah 11:41 says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of Allah it moves and stays!'"; this was taken to mean that Noah said, "In the Name of Allah!" 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. The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (d. 956) wrote that Allah 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. Masudi says that the ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, circling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judi (in Arabic also referred to as "high place, hill), 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, and he and his family and companions built a town at the foot of Mount Judi, named Thamanin ("eighty") in reference to 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. Some modern Muslims, although not generally active in searching for the ark, believe that it still exists on the high slopes of the mountain.^{[13] [14]}

Other traditions[link]

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 Mandaean scriptures, the ark was built of sandalwood from Jebel Harun and was cubic in shape, with a length, width and height of 30 amma (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 Nineveh Plains 40 kilometres (25 mi) north-east 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.

The Bahá'í Faith regards the Ark and the Flood as symbolic.^[21] In Bahá'í belief, only Noah's followers were spiritually alive, preserved in the "ark" of his teachings, as others were spiritually dead.^[22][23] The Bahá'í scripture Kitáb-i-Íqán endorses the Islamic belief that Noah had a large number of companions on the ark, either 40 or 72, as well as his family, and that he taught for 950 (symbolic) years before the flood.^[24]

In Hindu mythology, texts like the Satapatha Brahmana mention the story of a great flood,^[25] wherein the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat.^[26][27][28]

Noah's Ark and science[link]

Paradisaea apoda, literally "the Bird of Paradise Without Feet", so named by early European naturalists because the first specimens to reach Europe were prepared as skins without the feet. Biblical scholars decided that the bird was native to Heaven, and that it had flown around endlessly inside the ark without roosting.

Various editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica reflect the collapse of belief in the historicity of the ark in the face of advancing scientific knowledge. Its 1771 edition offered the following as scientific evidence for the ark's size and capacity: "...Buteo and Kircher have proved geometrically, that, taking the common cubit as a foot and a half, the ark was abundantly sufficient for all the animals supposed to be lodged in it..., the number of species of animals will be found much less than is generally imagined, not amounting to a hundred species of quadrupeds...". By the eighth edition (1853–1860), the encyclopedia said of the Noah story, "The insuperable difficulties connected with the belief that all other existing species of animals were provided for in the ark are obviated by adopting the suggestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Matthew Poole...and others, that the Deluge did not extend beyond the region of the Earth then inhabited..." By the ninth edition, in 1875, no attempt was made to reconcile the Noah story with scientific fact, and it was presented without comment. In the 1960 edition, the article on the ark stated that "Before the days of 'higher criticism' and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of the species, there was much discussion among the learned, and many ingenious and curious theories were advanced, as to the number of animals on the ark".^[29]

16th–18th centuries[link]

The Renaissance saw continued speculation on the nature of the ark that might have seemed familiar to Origen and Augustine. At the same time, however, 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. 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. The 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.^[18]

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. In 1646, Sir Thomas Browne wondered why the natives of North America had taken rattlesnakes with them, but not horses: "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature, a Horse, is very strange".^[18]

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. However, 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 harmonize the biblical account with the growing body of 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, less than a century after Kircher, their number had expanded beyond biblical proportions. Incorporating the full range of animal diversity into the Ark story was becoming increasingly difficult,^[3] and by the middle of the 18th century few natural historians could justify a literal interpretation of the Ark narrative.^[4] An uneasy rapprochement was reached by thinkers such as Edward Stillingfleet, a late 17th-century English theologian and scholar, who suggested that mankind at the time of Noah had inhabited only a small portion of the world, so that a purely local Flood would square the Bible with science; the idea gained popularity in intellectual circles in the 18th century, but was increasingly abandoned as the scientific evidence mounted.

19th century[link]

Geology[link]

The development of 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 in a history which stretched back no more than a few thousand years, the historicity of the Ark itself was undermined. In 1823, William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiae Diluvianae: relics of the flood which "attested the action of a universal deluge". His views were supported by other English clergymen and naturalists at the time, including the influential Adam Sedgwick, but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that the evidence only showed local floods. The deposits were subsequently explained by Louis Agassiz as the results of glaciation.^[30] In 1862, William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion focused not on whether this theory of deep time was viable, but on the derivation of a more precise figure for the age of the Earth.^[31] Lux Mundi, an 1889 volume of theological essays 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 upon as completely historical, but that the earlier chapters of Genesis should not be taken literally.^[32]

Biblical scholarship[link]

In the 19th century, Biblical scholars were beginning to examine the origins of the Bible itself. The story of Noah's Ark played a central role in the new theories, largely because, using the newly developed tools of source criticism, scholars discovered in the Ark narrative two complete, coherent, parallel stories. For example, it is stated twice over that God was angered with his creation, but the reasons given in each telling are slightly different; it is said that there was a single pair of each animal aboard, but also that there were seven pairs of the clean animals. The source of the floodwater is said to be rain, but also the "windows of Heaven" and the "fountains of the Deep"; the rains are described as lasting forty days, but the waters are also said to have risen for 150 days. Gradually, scholars came to agree that the entire Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible – had been written in this fashion, combining the writings of many authors over many centuries into a single work.^[33]

Translation of other flood myths[link]

This section is missing information about the effect of these discoveries on belief in Noah's Ark (that would make this information relevant to the general topic). This concern has been noted on the talk page where whether or not to include such information may be discussed. (June 2011)

The 19th century also saw the growth of Middle Eastern archaeology and the first translations into English of ancient Mesopotamian records. The Assyriologist George Smith achieved world-wide fame with his translation of the Babylonian account of the Great Flood, which he read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on December 3, 1872. Further discoveries brought to light several versions of the Mesopotamian flood-myth, with the closest to Genesis 6–9 being 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 huge vessel in which to save himself, his family, and his friends and animals, from a great flood by which the gods intended to destroy the world.^{[34][Need quotation to verify]}

Modern views[link]

Origins of the Genesis Ark story[link]

The story of Noah's Ark in Genesis is considered by modern scholars to be directly dependent upon the Babylonian version,^[35] which it parallels point by point, in the correct order, from beginning to end.^[36] It is a composite text,^[37] with some parts belonging to the Jahwist source and some to the Priestly source.^[38] The Jahwist version has modified the Babylonian text to make it conform to a monotheistic theology.^[35]

Chronology of the flood[link]

The elaborate chronology of the flood has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. The following revised table is abridged from a study by Gordon Wenham. The left column lists dates by day, month and year of Noah's life, the middle column lists the time-periods involved for each incident, and the right column gives the day of the week.^[39]

Numerology and the Tabernacle[link]

Noah's Ark is said to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high, and has three decks; it is therefore three times the height of the Tabernacle of the Israelites, as described in the Book of Exodus. The dimensions of the ark, the Tabernacle tent and the Tabernacle forecourt are listed below:

It is suggested that the biblical authors saw both the ark and the Tabernacle serving the same purpose – the preservation of humankind for God's plan.^[40] The dimensions of both structures betray a numerological preoccupation with the number sixty, one which is shared with the Babylonian Ark: Noah's Ark is 60x5=300 cubits long and 60÷2=30 cubits high.^[41]

Narrative structure[link]

British biblical scholar Gordon Wenham has identified an elaborate chiasmus within the ark story, with the phrase "And God remembered Noah" at its centre. This analysis has attracted numerous supporters, especially among more conservative scholars,^[42] but has been criticized by J. A. Emerton and others as being essentially subjective and inclined to arbitrary results.^[43]

Literalism and the search for Noah's Ark[link]

Mount Ararat, the supposed resting place of the ark, photographed from Iğdır, Turkey.

Modern Biblical literalists believe in a literal, physical ark, and have given numerous proposed dates for the Biblical flood.^[44] Additionally, some Young Earth creationists seek the physical remains of the vessel, as they feel that finding archaeological evidence of the Ark would validate their views on various theological and scientific matters. In 2009, John D. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research wrote that, "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."^[6] Physical searches for Noah's Ark continue on and around Mount Ararat in present-day Turkey, the Ark's supposed resting place.

Date of the flood[link]

The Ussher chronology, a literalist calculation of the dates of creation and other Biblical events published in 1650 by the Irish Archbishop James Ussher, places the Great Flood at 2348 BC.^[44] Using the Masoretic Text of the Bible shows the date to be 1656 years after creation.^[45] Ussher calculated that the creation occurred in 4004 BC; using the King James Bible, this creation date gives the date of the Flood as 2348 BC. Although the Ussher chronology remains highly influential among literalists,^[44] other theologians have given different dates for the Creation; for example, Joseph Scaliger claimed it to have occurred in 3950 BC, while Petavius calculated the date as 3982 BC.^[46][47]

See also[link]

	Religion portal
	History portal
	Mythology portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Noah's Ark

Notes[link]