The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the most well-known Bible stories and has been retold in songs, children’s storybooks, cartoons, and films. Many people think they know the story; however, there are many things we simply do not know. This is the story …
What is an ark?
The story of Noah and his ark is found in chapters 6, 7, and 8 of the book of Genesis. The word “ark” comes from the Latin arca, meaning a box or chest. The same word is used of the basket in which Moses was put, called an “ark of bulrushes” (Genesis 2:3), and in the “ark of the covenant” (Exodus 25:10). We think of Noah’s ark as a boat or ship, but actually the word has a meaning closer to a container.
What was the flood?
People have come up with different theories about the flood. The great rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, fed by mountain waters nearby, mean that the area was prone to flooding. Genesis 7:11 describes God as bringing the flood by opening “all the springs of the great deep” and “the floodgates of the heavens,” so that waters from below and rain from above together came to overwhelm the land. Some imagine it as the result of a massive cloudburst, melting ice caps, a tsunami, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, rivers bursting their banks, or a combination of factors. One recent theory sees it as when the Black Sea broke through the Bosphorus. That a great flood could have happened is not in doubt.
When did the flood happen?
Genesis 7:11 states that the flood began “in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month”. To approximate the date for the biblical flood, people have worked their way backwards from later, more datable events in Scripture. Traditionally, it has been dated to 2348 BC, based on counting backwards using names in biblical genealogies. Various other dates have been proposed, accounting for known biblical features like skipped generations and hyperbole. As the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and Sumeria seem to have had continuous histories going back to 3000 BC or earlier, other estimates of the flood push the date back further, with one theory being 5500 BC. We don’t know for sure.
What was the ark made of?
Genesis 6:14 states, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch” (KJV). The problem is that “gopher” is the Hebrew word, albeit written in our alphabet. It was left untranslated because its meaning was and remains unknown. Modern Bible versions in English either leave “gopher” with a footnote clarifying that the Hebrew is unclear or that the meaning is unknown, or they hazard a guess at what this word means. Some translations have the ark made of cedar or cypress wood or timber. Or it might not have been made of wood at all.
Some people note the parallel with Moses’ reed basket, also called an ark, which was likewise coated with pitch, suggesting a familiar ancient practice of combining reeds with waterproof coating for flotation. In various parts of the world, boats are made of reeds, and the practice existed for millennia amongst the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, who made huge boats of reeds. It is also suggested by the word for “rooms” in Genesis 6:14, which is literally the Hebrew word for “nests”. So, it could have been a type of wood, or it might not have been wood at all but made of reeds, or a combination of both. The reality is that we do not know what the ark was made from.
What shape was the ark?
Genesis 6:14 states, “And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.”
The problem with this verse is that it gives us dimensions but does not specify the shape of the ark. Some read these measurements to mean that the vessel was like a rectangular box; others read them to mean that these are the length and width at their longest and widest points, leaving it to be boat-shaped with a pointed front end, or even oval-shaped. Your concept of shape depends on whether you think of the purpose of the ark as a floating container or barge that rises above the water and then descends again, or as a boat or ship meant to move through the waters. The reality is that we do not know what shape the ark was.
How big was the ark?
Genesis 6:14 gives the dimensions as “The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits” (KJV). The problem with this is that we are not sure if these numbers are meant to be literal or symbolic, as St Jerome and St Augustine thought. Even assuming they are literal, we do not know how long the cubit was. A cubit is generally considered to be the length of the forearm from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. We do not know if people at the time were taller or shorter than people today, and therefore what the average cubit was.
In the Bible, cubits were used to measure the ark, the tabernacle, and the Temple, and even the height of Goliath. The story of Noah’s ark appears in Genesis, traditionally considered to have been written by Moses (Deuteronomy 31:9). Moses grew up in Egypt, and while in Egypt the Israelites had been enslaved and built the cities of Pithom and Ramases (Exodus 1:11) for Pharaoh, so they knew Egyptian units. It may therefore be safe to assume that Moses used Egyptian measurements in the Pentateuch. However, even then there is a problem, because several types of cubit were used at different times and to measure different things in Egypt. Even in the Bible there are different cubits. For example, 2 Chronicles 3:3 says that the Temple should be measured according to the “old standard”, and Ezekiel 43:13 mentions the use of two kinds of cubit, known as the short and the “long cubit”.
Some Bible translations prefer to leave the measurements in cubits and perhaps put a footnote to approximate the cubit in modern measurements, which is arguably the most honest approach. Other English translations try to render the measurements in feet in their American editions and in metres in their anglicised or British editions. Most Bible translations in English have decided that the cubit was about 18 inches, which is a foot and a half long, and even derive metric measurements from it. It may be about right, but the reality is that we do not know what size the ark was, except roughly.
Where did the ark land?
Genesis 8:4 states, “and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (KJV). If you ask most people where the ark landed, they will tell you it was on Mount Ararat. Yet the Bible never says the ark landed on Mount Ararat; in fact, that mountain is not even mentioned in the Bible. The Bible mentions the mountain range in which the ark landed, but it does not name the mountain. Ararat is not mentioned again until Jeremiah 51:27, where it is a kingdom, later known as Armenia. That area is in south-western Türkiye.
Mount Ararat is the name given to the highest mountain in the Ararat range, and by one tradition it was the mountain on which the ark landed. This is an understandable tradition, because people imagine that it was the first mountain to emerge from the flood. The problem is that some of the mountains in the Ararat range are volcanic. Mount Ararat is the largest mountain in the range because it was a volcano that grew through eruptions, most recently in 1840. That means that at the time of Noah it probably was not the highest mountain in the range, and not the first to emerge from the flood. This has not stopped some people, dubbed “arkaeologists”, from searching for the ark on Mount Ararat, following mythical sightings and tradition. Other traditions have placed the ark elsewhere, and Josephus and the Eastern Fathers located the ark on Mount Judi.
How many animals were on the ark?
Genesis 7:2–3 specifies the number of animals as: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male, and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male, and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth” (KJV).
We are used to children’s books and cartoons showing animals going in two by two, but the Bible says there were many more animals on the ark than one pair of each creature. It was only the unclean animals that went in pairs, and clean animals went in sevens, usually interpreted to mean seven pairs. Whilst they were on the ark, numbers may have multiplied, as the animals bred.
The odd thing here is that the rules for clean and unclean animals are not actually given until Leviticus 11, which in the chronology of the Bible is nearly a millennium later. So, it is not clear what is meant by clean and unclean animals in this context, and whether or not Noah had the same definition as later Israelites. Sea creatures are not mentioned, presumably because they could survive the flood. The higher number of clean animals might have been for sacrifice, for feeding to other animals, or for food, unless the family lived off fishing.
The number of animals on the ark is also dependent on the geographical extent of the flood. A regional or local flood would not need the thousands of kinds of animals that a global flood would have, which leads to the next question.
How much of the world was flooded?
Genesis 8:9 states that “the water was on the surface of all the earth”. A plain reading of the text therefore suggests a global flood. The descriptions seem to describe a universal flood. The problem is that we can be tempted to read the word “earth” as the name of our planet, “Earth”, but in the Bible the word “earth” often means land or ground.
There are many other places in the Bible where the plain reading also produces statements that seem global in nature but are not. In Genesis 41:57 we read that during Joseph's time “all the world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe everywhere” (NIV), which we do not take too literally. In 1 Kings 10:24, the reader learns that “the whole world sought audience with Solomon” (NIV), yet the most distant visitor mentioned is the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1–13).
In Luke 2:1 we read, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed” (KJV), yet we know that the Roman Emperor could not have taxed places outside the Roman world. At Pentecost we read in Acts 2:5, “And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven” (KJV), and yet when the places are listed, they all come from the eastern Mediterranean area and the Middle East (Acts 2:9–11). In Romans 1:8 Paul wrote, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world”.
In all these cases, we do not use the plain reading of the text when we know that the context gives it a more limited application. This is because we know that some parts of the Bible used hyperbole, and references to the whole world often meant their world. Hyperbole, as a figure of speech or rhetorical device used to exaggerate to make a point, was common then, as it is now.
Evangelicals often advocate consistent hermeneutics, using the same kind of interpretation that we use elsewhere in the Bible and reading the Bible in context. Anyone reading the Bible has to be conscious of the widespread use of hyperbole. To insist that it was a global flood is an interpretation that some believers prefer. However, from a theological perspective, to believe that the flood was a local or regional flood is not to disbelieve the biblical story, but to apply a perfectly reasonable interpretation consistent with how we read the rest of the Bible.
The logical implication of a global flood is that Noah and his family would be the ancestors of all mankind, which was the traditional interpretation. However, if this were the case, we might expect modern DNA studies to point to mankind as descending from a small group in this region not many millennia ago, which currently does not seem to be the case.
The evolutionary dilemma
Rescuing the world’s wildlife from a global flood would be a major zoological enterprise, requiring enormous numbers of animals. The ark would have had to contain one pair of every unclean animal in existence today, plus seven pairs of every clean animal, and include all animals that went extinct in the intervening period between then and now. Realistically, they would not all fit on the ark, even on an ark measured by the longest cubits and with many decks.
Therefore, people who believe in a global flood often argue that the ark only needed to have a pair (or seven pairs) of each animal “after their kind” (Genesis 6:20). The idea is that the current diversity of animals within each “kind” developed from them. To repopulate the whole earth from the animals on the ark and achieve the sheer numbers of creatures we know today in a few thousand years would require accelerated biological change, great migratory instincts, and rapid diversification of species. This would require a stronger belief in the power of Darwinian natural selection than current scientific biological theories allow for.
Did the ark survive?
We do not know if Noah’s ark survived. Perhaps after a great flood it was not preserved, but recycled for materials for building or for fuel. Wood and reeds tend to rot when left exposed. Admittedly, some wooden boats have survived for a long time, such as the ancient Egyptian boats found buried in the sands by the pyramids, and Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, which sank off the coast of Portsmouth and was raised from the seabed in 1982. Occasionally, dugout boats emerge from bogs, but most ancient boats have not survived. Several of the mountains in the Ararat range were volcanic. Had the ark landed on a mountain that was a volcano, the forces of nature might well have destroyed it during an eruption.
In the early parts of the Old Testament, when the narrative talks about important landmarks, it sometimes indicates that they are still there “unto this day” or “remaineth until this day”, as if the reader might want to go and see the object, and as evidence that the story is true (see Deut 29:28; Joshua 4:9; Joshua 7:26; Joshua 8:29; Joshua 10:27; Judges 6:4; Judges 15:19; 1 Samuel 6:18; 1 Kings 8:8; 2 Chronicles 5:9). In the case of Noah’s ark, however, there is no comment such as “and there it remaineth until this day”, which might have been added had it been known to have survived. That is not evidence either way, but after the story of Noah ends, the Bible does not mention people visiting it, and it does not indicate that it survived.
Summary
Over the years, different people around the world have made full-size or scale models of the ark. They have had to interpret the shape, materials, and size of the ark, and they have come to different conclusions. Whenever there are gaps in the biblical narrative, these have been filled by tradition. It is mainly western tradition, rather than the Bible, that creates the idea of pairs of animals departing a wooden boat on Mount Ararat after a global flood. Evangelicals who prefer what the Bible actually says in context over tradition can believe the story, but still face the reality that it is not clear what the ark was made of, how big it was, where it landed, how much of the world was flooded, or how many animals were aboard.
Different interpretations of the story have been made over time by people who take the story seriously. In the spirit of St Paul, we should not insist on a particular interpretation that becomes a stumbling block for others (Romans 14:13). We are not defending the Bible by insisting on a single interpretation when others are also available.
It seems unrealistic to expect an ancient vessel from that era to survive, but this has not stopped people from looking, even though we do not know where to look. In recent years, a favourite contender has been a geographical anomaly in south-eastern Türkiye, which some people think is the fossilised remains of an ancient boat. This may be wishful thinking, although it would be wonderful if it were true. If the ark were found, any discoveries might help answer some of the outstanding questions but might also challenge some of our cherished misunderstandings about the story.
