Noah’s ark makes for an exciting children’s bedtime story, but surely Christians don’t really believe he actually crammed all the creatures of the world into a boat? Take a closer look at the details of the Biblical account and you may be surprised to find that the narrative emerges water-tight.
The Ark’s Structure
According to Genesis 6:15 (NIV), the dimensions of the boat were “450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high”. This is one of the more conservative estimates; some other Bible translations interpret the ancient cubit differently resulting in even large measurements! At any rate, this makes the ark longer than the pitch at Cape Town Stadium and certainly bigger than any other ancient sailing vessel. (In fact, it was only in 1858 that the ark’s record was broken by a ship named the Great Eastern, measuring 692 by 83 by 30 feet).
Great Eastern at Hearts Content, July 1866
Now consider the buoyancy and stability of such a structure. The raging flood and relentless rains described in Genesis 7 would certainly have been a formidable test for any vessel. And yet simulated tests show that a boxlike structure of these dimensions is exceedingly stable and almost impossible to capsize.
Where would an ordinary man in the ancient world like Noah have gained the scientific and engineering expertise to build such an unsinkable boat? According to the Biblical account, the design for the ark was given to Noah by God (Genesis 6:14-21). The idea of God communicating with a man might be difficult for contemporary readers to believe, but it is not a foreign occurrence in the book of Genesis or indeed in the Bible as a whole. And it makes logical sense that the God who (according to the Bible) made the world and authored the laws of physics would be able to design a structure that would survive even the most devastating natural disaster.
The Animals
What about the many species transported in the ark? This is another argument skeptics often level at the ark. Surely Noah couldn’t have fitted ALL those animals in there? The difficulty here is in determining what the Bible means by the word “kind” when it says that Noah gathered “two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground” (Genesis 6:20). Does “kind” refer to our modern classification of “family” or “species”?
If the text is referring to the slightly broader category of families of animals, the maximum number of families represented on the ark would be about seven hundred. If the text is referring to individual species, the number would be much higher—but still not beyond the ark’s capacity given that there are many kinds of animals which would not have needed to be housed on the ark (e.g. fish, tunicates, echinoderms, mollusks, coelenterates, sponges, protozoans, most arthropods, and most worms).
Furthermore, most land animals tend to be rather small. Though the pictures of Noah’s ark in children’s books tend to feature all the large animals (e.g. elephants, hippopotamuses, giraffes), the average size of land animals is less than that of a sheep. Now for some calculations. When sheep are transported by rail, it is common to fit 240 sheep comfortably into an average size two-deck stock car. The volume of the ark would have been equal to 569 stock cars. As a result, the animals Noah saved would only have taken up approximately 50 percent of the ark’s carrying capacity. This would have left plenty of room for people, food, water, and whatever other provisions may have been necessary to sustain everyone during the voyage.
Archaeological Evidence
Even if the numbers add up, is there any archeological evidence to support the existence of the ark? The Bible speaks of the ark coming to rest on Mount Ararat as the floodwaters were receding (Genesis 8:4). It was on this spot that Noah and his family and all the animals departed the ark and it seems the imposing structure remained on the mountain in modern day Turkey. A number of historical records from different centuries testify to the existence of the ark’s remains, giving further weight to the reliability of the Bible’s account.
Ancient historians who refer to the ark include Berosus (a Babylonian historian writing in approximately 275 B.C.), Josephus (a Jewish historian, writing a generation after Christ), Hieronymus (an Egyptian historian), Nicolas of Damascus, and Theophilus of Antioch (180 A.D.).
In the 19th and 20th centuries, several explorers embarked on reportedly successful expeditions to the ark, some travellers even returning with photographs that seem to depict a snow-covered ark-like structure on the mountainside. These explorers include an Armenian named Haji Yearam (1856), a British statesman named Viscount James Bryce (1876), Prince Nouri (the archdeacon of the church of Babylon who claimed to have seen the ark in 1887) and six Turkish soldiers (1916). In the 1930s, Hardwicke Knight (a British archeologist) found interlocking timbers at a height of 14,000 feet and less than ten years later, American aviators flying over Ararat photographed the ark site and had the photos printed in the American military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
The eyewitness testimonies of various people over many years seem to support the existence of the ark but some may still question whether they prove the historicity of the Biblical account, as supposed to one of the 211 other versions of the flood event which exist in various cultural traditions.
in jesus’ words
Ultimately, in order to discredit the account of Noah’s ark in Genesis, one would have to discredit the words of Jesus’ himself as recorded in the New Testament by Matthew, an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry:
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”
It’s one thing to write off the flood account as exaggerated and unsubstantiated by evidence; it is a lot harder to write off the New Testament accounts of the life and words of Jesus. The New Testament is objectively the most trustworthy ancient document that has been passed down to us, having survived in more copies and in a purer form than any other significant work. Its reliability is unquestioned by serious scholars. It would be foolish not to take it seriously.
Matthew 24:37-41 indicates that Jesus not only believed in the historicity of the flood but also taught that it has implications for future generations. He saw the flood as a precedent for the universal judgement to come and as a warning that we would do well to heed. But will you?
Noah’s ark truly was a marvel of engineering far ahead of its time which continues to provoke many discussions about the Bible’s integrity. A closer examination of the details of the ark’s construction serves to reaffirm the historicity of the account, and yet to focus on the plausibility of the ark itself and forget the rest of the story is to miss the entire reason it has been included in the Bible! Noah’s ark is a story of coming judgement. It is also a story of grace and salvation and faithfulness. Why not read the whole of Genesis 6:5-9:17 asking what the author intended for us to learn about God’s character, and you’ll discover treasures you’d never seen before.
Bibliography:
Boice, J. M. (1998). Genesis: An Expositional Commentary. Baker Publishing Group.
