Noah's Ark

According to the Bible, Noah's Ark was a vessel built at God's command to save Noah, his family, and a core stock of the world's animals from the Great Flood. The story is contained in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament's book of Genesis, chapters 6 to 9. more...

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According to the documentary hypothesis, the Ark story told in Genesis may represent several originally quasi-independent sources, and the process of composition over many centuries may help to explain apparent confusion and repetition in the text. Many Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims reject this hypothesis, holding that the Ark story is true, that it has a single author, and that any perceived inadequacies can be explained rationally.

The Ark story told in Genesis has parallels in the Sumerian myth of Ziusudra, which tells how Ziusudra was warned by God to build a vessel in which to escape a flood sent by Him. Less exact parallels are found in other cultures from around the world. Indeed, the deluge story is one of the most common topics across the globe, leading both skeptics and believers to see this trend as proof of their position.

The Ark story has been subject to extensive elaborations in the various Abrahamic traditions, mingling theoretical solutions to practical problems (e.g. how Noah might have disposed of animal waste) with allegorical interpretations (e.g. the Ark as a precursor of the Church, offering salvation to mankind).

By the beginning of the 18th century, the growth of geology and biogeography as sciences meant that few natural historians felt able to justify a literal interpretation of the Ark story. Nevertheless, Biblical literalists continue to explore the region of the mountains of Ararat, in north-eastern Turkey where the Bible says Noah's Ark came to rest.

Narrative

The story of Noah's Ark, according to chapters 6 to 9 in the Book of Genesis, begins with God observing man's evil behaviour and deciding to flood the earth and destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time", and decided that he would carry forth the lineage of man. God told Noah to make an ark, and to bring with him his wife, and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Additionally, he was told to bring examples of all animals and birds, male and female. In order to provide sustenance, he was told to bring and store food.

When Noah completed the Ark, he and his family and the animals entered, and "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." The flood covered even the highest mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet, and all creatures on Earth died; only Noah and those with him on the Ark were left alive.

Finally, after about 220 days, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and the waters receded for another forty days until the mountaintops emerged. Then Noah sent out a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth". Next, Noah sent a dove out, but it returned having found nowhere to land. After a further seven days, Noah again sent out the dove, and it returned with an olive leaf in its beak, and he knew that the waters had subsided. Noah waited seven days more and sent out the dove once more, and this time it did not return. Then he and his family and all the animals left the Ark, and Noah made a sacrifice to God, and God resolved that he would never again curse the ground because of man, and never again would He destroy all life on it in this manner.

Read more at Wikipedia.org