Thanks to Noah and his obedience to God, the human race did not perish during the Flood, animals and birds were saved. A wooden ship with a length of 147 meters and smeared with tar at the behest of the Lord saved living creatures from the raging elements. The well-known biblical legend does not give rest to people till now.
What is Noah's Ark?
Noah's Ark is a huge ship that God ordered to build Noah, to ascend it with his family, to take all animals for two individuals of male and female sex for further breeding. In the meantime, Noah with the family and beasts will be in the ark, the flood will fall upon the Earth in order to exterminate the entire human race.
Noah's Ark - Orthodoxy
Noah's ark from the Bible is known to all believers and not only. When people morally fell, and this angered God, he decided to destroy the entire human race and create a worldwide flood . But not everyone deserved this terrible fate to be wiped from the face of the Earth, there was also a righteous family, pleasing to God - Noah's family.
How many years did Noah build an ark?
God commanded Noah to build an ark, a wooden ship in three stories, three hundred cubits long and fifty wide, and cover it with tar. Until now, disputes are being held about which tree an ark was built from. The tree "gopher", mentioned in the Bible once, is considered a cypress tree, a white oak tree, and a tree that has not existed for a long time.
About that, when Noah began to build the ark, there is not a word in the sacred scripture. But from the text it follows that at the age of 500 years Noah had three sons, and a command from God came when the sons were already. The construction of the ark was completed for its 600th anniversary. That is, Noah spent about 100 years building the ark.
The Bible has a more precise figure, around which disputes are being held, whether it relates to the date of building the ark. In the book of Genesis, the sixth chapter deals with the fact that God gives people 120 years. During these years, Noah preached about repentance and predicted the destruction of the human race through the deluge, he himself made preparations - he built the ark. Age of Noah, like many antediluvian characters, counts hundreds of years. There is an interpretation of the verse about 120 years, as that nowadays the life of people will be shortened.
How many Noah sailed on the ark?
The legend of the Noah's Ark from the Bible says that it rained for forty days, and for another hundred ten days the water came from under the earth. The flood lasted one hundred and fifty days, the water covered the surface of the earth completely, not even the tops of the highest mountains could be seen. Noah also swam on the ark even longer, until the water is gone - about one year.
Where did Noah's Ark stop?
Very soon after the flood was over, and the water began to decrease, Noah's ark, according to legend, was nailed to the mountains of Ararat. But the peaks still could not be seen, Noah waited forty more days after he saw the first peaks. The first bird released from Noah's Ark, the raven, returned with nothing - did not find sushi. So the raven returned more than once. Then Noah released a dove that did not bring anything on its first flight, and in the second - brought a leaf of an olive tree, and the third time the dove did not return. After that Noah left the ark with the family and beasts.
Noah's Ark - truth or fiction?
The controversy over whether the Noah ark actually existed, or is simply a beautiful biblical legend, continues to this day. Detective fever covered not only scientists. American anaesthesiologist Ronn Wyatt was so inspired by photographs published in Life magazine in 1957 that he set out to search for the Noah's Ark.
In the photo taken by a Turkish pilot in the area of the Ararat Mountains , a boat-shaped trail was depicted. Enthusiast Wyatt was re-qualified as a biblical archaeologist and found that place. The arguments did not subside - what Wyatt declared as remains of the Noah's ark, that is, a petrified tree, according to geologists was nothing else than clay.
Ron Wyatt had a whole crowd of followers. Later, new pictures were published from the place of "mooring" of the famous biblical ship. All of them depicted only outlines that resembled the shape of a boat. All this could not fully satisfy the scientific researchers, who even questioned the existence of the famous vessel.
Noah's Ark - Facts
Scientists have found the Noah's Ark, but some inconsistencies still cause skeptics to doubt the reality of the biblical tale:
- Flooding such a scale that hid the tops of the highest mountains, contradicts all natural laws. The flood, according to scientists, could not be. Rather, speech in the legend is about a specific territory, and philologists confirm that the Hebrew earth and the country - this is one word.
- It is simply impossible to build a ship of this size without the use of metal structures, and one family can not.
- The number of years Noah spent, 950, embarrasses many and involuntarily pushes the idea that the whole story is fiction. But philologists have arrived in time, they say that there is a possibility that the Bible testament meant 950 months. Then everything fits into the normal, subject to modern understanding, the life of a person.
Scientists believe that the biblical parable of Noah is an interpretation of another epic. In the Sumerian version of the legend, we are talking about Atrahasis, whom God ordered to build a ship, everything like Noah. Only the flood was of a local scale - in the territory of Mesopotamia. This already fits into scientific ideas.
This year, Chinese and Turkish scientists discovered the Noah's Ark at an altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level in the vicinity of Mount Ararat. Geological analysis of the found "boards" showed that their age is about 5,000 years, which converges with the dating of the Flood. The expedition members are sure that these are the remains of a legendary ship, but not all researchers share their optimism. They are skeptical that all the water on Earth is not enough to lift the ship to such a high altitude.