How Could the Ark Survive the Flood?

KRISO's proposed hull
form of the Ark, 135m long,
22.5m wide and 13.5m high

The description of the Ark is very brief—Genesis 6:14–16. Those three verses contain critical information including overall dimensions, but Noah was almost certainly given more detail than this. Other divinely specified constructions in the Bible are meticulously detailed, like the descriptions of Moses’ Tabernacle or the temple in Ezekiel’s vision.

The Bible does not say the Ark was a rectangular box. In fact, Scripture gives no clue about the shape of Noah’s Ark other than the proportions—length, width, and depth. Ships have long been described like this without ever implying a block-shaped hull.

Moses used the obscure term tebah, a word that is only used again for the basket that carried baby Moses (Exodus 2:3). One was a huge wooden ship and the other a tiny wicker basket. Both float, both rescue life, and both are covered. But the similarity ends there. We can be quite sure that the baby basket did not have the same proportions as the Ark, and Egyptian baskets of the time were typically rounded. Perhaps tebah means “lifeboat.”

For many years biblical creationists have simply depicted the Ark as a rectangular box. This shape helped illustrate its size while avoiding the distractions of hull curvature. It also made it easy to compare volume. By using a short cubit and the maximum number of animal “kinds,” creationists, as we’ve seen, have demonstrated how easily the Ark could fit the payload.¹ At the time, space was the main issue; other factors were secondary.

However, the next phase of research investigated sea-keeping (behavior and comfort at sea), hull strength, and stability. This began with a Korean study performed at the world-class ship research center (KRISO) in 1992.² The team of nine KRISO researchers was led by Dr. Hong, who is now director-general of the research center.


KRISO's conclusion: the Ark’s wave height
limit was more than 30 metres if the
thickness of the wood was 30 cm.

The study combined analysis, model wave testing, and ship standards, yet the concept was simple: compare the biblical Ark with 12 other vessels of the same volume but modified in length, width, or depth. Three qualities were measured—stability, hull strength, and comfort.

The study confirmed that the Ark could handle waves as high as 98 feet (30 m), and that the proportions of the biblical Ark are near optimal—an interesting admission from Dr. Hong, who believes evolutionary ideas, openly claiming “life came from the sea.”³

For more results of KRISO's research, see The Seaworthiness of the Ark.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 38: Final Parting of The Coming Wrath)

Discuss this post with us below, or here:

References

1. J. Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, 2003.

2. Hong, et al., Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway, TJ 8(1):26–36, April 1994. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp.

3. Seok Won Hong, Warm greetings from the Director-General of MOERI (former KRISO), Director-General of MOERI/KORDI, http://www.moeri.re.kr/eng/about/about.htm.

The Seaworthiness of the Ark

A Korean study performed at the world-class ship research center (KRISO) in 1992 investigated sea-keeping, hull strength, and stability characteristics of the Ark.¹ While Noah’s Ark was an average performer in each quality, it was among the best designs overall. In other words, the proportions show a careful design balance that is easily lost when proportions are modified the wrong way. It is no surprise that modern ships have similar proportions—those proportions work.

Interesting to note is the fact that this study makes nonsense of the claim that Genesis was written only a few centuries before Christ and was based on flood legends such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Babylonian ark is a cube shape, something so far from reality that even the shortest hull in the Korean study was not even close. But we would expect mistakes from other flood accounts, like that of Gilgamesh, as the account of Noah would have been distorted as it was passed down through different cultures.

Wind catching obstruction on the bow. Wind-driven waves would cause a drifting vessel to turn dangerously side-on to the weather. However, such waves could be safely navigated by making the Ark steer itself with a wind-catching obstruction on the bow. To be effective, this obstruction must be large enough to overcome the turning effect of the waves. While many designs could work, the possibility shown here reflects the high stems which were a hallmark of ancient ships.


Yet one mystery remained. The Korean study did not hide the fact that some shorter hulls slightly outperformed the biblical Noah’s Ark. Further work by Tim Lovett, one author of this chapter, and two naval architects, Jim King and Dr. Allen Magnuson, focused attention on the issue of broaching— being turned sideways by the waves.

Skylight windows with coverings. Any opening on the deck of a ship needs a wall (combing) to prevent water from flowing in, especially when the ship rolls. In this illustration, the window “ends a cubit upward and above,” as described in Genesis 6:16. The central position of the skylight is chosen to reflect the idea of a “noon light.” This also means that the window does not need to be exactly one cubit. Perhaps the skylight had a transparent roof (even more a “noon light”), or the skylight roof could be opened (which might correspond to when “Noah removed the covering of the Ark”). While variations are possible, a window without combing is not the most logical solution.



How do we know what the waves were like? If there were no waves at all, stability, comfort, or strength would be unimportant, and the proportions would not matter. A shorter hull would then be a more efficient volume, taking less wood and less work. However, we can take clues from the proportions of the Ark itself. The Korean study had assumed waves came from every direction, giving shorter hulls an advantage. But real ocean waves usually have a dominant direction due to the wind, favoring a short, wide hull even more.

Mortise and tenon planking. Ancient shipbuilders usually began with a shell of planks (strakes) and then built internal framing (ribs) to fit inside. This is the complete reverse of the familiar European method where planking was added to the frame. In shell-first construction, the planks must be attached to each other somehow. Some used overlapping (clinker) planks that were dowelled or nailed, others used rope to sew the planks together. The ancient Greeks used a sophisticated system where the planks were interlocked with thousands of precise mortise and tenon joints. The resulting hull was strong enough to ram another ship, yet light enough to be hauled onto a beach by the crew. If this is what the Greeks could do centuries before Christ, what could Noah do centuries after Tubal-Cain invented forged metal tools?

Another type of wave may also have affected the Ark during the Flood—tsunamis. Earthquakes can create tsunamis that devastate coastlines. However, when a tsunami travels in deep water it is imperceptible to a ship. During the Flood, the water would have been very deep—there is enough water in today’s oceans to cover the earth to a depth of about 1.7 miles (2.7 km). The Bible states that the Ark rose “high above the earth” (Genesis 7:17). Launched from high ground by the rising floodwaters, the Ark would have avoided the initial devastation of coastlines and low-lying areas, and remained safe from tsunamis throughout the voyage.

Ramps help to get animals and heavy loads between decks. Running them across the hull avoids cutting through important deck beams, and this location is away from the middle of the hull where bending stresses are highest. (This placement also better utilizes the irregular space at bow and stern.)

After several months at sea, God sent a wind (Genesis 8:1), which could have produced very large waves since these waves can be produced by a strong, steady wind. Open-water testing confirms that any drifting vessel will naturally turn side-on to the waves (broach). With waves approaching the side of the vessel (beam sea), a long vessel like the Ark would be trapped in an uncomfortable situation; in heavy weather it could become dangerous. This could be overcome, however, by the vessel catching the wind (Genesis 8:1) at the bow and catching the water at the stern—aligning itself like a wind vane. These features appear to have inspired a number of ancient ship designs. Once the Ark points into the waves, the long, ship-like proportions create a more comfortable and controlled voyage. Traveling slowly with the wind, it had no need for speed, but the Bible does say the Ark moved about on the surface of the waters (Genesis 7:18).

Stern extension for directional control. To assist in turning the Ark to point with the wind, the stern should resist being pushed sideways. This is the same as a fixed rudder or skeg that provides directional control. There are many ways this could be done, but here we are reflecting the “mysterious” stern extensions seen on the earliest large ships of the Mediterranean.

Compared to a ship-like bow and stern, blunt ends are not as strong, have edges that are vulnerable to damage during launch and beaching, and give a rougher ride. Since the Bible gives proportions like that of a true ship, it makes sense that it should look and act ship-like. The below design is an attempt to flesh out the biblical outline using real-life experiments and archeological evidence of ancient ships.

While Scripture does not point out a wind-catching feature at the bow, the abbreviated account we are given in Genesis makes no mention of drinking water, the number of animals, or the way they got out of the Ark either.

Nothing in this newly depicted Ark contradicts Scripture; in fact, it shows how accurate Scripture is!

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 38: Final Parting of The Coming Wrath)

Discuss this post with us below, or here:

Reference

1. Hong, et al., Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway, TJ 8(1):26–36, April 1994. www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp.

How Is Christ like the Ark?

For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost (Matthew 18:11).

As God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ is like Noah’s Ark. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Just as Noah and his family were saved by the Ark, rescued by God from the floodwaters, so anyone who believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior will be spared from the coming final judgment of mankind, rescued by God from the fire that will destroy the earth after the last days (2 Peter 3:7).

Noah and his family had to go through a doorway into the Ark to be saved, and the Lord shut the door behind them (Genesis 7:16). So we too have to go through a “doorway” to be saved so that we won’t be eternally separated from God. The Son of God, Jesus, stepped into history to pay the penalty for our sin of rebellion. Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (John 10:9).

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 37: New Path of The Coming Wrath)

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Did Noah’s father really die 5 years before the Flood?

In John K. Reed's book The Coming Wrath, Noah's father and grandfather both die shortly before the Flood. Lamech dies 5 years beforehand, and Methuselah less than a year. Is this just fiction, to make for a good story?

In the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, in chapter 5, we are given a detailed list of Adam and all his descendants, all the way up to Noah. We are told how long each lived, and how old they were when their sons were born. Genesis 11 continues with Noah and all of his descendants, up until Terah, the father of Abraham.

If you turn this into graphical form, you will get a graph like this:

Yes, Lamech and Methuselah were real men. According to the true testimony of the Bible, Lamech died 5 years before the Flood, and Methuselah one year beforehand. In his work of historical fiction, John K. Reed is faithful to this.

The Bible does not tell us how they died. Could it have happened the way it is portrayed in The Coming Wrath? You be the judge.

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 23: Death Dream of The Coming Wrath)

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For more info, see Bodie Hodge, Ancient Patriarchs in Genesis, Answers in Genesis, January 20, 2009.

Dragons and Dinosaurs

The Chinese and over 200 other cultures have detailed stories about “dragons.” Why, if such creatures were only mythical beasts?


Hunting Dinosaurs after the Flood-
probably not Science Fiction!

It is generally agreed that “the current extinction crisis is caused primarily by human impacts upon wild populations,”¹ and it is the largest, most dangerous wild creatures that are the first to go when humans move into an area. Thus, dinosaurs who came on board Noah's Ark and survived the Flood likely went extinct gradually the same way that scientists today observe extinctions.

Those who claim that dinosaurs could not have fit on the Ark might recall that the average dinosaur size was on the order of that of a large dog. Even the massive dinosaurs started out from football-size eggs, and juveniles of these groups could have easily been selected to board the life-saving vessel.

What about the descendants of the dinosaurs that stepped off the Ark after their year-long stay? Again, eyewitness evidence confirms that dinosaurs lived for centuries after the Flood.

St. George had to deal with a dragon in England. Alexander the Great’s army encountered a dragon. Marco Polo recorded dragon dealings. Flavius Philostratus provided this sober account in the third century A.D.:

The whole of India is girt with dragons of enormous size; for not only the marshes are full of them, but the mountains as well, and there is not a single ridge without one. Now the marsh kind are sluggish in their habits and are thirty cubits long, and they have no crest standing up on their heads.²

Pliny the Elder also referenced large dragons in India in his Natural History. More recently, historian Bill Cooper described many ancient news accounts of dinosaur encounters from England and Europe, which to this day contain place names that reference the dragons that were once there, like “Knucker’s Hole,” “Dragon-hoard,” and “Wormelow Tump.”³

Similar accounts have been handed down orally within North, Central, and South American Indian groups. The fact that so many different peoples told the same details authenticates their testimony. The book Fossil Legends of the First Americans relays information about anatomy, habitat, and hero tales related to “a water monster that ‘grew so huge’ (p. 29), a Pawnee giant raptor called Hu-huk (p. 189), a Yuki story of giant lizards that ‘were so huge that they shook the earth’ (p. 208), Sioux legends of thunderbirds (p. 239), and many other legends.”⁴

How did mankind handle post-Flood dinosaur encounters? Most likely, the dinosaurs were eliminated by humans trying to protect themselves. This is a common theme in the many dragon legends. 

(for the complete article, see Brian Thomas and Frank Sherwin, Eyewitnesses to Extinction, Testimonies to the Life and Death of Dinosaurs, Acts & Facts, June 2011)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 21: Uphill Battle of The Coming Wrath)

Discuss this post with us below, or here:

References (selected)

1. Woodroffe, R. 2000. Predators and people: using human densities to interpret declines of large carnivores. Animal Conservation. 3 (2): 165-173

2. Flavius Philostratus (c170-c247 A.D.). 1912. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, volume I, book III. F. C. Conybeare, trans. New York: Macmillan Co., 243-247. 

3. Cooper, B. A. 1995. After the Flood. Chichester, UK: New Wine Press, 130-145. Available online at ldolphin.org/cooper.

4. Thomas, B. 2010. Oblivious to the obvious: dragons lived with American Indians. Journal of Creation. 24 (1): 33. This is a book review of Mayor, A. 2005. Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Slavery before the Flood?

In The Coming Wrath, the first book of the Lost Worlds Trilogy, the warlord Delonias captures twelve Nephilim boys in battle to become slaves. He sends the most promising one, Sechiall, to Jared. Is it realistic that slavery as an institution was already established before the Flood of Noah's day?

Let us consider the most ancient written historical records that are available to us.

In ancient Babylon, in the land of Mesopotamia (currently Iraq), "The Code of Hammurabi, from Babylon in the 18th century BC, gives chilling details of the different Rewards and penalties for surgeons operating on free men or slaves."¹

Egyptian slaves

In ancient Egypt, from the very 1st dynasty before the year 2000 BC, "Hem (Hm), generally translated as 'slave' and originally meaning body, was seemingly a person with lessened rights dedicated to a certain task such as the service of a god or the royal administration."^2,3

In ancient India, "the institution of slavery originated in India when the Aryans captured a number of dasas in the battle. According to Mahabharata it is a law of war that the vanquished should become slave of the victor and should serve his captor until ransomed. In course of time certain other categories of slaves also came into existence. For-example children born to a slave automatically became the slaves of the same masters."⁴

In ancient China, "Slaves occupied a large portion of the population in ancient China since 2,100 BC, when Xia Dynasty started."⁵

Thus we see from the earliest records of the great civilizations, slavery was an evil presence in all of them. Is there somewhere a common thread here?

Yes! The Bible supplies us with many valuable clues, that historians ignore at the detriment of their own profession.

There are two events that the Bible records in detail which occurred before all of these ancient civilizations. They are the global Flood of Noah's day, and only four generation later, the Tower of Babel. The book of Genesis tells us about the worldwide flood which Noah, his family of eight, and all land creatures survived through God's provision of the Ark. Noah's, his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives lived on to tell the next generations many true stories about what the world was like before the Flood.

Tower of Babel?

Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, was a mighty ruler who built great cities in the land of Mesopotamia, among them Babylon (also known as Babel), Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in the area of Shinar, and Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen in the area of Assyria (Genesis 10:9-11). By this time, most of the newer generations no longer had faith in the Creator God in the way Noah and his family did. Instead, they followed Nimrod. They "wanted to make a name for themselves." As told in the Bible's book of Genesis chapter 11, at the city of Babel which Nimrod built:

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:3-8)

The Tower of Babel account explains many things. Shortly afterward we see four separate advanced civilizations springing up: in Babylon, Egypt, India, and China. All of them had slavery! Though God confused their languages, he did not take away their memory. It is likely that the Tower of Babel itself was built by slave labor (!), spurred on by the leadership of men such as Nimrod.

Did Nimrod and his followers come up with the idea of slavery themselves? Perhaps. But it is extremely likely that they heard all about slavery and the evils that resulted from it from their forefathers Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and from Noah himself who was still alive at the time. (From clues in Chinese history, after the Tower of Babel incident, Noah with one of the scattered groups to China, and lived out the remainder of his years there.⁶)

Genesis chapter 6 paints a brief picture of the world prior to the Flood. We are told "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." (Genesis 6:5). The fact that slavery was an integral part of the earliest historic civilizations in Babylon, Egypt, India, and China, points to the presence of slavery before the Flood. Slavery was very likely one huge area of the "wickedness of the human race" that brought the Flood judgment upon them.

Yet God extended his grace and mercy to Noah and his family, knowing that their descendants Nimrod and his adversaries would hear about the evil of slavery before the Flood, and like the idea! Knowing that the Tower of Babel would be built by slaves. Knowing that wickedness would once again be widespread upon the earth?! This is the topic of Mystery of Lawlessness, the third book of the Lost Worlds Trilogy.

God extends his grace and mercy to sinful people today, if they turn to him in repentance and accept the give of Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross for our behalf. This makes this all so extremely relevant to people of every day and age, including for us today.

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 7: Protégé of The Coming Wrath)

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written by Marko Malyj

References 

1. History of Slavery, An Evil of Civilization, History World, retrieved 1/16/2013.

2. Slavery in Ancient Egypt, An introduction to the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt, retrieved 1/16/2013.

3. Jimmy Dunn, Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Egypt , http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/slaves.htm, retrieved 1/16/2013.

4. Srouti Modha, Essay on system of slavery in Ancient India, retrieved 1/16/2013.

5. Slavery in Ancient China, Slaveryinjustice blog, retrieved 1/16/2013.

6. Roy L. Hales, Archaeology, The Bible and The Post-Flood Origins of Chinese History, retrieved 1/26/2013.

Were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?

The history of God’s creation (told in Genesis 1 and 2) tells us that all the land-dwelling creatures were made on Day 6 of Creation Week—the same day God made Adam and Eve. Therefore, it is clear that dinosaurs (being land animals) were made with man.

Also, two of every kind (seven of some) of land animal boarded the Ark. Nothing indicates that any of the land animal kinds were already extinct before the Flood. Besides, the description of “behemoth” in chapter 40 of the book of Job (Job lived after the Flood) only fits with something like a sauropod dinosaur. The ancestor of “behemoth” must have been on board the Ark.¹

We also find many dinosaurs that were trapped and fossilized in Flood sediment. Widespread legends of encounters with dragons give another indication that at least some dinosaurs survived the Flood. The only way this could happen is if they were on the Ark.

Models of juvenile dinosaurs at Creation Museum

Juveniles of even the largest land animals do not present a size problem, and, being young, they have their full breeding life ahead of them. Yet most dinosaurs were not very large at all—some were the size of a chicken (although absolutely no relation to birds, as many evolutionists are now saying). Most scientists agree that the average size of a dinosaur is actually the size of a sheep.

For example, God most likely brought Noah two young adult sauropods (e.g., apatosaurs), rather than two full-grown sauropods. The same goes for elephants, giraffes, and other animals that grow to be very large. However, there was adequate room for most fully grown adult animals anyway.

As far as the number of different types of dinosaurs, it should be recognized that, although there are hundreds of names for different varieties (species) of dinosaurs that have been discovered, there are probably only about 50 actual different kinds.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 36: Migration of The Coming Wrath)

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Reference

1. For some remarkable evidence that dinosaurs have lived until relatively recent times, see chapter 12, “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?” Also read The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved, New Leaf Press, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2000. Also visit www. answersingenesis.org/go/dinosaurs.

How Could Noah Round Up So Many Animals?

"Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you, to keep them alive." (Genesis 6:20)

This verse tells us that Noah didn’t have to search or travel to far away places to bring the animals on board. The world map was completely different before the Flood, and on the basis of Genesis 1, there may have been only one continent. The animals simply arrived at the Ark as if called by a “homing instinct” (a behavior implanted in the animals by their Creator) and marched up the ramp, all by themselves.

Though this was probably a supernatural event (one that cannot be explained by our understanding of nature), compare it to the impressive migratory behavior we see in some animals today. We are still far from understanding all the marvelous animal behaviors exhibited in God’s creation: the migration of Canada geese and other birds, the amazing flights of Monarch butterflies, the annual travels of whales and fish, hibernation instincts, earthquake sensitivity, and countless other fascinating capabilities of God’s animal kingdom.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 36: Migration of The Coming Wrath)

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How Could Noah Fit All the Animals on the Ark?

And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female (Genesis 6:19).

In the book Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study¹, creationist researcher John Woodmorappe suggests that, at most, 16,000 animals were all that were needed to preserve the created kinds that God brought into the Ark.

The Ark did not need to carry every kind of animal—nor did God command it. It carried only air-breathing, land-dwelling animals, creeping things, and winged animals such as birds. Aquatic life (fish, whales, etc.) and many amphibious creatures could have survived in sufficient numbers outside the Ark. This cuts down significantly the total number of animals that needed to be on board.

Another factor which greatly reduces the space requirements is the fact that the tremendous variety in species we see today did not exist in the days of Noah. Only the parent “kinds” of these species were required to be on board in order to repopulate the earth.² For example, only two dogs were needed to give rise to all the dog species that exist today.

Woodmorappe's suggestion for smaller animal cages
that would be suitable for animals such as rodents,
modeled by Arnold Mendez³

Creationist estimates for the maximum number of animals that would have been necessary to come on board the Ark have ranged from a few thousand to 35,000, but they may be as few as two thousand if the biblical kind is approximately the same as the modern family classification.

As stated before, Noah wouldn’t have taken the largest animals onto the Ark; it is more likely he took juveniles aboard the Ark to repopulate the earth after the Flood was over. These younger animals also require less space, less food, and have less waste.

Using a short cubit of 18 inches (46 cm) for the Ark to be conservative, Woodmorappe’s conclusion is that “less than half of the cumulative area of the Ark’s three decks need to have been occupied by the animals and their enclosures.”⁴ This meant there was plenty of room for fresh food, water, and even many other people.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 19: Dark Vessel of The Coming Wrath)

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References

1. J. Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, 2003

2. Here’s one example: more than 200 different breeds of dogs exist today, from the miniature poodle to the St. Bernard—all of which have descended from one original dog “kind” (as have the wolf, dingo, etc.). Many other types of animals— cat kind, horse kind, cow kind, etc.—have similarly been naturally and selectively bred to achieve the wonderful variation in species that we have today. God “programmed” this variety into the genetic code of all animal kinds—even humankind! God also made it impossible for the basic “kinds” of animals to breed and reproduce with each other. For example, cats and dogs cannot breed to make a new type of creature. This is by God’s design, and it is one fact that makes evolution impossible.

3. Tim Lovett, An Ark full of Nests, WorldWideFlood.com, June 2007.

4. Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, 16.

How Could Noah Build the Ark?

The Bible does not tell us that Noah and his sons built the Ark by themselves. Noah could have hired skilled laborers or had relatives, such as Methuselah and Lamech, help build the vessel. However, nothing indicates that they could not—or that they did not—build the Ark themselves in the time allotted. The physical strength and mental processes of men in Noah’s day was at least as great (quite likely, even superior) to our own.¹ They certainly would have had efficient means for harvesting and cutting timber, as well as for shaping, transporting, and erecting the massive beams and boards required.

If one or two men today can erect a large house in just 12 weeks, how much more could three or four men do in a few years? Adam’s descendants were making complex musical instruments, forging metal, and building cities—their tools, machines, and techniques were not primitive.

History has shown that technology can be lost. In Egypt, China, and the Americas the earlier dynasties built more impressive buildings or had finer art or better science. Many so-called modern inventions turn out to be re-inventions, like concrete, which was used by the Romans.

Even accounting for the possible loss of technology due to the Flood, early post-Flood civilizations display all the engineering know-how necessary for a project like Noah’s Ark. People sawing and drilling wood in Noah’s day, only a few centuries before the Egyptians were sawing and drilling granite, is very reasonable! The idea that more primitive civilizations are further back in time is an evolutionary concept.

In reality, when God created Adam, he was perfect. Today, the individual human intellect has suffered from 6,000 years of sin and decay. The sudden rise in technology in the last few centuries has nothing to do with increasing intelligence; it is a combination of publishing and sharing ideas, and the spread of key inventions that became tools for investigation and manufacturing. One of the most recent tools is the computer, which compensates a great deal for our natural decline in mental performance and discipline, since it permits us to gather and store information as perhaps never before.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 18: Strange Shipyard of The Coming Wrath)

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Reference

1. For the evidence, see Dr. Donald Chittick, The Puzzle of Ancient Man, Creation Compass, Newberg, Oregon, 1998. This book details evidence of man’s intelligence in early post-Flood civilizations.

Was Noah’s Flood Global?

And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered (Genesis 7:19–20). 

A local flood?

Many Christians today claim that the Flood of Noah’s time was only a local flood. These people generally believe in a local flood because they have accepted the widely believed evolutionary history of the earth, which interprets fossil layers as the history of the sequential appearance of life over millions of years.¹

Scientists once understood the fossils, which are buried in water-carried sediments of mud and sand, to be mostly the result of the great Flood. Those who now accept millions of years of gradual accumulation of fossils have, in their way of thinking, explained away the evidence for the global Flood. Hence, many compromising Christians insist on a local flood.

Secularists deny the possibility of a worldwide Flood at all. If they would think from a biblical perspective, however, they would see the abundant evidence for the global Flood. As someone once quipped, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”

Those who accept the evolutionary timeframe, with its fossil accumulation, also rob the Fall of Adam of its serious consequences. They put the fossils, which testify of disease, suffering, and death, before Adam and Eve sinned and brought death and suffering into the world. In doing this, they also undermine the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ. Such a scenario also robs all meaning from God’s description of His finished creation as “very good.”

If the Flood only affected the area of Mesopotamia, as some claim, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Most importantly, if the Flood were local, people not living in the vicinity of the Flood would not have been affected by it. They would have escaped God’s judgment on sin.

In addition, Jesus believed that the Flood killed every person not on the Ark. What else could Christ mean when He likened the coming world judgment to the judgment of “all” men in the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37–39)?

In 2 Peter 3, the coming judgment by fire is likened to the former judgment by water in Noah’s Flood. A partial judgment in Noah’s day, therefore, would mean a partial judgment to come.
If the Flood were only local, how could the waters rise to 20 feet (6 m) above the mountains (Genesis 7:20)? Water seeks its own level; it could not rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.

Even what is now Mt. Everest was once covered with water and uplifted afterward.² If we even out the ocean basins and flatten out the mountains, there is enough water to cover the entire earth by about 1.7 miles (2.7 km).³ Also important to note is that, with the leveling out of the oceans and mountains, the Ark would not have been riding at the height of the current Mt. Everest, thus no need for such things as oxygen masks either.

There’s more. If the Flood were a local flood, God would have repeatedly broken His promise never to send such a flood again. God put a rainbow in the sky as a covenant between God and man and the animals that He would never repeat such an event. There have been huge local floods in recent times (e.g., in Bangladesh); but never has there been another global Flood that killed all life on the land.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 16: Reaction of The Coming Wrath)

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References

1. For compelling evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, read The Young Earth by Dr. John Morris and Thousands ... not Billions by Dr. Don DeYoung; also see www.answersingenesis.org/go/young.
2. Mount Everest is more than 5 miles (8 km) high. How, then, could the Flood have covered “all the mountains under the whole heaven?” Before the Flood, the mountains were not so high. The mountains today were formed only towards the end of, and after, the Flood by collision of the tectonic plates and the associated up-thrusting. In support of this, the layers that form the uppermost parts of Mt. Everest are themselves composed of fossil-bearing, water-deposited layers. For more on this, see Chapter 14 on catastrophic plate tectonics.
3. A.R. Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe, McClure, Phillips & Co, New York, 1903, 225–226; www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S728-3.htm.

Secrets of Ancient Navigators

Among the many challenges that faced those who ventured onto the open sea was navigation. In the millennia before the 18th-century English clockmaker John Harrison invented a chronometer that enabled sailors to accurately determine their longitude—the last major hurdle in accurate location-finding at sea—how could mariners possibly know where they were, or where they were going, in the vast emptiness? Well, find their way they did, using a host of ingenious methods.

How did mariners of old navigate their way around the open ocean? 
Photo credit: © Felix Möckel/iStockphoto.com

Land and air

 

The first seafarers kept in sight of land. That was the first trick of navigation—follow the coast. To find an old fishing ground or the way through a shoal, one could line up landmarks, such as a near rock against a distant point on land; doing that in two directions at once gave a more or less precise geometric location on the surface of the sea. Sounding using a lead and line also helped. "When you get 11 fathoms and ooze on the lead, you are a day's journey out from Alexandria," wrote Herodotus in the fourth century B.C. The Greeks even learned to navigate from one island to the next in their archipelago, a Greek word meaning "preëminent sea." They may have followed clouds, which form over land, or odors, which can carry far out to sea.

But what if land were nowhere nearby? The Phoenicians looked to the heavens. The sun moving across the commonly cloudless Mediterranean sky gave them their direction and quarter. The quarters we know today as east and west the Phoenicians knew as Asu (sunrise) and Ereb (sunset), labels that live today in the names Asia and Europe. At night, they steered by the stars. At any one time in the year at any one point on the globe, the sun and stars are found above the horizon at certain fixed "heights"—a distance that mariners can measure with as simple an instrument as one's fingers, laid horizontally atop one another and held at arm's length. The philosopher Thales of Miletos, as the Alexandrian poet Kallimachos recorded, taught Ionian sailors to navigate by the Little Bear constellation fully 600 years before the birth of Christ:

Now to Miletos he steered his course
That was the teaching of old Thales
Who in bygone days gauged the stars
Of the Little Bear by which the Phoenicians
Steered across the seas.

 

Watching the direction a seabird traveled with food for its young was one reliable method to find the nearest land. Photo credit: © Ken Canning/iStockphoto.com

 

Bird and wave

 

The Norsemen had to have other navigational means at their disposal, for in summer the stars effectively do not appear for months on end in the high latitudes. One method they relied on was watching the behavior of birds. A sailor wondering which way land lay could do worse than spying an auk flying past. If the beak of this seabird is full, sea dogs know, it's heading towards its rookery; if empty, it's heading out to sea to fill that beak. One of the first Norwegian sailors to hazard the voyage to Iceland was a man known as Raven-Floki for his habit of keeping ravens aboard his vessel. When he thought he was nearing land, Raven-Floki released the ravens, which he had deliberately starved. Often as not, they flew "as the crow flies" directly toward land, which Raven-Floki would reach simply by following their lead.

Heeding the flightpaths of birds was just one of numerous haven-finding methods employed by the Polynesians, whose navigational feats arguably have never been surpassed. The Polynesians traveled over thousands of miles of trackless ocean to people remote islands throughout the southern Pacific. Modern navigators still scratch their heads in amazement at their accomplishment.

Like Eskimos study the snow, the Polynesians watched the waves, whose direction and type relinquished useful navigational secrets. They followed the faint gleam cast on the horizon by tiny islets still out of sight below the rim of the world. Seafarers of the Marshall Islands built elaborate maps out of palm twigs and cowrie shells. These ingenious charts, which exist today only in museums, denoted everything from the position of islands to the prevailing direction of the swell.

Currents may be invisible to the untrained, but not to seasoned mariners. Photo credit: © Clicks/iStockphoto.com

 

Current and wind

 

Sailors relied on natural forces they could readily comprehend. One of these was currents. From time immemorial, journeys have been made or broken by these undersea winds. The western-trending currents of the Indian Ocean, for one, are likely responsible for the Indonesian-based race of Madagascar, an African island more than 3,500 miles from the nearest bit of Indonesia. Similarly, the clockwise currents in the North Atlantic helped doom one of the greatest land scams in history: Erik the Red's colonization scheme for the island he cleverly dubbed "Greenland." Of the 25 ships that sailed west from Norway in the year 990, only 14 arrived.

The father of those North Atlantic currents—the Gulf Stream—was named by none other than Benjamin Franklin. While deputy Postmaster-General of Great Britain in the 18th century, Franklin noticed that his mail ships to the American colonies took longer than whaling ships. Questioning whalers, he learned of a powerful current originating from the Gulf of Mexico—hence his name for it—and sweeping northeast into the North Atlantic (and, incidentally, giving the British Isles a climate positively balmy for such a northern latitude).

Like currents, trade winds have always been important to mariners. Those blowing heads on yellowed old maps were not mere decoration. In the Indian Ocean, for example, Indian traders over the ages have ridden the northeast monsoon to Africa in the cool, dry winter and taken the southwest monsoon back to the subcontinent in the hot, wet summer. To make their annual voyages from Tahiti to Hawaii, a journey of several thousand miles, the Polynesians hitched a ride on the prevailing south-easterly wind, setting a starboard tack and sailing northeast.

 

Sun and star

 

Gnomon

For millennia, as sailors from the Phoenicians to the Polynesians knew, the heavens remained the best way to find one's north-south position. Increasingly sophisticated devices were designed over the centuries to measure the height of the sun and stars over the horizon. The gnomon or sun-shadow disk operated like a sundial, enabling the user to determine his latitude by the length of the sun's shadow cast on a disk floating level in water. The Arabian kamal was a rectangular plate that one moved closer or farther from one's face until the distance between the North star and the horizon exactly corresponded to the plate's upper and lower edges. The distance the plate lay away from the face—measured by a string tied to the center of the plate and held at the other end to the tip of the nose—determined the latitude.

(Reposted from Peter Tyson, Secrets of Ancient Navigators, October 6, 1998, Nova)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 3: Look Back of The Coming Wrath)

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How Could a Flood Destroy Every Living Thing?

"And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died." (Genesis 7:21–22)

Noah’s Flood was much more destructive than any 40-day rainstorm ever could be. Scripture says that the “fountains of the great deep” broke open (Genesis 7:11).

In other words, earthquakes, volcanoes, and geysers of molten lava and scalding water were squeezed out of the earth’s crust in a violent, explosive upheaval. These fountains were not stopped until 150 days into the Flood—so the earth was literally churning underneath the waters for about five months! The duration of the Flood was extensive, and Noah and his family were aboard the Ark for over a year.

Relatively recent local floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes—though clearly devastating to life and land—are tiny in comparison to the worldwide catastrophe that destroyed “the world that then existed” (2 Peter 3:6). All land animals and people not on board the Ark were destroyed in the floodwaters—billions of animals were preserved in the great fossil record we see today.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

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Picture Reference

Walter Brown, The Hydro-Plate Theory and The Great Flood, TASC-Triangle Association for the Science of Creation, November 1, 2010.

How Large Was Noah’s Ark?

"The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits." (Genesis 6:15)

Unlike many whimsical drawings that depict the Ark as some kind of overgrown houseboat (with giraffes sticking out the top), the Ark described in the Bible was a huge vessel. Not until the late 1800s was a ship built that exceeded the capacity of Noah’s Ark.

The dimensions of the Ark are convincing for two reasons: the proportions are like that of a modern cargo ship, and it is about as large as a wooden ship can be built. The cubit gives us a good indication of size.¹ With the cubit’s measurement, we know that the Ark must have been at least 450 feet (137 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide, and 45 feet (14 m) high. In the Western world, wooden sailing ships never got much longer than about 330 feet (100 m), yet the ancient Greeks built vessels at least this size 2,000 years earlier. China built huge wooden ships in the 1400s that may have been as large as the Ark. The biblical Ark is one of the largest wooden ships of all time—a mid-sized cargo ship by today’s standards.

(Reposted from Ken Ham & Tim Lovett, Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?, October 11, 2007, AnswersInGenesis.org)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 11: Master Builder of The Coming Wrath)

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Reference

1. The cubit was defined as the length of the forearm from elbow to fingertip. Ancient cubits vary anywhere from 17.5 inches (45 cm) to 22 inches (56 cm), the longer sizes dominating the major ancient constructions. Despite this, even a conservative 18 inch (46 cm) cubit describes a sizeable vessel.

How Long Is a Cubit?

The cubit is one of the earliest known standards of length, used in ancient Israel and throughout the Near East. It was originally the length of one’s forearm between the tip of the middle finger and the elbow. The word cubit comes from the Latin word for elbow and the Hebrew term refers to the forearm. The term occurs more than one hundred times in the Old and New Testaments to describe structures and distances.

Nations varied somewhat in defining the cubit's exact length, and both short cubits and long or royal cubits were common. Dual cubit values in Egypt were 17.72 and 20.67 inches, as determined from measuring sticks found in tombs. In Babylon, 20.806 inches was a common cubit length (Achtemeier, 1985).

Cubit measuring rods such as these from the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb of Aperia would have been common tools in the quarries and at the pyramid construction site (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

There is a fascinating clue to the length of the cubit from the Old Testament and archaeology. Hezekiah’s famous Siloam water tunnel is referenced in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:3–4. It was built around 700 B.C. to provide water for Jerusalem during a siege by the Assyrians under Sennacherib. This tunnel is hewn from solid rock and is a memorable hike for visitors to the old city of Jerusalem. When I walked the tunnel in 1995 by flashlight, there was a foot depth of moving water along the entire length of one-third mile, or 1,749 feet.

Originally there was a carved inscription near the tunnel outlet into the Pool of Siloam within the city wall. This Siloam Inscription, now in the Archaeology Museum of Istanbul, Turkey, records the tunnel length as 1,200 cubits. Comparison with the actual length yields a cubit measure of about 17.5 inches.

With a 17.5-inch value for the cubit, Noah’s Ark measures an impressive 437.5 feet long, 72.92 feet wide, and 43.75 feet high (300x50x30 cubits; Genesis 6:15). The Ark may well have been the largest building project in history up to that time. Also, the biblical giant Goliath was over six cubits tall (l Samuel 17:4), or nine feet.

(re-posted from Don DeYoung, How Long Is a Cubit?, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 5, September/October 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2005%20low%20res.pdf)

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 11: Master Builder of The Coming Wrath)

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Reference
Achtemeier, P.J. (ed.) 1985. Harper’s Bible Dictionary. Harper & Row, San Francisco.