Helo

Cedar boats were rare, mostly used for ceremonial purposes and for the SERIOUSLY rich folk. Cedar was expensive and not used for common boats.

crazyfingers

What's a Time Lord? Is that some Dr. Who thing or something?

Gullwind

Yep. The Doctor was a Time Lord. His time machine, the Tardis, looked like a British police box (like a phone booth) on the outside, but had rooms upon rooms on the inside.

llanitedave

Well, to give Noachians the benefit of the doubt, pitch is also commonly derived from turpentine, which can come from the sap of pines or spruce. (Balsam pitch is pretty good stuff for polishing optics).

So, all Noah had to do, in addition to driving the gopher trees to extinction, was to cut down a nearby pine forest for the pitch. No problem, right?:Cheeky:

Monad

Maybe, maybe not - most references I've read state cedar wood was often used for larger vessels, though the more common smaller ones were made of papyrus (e.g)- the point was it is suitable for making ships - pretty big ones in fact (and its a big tree - bigger than cypress which is often said to be "Gopher wood" due to similarities in the Hebrew root). If (suspending disbelief for a second) there had been a Noah I really think he would have gone for the best he could lay his hands on and cost would have been irrelevent (faith provides and all that) - this was obviously not a "common" boat.

Helo

The only known cedar boat we have is the Khufu Ship. This was probably a solar barge or a personal transport ship of Khufu himself. Cedar was EXPENSIVE as hell. Today the equivalent would be having a boat covered in solid gold. This is not something that your ordinary joe would have. A very rich man MIGHT have one but it would have cost him. Cedar was prized for decoration and since it was imported from Lebanon, it was very expensive.

I seriously doubt that Noah built the ark out of cedar as it would have cost so much to import enough cedar to build a boat that size that theres no possible way he could have afforded it. The Lebonese also tightly controlled the sale and cutting of cedar so its unlikely that a vinter would have been allowed to waltz in and start whacking down trees at will.

Monad

The only surviving boat yes but that they built many boats from cedar is well documented.

As for Noah - of course it is a myth anyway so this is all hypothetical - there was no such person in real life (though possibly the myth has a basis in a local story of a real person surviving a flood) - to try and think in terms of realities like how much it might have cost is somewhat absurd. I was just pointing out that it was possible to build a large ship using cedar and so it shouldn't have been dismissed. However, if there was a Noah and the world was about to end and all that then I seriously doubt he would have let petty details like money stand in his way.

Helo

That says only that cedar was used in construction of ships and that it was transported.

Well unless he planned to produce the wood out of thin air he would have had to do SOMETHING