Sensei Meela

From the NIV of Genesis 6:
14 So make yourself an ark of cypress [c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. [d] 16 Make a roof for it and finish [e] the ark to within 18 inches [f] of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

Or, in the YLT

15and this [is] that which thou dost with it: three hundred cubits [is] the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height;

16a window dost thou make for the ark, and unto a cubit thou dost restrain it from above; and the opening of the ark thou dost put in its side, -- lower, second, and third [stories] dost thou make it.

Sheshbazzar

Hezekiah's tunnel suggests a different length for the cubit.

Diogenes the Cynic

How so? A cubit was the length from one's elbow to the tip of one's middle finger. This is typically about 18 inches and that's how cubits are translated into English feet.

The Siloam inscription claims that Hezekiah's conduit is "1200 cubits" long. The tunnel is ~1775 feet long which means that it's "cubits" are ~17.75 inches long.

There are some Noahs Arkers who claim exaggerated cubits for Noah (20-21 inches) but even allowing for a Yao Ming-like Noah with convienently rangy forearms, I don't think the dimensions of the ark would be sufficiently enhanced so as to eliminate the logistic problems raised by the OP.

Clivedurdle

My apologies Chili, it was not addressed at you, and I can see now why you might think it was! I was referring to the possibility that Gilgamesh may be an eye witness account - have to be by his family unless written on stone that survived the flood - and imagining a fundi preacher quoting IIDB that there was an eyewitness!

I then took that a step further to ask what else could we make up deliberately to seed consternation!

I like your contributions.

Clive

Clivedurdle

When was cypress used as a building material? When was pitch first used to coat wood? When was the technology to roof a wooden structure first used? What about doors? What is an ark?

I assume most of this is pretty mundane Egyptian, Phoenician or Sumerian technology, but is it? When does it date to? Is there any numerological reason to pick these dimensions?

Are there anomalies here, like a reference to Apollo 11 in a seventeenth century document?

Clivedurdle

When were decks first used on ships? Is there a translation problem here - people familiar say with the technology of the sixteenth century Armada have translated back naval concepts that are not in the earliest versions we have?

Hydarnes

And to think that this is but a small sample of the ignorance that permeates the ranks of casual biblical critics.

Not only do you have the dimensions wrong (probably the most innocent of your blunders), but your argument is inherently rife with academically-handicapped assumptions.

The Biblical "kind" is not tantamount to "species". All of the species now had a common ancestor representing their "kind" from which speciation determined the rest. The actual amount of animals that were to enter the ark were dramatically less numerous than what we have today.

Although I disagree heavily with AIG on a number of stances, they provide a nice little primer on the subject that you might find helpful:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home.../arksize13.asp

Clivedurdle

Ark website

This is a fascinating site, written from a floodist perspective - "ark" may be from the pre Babel language (um, which came first - Noah or Babel?) and may mean life saver - so a direct link to a saviour!

But ignoring that it looks like a reasonably honest attempt, but no discussion of archaeology and when technology was invented, although it does show an egyptian wooden coffin that seems to have most of the required technology.

He also does not mention Cedar - is there a translation problem there as well?

Diogenes the Cynic

How are the dimensions wrong and what is a "kind?" (That is, how do you determine what these presumptive special progenators were that you hypothesize for your definition? What was the "kind" that led to horses and was it the same kind that led to zebras? How do you know and how do you address the fossil evidence for species which preceded both of them? What are either the scriptural or biological bases for your definition?)

The page you link to is quite vague, equivocating, non-specific and in some cases demonstrably wrong.

(And come on...the dinosaurs were babies? You expect us to take a page like that seriously? :rolling: )

Lysimachus

Hydarnes is correct, the dimensions are wrong, completely wrong. The ingorance wreathes in this subject.

When the book of Genesis was written, the Hebrew cubit had not even come into existence. The standard cubit during the time of Moses was the Royal Egyptian 20.6 inch cubit. Moses wrote the book of Genesis, and he was raised in the Egyptian schools. It so happens to be, also, that the boat-shaped object on Doomsday mountain fits these dimensions precisely for the length (515 ft), but not for the width. The width should be 86 feet, but since the deck support timbers collapsed and impaled on a rock, the object splayed out--making the boat a bit wider.

Length of Ark = 300 cubits
1 cubit = 20.6 inches
3 cubits = 61.8 inches
300 cubits = 6180 inches

6180 divided by 12 = 515 feet.
Ark = 515 feet

Very simple. It's a shame that this information just seems to fly by so many.