Ark, Noah’s
Ark, Noah’s
The Hebrew name to designate Noah’s Ark, the one which occurs again in the history of Moses’ childhood, suggests the idea of a box of large proportions, though the author of Wisdom terms it a vessel (Wisdom 14:6). The same conclusion is reached from the dimensions attributed to it by the Bible narrative: three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and thirty in height. The form, very likely foursquare, was certainly not very convenient for navigation, but, as has been proven by the experiments of Peter Jansen and M. Vogt, it made the Ark a very suitable device for shipping heavy cargoes and floating upon the waves without rolling or pitching. The Ark was constructed of gofer wood, or cypress, smeared without and within with pitch, or bitumen, to render it water-tight. The interior contained a certain number of rooms distributed among three stories. The text mentions only one window, and this measuring a cubit in height, but there existed possibly some others to give to the inmates of the Ark air and light. A door had also been set in the side of the Ark; God shut it from the outside when Noah and his family had gone in. Apart from Noah’s family, the Ark was intended to receive and keep animals that were to fill the earth again (Genesis 6:19-20; 7:2-3) and all the food which was necessary for them. After the Flood, the Ark rested upon the mountains of Armenia (Genesis 8:4 — according to Vulgate and Douay, the mountains of Ararat, according to Authorized Version). Tradition is divided as to the exact place where the Ark rested. Josephus (Ant., I, iii, 6), Berosus (Eus., Praep. Ev., IX, ii, P.G., XXI, 697), Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, St. Ephrem, locate it in Kurdistan. Berosus relates that a part of Xisuthrus’s ship still remained there, and that pilgrims used to scrape off the bitumen from the wreck and make charms of it against witchcraft. Jewish and Armenian tradition admitted Mount Ararat as the resting place of the Ark. In the first century B.C. the Armenians affirmed that remnants of it could yet be seen. The first Christians of Apamea, in Phrygia, erected in this place a convent called the monastery of the Ark, where a feast was yearly celebrated to commemorate Noah’s coming out of the Ark after the Flood.
Suffice it to remark that the text of Genesis (viii, 4) mentioning Mount Ararat is somewhat lacking in clearness, and that nothing is said in the Scripture concerning what became of the Ark after the Flood. Many difficulties have been raised, especially in our epoch, against the pages of the Bible in which the history of the Flood and of the Ark is narrated. This is not the place to dwell upon these difficulties, however considerable some may appear. They all converge towards the question whether these pages should be considered as strictly historical throughout, or only in their outward form. The opinion that these chapters are mere legendary tales, Eastern folklore, is held by some non-Catholic scholars; according to others, with whom several Catholics side, they preserve, under the embroidery of poetical parlance, the memory of a fact handed down by a very old tradition. This view, were it supported by good arguments, could be readily accepted by a Catholic; it has, over the age-long opinion that every detail of the narration should be literally interpreted and trusted in by the historian, the advantage of suppressing as meaningless some difficulties once deemed unanswerable.
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CHAS. L. SOUVAY Transcribed by Michael T. Barrett Dedicated to Sean Mazza
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Ark, Noah’s
(See ARK.)
Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
Ark, Noah’s
Ark, Noah’s (Gen 6:14). Vast labor and much ingenuity have been employed by various writers, in the attempt to determine the form of Noah’s ark and the arrangement of its parts. The success has not been equal to the exertion; for, on comparing the few simple facts in the Scripture narrative, everyone feels how slight positive data there are for the minute descriptions and elaborate representations which such writers have given. That form of the ark which repeated pictorial representations have rendered familiara kind of house in a kind of boathas not only no foundation in Scripture, but is contrary to reason. The form thus given to it is fitted for progression and for cutting the waves; whereas the ark of Noah was really destined to float idly upon the waters, without any other motion than that which it received from them. If we examine the passage in Gen 6:14-16, we can only draw from it the conclusion that the ark was not a boat or ship, but a building in the form of a parallelogram, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, and 30 cubits high. So far as the name affords any evidence, it also goes to show that the ark of Noah was not a regularly-built vessel, but merely intended to float at large upon the waters. We may, therefore, probably with justice, regard it as a large, oblong, floating house, with a roof either flat or only slightly inclined. It was constructed with three stories, and had a door in the side. There is no mention of windows in the side, but above, i.e.probably in the flat roof, where Noah was commanded to make them of a cubit in size (Gen 6:16).
The purpose of this ark was, to preserve certain persons and animals from the Deluge with which God intended to overwhelm the land, in punishment for man’s iniquities. The persons were eightNoah and his wife, with his three sons and their wives (Gen 7:7; 2Pe 2:5). The animals were, one pair of every ‘unclean’ animal, and seven pairs of all that were ‘clean.’ By ‘clean,’ we understand fit, and by ‘unclean,’ unfit for food or for sacrifice. Of birds there were seven pairs (Gen 7:2-3). Those who have written professedly and largely on the subject, have been at great pains to provide for all the existing species of animals in the ark of Noah, showing how they might be distributed, fed, and otherwise provided for. But they are very far from having cleared the matter of all its difficulties; which are much greater than they, in their general ignorance of natural history, were aware of. These difficulties, however, chiefly arise from the assumption that the species of all the earth were collected in the ark. The number of such species has been vastly under-rated by these writerspartly from ignorance, and partly from the desire to limit the number for which they imagined they required to provide. They have usually satisfied themselves with a provision for three or four hundred species at most ‘But of the existing mammalia,’ says Dr. J. Pye Smith, ‘considerably more than one thousand species are known; of birds, fully five thousand; of reptiles, very few kinds of which can live in water, two thousand; and the researches of travelers and naturalists are making frequent and most interesting additions to the number of these and all other classes. Of insects (using the word in the popular sense) the number of species is immense; to say one hundred thousand would be moderate: each has its appropriate habitation and food, and these are necessary to its life; and the larger number could not live in water. Also the innumerable millions upon millions of animalcules must be provided for; for they have all their appropriate and diversified places and circumstances of existence.’ Nor do these numbers form the only difficulty; for, as the same writer observes:’All land animals have their geographical regions, to which their constitutional natures are congenial, and many could not live in any other situation. We cannot represent to ourselves the idea of their being brought into one small spot, from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Australia, and the thousands of islands, their preservation and provision, and the final disposal of them, without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any which are recorded in Scripture.’
The difficulty of assembling in one spot, and of providing for in the ark, the various mammalia and birds alone, even without including the otherwise essential provision for reptiles, insects, and fishes, is quite sufficient to suggest some error in the current belief. We are to consider the different kinds of accommodation and food which would be required for animals of such different habits and climates, and the necessary provision for ventilation and for cleansing the stables or dens. And if so much ingenuity has been required in devising arrangements for the comparatively small number of species which the writers on the ark have been willing to admit into it; what provision can be made for the immensely larger number which, under the supposed conditions, would really have required its shelter?
There seems no way of meeting these difficulties but by adopting the suggestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Matthew Poole, Dr. J. Pye Smith, Le Clerc, Rosenmller, and others, namely, that, as the object of the Deluge was to sweep man from the earth, it did not extend beyond that region of the earth which man then inhabited, and that only the animals of that region were preserved in the ark. The bishop expresses his belief that the Flood was universal as to mankind, and that all men, except those preserved in the ark, were destroyed; but he sees no evidence from Scripture that the whole earth was then inhabited; he does not think that it can ever be proved to have been so; and he asks, what reason there can be to extend the Flood beyond the occasion of it? [DELUGE].
Fig. 49Ancient Monument
As Noah was the progenitor of all the nations of the earth, and as the ark was the second cradle of the human race, we might expect to find in all nations traditions and reports more or less distinct respecting him, the ark in which he was saved, and the Deluge in general. Accordingly no nation is known in which such traditions have not been found. Our present concern, however, is only with the ark. And as it appears that an ark, that is, a boat or chest, was carried about with great ceremony in most of the ancient mysteries, and occupied an eminent station in the holy places, it has with much reason been concluded that this was originally intended to represent the ark of Noah, which eventually came to be regarded with superstitious reverence. On this point the historical and mythological testimonies are very clear and conclusive. The tradition of a deluge, by which the race of man was swept from the face of the earth, has been traced among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Druids, Chinese, Hindus, Burmese, Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, the inhabitants of Western Caledonia, and the islanders of the Pacific; and among most of them also the belief has prevailed that certain individuals were preserved in an ark, ship, boat, or raft, to replenish the desolated earth with inhabitants. These traditions, moreover, are corroborated by coins and monuments of stone. Of the latter there are the sculptures of Egypt and of India; and it is not unlikely that those of the monuments called Druidical, which bear the name of kist-vaens, and in which the stones are disposed in the form of a chest or house, were intended as memorials of the ark.
Fig. 50Ancient Coin
Fig. 51Ancient Coin
With regard to the evidence furnished by coins, we shall confine our illustrations to the two famous medals of Apamea. These medals belong, the one to the elder Philip, and other to Pertinax. In the former it is extremely interesting to observe that on the front of the ark is the name of Noah, in Greek characters. The designs on these medals correspond remarkably, although the legends somewhat vary. In both we perceive the ark floating on the water, containing the patriarch and his wife, the dove on wing, the olive-branch, and the raven perched on the ark. These medals also represent Noah and his wife on terra firma, in the attitude of rendering thanks for their safety. The genuineness of these medals has been established beyond all question, and the coincidences which they offer are at least exceedingly curious.
Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature
Ark, Noah’s
Ark, Noah’s. See Noah.