The bible is very specific about the dimetions of the Ark. How could every living species fit?

Question

The Ark was taller than a 3-story building and had a deck area the size of 36 lawn tennis courts. Its length was 300 cubits (450 feet, or 135 meters); its width was 50 cubits (75 feet, or 22.5 meters); it had three stories and its height was 30 cubits (45 feet, or 13.5 meters).

If God sent every living species by twos to get aboard, how did they all fit? Even if you just took one group from each species, no subgroups or subspecies, there isn't nearly enough space on the Ark to fit them all. What about food, and keeping everything clean. I am sure any farmer can tell you that keep all that fecal matter cleaned up would take thousands of people?

This one always bothered me as a kid growing up in church.

Eye - I like some of your answer but think that using cubic feet for measurement is dishonest. "Assuming an 18-inch cubit [45.72 centimeters], Noah's Ark would have had a cubic volume equal to 569 modern railroad stock cars.The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters] --that would be equal to the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars"

The problem with using cubic volume is that there were only 3 floors on the ark. One room in my house is 10X10X12, there is 100 square feet of living space. In that same room there is 1200 cubic feet of volume, sounds like a huge room, but actually it is a small bedroom. Unless noah stacked hibernating animals on one another to use all the cubic feet available, this doesn't work. Even if he did that the poor baby elephants at the bottom of the pile would suffocate.

Still looking for a good answer.

Answer 1

The Old Testamernt was written a few hundreds of years after the event, so details handed down generation after generation are not reliable. What is not known is also whether the flood, engulfed a given limited area, whereas it is automatically assumed that the flood engulfed the entire earth. Clearly if the latter was the case then no vessel could possibly cope with all the species that had to be saved.

Answer 2

I have always thought that since God is God, and since the task was given to Noah to complete...that we were supposed to learn a lesson in Noah's faith and hard work for the Lord. Not only was he willing to build the ark (which considering he was landlocked and had no duelly to haul it with probably made him a bit of an oddball at the local community picnic) but he followed through on the task of gathering every species he could. The bible says there are many things we will not understand.....thats the faith part. We all pray that God will give us direction and guidance. When He does (and for me, He does) the question is am I willing to follow that and to work with the passion and commitment of Noah? God could have built his own boat, or created a whole new species. Maybe building the ark demonstrated Noahs commitment and obedience to the Lord. Maybe his choice of animals demonstrated his genuine pure love.....His actually getting into the ark.....now that was faith.

Answer 3

With God, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE. God didn't put this story in the bible so that man wouldn't question his abilities. He did it so that we can marvel at His greatness. We know that it's true through our faith. God could have went into details and explained everything exactly but those who don't believe in His greatness would still question His ability. If God can reach out into nothing and create something. If God can speak and make the Earth and everything that exists on it, God can sustain mankind and creatures on an ark or a canoe if He choose to do so.

Answer 4

Same here. This question is one of the many reasons I left Church and burned that bridge a long time ago.

What about ants, spiders, bugs? And what about polar bears and penguins? So, so many of the animals he would take on would require special diets, not to mention the work of keeping animals like polar bears and otters apart so the bigger animals didn't eat the little ones, and the snakes didn't bite anyone and kill them.

Then they would need food, for all the animals, not just themselves. The poo and pee, where would that go? just taking care of the feeding and disposing of the poo of 2 elephants and a couple of zebras would have been an all day affair.

I honestly think that if Noah did build this ark of his, he put his family on it, enough animals and vegetables to sustain them, enough feed/grain to sustain the animals until they ate them, (plus a few extra for breeding purposes when they finally got to dry land) and some supplies to build a few houses after the flood waters went down.

Answer 5

An elephant eats 300 to 600 lbs of food per day. And that's just one elephant! There were supposed to be two (or maybe three of the "good' animals). Just the food supply for 2 elephants for 150 days (total time on the ark before it was on dry land) and that's 90,000 lbs of food (I used the 300 lbs per day, lets put those elephants on a diet). 45 tons. Where'd they store that? And keep it fresh for 150 days (no refigeration back then). What did the other animals eat?

It's a funny story, obivously not a true story.

Answer 6

I'm not sure. But it is probable that a lot of species went extinct and then new ones arose from those aboard the ark to fill the ecological niches that used to be filled by other species. I also heard it proposed that not the entire earth was flooded, just a big section of the middle east, after all, where did the water go (that much water doesn't evaporate that fast.)

Doesn't really matter, but I plan on asking God when I die and get to see Him.

Answer 7

There may well be so diverse solutions. Non suitable in case you in basic terms chosen to no longer have self belief. yet think of of this: do you extremely think of that if somebody writing a certainly one of those large e book by using fact the Bible and pretend that is real, could hazardize in giving informations that would instruct the story to be fake or do you think of you outsmarted the undesirable guy and found out what he did no longer. nicely, that is real they did no longer had television to observe all those evolutionist's theories back then yet what have been finished is achieved. the frightening section is that even Noah could in all risk weakened by potential of television brainwash. Er... another ingredient... why none tries to alter those numbers to extra healthful "expert's" opinion?

Answer 8

The Bible isn't a science book. Perhaps the flood only covered Noah's world and therefore effected the animals only in that area. Perhaps it's just a story to teach a truth. The point of it is to find out in that part of the Bible what God wants to teach you about himself.

Answer 9

Actually, there would be room for all the species if you allow God to rebuild them from their original 'kinds'. And cleanup wouldn't be so bad considering that most of the animals would be hibernating for most of that time.

Answer 10

It does not make any sense. Not only would they not fit, but the amount of time necessary to get them all on would be staggering. If he could get them rounded up and on at a rate of 100 animals per minute, 24 hours a day; it would still take almost a year. Not to mention any wooden craft that large would buckle under the stress of its own weight. The story simply does not hold water.
...pun intended.