A serious question about the Noah's Ark story...?

Question

How did the animals breed after the flood?

There were 2 of each species left on earth after the flood... right? Ok, so they had offspring.

Then who did their offspring mate with? Each other? That's incest. Isn't incest morally wrong in the Christian faith?

And what about creatures like bees? Bees don't breed like we do. It takes hundred of male drone bees breeding with a single queen to produce offspring. But in the ark story, only 1 male and 1 female bee would have been allowed on the ark. So how did bees breed after the flood?

Answer 1

If Adam and Eve were the first, then does that mean that their children engaged in incest?

The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman and Cain was their first son. His wife must therefore have been his sister. This seems strange (or worse!) to us but we know that that is where the human race all started, and this incest was under God's control and guidance.

Genesis 5:4 tells us:
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

It reads as though there were several brother/sister couples. It wasn't quite the same following the Flood, as the Bible tells us that there were eight in total who were saved in the ark, or four couples. They consisted of Noah and his wife, and their three sons, who were therefore all related, but the wives of the sons were not. Therefore the sons children would be cousins and marriage between them was not incest.

At the time of God giving the law to Moses, the practise of incest, as well as some other close relationships, was stated to be wrong (refer Deuteronomy 27:22) because by this time there were sufficient people for it to be avoided. At this time too, God brought in the instructions regarding respecting parents and elders etc, so it was all part of establishing the family unit as the basis of society.

The basic principals would be true for the animals!

Answer 2

Incest isn't "morally wrong" in the animal kingdom...moral laws don't apply to animals. Most of the dog breeds we have now are a result of selective inbreeding.

As a child, I had the opportunity to witness first hand how quickly a species can multiply when you start with only two...we had two mice...within a year we had nearly 100 (counting babies)...it was crazy!

God didn't say anything about taking insects onto the ark...he specifically mentioned "animals" and "birds"...insects don't really fall into either category. Of course, I don't have to bring two roaches into my house for them to multiply...they just waltz in on their own. No doubt it was the same for bees. All that wood on the ark not to mention food they loaded for all the animals and birds (some of which ate pollen-producing plants) probably attracted at least one hive of bees not to mention hundreds of flies, cockroaches, spiders and other insects. Insects didn't need God's help to survive a little rain and without the Orkin man, Noah didn't have any way to keep them out of the ark for the 100+ years he spent building it or the time it took to load everything!

Answer 3

Go back a little farther. If Adam and Eve had children, those children would have to have mated with each other in order for the population to multiply.

As far as animals go, I don't believe mating animals from the same genetic parents is construed as incest.

Another part of the Noah story, that is told from another source, is that there were 7 of each clean animal and 2 from each unclean animal. That would have made a little more roam for breeding.

The bee must have made his nest in the ark and brought his Queen along.

See, everyone has a way to tell a story that can only be believed through faith. Scientifically, it can not be explained as told.

Answer 4

While by definition an animal can't commit incest most humans would regard another human who did commit incest as an animal.
Bees are a bit more of a problem because unlike many insects , bees are absolutley necessary for human survival.
I think that Noah's wife probablly just snuck some bee's aboard in her bonnet .

Answer 5

The story reads "two of each, acccording to their kind" So there might have been hundreds of pairs of the same animal but different species.
Secondly, incest is only considered a sin for humans, wild animals inbreed all the time.
Third, and most importantly, this was a HUGE miracle of God. So to try to figure it out with regular human logic, which is imperfect to start with, doesn't work. This is one of those things that you have to have faith about & know that almighty God, who made the earth and all the animals, can do anything.

Answer 6

When there's no other choice, obviously incest must be permissible.

Further, morality only exists when free will exists. As animals do not have free will, it is not a moral dilemma.

As for the bees....even if one follows the evolutionary model, bees started out with 1 male and 1 female....so what's the problem.

Answer 7

Here's the true story of Noah:

The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth's surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity.

But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech in the Euphrates valley. The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.

For thousands of years the highlands about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.

Noah kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah's flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.

Answer 8

Hi, Hottie.

The story of the Ark was Symbolic in nature as is the remainder of the new and old Testimates; the Bibnles were never intended to be taken at face vaule as the teachings are ALL symbolic in nature.

The Ark was Symbolic also; there was no flood; geogrpahically and Archeologcal evidence clearly indicate NO Flood.

Answer 9

It is a story to explain complex situation I will give you two examples to explain this.

First Watch Titan A.E it is an animated movie based on total destruction of planet earth and creation of a new earth.

Second: I write a diary daily and on Sep 3rd I wrote "I flew from Chicago at 6 am to New York's JFK to attend the meeting at 7:30am with a flying time of about 1:20min and I will make the meeting, but I did not realize that the NY time is one hour ahead so I was late for meeting by 1 hour arriving there at actually 8:30 local time ....."

The above makes perfect sense to someone today.

Imagine someone reading this 400 years ago. what would they think? They will think there was a Man named Thomas who could fly to far distances in very short time.

These stories require patience to understand and not blind faith of Science or Religion.

Answer 10

While considering the many impossibilities of the flood, also consider the mixing of fresh and salt water. We know that many fish and sea creatures are simply unable to survive in salt water or require salt water to live. Not all can live in both. Yet if the entire planet was covered with water, it would have all mixed.

And that's just water. What about the animals that require certain climates and temperatures for their survival. And what about animals that eat specific foods that can only be found in certain regions. How about hibernation? The list goes on.