Are we supposed to take the Noah's Ark story literally?

Question

I can't imagine all those animals (and their food) getting on even a big boat

Answer 1

I personally don't see why you couldn't be a Christian and not have to take the entire Bible literally word for word. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there who do think you have to, and would call anyone who doesn't "not a real Christian."

Answer 2

God told Noah, "Everything that is on the earth shall die" by a flood. (Gen. 6:17; 7:4). Noah was also told that the Ark would save his family (four married couples) and a male and female pair of every kind of "unclean" animal and 7 each (or 7 pairs) of every "clean" animal. (Gen. 6:18-19). Noah was also instructed to store food in the Ark for his family and for all the animals. (Gen. 6:21).

A very real possibility was that the animals Noah put in the Ark were not full grown. It would not take as much food for young samples of each species. According to calculations in The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, page 69, the Ark could hold the equivalent of 522 standard two-decked railroad stock cars. To carry the no more than 35,000 estimated individual vertebrate animals, the average size being that of a sheep, would require no more than 146 such railroad cars.

Jesus mentioned it, so did Peter and the writer of the Hebrews....I'm in good company there if I believe it to be true..

Answer 3

The only thing positive which hasn't yet been said -- and is actually the explanation to the, "Yes" answer to your question, is... Who said the animals taken in the Ark were all fully grown? Sure, the Bible doesn't say one way or the other, but along with faith you gotta get past those things which cause doubt. Thus, just think about how easy it would have been to take care of and feed all those animals if they were all something just less than adolescents but not quite babies either. You wouldn't want to take animals which were very old anyway. You'd want them to be able to live a long enough and productive enough life after the Flood to repopulate the earth.

Also, as one example... There wasn't any Artic Wolf, Timber Wolf, Gray Wolf, Red Wolf, Asiatic Wolf, etc. There was only the ancestor of the Wolf. Then, through micro evolution and selective breading, the different kinds you see today resulted. After all, we're talking about over 4,000 years of selective breading which has nothing to do with man. The wolves in the northern parts of a continent don't breed with the wolves in the southern part of that continent -- nor the west with the east, nor across continents. Thus, you get selective breeding because of a limited gene pool. As for inbreeding, that only became a problem after all of the selective breeding and micro evolution set in. There would have been no problems with inbreeding when you're talking about the original stock.

The same applies to the humans on the Ark. They were a small gene pool but Noah was only !!! NINE !!! generations removed from the original perfect stock created by God! Yet, from him, and the genes introduced by the four women, we ended up with all the different races and varieties of peoples we now have on the earth. Noah and those four women contained all the DNA coding information to produce all the current variety we see -- plus some micro evolution. Do you realize the number of permutations possible based on the human genome?

Wikipedia: The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is composed of 24 distinct pairs of chromosomes (22 autosomal + X + Y) with a total of approximately 3 billion DNA base pairs containing an estimated 20,000–25,000 genes.

Answer 4

There are three ways you can look at stories from The Bible:
1. Literally
2. Not so literally
3. Total fiction

If you were to read the story literally, you would believe that there was a flood that lasted for forty days and that the only survivors were Noah and his family.

If you were to take the story not so literally, you would believe that there was probably a great flood around that time, but more than anything, the story is to be a lesson for us.

If you believe the story is fiction, then you don't believe anything about it.

I personally, go with number 2. It is hard to believe that there was a flood that covered the WHOLE Earth for forty days and there was only one family who survived. Instead, I believe it is an exaggerrated story from which I try to learn a lesson.

If someone has proof that there was a flood that covered the whole Earth, let me know, because that would be interesting.

Answer 5

http://www.kingdom-gospel.com/interpret.html

"About the time of the end, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the Prophecies, and insist upon their literal interpretation, in the midst of much clamor and opposition." Sir Isaac Newton 1642-1727


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http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c013.html

The total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts.

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.

Now comes the question, how many land dwelling air breathing animals would have had to be taken aboard the ark to survive the flood?

According to Ernest Mayr, America's leading taxonomist, there are over 1 million species of animals in the world.

However, the vast majority of these are capable of surviving in water and would not need to be brought aboard the ark. Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish or the 1,700 tunicates (marine chordates like sea squirts) found throughout the seas of the world, or the 600 echinoderms including star fish and sea urchins, or the 107,000 mollusks such as mussels, clams and oysters, or the 10,000 coelenterates like corals and sea anemones, jelly fish and hydroids or the 5,000 species of sponges, or the 30,000 protozoans, the microscopic single-celled creatures.

In addition, some of the mammals are aquatic. For example, the whales, seals and porpoises. The amphibians need not all have been included, nor all the reptiles, such as sea turtles, and alligators. Moreover, a large number of the arthropods numbering 838,000 species, such as lobsters, shrimp, crabs and water fleas and barnacles are marine creatures. And the insect species among arthropoda are usually very small. Also, many of the 35,000 species of worms as well as many of the insects could have survived outside the Ark.

Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book,The Genesis Flood state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark. In his well documented book, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, John Woodmorappe suggests that far fewer animals would have been transported upon the ark. By pointing out that the word "specie" is not equivalent to the "created kinds" of the Genesis account, Woodmorappe credibly demonstrates that as few as 2,000 animals may have been required on the ark. To pad this number for error, he continues his study by showing that the ark could easily accommodate 16,000 animals.)

But, let's be generous and add on a reasonable number to include extinct animals. Then add on some more to satisfy even the most skeptical. Let's assume 50,000 animals, far more animals than required, were on board the ark, and these need not have been the largest or even adult specimens.

Remember there are really only a few very large animals, such as the dinosaur or the elephant, and these could be represented by young ones. Assuming the average animal to be about the size of a sheep and using a railroad car for comparison, we note that the average double-deck stock car can accommodate 240 sheep. Thus, three trains hauling 69 cars each would have ample space to carry the 50,000 animals, filling only 37% of the ark. This would leave an additional 361 cars or enough to make 5 trains of 72 cars each to carry all of the food and baggage plus Noah's family of eight people. The Ark had plenty of space.

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Answer 6

The ark would have been the size of nearly 3 football fields long. It was 3 stories high. The animals were babies, so they were small.

There is evidence on every part of the globe of some kind of world-wide catastraphe.

Every local tribe and village has a story how they were rescued from a disaster of water, and when the rest of the world perished, they were the only ones to survive. I'm talking about tribes who know nothing about the Bible. This is true of Native Americans, people in Alaska, South America, Africa, the Bahamas, et cetera. It wasn't just a local story here or there, but pretty much "universal", and each group tells how they, alone, survived. Each group's account, of course, is shrouded in myth and mystery, but they all basically give the same fundamental account of being saved out of a flood.

Oh, yeah - one last comment:
The Bible says that in the last days, people will be deliberately ignorant of the facts of the flood. (paraphrased).

Jesus even talked about the flood in a manner which indicates that he considered it to be a literal account in history.

Answer 7

i'm careful to respond to this question simply by fact on a similar time as I evaluate the comments like Noah are relatively literal, I additionally think of there are better metaphors and meaning in the back of the actual tale as good. for occasion the earth is passing by utilising technique of the equivalent course as guy, earth became to start with secure in water and in darkness, then the dry land regarded, permitting existence to flourish, that's like guy being born. The earth turns into populated and wickedness is rampant, then earth is cleansed by utilising utilising flood, that's like baptism (immersion), then comes a cleansed earth and a sparkling initiating with Noah, finally the earth might properly be baptised with hearth, flow away and become new, as guy is likewise baptised with hearth (holy ghost), dies and is ressurected. So jointly as the literal tale is right there might properly be deeper metaphors.

Answer 8

A boat roughly the size of the titanic to be precise, as it says in the scriptures.

That isn't the biggest problem though. It states the boat was made solely out of wood, which is fine for very small vessels, but a boat anywhere near that big would have cracked and sunk within minutes, and that's without any cargo, the cargo would have weighed much more than the boat itself.

Furthermore, with the amount of water in the atmosphere it would have taken to produce a flood, all land mammals would have drowned within instants just from breathing in the air. This is disregarding that our natural laws would prevent such an amount of water from even entering our atmosphere.

And as to your original question, yes, it would take about 500 titanics to get anywhere close.

Answer 9

How many animals do you think there were?

Do you believe God would have sent Noah fully grown adult animals? Or, would a smart God rather send Noah small baby animals, who don't eat much, and do not take up much space?

The thing is, we know which stories in the bible are literal, and which ones were parables. We can tell by the language used. The sotry of Noah's ark is most assuredly literal. You cannot ignore the language used in the bible, just because you can't believe something.

Answer 10

Consider this, the entire account is true. Also consider that unknown to all, nature (as it has a way of doing) saved many creatures as well. Whether they floated and therefore survived on the what certainly must have been a tremendous amount of debris, or by some other means. Surely God in his infinite wisdom would allow such a scenario. Now the ''story'' rings true with it's intended impact intact, does it not?

Answer 11

Personally, I don't think so. Unless God did some kind of hocus pocus on the carrying capacity of that ark, there doesn't seem to be a way to fit everything on board.

I try to take it in context-- "The entire world" to someone in Biblical times didn't include all of Europe, Africa and Asia. Maybe Noah saved two of every animal found in the area affected by the large flood, which seemed like the whole world to him.

Also, scientists will tell you that 99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct now, and they'll show you the fossils. So perhaps a lot of the fossils they find are from kinds of animals that didn't make it onto the boat.