Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today we are gonna talk about Noah's Ark. We're gonna talk about the boat, we're gonna talk about the construction. We are of course going to talk about ancient Near Eastern parallels. We'll get into some of the Hebrew language and basically just try to get into all of the little details that we can as far as the ark construction and everything like that.
[00:00:43] Today what I'm going to suggest is kind of a follow on to what I was talking about earlier about flood parallels and the importance of the boat in the narrative. Because you might not think it's all that important because, well, it's just a boat, right?
[00:01:00] But what I'm gonna suggest to you is that the ark is presented less like a ship for navigation and more like a divinely designed vessel of preservation. And you might think, well, what's the difference? Why can't we have both things? And you know, fair enough, sure you can, but we don't really have enough information for that, for one thing.
[00:01:27] I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Ark Encounter. It's a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark. And you can go visit and you can see a modern reconstruction of what people think the Ark looked like. But you'll be seeing a lot of details in that Ark Encounter that have no basis in the biblical text. And they have it in the Ark Encounter because, well, this is how we think we would build a boat like this. This is how we would make a boat like this seaworthy.
[00:02:02] And the question I'm asking is, did the Genesis author even care about whether or not the boat was seaworthy? Did the Genesis author even care about anything regarding that at all? Not just that it was seaworthy, like it might survive the waves for five months, but that it would even survive the waves of a day.
[00:02:27] And of course the biblical flood narrative has a very catastrophic flood. So the Ark would have to be very strong. It would have to be able to endure not just waves, but really the worst storm we could possibly imagine as the water is coming up from the ground as well as down from the sky. And I think this is why people like to use the word deluge because it kind of pictures this really intense thing that's going on here. And it kind of might be the case that the Ark that is described in Scripture is not one that we would actually presume would survive something like that.
[00:03:07] Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Noah was a great engineer or he had amazing engineer patterns that we don't have recorded in the text. Who knows? I'm not really saying that that can't be possible.
[00:03:20] The other thing we might say is that God is preserving it, so God is over the boat and protecting it and sheltering it in a way. And that's certainly possible. But again, we have no description of that. We're kind of presuming that that's the case.
[00:03:38] So the Ark is one of those places in the flood narrative where we tend to import an awful lot of information, and maybe that's warranted and maybe it's not really the point of the text at all. Genesis gives us just enough construction detail to feel concrete, but not enough to turn Noah's Ark into some sort of blueprint.
[00:04:04] So what are the details in the text even doing here? Why call it an Ark and not a general word for a ship? Why emphasize the sealing and the compartments of the ship? Why give dimensions but no mast, no sail, no rudder, no keel. Really, what kind of vessel are we supposed to imagine, anyway? That's what we're going to wrestle with today and we have some really interesting details, but we have a lot of details that are also missing.
[00:04:39] And why does this question matter? Well, let's look at International Standard Bible Encyclopedia's description of the flood in Gilgamesh, and this might help us out. I'm gonna caution you here. Usually I really love International Standard Bible encyclopedia's entries, but in this case, for whatever reason, it's got some really big misses in it. And I think it's because it's drawing upon old information. You'll notice that it says that Gilgamesh was the survivor of the flood. When we know it's not Gilgamesh who was the survivor of the global flood, it was Utnapishtim.
[00:05:19] And there are some other little oddities in this that I'll probably kinda flesh out here after I read it. But anyway, here is a quote from International Standard Bible encyclopedia. It says, quote " Gilgamesh, who lived in Shurrupak, a city full of violence on the banks of the Euphrates. He was warned of an approaching flood and exhorted to pull down his house and build a ship and cause seed of life of every sort to go up into it. The ship, he says, was to be exact in its dimensions, equal in its breadth and its length. Its sides were 140 cubits high. The border of its top equal to 140 cubits. I constructed it in six stories, dividing it into seven compartments. Its floors I divided into nine chambers. I chose a mast or rudder pole and supplied what was necessary. Six sars of bitumin I poured over the outside. Three sars of bitumin over the inside. After embarking, the storm broke with fearful violence and the steering of the ship was handed over to Bezur-Bel the shipman, but amidst the roll of thunder and the march of mountain waves, the helm was wrenched from the pilot's hands and the pouring rain and the lightning flashes dismayed all hearts, like a battle charge upon mankind. The water rushed so that the gods even were dismayed at the flood and cowered like dogs, taking refuge in the heaven of Anu. While Ishtar screamed like a woman in travail and repenting of her anger resolved to save a few and to give birth to my people till like the fry of fishes they fill the sea. The ship was therefore turned to the country of Nazir, Armenia." End quote.
[00:07:20] Not all of these details are bad, and part of the reason I quoted it was because it gave the borders of the ship, which is more square than we have in the Ark in the biblical narrative. But again, this is talking about Gilgamesh. It's bringing in the idea of the city full of violence, which again, in the standard Mesopotamian flood tradition that we have here, violence is not the stated reason for the flood like it is in Genesis six.
[00:07:51] And while there's plenty of violent imagery in the Gilgamesh flood narrative, that's mostly the character of the catastrophe and not some sort of moral rationale. The storm and the flood comes like an assault on the land. And the people, the gods are terrified by the destruction that they unleash. And the whole scene is depicted in violent, chaotic terms. But that's different from saying that human violence is why the flood happened.
[00:08:20] But it is broadly right in some of the details and the boat building instructions and things like that. But you'll notice a few other things, like there's actual sailing going on, even though this is described as basically a cube type vessel.
[00:08:36] And this quote that I gave, this is exactly the kind of thing why I say that we need to be careful about claims of global flood narratives. Even when scholars are looking at the closest texts that we have side by side, they are still importing biblical details into the other flood myths that do not belong in them.
[00:09:00] I just cannot state how much this little bit of evidence matters for how carefully we need to take claims of global flood myths. And I'm sorry, but people who aren't careful with the data, and frankly, most people aren't as careful as they could be because they don't even recognize how much influence they're adding to what they're recording or what they're telling.... well, that's just one reason why we need to be very careful with what we're talking about here.
[00:09:29] But you can see the parallels we have. There's also pitch that is given in this boat, inside and out. There are compartments. So there's a lot of similarity to what we're gonna see in the biblical flood.
[00:09:43] Let's get into the actual text here. We're gonna read Genesis six, verses 14 to 16, which says, quote, " Make yourself an Ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the Ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the Ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. Make a roof for the Ark and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the Ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks." End quote.
[00:10:26] Of course, we do have a little bit more information here and there as the flood progresses, like the fact that God is the one who shuts them in. But basically this is what we have. The gopher would, the pitch, the dimensions, the roof, or is it a roof? And the door and the different decks. It's not a whole lot of data to go on, is it?
[00:10:52] But I'm also going to bring up the beginning of Exodus chapter two. This is the story of Moses in his little basket where he is put in and he is found by the Pharaoh's daughter. Let me just go ahead and read these few verses starting in Exodus chapter two, verse one. Quote, "Now, a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bull rushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank." End quote.
[00:11:40] We have Moses set in the river. He's watched over by the sister. He's picked up by Pharaoh's daughter. Then his mother offers to be his nursemaid. That's how Moses ends up in Pharaoh's house.
[00:11:54] The reason I'm reading this is because this basket is the same word as the Ark. These are the only two places we have this word used. So I think that it's pretty clear that we're supposed to connect the two things. And the basket is made of bull rushes and it has bitumin and pitch. There's also a couple of points that are really interesting. Moses' parents are Levites, and this is described very particularly because their names are not even given here. Why does that matter? Well, it might.
[00:12:30] Second of all, there is an element of hiddenness where Moses is being hidden and he is certainly being protected and he is being sent out from one place to another, from one realm to another, we might say. So those are some conceptual ideas that we might consider as we're looking at this.
[00:12:52] But looking at the Genesis Construction narrative, it is really quite interesting the details we have and the ones that we don't have, as I said before. The text begins with a command. Make yourself an Ark. This is the object that Noah is to build. It is built out of gopher wood. And if you're wondering what the heck gopher wood is, we'll join the club. Everyone is wondering what gopher wood is.
[00:13:19] We have rooms made. We have it covered inside and outside with pitch. Then we have very explicit dimensions. We have a roof, or it could be a window or a few different options for that and we'll get into that. We have the door in its side and we have the three decks. So it's vertically structured and it's layered and it's ordered and we're not told where the animals go. We're not told any more specifics about how the inside is arranged. In a lot of ways, this feels more like some sort of building than it does a boat.
[00:13:59] But before I get a little bit more into that boat narrative, I want to mention John Walton and the Lost World of Genesis One. And I'm bringing up Genesis one here because I think the flood narrative has a lot to do with the creation narrative. And I wanna bring up the idea of functional creation to you, because if Genesis one is about functional creation and it is less about the materials, less about the time, and so on and so forth, but more about structuring an environment for a purpose, then if we come over to the narrative of the Ark construction and we kind of presume that those ideas are still in our heads, then the order and the functions of the different elements in the text here are going to matter a lot.
[00:14:50] Because it seems like the author of Genesis is not just interested in what exists materially or in an engineering fashion, but really in how a space is ordered for life, purpose and preservation. And so in that sense, the Ark can be discussed as a kind of functionally ordered space within a world that is being de-created in the flood.
[00:15:16] If creation is about the world, becoming an ordered realm, fit for life and human vocation, then the Ark is also something that becomes an ordered realm that is fit for life., It has boundaries, it has compartments, levels, particular access, and protective coating.
[00:15:35] And so as we look at it from that kind of an angle, all of those elements are going to tell us something, or at least they would be communicating something in particular to the ancient person, even if sometimes we're gonna miss a little bit of that. I suspect that the dimensions of the Ark originally would've meant something a lot more to them than it does to us, and we've just lost some of that information.
[00:16:02] The benefit of looking at function over just material is going to give us that theological perspective. It's going to shine a light on what kind of thing the Ark is for: preserving life, containing creatures, carrying order through chaos, and sustaining a future world.
[00:16:24] Walton ties Genesis one to cosmic order, sacred space, and the world functioning as God's ordered domain in a way that allows for human flourishing. The Ark can be presented as a temporary pocket of ordered life amid watery anti order. Now, that is going to get us into the cosmic temple and the Ark as temple. But we need to be really careful in that because again, the way I like to talk about these things in the early chapters of Genesis is more in the way of proto things.
[00:17:02] Like is Adam a priest? Well, he is not exactly a priest like Aaron is. He's a proto priest. Is Eden a temple? Well, it's more like a proto temple. And so I think the Ark is functioning as a proto tabernacle, which means that it does not have to have all of the elements of the tabernacle, but it's bringing up some of those things that are really crucial to what we should see in the tabernacle. The tabernacle was a wandering sacred space. And the Ark also is going to be something that moves.
[00:17:41] We have all kinds of things about boundaries and roles in the Ark. And so it really seems like a structured environment where life is kept in its proper preserved order, and that is functionally what a tabernacle or temple was also meant to do. Now, it would be meant to do other things. The Ark is not everything. That is why it would be a proto sacred space.
[00:18:07] And before we get into the Ark details, let me just give you a handful of pieces of evidence that demonstrate this. Number one, it is a divinely revealed architecture. The Ark is not Noah's idea. God gives him design instructions, and that matters because later sacred spaces are also built according to divine instruction. The pattern is important. God specifies the structure in some sort of detail because the structure has a divinely intended function.
[00:18:41] Number two, it is a bounded space separated from chaos and death. There is an inside and outside contrast. And biblical sacred space is often about ordered, protected space that is distinguished from things that are dangerous, things that are impure, or things that involve death.
[00:19:03] Number three, the covering or the sealing of the Ark really strengthens the boundary. The pitch inside and outside and the word that is used to cover is connected to the word to make atonement. It's not the same form of the word, but it is connected. So we do not have the picture of making atonement here. But we have some sort of conceptual reality that is probably being pulled to mind by the ancient person.
[00:19:35] Number four, we have ordered interior space with rooms, levels, and structure. We do not have like an inner sanctum here in the Ark, but again, we do not have to have all of the details in a proto sacred space.
[00:19:53] Number five, it has controlled access. The door is something that really matters, and again, it is connected to God's action.
[00:20:03] Number six, it preserves life, not just people. If temple and tabernacle logic is tied to ordered creation and God's intention for life in general, then the Ark fits that pattern as a place where life is preserved through judgment.
[00:20:21] Number seven, it has a connection to the Genesis one functional order of creation. And that connects to temple and sacred space.
[00:20:33] Number eight, the Ark rests on a mountain after the waters recede. And so this is an image that contributes to the cluster of sacred space because mountains in biblical literature often become important places of divine encounter or sacred significance, and definitely places of worship.
[00:20:55] Number nine, Noah's post flood altar strengthens that sacred space trajectory. Again, we're thinking in terms of proto temple.
[00:21:06] So again, all of these details are helping us to see that the Ark is not just about building a boat, but there is a theological cloud of meaning surrounding it.
[00:21:18] Okay, so let's get into some of these details. First of all, we have the word Ark itself, the Hebrew word tabah. With Moses's tabba, the point is not sailing, but concealed preservation in dangerous waters. And this hiddenness is really interesting factor in the story of Moses.
[00:21:41] We have ideas here like hidden away, being sheltered, being enclosed, being protected from judgment or death. So if Noah's Ark and Moses' basket share this language, then hiding is at least a fair conceptual overtone of the preservation- vessel idea. And if you take the idea of the pitch being something that is covering or concealing or something like that, we kind of have that idea as well.
[00:22:12] Now people like to go on to say that that's all about covering our sins so that God doesn't see them. And well, we've talked about that at length and how making atonement is more about purgation and cleaning rather than just covering it up. But we do have this idea of preservation. Preservation through the flood. Preservation with Moses. Preservation within sacred space. Preservation within what happens during the Passover in Egypt. So lots of conceptual ideas here.
[00:22:46] It does not mean that the Ark is a hiding place. I mean, what are they hiding from exactly. They're not hiding from other gods or something like that. So we don't want to overreach or say something we shouldn't say here too strongly. But there is a sense of being concealed, enclosed, preserved, protected, and sheltered. Kind of like a refuge. And it does work pretty well with the Ark narrative, with the rooms, the pitch, the door, the bounded interior versus the rest of the world that's going to be flooded.
[00:23:24] But again, what we have here in the description and the use of this word that we have translated as Ark, is it's really not the normal everyday word we would expect if the text wanted to foreground the classic ship image.
[00:23:40] So then we move on to the type of wood that the Ark is made of. Almost always, you will see this translated as gopher wood. When I was younger reading this, I thought, well, that's just a type of wood that they had. But this Hebrew term is only here. This is the only place it appears. So we're not really sure what kind of wood this is or what it's referring to exactly, but of course we have ideas. We always have ideas.
[00:24:10] Is it some sort of type of wood that we just don't have anymore because it's gone extinct? Well, it's possible.
[00:24:17] The most common specific proposal in the modern scholarly discussion is that this wood is cyprus wood, which is a resinous timber. It's rot resistant. It was definitely used in antiquity for ships as well as coffins. And it fits the idea of a durable resinous timber for major construction and ship building. But it is really weird if it's cyprus wood that they wouldn't just use the word cyprus wood. So that's the thing that gives me pause.
[00:24:50] Let's go back to International Standard Bible Encyclopedia to a slightly better article here, and let me read about the gopher wood here. It says, quote, "The wood from which Noah's Ark was made, gopher is a word unknown elsewhere in Hebrew or allied languages. Lagarde considered that it was connected with gofirith, meaning brimstone or pitch, while others connected with kofer, also meaning pitch. Hence, along both lines, we reach the probability of some resinous wood, and pine, cedar, and cyprus have all had their supporters. A more probable explanation is that which connects gopher with the modern Arabic word kufa, a name given to the boats made of interwoven willow branches and palm leaves with a coating of bitumen outside used today on rivers and canals of Mesopotamia. In the Gilgamesh story of the flood, it is specially mentioned that Noah daubed his Ark both inside and out with the kind of bitumen." End quote.
[00:26:02] And of course in Gilgamesh, it's not Noah, it's Utnapishtim. I dunno why that's really hard for them to get right here. But at any rate, I like the idea that this is referring to reeds. Now I understand why a lot of people won't like that because it doesn't really sound like really sturdy material that you're going to build a massive boat out of, and that you're gonna save every type of animal on Earth with. That just doesn't seem all that practical, right?
[00:26:33] Well, first of all, I'm just not sure it has to be practical. And second of all, I think connecting it to things that people would commonly use makes a little bit more sense. And it makes a whole lot of sense with the need of pitch and all of that kind of thing as well. In any case, the uncertainty of the term really doesn't make the detail empty or un important. But clearly we are missing a little bit of that ancient context that is really hard for us to wrap our hands around.
[00:27:06] I think the fact that the reed connection makes more sense simply because of the ancient New Eastern parallels. It's something people would be able to picture. It is a material structure that they would be able to create if they were people who used the river at all. So this kind of a boat would not be strange to them. It would not be weird that Noah would be able to build a boat, even though it's really big.
[00:27:35] Okay, so our next little issue here with the Ark is the rooms or the cells or the nests within the boat. We have the word qinnim here in Hebrew, and this is a key construction detail of the Ark. It's the interior organization of it. Now, why did I say nests? Well, it's because the noun is related to the Hebrew root commonly associated with a nest. That is why many interpreters will note the literal flavor of nests, even if most translations will still render the word more smoothly as rooms or cells or compartments or something like that.
[00:28:18] So here the main scholarly issue isn't whether the Ark had internal spaces because it clearly did, but how much interpretive weight we're gonna place on the root sense of the word nest. Now, is it possible that the word nest is something that is going to be called to mind to the ancient person when they're reading this?
[00:28:39] It is certainly possible, but at the same time, it's very easy for us to make etymological fallacies. And by that I just mean that just because a word is connected to something else doesn't mean that that word is related. If that was the case, then the word butterfly is a very strange word, indeed.
[00:29:03] The safest interpretation is really the word rooms or compartments. But again, there could be kind of an underlying idea of protection and life. We still might have some of that flavor that is in this word, but it's hard to know how an ancient person would be thinking of it, because, again, I'm not gonna go putting a butterfly on my toast.
[00:29:29] But one of the important things to note is, again, we have the connection to other ancient Near Eastern texts where the boats are also constructed in ways that have rooms. And this also goes along with the trajectory of functional creation and a proto sacred space.
[00:29:48] We aren't told, again, functions of these rooms or whether or not if you go up the levels, whether it's more sacred or anything like that. We have none of that detail. And we also have nothing that says how the people or the animals inside the compartments are going to survive five months without light, without windows in each of these rooms, right? We'll get to the window bit here in a little bit. But clearly each of these rooms is not gonna be lit from outside.
[00:30:19] It's these kinds of details where if you want to go a really literal description here, we're gonna struggle with it. In fact, when I was growing up in the LDS church, I was frequently told about this idea of glowing rocks. Because if you're familiar with the LDS church, they have the story of the Book of Mormon. And the Book of Mormon has the story about a group of people who travel from the promised land across the ocean over to the Americas.
[00:30:52] So of course, they needed a really big boat and they needed things that are very similar to what we have in Noah's Ark. And the way that they lit the way across the ocean was through these magical, glowing stones. So that was the picture I had growing up, that inside Noah's Ark, they had some magically glowing stones that provided light in all of the rooms.
[00:31:19] Alright, let's talk about this pitch for a moment. We've talked about that before in my Genesis and atonement episode, so if you haven't listened to that one, you can go check that out. But Genesis six is using the verb for what Noah has to do to the Ark and the noun is fer for the substance that is used. So Noah's covering or coating the inside and the outside with pitch. So it's very practical. It's not making atonement, but it may be alluding to the package of ideas here.
[00:31:56] Now, of course, there is a practical side to this. We have waterproofing and caulking that's going on to, Hey, look, this is our detail that's making the Ark seaworthy. That's the mainstream reading of what's going on here. The coating is what protects the Ark from the waters outside.
[00:32:16] But it's interesting that it's on both the outside and the inside, isn't it? Well, we usually think that's because of an engineering detail. It has to be coated on both sides to work. Well, maybe, but maybe there's something else that's going on in the inside and outside distinction there. Like it's pointing out the fact that it is a boundary.
[00:32:39] With the lexical resonance with the atonement language here, it is something that scholars talk about a lot, and depending on their view of atonement that will color that discussion. But if nothing else, I would say that the theological foreshadowing is really strong in this. Especially because this is the first place we get this word, or at least a form of it.
[00:33:06] Of course, a lot of people will talk about how the flood foreshadows many things, and indeed, surely it does. But again, I find the concept of proto language really helpful here because this is not making atonement, but this could be part of what the picture of atonement is meant to be part of. This idea of protection and boundary marking.
[00:33:33] And Tim Mackie from the Bible Project points out that this is a lot of repetition here. You will pitch it inside and out with pitch. And when you have repetition in Hebrew, they're doing that for a particular purpose. They're doing it probably because of the acoustic sounds that you're hearing when you hear the text read, but also because of conceptual markers. And many people will push it pretty far into that typology and atonement symbolism. And to some degree I think that's fair, but it's also really easy to go too far and over claim with that.
[00:34:14] I think this makes the Ark very connected to the tabernacle. The Ark is the first human created sacred space, if indeed it is a sacred space or a proto sacred space. We talked last week about the different ancient Near Eastern stories and how their boats really did not seem to function as sacred space at all. Zisudra had to make a hole in the boat in order for the divine light to enter. So the boat was actually keeping out the divine.
[00:34:49] But with the Ark, it is God who seals them in and he closes the door. And I don't think that's a small detail. And when God closes the door, we don't have any more description of, well now we have to seal up all the cracks with more pitch.
[00:35:06] But, okay. Well let's go on to our next point here, which is the dimensions of the Ark. Genesis six verse 15 gives the Ark's dimensions as 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. And so here we can picture the length and the width and the height certainly, but we can also picture the ratios. And the ratio proportions are one reason why modern discussions focus on stability and capacity of the boat.
[00:35:39] So you have the boat 50 cubits wide, and then it is six times that length. And then between the length and the height, the height is 10 times the length. And some people will focus on those things and suggest that this makes the boat seaworthy. And I think, well, that might be so, but you need a whole lot of other things to make something seaworthy than just the right ratios.
[00:36:08] Now, if you use the common 18 inch cubit, the Ark comes out to be about 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet tall. If we're using the longer royal cubit, which is around 20 and a half inches, then the dimensions are about 510 feet by 85 feet by 51 feet tall.
[00:36:36] So this is certainly a very large Ark. Whether or not these numbers have symbolic meaning, it is hard for us to say. There's not a whole lot there to hang our hats on as far as determining the ancient meaning of these numbers. But if we want to compare it to things in the modern day, well, the Ark is going to be longer than a full football field long if you're in America, American football field, but it's less than half as wide. And it's really described as a rectangular structure. We don't have any description of how we could have any curves to it or any angles or anything like that. Again, that doesn't mean that somehow Noah didn't know to make it in curved ways, but we just don't have any of that information.
[00:37:28] If we compare the Ark to the Titanic, then the Titanic was almost twice as long as the Ark, because the Ark is about 450 feet, and the Titanic was 882 feet, and the Titanic was only a little bit wider. The Ark was 75 feet and the Titanic is 92 feet, and the Titanic was much taller as well. It had multiple decks and a substantial super structure above the hull as well. So the Ark was 45 feet, but the Titanic is 104 feet or so depending on how we're measuring that exact height.
[00:38:09] So again, the Ark would be shorter, narrower, and lower than the Titanic. That's if we're using the regular qubit. But I think that still helps us picture the size of the boat. Not that any of us have seen the Titanic in person, But it's a common thing that we've seen scales and things of the Titanic. So if you go see something like that, or if you go build the Lego Titanic, then that will give you a really good idea of the Ark.
[00:38:40] So should we make a whole lot as to the seaworthiness of the ratios? Well, it might be helpful. It might not. Even though the Ark is huge, it's still really hard for a lot of people to picture that many animals on it, especially with all of the work that has to go into taking care of all of those animals and having them in the dark and things like that. You know, it's all these practical questions and people try to get around those practical questions with answers that have nothing to do with what we have in the Bible.
[00:39:15] And so then we have ideas like, well, Noah didn't really need to take every animal, he just needed to take every kind, and then every kind could develop into other animals, which is a funny argument to me because people who make those kinds of arguments usually are trying to avoid evolutionary arguments. But you basically need evolution in order to do something like that. But that's beside the point for today's episode.
[00:39:43] Let's move on to this really interesting aspect of the roof, or the opening or the window. This is one of the hardest details in the whole Ark description. The shohar. Commentators are divided over what this means. It's a word that doesn't show up elsewhere. So we have a number of options here. Commentators and scholars are not sure whether it means window, whether it means roof, whether it means skylight or opening. Or in older and rabbinic interpretation, whether it means a light- giving object. You see, the LDS tradition did not make up the idea of the glowing stones. They actually got that from older interpretation. It's not one that you'll see very frequently these days, but you will see it occasionally.
[00:40:37] The thing we can say with high confidence is that it specifies some kind of upper opening or light access feature, but what that's like is unknown. Some believe that there was no roof at all, which really makes no sense to us when we're thinking about a flood narrative. Right. It's raining a whole bunch. Why would they not have a roof? Well, maybe because they needed to be able to see, or maybe because they weren't thinking in terms of that much practicality.
[00:41:10] The most common reading is that it is a window or a skylight or an opening, and usually we're picturing something that can be moved.
[00:41:20] This is what Umberto Cassuto says. And he gives two reasons for that. First of all, we have Genesis eight verse six, where Noah opens the window of the Ark, and so we could read that back into chapter six. The second reason would be that a command to make a covering would be a bit superfluous, since an Ark must already have a covering. And a window by contrast would need special mention.
[00:41:49] Now I get that, but also that is thinking in terms of modern, practical logic. Is that necessarily what we have going on in the ancient world? I think it's open. I think it's open to suggestion there. The Vulgate also renders it as a window, and so Cassuto says that most medieval interpreters and many modern scholars are gonna follow that trajectory.
[00:42:17] Now, a major modern option is that this is a roof or a covering. Now, I think that there is a lot to be said for this because of the connection to the tabernacle that I think that people would have in their mind. The tabernacle, if you will recall, that we really haven't talked about, but maybe you already know this, the tabernacle also had a roof or a covering that was made from dolphin skins. Sea creatures.
[00:42:48] So it would be really easy to see this connection here. So the Ark is open, it's made from reeds, but they made a covering to protect themselves from the rain. And that covering could be removed when it's not raining. Like from a practical standpoint, this actually does make a lot of sense.
[00:43:09] Our other option of the light or illumination feature, well, this comes from Targum Onkelos, which translates with a word meaning light. And there's other rabbinic interpretations that follow on from that and say that this is a precious stone that was glowing inside the Ark.
[00:43:29] For myself, I think that the idea of the covering makes way more sense, but the option of the window is certainly there.
[00:43:38] But the second difficulty is that it says to finish it to a cubit from above. And that's where we really go, huh, what does that mean?
[00:43:48] And Cassuto argues strongly that the suffix refers to the Ark and not to the window. So on his reading, the verse is giving two distinct instructions. First of all, make the shohar. Second of all, finish the Ark at the top in a particular way. And then he explains the top as a sloping roof on both sides, leaving a one cubit wide horizontal strip along the top. And he cites the medieval scholar Rashi in support of that reading as well. So he has a bit of historical backup. So there's a roof that has kind of a ledge. And again, that's going to make a lot of sense to us when we're thinking about the rain flowing off the boat.
[00:44:33] It's a little bit harder to see how just a covering is going to protect them in such violent waters. But again, we tend to think very literally here and we have to wonder if the ancient person was thinking in that same way.
[00:44:49] Oh, another thing that Cassuto mentions is that in the Gilgamesh flood account, there is a mention of the window of the ship. So that does support the plausibility of the window reading and is not alien to the ancient Near Eastern flood story tradition. But regardless, it is pretty ambiguous. And what I think is going to be the case is that it probably doesn't look like what you'll find at the Ark encounter. Call me crazy.
[00:45:19] Now let's move to the door in the side of the Ark. The word side here is a word that will be used in tabernacle construction. It's a fairly straightforward idea. But I think the idea that God shut them in means that there is controlled access to this space and it is a bounded environment with a definite entry point.
[00:45:42] Some interpreters will try and say that the door is a particular size so that certain kinds of animals can get in and all of that. But obviously we don't have that kind of information. It just says it's a door and it's in the side.
[00:45:57] We have a few other things to get to. So let's move on to the decks of the boat. We have a vertical order, some sort of structure. It's really suggestive that there are three levels and you know, when we're thinking of sacred space and we're thinking of concentric rings of sacred space, we're often thinking in terms of three tiers of that.
[00:46:22] So that's very suggestive of a sacred space. Again, we can't say too much strongly about this because we have no description that the three levels are distinctive in any particular holy way. But it follows the logic of tabernacles and temples. Pagan temples would also have that gradated holiness as well.
[00:46:45] A lot of people will try and say that the levels are so that you can separate out the predators and the prey or that even the different levels of the Ark are different sizes to fit different animals. These are the kind of details that people will try and add in to fit in their literal view of what the Ark looked like.
[00:47:05] But what's really interesting to me is that it will give us the details of the decks, but it doesn't give us any boat type things here. We don't have a mast, we don't have a rudder, we don't have a sail, we don't have a keel. We have no navigation features or shaping of the ship at all. When we compare it to other ancient Near Eastern flood stories, they also have boat specifications, but they are a little bit different even as they are similar.
[00:47:36] And the reason I want to point this out is because Genesis omits normal navigation features, but it foregrounds containment and sealing and some sort of internal ordering and boundaries here. Again, we don't wanna read too much in when we don't have anything directly stated. But we see Scripture do this all the time where it shows things rather than strictly tells things. We don't have to have Scripture explain every little detail when it can show us in a narrative fashion.
[00:48:13] Let's look a little bit broadly at the ancient Near Eastern Construction parallels and why it's not weird that Genesis gives some details here and that Genesis is not even giving a whole lot of detail because that also is very common in stories. The detail that is chosen can often seem really strange.
[00:48:34] But again, part of what we're gonna be doing is looking at shared flood vessel information and whether or not that tells a different narrative or has a different theological emphasis. I've already stated outright that it does, and so I hope that you're kinda following along as to why that is now.
[00:48:56] Frequently there is a divine command or instruction to build the boat. There are measurements, there are materials, there is a coating and a There is internal arrangement. But in some of the stories we do have ship type details. With either a mast or a rudder. We have boat captains and things like that. We don't have any of that in the Genesis narrative, which is really quite instructive if we're thinking about the point of what we're reading.
[00:49:32] Irving Finkel is one of the most useful modern guides here because he highlights that the cuneiform flood tradition does preserve actual boat building instructions, and he gives a lot of detail about that, and he describes how it's got explicit building directions, the dimensions, and all of these points that we've already mentioned. So if you wanna get into a lot of those details, I would point you over to Irving Finkel for some of it.
[00:50:00] I am going to repeat what I said about Atrahasis and the Gilgamesh flood account last time, where the flood hero receives divine instructions for constructing the survival vessel. But a lot of times it's like the hero is going to build the boat and hope for the best, and they have to kinda be hidden and the gods are arguing and they're frightened and they're in a panic, and it's just not a good situation all around.
[00:50:30] But in Genesis, we have the divine warning. We have divine care, we have instruction. But we have almost no points about how Noah was supposed to survive the flood on his own. We could presume that God is just going to save him through the flood and use this as kinda a capsule, and God will guide the boat himself. And the boat doesn't really have to be all that seaworthy, as long as it can manage to go into the water and survive all the waves.
[00:51:03] But if the boat is in fact a micro, proto sacred space, that makes things very different. And that sets up a lot of trajectory for the biblical narrative.
[00:51:17] And I guess my general point here is that we can go through all of these different details, but they don't tell us a whole lot in and of themselves if what we're trying to get at is what the Ark looked like in a literal way. We just don't have enough information.
[00:51:37] And we have interpretive moves about the window and the roof and the door, but we have exactly zero information on the shape of it, aside from the ratio. For all we know, it was a floating rectangle. And floating rectangles don't tend to do all that well in the ocean.
[00:51:58] My suggestion here is that once all of the construction details are taken together, then the Ark emerges as more than a boat. It is a designed space of preserved life in the midst of de creation. That does not mean that the other flood narratives can't have some of that. It doesn't mean that the Ark can't be seaworthy. But if we're intending to look at the theological meaning, rather than just seeing this as a scientific account... because this is what has always perplexed me. People want to use the flood narrative in a scientific way to prove and defend the history of Scripture.
[00:52:42] And I understand that impulse, and I'm not arguing against it. I'm not saying you can't do that. I am not saying that at all. But what I am saying is that even if you get people to believe that there is an ancient cataclysm, that's still not gonna get people to faith in God. I mean, you can go look at Graham Hancock and many other sensationalist type authors.
[00:53:11] There's a lot of people who believe in a global cataclysm, that does not mean that they're gonna believe the Bible. It doesn't mean that they're gonna have faith in God. And a scientific defense of this... I'm not saying it's not gonna help somebody out there, because I know it does. I know people come to faith when they see science and faith merging and things like that. and that's not a problem. But there's a lot of people who don't. And so we tend to treat these things as kind of a gotcha moment as, well, if we don't defend this in a historical way, then we're gonna lose people. We're not gonna be able to bring people to the faith.
[00:53:55] But where is the story of God in that? Where is the relationship of God? This is where the theological message of the text matters deeply. It matters so much that the point here is that God is preserving life. In my opinion, it matters a whole lot that God is judging the world and that judgment comes in two forms. We have retribution against people who are just so wicked that they're gonna reject God and that they're gonna live lives of violence. And that no matter what not gonna bring them around to him.
[00:54:35] But the judgment also contains God's mercy and provision and vision for the future. And that doesn't have to make the flood a really fun story for kids, even though kids tend to love the flood story. I did as a child. I know a lot of kids do because it's got the animals and the boat and all of that. But it's a dark story.
[00:54:59] And when you're an adult and you're wrestling with this dark story and the idea that God could just wipe out all of creation like this... Even though we might have some answers to why that is, I think it's a mistake to try and wash away all of those problems because this is a hard text and it is difficult. But noticing the pattern of the boat and how it parallels creation and how it parallels the tabernacle, how it parallels sacred space in general, and that this is the story. That we survive hardship and struggles within the provision of God and his sacred presence. I think that is one of the big takeaways here.
[00:55:47] The point here is not scientific detail. Scientific detail might be there. Not saying it can't be, but that is not the thing that's going to change us from inside and help us have a relationship with God.
[00:56:04] So that's why I think the sacred space imagery and conceptions here matter a lot. And I think that most of the few details we have are directly pointing to that.
[00:56:16] Now, of course, we have a lot of objections to things here. A lot of people will say that it is impossible to build a boat like this. It is impossible for a boat like this to be seaworthy. And so we get a lot of apologetics organizations who try to come up with ideas that try to counter that. Some people will argue it's plausible. Some people will argue it's not, and that debate is gonna continue on for who knows how long.
[00:56:46] But again, the text preservation by divine instruction, not by science.
[00:56:55] And of course we have the question, is it historical? Is it symbolic or only metaphorical?
[00:57:02] well, if you've listened to my podcast for very long at all, you know, that I'm gonna say that this is not a question we have to answer as one or the other. I have always loved what Dr. Heiser said. What's important is to ask what the text can sustain. And it can sustain multiple options. So we have interpretive options here, but no matter what the interpretive options you prefer are, the theology is what matters most.
[00:57:34] The understanding of who God is and why he would care about humanity so much. That's the point. And when we marry that with the idea of presence of God and sacred space, that connects directly into our Christian walk and our discipleship.
[00:57:52] So as always, let's avoid overclaiming in what we're trying to say. Let's stop saying it's so very clear and it's obviously this, or it's obviously that. Because there are real questions and real options for interpretation here. But the text overall is trying to give us a theological description, not exhaustive blueprints.
[00:58:19] Some claims can be made with high confidence, but others belong in the possible or plausible or well maybe categories. And the more firmly we ground ourselves in what Genesis actually emphasizes, the less, I hope, we find that we need that speculation.
[00:58:43] Personally, I would really prefer it if everybody would just decide that we don't need the sensationalist ideas. I know that they're not gonna go away though, and there are some real possibilities in the literal sensationalism or the weird sensationalism that we have. But either way, let's root ourselves in the actual theological message of the text.
[00:59:11] Now that being said, I'm probably gonna have to get into and talk about all of the options for where the Ark is today. And that's going to be a lot of speculation. But I will wrap up today's episode and as always, thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing the episodes, and thank you for all of the different ways that you support me. I really appreciate it, and I invite you all over to my biblical theology community, On This Rock. I will leave a link to that in the show notes. Come on over. All you have to do is sign up. it's free to join the community and I hope you'll find some interesting conversations and resources there.
[01:00:01] Big shout out to my Patreon and PayPal supporters and those of you who help support me at On This Rock. I really deeply appreciate all of that, and I appreciate everybody who listens to this podcast, not just those of you who support me directly. I hope you all enjoy the episodes. But for now, I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
