Noah's Ark

The ship in which Noah, his family, and the animals were saved from the Flood, according to the biblical account (Genesis 6–8).
A small bivalve mollusk with a boat-shaped shell, found in the Mediterranean and off the Atlantic coasts of Africa and southern Europe.

The structure of Noah's Ark (and the chronology of the flood) is homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship.7 Accordingly, Noah's instructions are given to him by God (Genesis 6:14–16): the ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high (approximately 134×22×13 m or 440×72×43 ft).8 These dimensions are based on a numerological preoccupation with the number 60, the same number characterizing the vessel of the Babylonian flood hero.1

Its three internal divisions reflect the three-part universe imagined by the ancient Israelites: heaven, the earth, and the underworld.9 Each deck is the same height as the Temple in Jerusalem, itself a microcosmic model of the universe, and each is three times the area of the court of the tabernacle, leading to the suggestion that the author saw both Ark and tabernacle as serving for the preservation of human life.1011 It has a door in the side, and a tsohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight.8 It is to be made of gopher wood, a word which appears nowhere else in the Bible – and divided into qinnim, a word which always refers to birds' nests elsewhere in the Bible, leading some scholars to emend this to qanim, reeds.12 The finished vessel is to be smeared with koper, meaning pitch or bitumen; in Hebrew the two words are closely related, kaparta ("smeared") ... bakopper.12

by ISTHISAMOGUSAMOGUS July 13, 2023

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