I was just thinking about Noah’s Ark, idly wondering how he managed to fit all those animals on a wooden boat. I thought I’d better find out a bit more, before shooting my mouth off and I stumbled on an article written by a Christian author.
According to the bible; (make that The Bible, I don’t wish to be overly offensive), the Ark when converted from cubits, was approximately 450ft long x 75ft wide and 45ft high. That is a pretty large boat in anybody’s language, and would fit a shit load of animals on it, but there are a heap of different critters wandering around out there.
This article said that the average size of an animal is about the same size as a sheep, according to some experts, or a rabbit according to others. I guess if you take into account Elephants, Camels, Rhinoceroses, Hippopotami (interesting plurals those two!) as the biggies and mice, shrews, hamsters and rats as the smallies, this could be an acceptable assumption.
It also said that The Bible, didn’t actually stipulate different ‘Types’ of animals, it could be taken as ‘Families’ or ‘Genera’ (plural of Genus, neat eh?). In other words ‘Cats’ would include Pussies, Lions, Leopards, Cheetah (no ‘s') and other assorted purring beasts, but only two generic felines would have been required. The same with Chihuahua, Siberian-Moosehounds, Wolverines and Hyena, just two canines needed?
A bit of a conundrum here with Avians though, if there were Ravens and Doves, what about Ostriches, Dodo and Rhea? Albatrosses and other Sea-birds would have been sweet, but I doubt if an Emu could have dog-paddled around the Ark for a year or so.
Which brings us to another conundrum. Marsupials! did Noah send one of his sons out in a smaller boat to round up a few Wallabies and Koala from Australia? and a couple of Penguins from Antarctica while he was down in that neck of the Antipodes? I guess another one must have taken a trip to the Americas, both North and South, there are a lot of unique beasties over there. Not to mention Africa and Asia, don't ask me why I don't mention them, because I already have, all the 'biggies' were from there.
Going by all the begatting that was going on at the time, Biblical Scholars have calculated that God created everything around 4,000BC and that the Flood occurred around 2,300BC. I’m not real sure how they arrived at these figures as Noah was supposed to be 600 years old when he entered the Ark and he was considered a mere stripling. I think that they may have underestimated by a millennium or two.
Even so, if there were only one of each genera, how did they evolve into the plethora of creatures that exist today? and while we’re about it; if you’re a Creationist and believe in Noah and his Ark, you don’t believe in evolution anyway, do you?
Finally, according to some sources, the Ark came to rest high on Mt Ararat in Turkey. Mt Ararat is 5,165m above sea-level (that’s about 16,000ft in the old money), did it only rain for 40 days and 40 nights? or is that my faulty memory? That’s about 400 feet every 24 hours over the whole wide world, where did all that water come from? Where did it all go?
Mind you, if you’re Omnipotent and have the whole Universe at your fingertips, what’s a few zillion megalitres of water? A mere drop in the ocean! or should that read a mere rise in the ocean?
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
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