Noah’s Ark
Biblical literalists will disagree, of course, but the insurmountable problems gathering, feeding and returning all the animals carried in Noah’s Ark have been discussed many times. So, for a change, I would like to examine the actual construction of the Ark, as it must have occurred.
First problem, we have a 600 year old man and his 3 elderly sons trying to build a vessel that is 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet tall, according to Genesis. This is almost a city block long, certainly several times larger than any boat constructed up to that time in history. It is possible that these men knew simple carpentry, but they would have been totally ignorant of the trade of shipbuilding.
As for materials, remember that there were no lumber yards in those days, so they would have to obtain the necessary wood by chopping down trees and shaping them into planks with either an ax or a primitive hand saw. (God told Noah to build the ark of gopher wood, which some translations say is cedar.)
Assuming that they chose to build the hull from 10 foot long x 1 foot wide planks, which would be a reasonable size to handle, it would require close to 100 of these boards to encircle the Ark once. The hull was roughly 40 feet high, so the total number of 10’x1′ planks required to form the hull would be about 4000. This of course, doesn’t include the large quantity of lumber needed for the supporting frame, which would require ribs every ten feet along the entire length to which the hull planks are attached, and not counting the wood for the three decks, roof,and some sort of cages for the animals.
To assemble the Ark they would first need to construct the skeleton, and then fasten the planks to it. Attaching the hull timbers to the frame with nails would require 4 per board, or 16,000 in total. Metal nails did exist, but they were hand forged, expensive and not commonly available, so they probably attached the planks with woven strapping, and then covered the resulting gaps with pitch, since God told Noah to use pitch inside and out. How they could construct the supporting framework without nails, I have no idea.
I’m sure that it would take a dozen experienced shipbuilders several years to construct such a vessel – so how long would it take Noah and his sons? Perhaps 10 to 20 years, or even longer. My point is that constructing the Ark was an impossible task for 4 inexperienced men to attempt.
And finally, a wooden ship of that size, held together by some sort of fiber strapping, if it did not collapse of its own weight before it was launched, would not last long in the vast ocean of water caused by the flood, but quickly fall apart. Obviously the writer of this particular episode in the book of Genesis did not consider these difficulties, so the entire episode must be a complete fabrication, with no basis in fact.
My favorite part is how Noah got the kangaroos and other marsupials from Australia AND got them back there after he landed at Ararat. Don’t get me started as to why the Australian Aborigines, whose culture is over 50,000 years old, were not wiped out by said flood or have no amazing survival stories.
Of course, the story of Noah and the Ark is just what one expect from an ignorant, illiterate Mideastern tribe of sheep and goat herders, who had no idea of the size of the Earth, its many oceans and continents, and the vast number of different animal species therein, and their many different food and habitat requirements. So they based the number of animals they needed to put aboard the Ark on the rather limited species they were personally familiar with. And they simply took flood myths from other, earlier cultures and elaborated on them, without thought to the impossibilities inherent in their imaginary tale. Obviously, an omnipotent, omniscient superbeing had no hand in it.