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A painting by Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849), showing animals boarding Noah's Ark, two of every kind.

Noah's Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח, Tevat Noach; Arabic: سفينة نوح, Safina Nuh) — as related in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis chapters 6 through 9), the Qur'an (Suras 11 and 71), and in other texts of various Abrahamic religions — was a massive vessel built to save Noah, his family, and a stock of the world’s animals from the impending Deluge.

According to the basic narrative found in Genesis, God, grieved at the wickedness of mankind, decides to destroy the corrupted world, but instructs Noah, a man "righteous in his generation", to build an Ark which will save him, his family, and representatives of all the land animals and birds. The flood then destroys the earth, but at the height of the deluge "God remembered Noah", and the waters abate and the dry land reappears, with the Ark resting "upon the mountains of Ararat". The story ends with God entering into a covenant with Noah and his descendants.

The story has been subject to many extensive elaborations in Abrahamic religions, ranging from theological interpretations, to hypothetical solutions for more practical problems. By the 19th century, many geologists, archaeologists and biblical scholars had abandoned a literal interpretation of the narrative; however, Biblical literalists continue to accept the Ark as a crucial element in their understanding of the historicity of the Bible, and searches for the Ark's speculated resting spot continue to this day.

The Ark

The Ark is described in Genesis 6:15 as 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. However, the precise dimensions cannot be determined, because the biblical account does not specify the type of cubit. With the Egyptian cubit, this could be as small as 129 by 21.5 by 12.9 m, or as much as 165 by 27 by 16.5 m; or if it were more like the strict Sumerian cubit, it would approximate 155.2 by 25.9 by 15.5 m. This same proportion of length to width (6 to 1) is used by modern naval architects, as it is a very stable shape.

Traditional pictures of the Ark typically show something shaped like a boat, but the directions given appear to be for an oblong three-storey floating structure, with a door in the side and a window in the roof. It was said to be 100 years in building (Gen. 5:32; 7:6), and is called in Hebrew tevah meaning "box".

Gopher wood

Genesis 6:14 states that Noah was to build the Ark of "gopher wood" (גפר , a word not appearing elsewhere in Hebrew.) The Jewish Encyclopedia believes it was most likely a translation of the Babylonian gushure iş erini (cedar-beams), or the Assyrian giparu (reed). The Greek Septuagint (3rd–1st centuries BC) translated it as ξύλων τετραγώνων ("xylon tetragonon"), "squared timber". Similarly, the Latin Vulgate (5th century AD) rendered it as lignis levigatis, or "smoothed (possibly planed) wood". Older English translations, including the King James Version (17th century), simply leave it untranslated, but many modern translations tend to favor cypress, (although the word for "cypress" in Biblical Hebrew is erez), while others favor pine or cedar. Recent suggestions have included a lamination process, or a now-lost type of tree, or a mistaken transcription of the word kopher (pitch), but there is no consensus.

Narrative

Depiction of the flood in Gustave Doré's illustrated Bible.

The story of Noah's Ark in Genesis begins with God observing mankind's evil behaviour and deciding to flood the earth and destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time" (6:9), and decided that he would carry forth the lineage of Adam. God told Noah to make an Ark, and to bring with him his wife, his three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) and their three wives - eight persons in all. Additionally, he was told to bring seven pairs of each kind of clean animal, two pairs of each kind of unclean animal and seven pairs of each kind of bird into the Ark, and to bring and store food. After they entered the Ark, God sealed the door.

The flood

The Genesis narrative states that on the seventeenth day of the second month of the 600th year of Noah's life, the "fountains of the great deep" and "windows of heaven" broke open, bringing on the deluge both from forty days of rain and a subterranean water source. Psalm 104 says that after the waters covered the mountains, the mountains rose and the valleys sank. The flood covered even the highest mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet, and all creatures on Earth died; only Noah and those with him on the Ark were left alive.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Deluge, Sistine Chapel, the Vatican.

Genesis gives a specific timeline for the flood. The flood was sent in the 600th year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month. Then “the floodgates of the heavens were opened” (Genesis 7:11, 16). An incessant torrential downpour followed for “forty days and forty nights”; “the waters continued overwhelming the earth” 150 days (Genesis 7:4, 12, 24). Five months after the downpour began, the Ark “came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). It was nearly two and a half months later, on the first day of the tenth month, before “the tops of the mountains appeared” (Genesis 8:5). After another three months, on the first day of the first month of the 601st year of Noah's life, Noah lifted the cover of the Ark to see that the face of the Earth was dry (Genesis 8:13). And nearly two months later, on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was dry, and Noah, his wife, sons, their wives, and all the animals left the Ark.

For the date of the Flood, literalists generally rely on interpretation of the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11. Archbishop Ussher, using this method in the 17th century, arrived at 2349 BC, and this date still has acceptance among many. A more recent Christian fundamentalist scholar, Gerhard F. Hasel, however, summarising the current state of thought in the light of the various Biblical manuscripts (the Masoretic text in Hebrew, various manuscripts of the Greek Septuagint), and differences of opinion over their correct interpretation, demonstrated that this method of analysis can date the flood only within a range between 3402 and 2462 BC. Other opinions, based on other sources and methodologies, lead to dates outside even this bracket. According to the Book of Jubilees, the flood occurred in 1309 Anno Mundi, and the Exodus in 2410 A.M. While the dates in Jubilees do not correspond with the Masoretic recension of Genesis, they do agree with the Samaritan version, which is arguably older. Calculations based on these versions would depend on the date of the Exodus; eg. if the Exodus occurred in 1208 BC, it would thus place the Deluge in the year 2309 BC.

After the flood

After 150 days, according to the narrative, the Ark came to rest on the "mountains of Ararat" (Gen. 8:4). The waters continued to recede, and after about seventy more days, the mountaintops emerged. Noah sent out a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth" (8:7). Next, Noah sent a dove out, but it returned having found nowhere to land. After a further seven days, Noah again sent out the dove, and it returned with an olive leaf in its beak, and he knew that the waters had subsided. Noah waited seven days more and sent out the dove once more, and this time it did not return.

Noah and family descending from the mountains of Ararat. Painting by Hovhannes Ayvazovsky.

When the Earth was dry again, God commanded Noah to take his family and all the animals out of the Ark and made a covenant with him, in which he promised never to flood the Earth again, and imposed a basic set of laws on humanity, the Noahide Laws. Noah and his offspring were enjoined never to eat any animal that had not been drained of its blood. God symbolized his promise with a rainbow, to remind his people after each storm that he would never again destroy the world by water.

The Genealogies of Genesis portray some patriarchs living nearly 1000 years up until Noah, but indicate that lifespans quickly dropped immediately following the flood, until reaching a maximum of 120 years.

The Book of Jubilees (once widely used and still considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) repeatedly stresses the importance of four "days of remembrance", said to be ordained by Noah himself, and falling on the first day (or the first new moon in some versions) of the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth months in its calendar, as feasts or festivals to be strictly observed "for a memorial forever" of the main events in the timeline of the Ark and the flood; for example, Noah's being bidden to build the Ark on the first day of the year, or the appearance of the mountaintops on the first day of the tenth month. (Jubilees 6:23-28)

The Ark in later traditions

In Rabbinic tradition

According to Jewish Rabbinic literature from the first centuries of the Christian era, Noah planted cedars 120 years before the Deluge, from which he afterward made the Ark. This lengthy period was partly in order to urge the sinful to amend their ways, and partly to allow sufficient time for the construction of the Ark. According to various midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals to the Ark, together with their food. As there had been no need to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the Ark. A differing opinion said that the Ark itself distinguished clean from unclean, admitting seven each of the former and two each of the latter. God placed lions and other ferocious animals to protect Noah and his family from the wicked who mocked them and offered them violence.

Noah was engaged both day and night in feeding and caring for the animals, and did not sleep for the entire year aboard the Ark. (Genesis Rabba 23 states that the flooded area extended only as far as Barbary.) The animals were the best of their species, and so behaved with utmost goodness. (Yet Noah was castrated by the lion, and the sacrifice at the end of the voyage was therefore carried out by his son Shem.) They abstained from procreation, so that the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to go out of the Ark when Noah sent it forth, and accusing the Patriarch of wishing to destroy its race, but as the commentators pointed out, God wished to save the raven, for its descendants were destined to feed the prophet Elijah.

Refuse was stored on the lowest of the Ark's three decks, humans and clean beasts on the second, and the unclean animals and birds on the top. A differing opinion placed the refuse in the utmost storey, from where it was shovelled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, bright as midday, provided light, and God ensured that food was kept fresh. Besides the regular occupants was the giant Og, king of Bashan, but owing to his size had to remain outside, Noah passing him food through a hole cut into the wall of the Ark. A beam of the Ark was said to have been found by Sennacherib, who made an idol of it; another was used as the gallows for Haman, the villain of the Book of Esther, according to Midrash Abba Gorion.

In Christian tradition

Construction of the Ark. Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).

According to the Christian Gospels, Jesus spoke of his return as being similar to what it was like when Noah entered the Ark and when the rains came and swept them all away: that when he came one would be taken and another left, as it was in Noah's day. (Matthew 24:37-42)

Early Christian writers recorded allegorical meanings for Noah and the Ark. In the First Epistle of Peter, for example, those saved by the Ark from the waters of the Flood are said to prefigure the salvation of the Elect through baptism, Early Christian artists also celebrated Noah in their work, often depicting Noah standing in a small box on the waves.

St. Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) recounted a number of early traditions specific to the Ark. He stated that it was built in three storeys: the lowest for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top level for humans; he adds that the male animals were separated from the females by sharp stakes, to help maintain the prohibition against cohabitation aboard the vessel. According to him, a door was built on the east side, the bones of Adam were brought aboard with gold, frankincense and myrrh, and the Ark floated to and fro in the four directions on the waters, making the sign of the cross, and eventually landing on Mount Kardu "in the east, in the land of the sons of Raban, and the Orientals call it Mount Godash; the Arabians and Persians call it Ararat".

St Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in The City of God (De Civitate Dei), demonstrated that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which is the body of Christ, which is the Church. The equation of Ark and Church is still found in the Anglican rite of baptism, which asks God, "who of thy great mercy didst save Noah," to receive into the Church the infant about to be baptised.

Origen (c. 182-251), responding to a critic who doubted that the Ark could contain all the animals in the world, countered with a learned argument about cubits, holding that Moses, the traditional author of the book of Genesis, had been brought up in Egypt and would therefore have used the larger Egyptian cubit. He also fixed the shape of the Ark as a truncated pyramid, rectangular rather than square at its base, and tapering to a square peak one cubit on a side. It was not until the 12th century that it came to be thought of as a rectangular box with a sloping roof. In the 15th century Alfonso Tostada gave a detailed account of the inside of the Ark, down to arrangements for the disposal of dung and the circulation of fresh air, and in the 16th century the noted geometrician Johannes Buteo calculated its internal dimensions, allowing room for Noah's grinding mills and smokeless ovens, a model widely adopted by other commentators.

According to Irish mythology, Noah had a "fourth son" named Bith who was not allowed aboard the Ark, and who instead attempted to colonise Ireland with 54 persons, all of whom were then wiped out in the Deluge.

In Latter-Day Saints tradition

The Ark is also alluded to in the Book of Mormon (Ether 6:7), and the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds Noah to have been an incarnation of the Archangel Gabriel (not to be confused with the evil King Noah, a distinct character in the Book of Mormon).

In Islamic tradition

File:NoahsarkminiatureNusretColpan.jpg

Noah's Ark by Nusret Çolpan.

Noah (Nuh) is one of the five principal prophets of Islam, generally mentioned in connection with the fate of those who refuse to listen to the Word. References to Nuh are scattered through the Qur'an, with the fullest account at sura 11:27-51, entitled "Hud".

The Qur'an speaks of the Ark as an ordinary ship, a safina, "a thing of boards and nails" (surah 54:13). The flood was sent by Allah in answer to Noah's prayer that this evil generation should be destroyed; yet as Noah was righteous he continued to preach, and seventy (or 72) idolators were converted and entered the Ark with him, bringing the total aboard to 78 (or 80) humans. The seventy had no offspring, and all of post-flood humanity is descended from Noah's three sons. A "fourth son" (or a grandson, according to some authorities; named either 'Kenan' or 'Yam' depending on the source) was among the idolators, and was drowned when he failed to heed the warnings to board the Ark.

Sura 11:43 of the Qur'an says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of God it moves and stays!'" Baidawi takes this to mean that Noah said, "In the Name of God!" when he wished the Ark to move, and the same when he wished it to stand still.

Sura 11:44 says it settled on Mount Judi, identified by tradition with a hill near the town of Jazirat ibn Umar on the east bank of the Tigris in the province of Mosul in northern Iraq, and Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (d. 956) says that the spot where it came to rest could be seen in his time. He also says that the Ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mekka, where it circled the Kaaba, before finally travelling to Judi. Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179 - 1229) mentions a mosque built there by Noah and still extant in his day, and Ibn Batutta passed it on his travels in the 14th century. The recently discovered Durupinar site is said to be near a Turkish peak also called "Mount Judi", or Cudi.

Noah left the Ark on the tenth day of Muharram, and he and his family and companions built a town at the foot of Mount Judi named Thamanin ("eighty"), from their number. Noah then locked the Ark and entrusted the keys to Shem.

`Abd Allah ibn `Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote that Noah was in doubt as to what shape to make the Ark, and that Allah revealed to him that it was to be modeled after a bird's belly and fashioned of teak wood. Noah then planted a tree, which in 20 years had grown enough to provide him all the wood he needed.

Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawi, writing in the 13th century, gives the Biblical dimensions of 300 cubits by 50 by 30, and explains that in the first of the three levels wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second human beings, and in the third the birds. Others go much further. Al-Tha'labi in his Ḳisaḳ al-Anbiyya and al-Diyarbakri in his Khamīs tell how Noah, under the direction of Gabriel, built a "house" of teak-wood — after having first grown the trees for the purpose — with dimensions of 80 cubits by 50 by 30; or, according to others, 660 by 330 by 33; or, again — on the authority of the prophet Isa (i.e. Jesus), who raised up Ham to give the information to his disciples — 1,200 by 600. On every plank was the name of a prophet, and the body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide males from females. When Noah came near the end of his building, he found that three planks, symbolizing three prophets, were missing, and that he could not complete the task without them. These planks were brought to Noah from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the Flood.

The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings (c. 915) includes numerous details about Noah's Ark found nowhere else; for instance, he says that the first creature aboard was the ant, and the last was the donkey, by means of whom Satan came aboard. He also relates that when Jesus' apostles expressed a desire to learn about the Ark from an eye-witness, he responded by temporarily resurrecting Noah's son Ham from the dead, who told them more: to deal with the excessive dung, Noah had miraculously caused a pair of hogs to come out of the elephant's tail, and to deal with a stowaway rat, Noah caused a pair of cats to come from the lion's nose.

In his cosmography Dürr-i Meknûn (15th century), Ahmed Bican Yazıcıoğlu tells a tale about Ken‘an, one of the sons of Nuh. Ken‘an refuses to join Nuh in the Ark, and hopes to survive the Flood in a kind of diving bell. God punishes this disobedience with a supernatural bladder infection and Ken‘an drowns in his own urine inside the diving bell. Most of these later interpretations that have no grounding in the text of the Qur'an, are hence rejected by many Muslims.

Muslims today generally maintain the Quran to be a reliable historical account, including its account of Noah's Ark and the Deluge. Muslim interpreters such as Harun Yahya have asserted, on the basis of the Quran, that the deluge it describes was not world-wide, but a regional one that only punished the tribe that rejected Nuh.

In Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith regards the Ark and the Flood as symbolic. In Bahá'í belief, only Noah's followers were spiritually alive, preserved in the ark of his teachings, as others were spiritually dead. The Bahá'í scripture Kitáb-i-Íqán endorses the Islamic belief that Noah had a large number of companions, either 40 or 72, besides his family on the Ark, and that he taught for 950 (symbolic) years before the flood.

In the Sabian religions

The religion of the Yazidi of the Sinjar mountains of Kurdistan blends indigenous and Islamic beliefs. According to their Mishefa Reş, the Deluge occurred not once, but twice. The original Deluge is said to have been survived by a certain Na'umi, father of Ham, whose ark landed at a place called Ain Sifni, in the region of Mosul, Iraq. Some time after this came the second flood, upon the Yezidis only, which was survived by Noah, whose ship was pierced by a rock as it floated above Mount Sinjar, then went on to land on Mount Judi as described in Islamic tradition.

The Mandaeans of the southern Iraqi marshes practice a religion that was possibly influenced in part by early followers of John the Baptist. They regard Noah as a prophet, while rejecting Abraham and Jesus as false prophets. In the version given in their scriptures, the Ark was built of sandalwood from Jebel Harun and was cubic in shape, with a length, width and height of 30 gama (the length of an arm); its final resting place is said to be Egypt.

Related Mesopotamian flood stories

The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian

The majority of modern scholars accept the thesis that the Biblical flood story is linked to a cycle of Assyro-Babylonian mythology with which it shares many features. The oldest known copy of the epic of Atrahasis can be dated by colophon (scribal identification) to the reign of Hammurabi's great-grandson, Ammi-Saduqa (1646–1626 BC), and it continued to be copied into the first millennium; the Ziusudra story can be dated from its script to the late 17th century BC; and the story of Utnapishtim, known from first millennium copies, is probably derived from Atrahasis. The Mesopotamian flood-myth had a very long currency—the last known retelling dates from the 3rd century BC. A substantial number of the original Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian texts, written in cuneiform, have been recovered by archaeologists, but the task of recovering more tablets continues, as does the translation of extant tablets.

The Sumerian story of Ziusudra, found in tablets IX-XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, has broadly the same plot structure as the Genesis account, leading some to suggest that these stories may share a common root in the same event. Ziusudra, king of Shuruppak, is warned by Enki of the other gods' decision to destroy mankind, and he survives a flood in a boat. However, Ziusudra's flood lasts only seven days, and is not said to be worldwide.

The Sumerian legend was adapted by the later cultures of the region. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh tells of Utnapishtim (a translation of "Ziusudra" into Akkadian, the language of Babylonia) of Shuruppak. Utnapishtim is warned by the god Ea (equivalent to the Sumerian Enki) to tear down his reed house and use the materials to build an ark and load it with gold, silver, and the seed of all living creatures and all his craftsmen. After a storm lasting seven days, and a further twelve days on the waters, the ship grounds on Mount Nizir; after seven more days, Utnapishtim sends out a dove, which returns, then a swallow, which also returns, and then a raven, which does not come back.

In the epic of Atrahasis, the god Ellil grows tired of the noise made by man and has Enki open the floodgates to drown them all. Enki warns the hero Atrahasis, who has already lived hundreds of years, to build a boat and instructs him on the appropriate offerings to the various deities in order to win their favour after the flood.

In the 3rd century BC, Berossus, a high priest of the temple of Marduk in Babylon, wrote a history of Mesopotamia in Greek for king Antiochus Soter (323-261 BC), from the earliest times to his own day. Berossus' Babyloniaka has not survived, but the 3rd/4th century Christian historian Eusebius retells from it the story of Xisuthrus, a Greek version of Ziusudra. In this very late version, with Greek gods substituted for Babylonian ones, the god Cronus appears in a vision and warns Xisuthrus of the coming flood. Xisuthrus builds a vessel, takes on board his family and his friends, and rides out the waters. Three times Xisuthrus sends out birds: the first time they return; the second time they return with mud on their feet; the third time they do not return, and Xisuthrus makes an opening in the side of the vessel and disembarks with his wife, his daughter, and the ship's pilot. The vessel is on the side of a mountain, and Xisuthrus makes sacrifices to the gods, and together with those who came out of the boat with him, disappears. Those who come out after him hear his voice telling them that he and his wife and daughter, and the pilot, have become immortal on account of their piety. Berossus concludes that the vessel was still to be seen "in the Corcyræan mountains of Armenia; and the people scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet."

There is no agreement among scholars whether the Mesopotamian legends were the source for Genesis, or vice versa, or if both had a common source. At least one recent study has concluded that the high level of detail in Genesis seems to have become distorted or garbled in Mesopotamian versions, making Genesis more likely to be closer to the original. Historian Robert Best also wrote a book proposing the theory that Noah was originally a historical king of Shuruppak named Ziusudra, who would have reigned c. 2900 BC, and that the "Ark" was a beer, livestock and grain barge on the Euphrates River.

Other flood accounts

Nearly every culture in every religion, time, and place has a global flood story, including European, African, Native American, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and other societies.

Noah's counterpart in Greek mythology was Deucalion and Pyrrha, found in Apollodorus' Bibliotheke and Ovid's Metamorphoses, among other sources.

In Hindu texts, a terrible flood around 15,000 years ago was supposed to have left only one survivor, a saintly King named Manu (reputed author of the Manu Smriti law code), who along with his family and seven learned men or Rishis, was saved by the god Vishnu aboard a ship stocked with animal and plant specimens, which came to land in the Himalayas (or at Naubhandhan Tirtha, Kashmir, according to the 12th centrury Kashmiri author, Kalhana, in his Sanskrit book Rajatarangini.) Manu's descendants called themselves Manushyas or Manavas (Sanskrit for "human beings").

In the Zoroastrian Avesta the figure of Yima saves a remnant of mankind from destruction by ice in an "enclosure" (vara).

There is a Chinese flood story about the water god Gong Gong (共工) banging his head against Buzhou Shan (不周山) (Mount Buzhou) in a rage. Mt. Buzhou held up the sky. The pillar suffered great damage and caused the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the earth to shift to the southeast. This caused great floods and suffering to the people. Nüwa (女媧) cut off the legs of a giant tortoise and used it to support Mt. Buzhou, but she was unable to fully correct the tilted sky. This explains the phenomenon that the Sun, moon, and stars move towards the northwest, and that rivers in China flow southeast into the Pacific Ocean. Nüwa is said to have repaired the heavens with the five-coloured stones after the great flood and moulded people out of clay.

Flood stories have been found also in the mythologies and religions of many preliterate peoples, from areas distant from Mesopotamia and the Eurasian continent - the Ojibwa Indians' legend is but one example. Biblical literalists point to these stories as evidence that the biblical deluge, and the Ark, represent real history.

Historicity and criticism

Flavius Josephus quoted the earlier gentile historians Berossus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus as writing that there was a Ark in the Armenian mountains whereby people had escaped the Deluge. Rabbi Jonathan ben Uzziel (1st century), the Christian church fathers Hippolytus of Rome, Theophilus of Antioch (2nd century), Jerome and Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 400), and the Islamic authors al-Masudi (9th century) and Yaqut al-Hamawi (c. 1200) also stated that the Ark could still be seen in their respective times, in the mountains of Kardu or Kurdistan / Armenia, and Marco Polo mentioned hearing a similar report. Relics supposedly made of wood taken from the Ark site by Jacob of Nisibis were said to be found in St. Jacob's monastery (destroyed by an earthquake in 1840), and even to this day, in Etschmiadzin, Armenia.

Into the Renaissance and early "enlightenment" of the 16th and 17th centuries, Christian scholars such as Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) continued to study the Ark story as a literal account of earth history. The Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601-1680), in asserting that sirens of Greek mythology were actual creatures, even went so far as to reason that special compartments must have been built for them aboard the Ark. Investigations into the Ark story, and the resulting hypotheses that harmonized the biblical account with natural historical knowledge, were an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals.

By the 19th century, many scientists had abandoned a literal interpretation of the narrative. However, some prominent scholars of this time, including August Dillmann, Franz Delitzsch, and Francois Lenormant, maintained their conclusion that the Flood narrative was "no 'myth', but a historical fact". Lenormant counted as evidence the fact that the "three great civilised races of the ancient world preserved a dim recollection of it."

About two-thirds of American adults believe the story of Noah's Ark and the global flood is literally true. Literalists generally accept the traditional belief that the Ark narrative was written by Moses some time between the 16th century BC and late 13th century BC, and describes a real event that took place in the 3rd millennium before Christ. Flood geology holds that a global flood actually occurred, as recorded in Genesis, and that many geological formations of today, such as submarine river canyon extensions, layered fossil fuel deposits, fossil layers, and layered sedimentary strata are best explained in terms of a global flood in the recent past. This is rejected by mainstream geology, which holds that the Earth is extremely ancient, that geological formations were created over many millions of years and that there was no Great Flood. The concept of flood geology was abandoned as a serious scientific hypothesis in the mid-19th century following advances in scientific understanding of geological processes, and is now relegated to pseudoscience, though it is still promoted by some Christian fundamentalists.

Outside literalist circles, the Biblical account is regarded as being anywhere from apocryphal to metaphorical. Some have suggested that the Biblical account may be a folk memory of local floods that affected the Persian Gulf or Black Sea regions in prehistoric times. The details of how Noah knew to build an Ark to preserve his family alive is sometimes explained as a legend built up around a momentous event in the early expansion of the human race. Science author Isaac Asimov has speculated, in Asimov's Guide to the Bible Volume One, that a large meteoroid or small asteroid striking the Persian Gulf could have flooded much of Mesopotamia and been the source of the legend.

The documentary hypothesis holds that the Ark story told in Genesis may represent several originally quasi-independent sources. This hypothesis still has many adherents in academic circles, but can no longer be called a consensus view: newer theories propose instead that Genesis was composed from a host of fragments rather than from complete documents, or that it is the result of a complex process of additions and supplements to an original document. Nevertheless, there is still some agreement that two distinct narrative strands exist in the flood narrative, which, though as yet still unprovenanced as such, continue to be reconstructed as the Yahwist and the Priestly. Followers of Abrahamic religions, including many Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims, usually reject this hypothesis, holding that the Flood is part of history, and that any perceived inadequacies in the Ark story can be explained rationally. Gordon Wenham, Kenneth Kitchen, James Hoffmeier and other scholars have argued that doublets and apparent contradictions are in fact standard features of Semitic texts, and not indicative of multiple authors. Umberto Cassuto, E. Nielsen and F.I. Andersen have all likewise defended the unity of the Flood story.

In addition, there are differing views regarding the practicality and seaworthiness of a vessel approximately 450 feet (137 m) in length, holding representatives of all the Earth's land species. The longest timber-hulled ship built in modern times was the schooner Wyoming, at 329 feet (100.28 metres), but literalists have argued that a number of ancient historical ships were longer, including Caligula's Giant Ship (341 ft), the Thalamegos (377 ft), the Tessarakonteres (420 ft), and some Treasure ships of the Ming Dynasty (possibly up to 600 ft). A Korean paper purported to demonstrate that the dimensions, shape, and structural materials of the Ark are realistic, and that the Ark 'had a superior level of safety in high winds and waves compared with the other hull forms studied'. Creationists also argue that instead of each scientific species, the Ark might have carried representatives of the "created kind"s which later diversified somewhat; the phrase "having breath in its nostrils" is thought to exclude some types such as insects. There are also varying opinions on how widespread human habitation may have been at the time of such a flood, and thus how widespread the flood needed to be in order to destroy all mankind, as well as whether or not all mankind (apart from those on the Ark) were indeed destroyed. Suffice it to say that contemporary scientists do not recognize the feasibility of any global flood, nor of such a population bottleneck as the story seems to imply, and generally support the view that the story is entirely fabulous and mythical.

Searches for Noah's Ark

Main article: Searches for Noah's Ark

For centuries, Mount Ararat (pictured here) has been speculated as holding the remains of Noah's Ark. Recently other mountains in Turkey or Iran have also been under investigation.

The prospect of finding the location of Noah's Ark has held fascination since antiquity. This effort became more widespread in the early 19th century, and unverified claims of the Ark's discovery have been made on a number of occasions.

Many searches have concentrated on Mount Ararat itself, located in present-day Turkey, although Genesis actually refers only to the "mountains of Ararat". The account in Jubilees names the specific peak as "Mount Lubar". The Durupinar site, near but not on Ararat, and much more accessible, attracted attention in the 1980s and 1990s; in 2004 a Honolulu businessman announced an expedition to investigate a site called the Ararat anomaly (the expedition was aborted when the Turkish government refused permission); and in 2006 there was brief flurry of interest when an expedition reported a potential site at Mount Sabalan in Iran.

In 2007, a joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition claimed to find an unusual cave with fossilized wooden walls on Mount Ararat, well above the vegetation line. This 2007 expedition marked the first time in history that an alleged material sample of Noah's Ark was retrieved for lab analysis; the sample was determined by the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong to be petrified wood, although the origin of the material remains uncertain.