He didn’t know! He didn’t know whether the cubit was ten feet or ten yards or ten inches. We closed the argument by saying with all the kindness we could muster, “ If a child ten years of age manifested no more logic than you have shown in this argument, you would think he was wanting in intelli gence. You have an ark, the size of which you do not know. You have a number of animals, which number cannot at this time be determined. Yet you maintain that it is scientifically impossible to get two of an unknown number of creatures into a boat of undetermined capacity!” The argument would have sounded silly to any listener who did not know the background, but it was sufficiently clear to his mind to start a'train of logical thinking. We pointed out to him the depth of intelligence required to make a man reject the Bible on such flimsy grounds as he possessed. Like most men who start to reason, when his eyes were opened to the silliness of his position, he retraced his former statements upon making a study of the details that are given in the record. Many times we have witnessed the attempt of ignorance to assail the Word of God, and it is always easily frustrated. The purpose of this treatise, however, is to deal seriously with objections to the story of the ark as they have been given to us so often by students and others, and to try to clear up several points. The first consideration in our study here is the question of the capacity of the ark. The exact size of this famous vessel will probably never be known. Scholarship, knowledge, and the science of archeology have all contributed their quota of information, but we still do not know very much about the exact capacity of this marvelous craft. The text simply says: “ And this is how thou shalt make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” At first sight that seems enough and sufficiently specific, but now we face the question, “How long, or how much, is a cubit?” The Scripture speaks of “the cubit of a man.” Does Moses mean that the cubit Noah used was the length of a man, or was it the length of a forearm? The standard is' variable, and it may have been either one. If the length of the ark was three hundred times the length of a man’s forearm, we have one problem based on a certain set of factors. If the cubit that is here intended is the entire height of a man, however, we have still another problem with totally different and vary ing factors. If it was a man’s height, how tall was the man? It is a dangerous proceeding to make an argument from ignorance. How utterly senseless for the critics to say, “We do not know and cannot know the exact size of the ark, but we do know that it could not hold two of every kind of animal then living!” The ark was a ship of gigantic size. To be conservative, we will take as a potential cubit the measurement advocated by the famous scientist and archeologist, William Mathew Petrie. He, being one of the foremost Egyptologists who ever lived, is entitled to speak with some authority, and he says the oldest standard cubit is twenty-two and a half inches. According to this basis, the ark was a tremendous and commodious boat. Five hundred and sixty-two feet and six inches long; ninety- three feet and six inches wide; fifty-six feet and three inches high. Built with a flat bottom, square on both ends and straight up the sides, there was no waste space in bow or stern, and it had the tremendous carrying capacity of a little over two million, nine hundred fifty-eight thousand cubit feet! (2,958,000 cubic feet). This is a tremendous cargo capacity. To put it in modern terms, it would take a train of almost 1,000 freight cars to carry this enormous load, or to provide this amount of cubic space! That these dimensions and this size are not out of reason, we see from two separate lines of evidence. First, the ancient legendary stories of the ark make it much larger than this. It is inevitable that archeology should uncover traditional accounts of the deluge and the ark from the monuments and tablets of lost civilizations, for these ancient civilizations were founded, of course, by descendants of Noah. When people have a common origin, it is always shown in their common traditions, and as Noah and his sons were the only
"By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” (Heb. 11:7). Gustave Dore men saved alive from or through the flood, they must have peopled the entire earth with their progeny. Indeed, there could have been no other way. That these common legends all point to a common origin, none can gain, say. Some of them are weird and distorted by tradition, but they all testify to two truths: there was a deluge and there was an ark. The ark was the largest vessel that ever floated prior to the building of the giant liners of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of its square construction, it could carry a third more cargo than any modern vessel that equaled it in size and dimensions. And when modern engine rooms, crew’s quarters, control stations, life boats and safety belts, cabins, gymnasia, knife-edged bows and rounded sterns are all de ducted, an ark of the size set forth (562 feet by 93 feet by 56 feet) would carry a much larger load than any ship of these approximate dimensions sailing the seas today. The second factor in the problem is found in the size of the load. This factor is as variable as is the factor of capacity. The exact number of animals which were carried in the ark can never be determined by science. There may have been more “kinds” living then; certainly there could not have been less than are extant now. Birds, cattle, creeping things, are the only orders mentioned. The others are all grouped under the head of “ every living thing of all flesh.” Of the animals classified as “ clean,” there were to be fourteen, seven male and seven female. Of the other, or “ unclean” animals, there were to be one pair, a male and a female of each. Noah was not under the necessity of finding room in his ark for every variety and specimen of animal and bird alive today. As soon as we see this, the problem of the ark is simplified tremendously. The specific command is “ of each kind.” If Noah took into his ark a pair of a pure strain of every available creature, the varieties would have arisen by the process of mutation. A typical case in point may be the bee. There are many, many different varieties of bees. But Noah would have to take only a fertile queen into the ark, for her progeny could in turn give rise to all the other varieties. Page Eleven
S E P T E M B E R , 1 9 5 1
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs