Noah's Ark - myth or reality? What was the real Noah like?

The name of the Old Testament righteous man Noah has been known to everyone since childhood, but not everyone knows who Noah is and why he became the forefather of humanity after the Flood.

Who is Noah from the Bible

Noah is one of the righteous people of the Old Testament, whom the Orthodox Church honors as a Saint. His life story can be found in the book of Genesis, but the name Noah appears in many biblical texts. He is always spoken of as a man of rare righteousness.

Noah lived in the era of the heyday of sin on earth and walked in the full sense against the tide, firmly following the ways of the Lord. Noah's determined and unwavering virtue helped him find “favor in the sight of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8).

Despite the fact that the time of his earthly life is distinguished by the general tendency of people towards wickedness, this period is not far from the moment of the Fall. According to the Bible, the first generations of people lived for a very long time: Adam lived 930 years, his son Seth - 912 years. Noah is only ten generations removed from the first man; his father Lamech was born while Adam was still alive.

However, despite the fact that the memory of the expulsion of people from paradise was alive, as the witnesses of the formation of humanity on earth were alive, sin conquered the hearts of everyone in Noah’s generation, except himself. And, despite ridicule and reproach, the righteous man walked according to the will of God with all firmness.

Sons of Noah

By the age of five hundred the righteous man had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Tradition claims that Noah foresaw the punishment of humanity and for a long time did not want to have children. The Lord told him to marry, and therefore Noah had sons much later than it happened to his ancestors.

After the flood, when everyone who did not enter the ark perished, the sons of Noah divided the earth and became the ancestors of all nations living today. Sim got the East, he became the progenitor of the peoples named after him Semites. This is also included in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Today, Semitic peoples include: Jews, Arabs, Maltese, Assyrians and some peoples of Ethiopia. The Amalekites, Moabites, Ammonites, etc., mentioned in the Bible but no longer existing today, also belong to the descendants of Shem.

Ham was the second son of Noah, his descendants settled the South after the flood. The Egyptians, Libyans, Ethiopians, Somalis and the entire Negroid race who descended from him are called Hamites. The Philistines, Phoenicians, and Canaanites also descended from Ham.

Japheth, the youngest son of Noah, became the progenitor of modern Europeans, occupying lands in the North and West. The Japhethites today are the most numerous among the peoples of the world. Legend says that these are all the peoples of Western Europe, as well as Slavic and Finno-Ugric. The traditions of Armenia and Georgia also trace the Caucasian peoples to Japheth.

Noah's great-grandfather

There are many remarkable people among Noah's ancestors, but it is unlikely that one will be able to find a second one like Enoch. The seventh from Adam, according to various biblical texts, was the first to walk in the ways of the Lord after the death of Abel. Having pleased God, Enoch was transported from the place of his life without meeting death.

Often the story of Enoch's migration is considered to contradict the words of the Gospel of John that no one except our Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven. The reason for the confusion is probably the speculation about Enoch's relocation to heaven, although there are no direct indications of this in the Bible.

Indeed, the Old Testament mentions Enoch's translation twice:

• According to the book of Genesis, “he was no more, because God took him.” He is no longer where he was, but it is not said where he moved;
• in the book of Jesus, son of Sirach, it is mentioned that Enoch “was caught up from the earth,” that is, his transfer took place above the earth.

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews says “he was no more, because God carried him away.” There is no talk of moving to heaven. To understand the story of Noah, it is important that the only righteous people of the antediluvian world were saved by the Lord and received a reward from Him.

The story of the Flood and Noah's Ark

At the age of five hundred years, the prophet Noah received from the Lord a revelation about the flood - the upcoming punishment of mankind for the sin that enslaved him. Then Noah learned that he had to save himself and his family from death by entering the ark along with many animals.

Noah took a hundred years to build the ark. For an entire century, the construction of a giant ark, ridiculed by others, rested on unshakable faith in the word of the Lord. They did not want to listen to Noah's stories about the coming disaster, continuing to live an unbridled life.

Noah was named a preacher of truth in the Second Epistle of the Apostle Peter for his firmness in faith and constancy in trying to return sinners to the path of Truth.

In a new revelation, the Lord told Noah and his family to enter the ark. Then it was said that water would pour from the sky for forty days, destroying all living things. On the day of this revelation, animals and birds began to flock to Noah’s ark from all sides of the earth. Noah's contemporaries, seeing elephants, lions, and monkeys entering the ark, only marveled at such a sight, continuing to persist and refusing to believe the preaching of the righteous man.

The doors of the ark were open for another week in anticipation of the repentance of sinners. But no one else entered them. And the sky opened up. The flood filled the earth gradually, throughout the forty days leaving, although fading, chances for repentance. The Apostle Peter claims that among those who perished there were indeed people who brought repentance to the Lord in these last days and accepted death with all humility.

For another five months the water on the earth did not decrease, and then, on the first day of the tenth month from the beginning of the flood, the tops of the mountains became visible. The Ark landed on the Ararat Mountains.

Release of the raven and dove from the ark

The first messenger of the water's retreat was the raven. Seeing that the earth was gradually freed from water, Noah released a raven from the ark. But the raven returned. Then the raven flew into the ark again and again until the earth was dried up.

Then Noah released the dove, but there was no place for it on earth, and it returned. Seven days later, released again, he arrived with an oil leaf. And the third time he did not return at all, which meant the final drying of the land. Then Noah, his family and the animals that had escaped with them went outside.

The story of Ham, son of Noah

The first thing Noah did after leaving the ark was a thanksgiving sacrifice to God. Then the Lord made a covenant with Noah, blessing the righteous man himself and his descendants.

The sign of the covenant was the rainbow, which also announced that people would no longer be destroyed by a flood from the earth.

However, not everyone in Noah's family was as righteous as he was. The story of Ham allows us to draw this conclusion. While cultivating the newly discovered lands, Noah drank wine from his vineyard and became drunk. Ham saw him lying naked in the tent and wanted to reveal this to the brothers Shem and Japheth.

They showed respect to their father by covering him with clothes so as not to see what they should not have seen.

Having learned about Ham's unworthy act, Noah cursed his son, Canaan, promising him a slave's share in the houses of his brothers. Why was Canaan cursed and not Ham? John Chrysostom says that Noah could not break the blessing given to him and his sons by the Lord with a curse.

At the same time, punishment for Ham was necessary, so the father was punished through his son, who himself, as the saint says, was a sinner and deserved punishment. Blessed Theodoret also sees in this a fair reward for his son (Ham), who sinned against his father (Noah) and received punishment through the curse of his son (Canaan).

The punishment of Canaan was fulfilled in full, since the Canaanites were exterminated or conquered by the descendants of Shem. John Chrysostom explains the intoxication of Noah himself by ignorance, since the harm from drinking wine was not as well known then as it is now.

How many years did Noah live?

After the flood, Noah chose the path of abstinence and had no more children except three sons.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood began, and he lived another three hundred and fifty years after that. Further, the book of Genesis testifies that after Noah people lived less and less: for example, Moses lived only 120 years.

Conclusion

• the prophet Ezekiel;
• the prophet Isaiah;
• Jesus, son of Sirach;
• book of Ezra;
• book of Tobit;
• Gospel of Matthew;
• Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews;
• 2 Epistle of the Apostle Peter and others.

Today the Orthodox Church honors righteous Noah as one of the Old Testament forefathers, who firmly kept God's law long before the giving of the commandments to Moses.

Story Noah's Ark, in which people and animals were saved from the global flood, is familiar to people of various nations and is told in the Bible, Koran and Torah, but was it really so. Modern scientific methods allow us to look at this well-known legend differently.

The story of Noah, told in the book of Genesis, happened somewhere in the Middle East about 5,000 years ago. Noah's family consisted of three sons. Noah is called in the Bible the most worthy man in the world. He maintained virtue in a world where sin and violence reigned.

Noah was a winemaker, so some details of his life are connected with this craft. According to the Bible, after the flood, Noah planted the first vineyard, but he had one weakness - after making the first wine, he began to drink it immoderately. One night his sons found him completely drunk and without clothes. In the morning, with a hangover, Noah was angry at his sons for seeing him naked. Noah had a complex character, but so do many great men.

Apparently Noah was a good believer, because God himself entrusted him with an important mission. He announced to the artisan in a dream that he would punish people for their sins by causing a global flood. To save Noah and his family, God ordered the construction of a tarred the ark. He also ordered Noah to build three decks, a roof, and a door on the ark. In addition, God indicated the exact dimensions vessel. In the Bible the dimensions are given in cubits - the ark It was 300 cubits long and 30 cubits wide and high. An elbow is the length of a man's forearm, slightly less than half a meter. Dimensions ark can be compared with modern or. With a length of almost 140 meters, it was the longest in the entire ancient world. Backbreaking work for one family. How can you build something like this? giant ship almost alone? This is a very brave undertaking.

Many engineers claim that this is vessel could not have been built at that stage of shipbuilding development. Even in the 19th century, engineers used metal fastenings, and with a wooden ship there could be big problems.

The main problem for this wooden one is its length, because the sides simply would not be able to withstand such weight. At sea, the hull of such a ship will immediately crack, leaks will appear, and vessel It will immediately sink like an ordinary stone. Of course, Noah could build an ark, but its dimensions were much more modest.

The second problem arises - how he placed different animals inside the ship, each in pairs. It is believed that there are 30 million species of animals on Earth, if Noah had a whole ark fleet, this task would be beyond his strength. After all, how was he able to get all the animals on board? He had to catch them... or they themselves came to the ship. Noah had only seven days to find all the animals and load them onto the the ark. 30 million species in one week - a total loading speed of 50 pairs per second. For a more realistic loading rate, this would take about 30 years.

The conclusion suggests itself that the whole story is either fictitious or there was direct help from divine power. But the next part creates much more problems. According to the Bible, the rain continued until the whole world was flooded. Such a catastrophe should have left traces all over the Earth - homogeneous geological layers of a certain type. The search for evidence of a worldwide flood, which only Noah and his family and animals managed to survive, began a century and a half ago. Various geologists searched on all continents, but nothing like this was found. On the contrary, there is evidence that this never happened. The story of the flood itself negates everything that geologists know about the history of the Earth. To flood the planet to the height of the highest mountain system, the Himalayas, a volume of water three times the volume of the world's oceans is required. Where did so much of it come from? Here the Bible gives some clues. The book of Genesis says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. But even this would not be enough to flood the entire planet. If it's not rain then what is it?

The Bible gives another answer to this question - the origins of the abyss. Could the great flood come from the depths of the Earth itself? If water in such a volume appeared from geysers, it would not be water or an ocean, but swamp slurry, through which it would be impossible to swim. Even if the flood was caused by a miracle, Noah would have had to face another difficulty. The flooding of the entire surface of the planet led to changes in the Earth's atmosphere. So much water vapor would enter the atmosphere that a person would choke while breathing, and the increased pressure could cause the lungs to rupture. There is another threat. Geyser emissions contain poisonous gases from the depths of the earth's surface. Their concentration would also be lethal for humans.

So, nothing on Earth could cause a global flood. It turns out that the reason must be sought in space, since comets contain a lot of ice. However, to flood the entire Earth, the diameter of the comet must be 1500 km. If such a comet had fallen, all people would have died before the flood began. When an extraterrestrial object approaches, kinetic energy turns into thermal energy, and this is equivalent to the explosion of 12 million megatons of trinitrotoluene. This would be a monstrous cataclysm. All life would be wiped out from the face of the Earth. Temperatures would briefly rise to 7,000 degrees Celsius. Everyone would have died before they could get on board. ark.

According to the Bible the ark landed at Mount Ararat in the east of Asia Minor. When the waters receded, animals and people repopulated the planet. Is it possible to find remnants there? ark. Wood is a short-lived material in the face of time. Countless expeditions visited the mountain in search of the ark, and no traces of its presence were found on the slopes of this mountain. This even made it possible to develop the tourism business - pilgrims, archaeologists - everyone wanted to find the remains ancient ship. When interest in Mount Ararat began to fade, she “planted” a sensation. In 1949, the Americans took aerial photographs of Mount Ararat. There were rumors that the pilots had photographed a strange object in the ice. The CIA classified this information for decades. However, in 1995, access to this information became available. A dark object about 140 meters long was spotted on one of the slopes, the exact length of Noah's Ark. But geologists declared these images inconclusive due to the poor resolution of the photograph. In 2000, the images were taken from a satellite. On the slope there was something similar to ship, but very doubtful. According to geologists, in any case the ark couldn't stay frozen for that long. The glacier moves and carries everything on the slopes down the slope.

...sensation Noah's Ark has been found!

There are a lot of pictures in the world Noah's Ark, but they all raise doubts. The authors of the photographs cannot be found. All this is done with the aim of confirming the biblical legend. Alas, history Noah's Ark from a scientific point of view it is not reliable. Perhaps it wasn't supposed to be real.

If the story Noah's Ark rewrite, you get the following. It all started in Shuman, an ancient state in what is now Iraq. Specifically in the city of Shuruppak is the center of an ancient civilization. It was here that the wheel and the counting system were invented. Noah himself was not at all a bearded old man as in the Bible stories. He was a rich man (merchant), as evidenced by the presence of gold and other valuables. He also had a large barge, perfect for transporting grain and livestock.

The city was located on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They delivered goods to other settlements, which was much cheaper than caravans through the desert. For transportation, the Sumerians used four-meter canoes, but merchant ships were larger. The boat was divided into sections. Large ships could be built like pontoons. Several river barges were pulled together using ropes or fastening bars. Because the vessel Since it was a cargo ship, it is easy to guess what it was loaded with: grain, animals and beer.

Most likely, our Noah became a hostage to the elements. In some places the Euphrates River is navigable at high water levels, so it was necessary to calculate the time of departure. It had to coincide with high water. Melting snow in the mountains of Armenia in July increases the water level in the Euphrates River. At this time, the ducts become passable for ships. But there was some risk. If a strong storm had broken out over Shuruppak, the full-flowing river would have turned into an uncontrollable raging force and caused a flood. Usually in July it rarely rains in these places. Such phenomena occur here once every thousand years. Therefore, such an event would certainly be reflected in the chronicle. Noah's family was sitting together at dinner. Suddenly the wind blew, a storm began, and then a flood. It was this that became the basis of the story of Noah. To rip Noah's barge off the leash, due to the sharp rise in water level in the river, a real tropical downpour was required. The consequences of such cataclysms were catastrophic and records of them were reflected in the chronicles of those years. If the storm coincided with the period of melting snow in the mountains, then the waters of the Euphrates could flood the entire Mesopotamian plain. It rained for seven days. Having lost most of its cargo, Noah's barge found itself among the raging waves of the Euphrates. According to legend, in the morning Noah and his family were unable to see the earth. The flooded area extended for tens of kilometers. After the storm, they drifted on the ship with the current, waiting to be washed aground on the river. But the difficulties were just beginning. Since people could not see the earth for seven days, the conclusion suggests itself - the flood swept the whole world.

Noah's family believed that their ship was drifting through the flooded waters of the Euphrates River, but the water overboard had become salty. Noah's Ark was no longer sailing along the river, but in the Persian Gulf. It is unknown how long his family sailed around the bay, the Bible says a year, and the Babylonian tablets say seven days. Noah's main problem was the lack of fresh water. In the absence of rain, they could only drink beer stored in the holds for trade. According to the Bible, Noah managed to reach and escape on Mount Ararat, but the Sumerian texts said that it was far from over. Creditors began to demand money from Noah, so he decided to leave this country to avoid persecution. The end of Noah's life remains a mystery.

The land abundant with food that God gave to Noah, where his family could not waste time on work and enjoy idleness, could have been Dilmun, now the island of Bahrain. There are a thousand small burial mounds on the island. Only a few of them have been excavated and studied. Perhaps among them there is a grave where the great Noah rests. Gradually, the story of this unusual journey formed the basis of one of the Sumerian legends. Many mythical details were added to it. Subsequently, the text was repeatedly copied and rewritten. More and more changes were made to history. 2000 years later, one of these texts, kept in the library of Babylon, was read by Jewish priests. They found an important moral in it. If people break God-given laws, they pay a terrible price for it. An illustration of this morality then became one of the most popular legends at that time. But now we can imagine an ordinary person, a real ship and a very real adventure.

In eastern Turkey, on the Anatolian coast, not far from the borders with Iran and Armenia, there is a mountain covered with eternal snow. Its height above sea level is only 5165 meters, which does not allow it to be among the highest mountains in the world, but it is one of the most famous peaks on Earth. The name of this mountain is Ararat. In the clear air of the early morning, before the clouds cover the peak, and at dusk, when the clouds go away, revealing the mountain appearing against the background of the evening pink or purple sky before the eyes of people, many look at the outline of a huge ship high on the mountain... Mount Ararat, on at the top of which Noah's Ark should be located, is mentioned in the religious traditions of the Babylonian kingdom and the Sumerian state, in which the name Ut-Napishtim was given instead of Noah. Islamic legends also immortalize Noah (in Arabic Nuh) and his huge ark-ship, but again without even indicating the place of his stay in the mountains, which here is called Al-Jud (peaks), they mean Ararat and two other mountains in the Middle East. The Bible provides us with approximate information about the location of the ark: "... the ark stopped on the Ararat mountains." Travelers, who for centuries made voyages with caravans to Central Asia or back, repeatedly passed near Ararat and then said that they had seen the ark near the top of the mountain, or mysteriously hinted at their intentions to find this ark ship. They even claimed that amulets were made from the wreckage of the ark to protect against illnesses, misfortunes, poisons and unrequited love.

Beginning around 1800, groups of mountain climbers with quadrants, altimeters, and later cameras climbed Ararat. These expeditions did not find the true remains of the huge Noah's Ark, but they did find huge ship-like traces - in the glaciers and near the very top of the mountain they noticed massive columnar formations covered with ice, similar to wooden beams hewn by human hands. At the same time, the opinion was increasingly established that the ark gradually slid down the mountainside and fell apart into numerous fragments, which were now probably frozen into one of the glaciers covering Ararat. If you look at Ararat from the surrounding valleys and foothills, then, with a good imagination, it is not difficult to see the hull of a huge ship in the folds of the mountainous terrain, and notice some elongated oval object in the depths of the gorge or a not entirely clear dark rectangular spot in the ice of the glaciers. However, many explorers who claimed, especially in the last two centuries, that they saw a ship on Ararat, in some cases climbed high into the mountains and found themselves, as they claimed, in close proximity to the ark, most of which was buried under ice.

Legends about an unusually large wooden ship, which has survived entire civilizations over millennia, do not seem absolutely plausible to many. After all, wood, iron, copper, bricks and other building materials, with the exception of huge rock blocks, are destroyed over time, and how in this case can a wooden ship survive on top? This question can be answered, apparently, only this way: because this ship was frozen in the ice of a glacier. On the top of Ararat, in the glacier between the two peaks of the mountain, it is cold enough to preserve a ship built from thick logs, which, as is mentioned in messages coming from the depths of millennia, “were carefully tarred inside and out.” In the reports of mountain climbers and airplane pilots about their visual observations of a ship-like object that they noticed on Ararat, they always talk about parts of the ship covered with a solid shell of ice, or about traces within the glacier, reminiscent of the outline of a ship, corresponding to the size of the ark, given in the Bible: “three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.”

Thus, it can be argued that the preservation of the ark mainly depends on climatic conditions. Approximately every twenty years, exceptionally warm periods occurred in the Ararat mountain range. In addition, every year in August and early September it is very hot, and it is during these periods that reports appear of traces of a large ship being found on the mountain. So, when a ship is covered with ice, it cannot weather and rot, like a number of extinct animals known to scientists: Siberian mammoths or saber-tooth tigers and other mammals from the Pleistocene era found in Alaska and northern Canada. When removed from the ice captivity, they were completely intact, even in their stomachs there was still undigested food.

Since certain areas of the surface of Ararat are covered with snow and ice throughout the year, searchers for the remains of a large ship could not notice them. If this ship on the mountain is covered with snow and ice all the time, extensive special research is needed. But it is very difficult to carry them out, because the mountain peak is fraught, according to the residents of the surrounding villages, with a danger for mountain climbers, consisting in the fact that supernatural forces protect Ararat from people’s attempts to find Noah’s Ark. This “protection” manifests itself in various natural disasters: avalanches, sudden rockfalls, severe hurricanes in the immediate vicinity of the peak. Unexpected fogs deprive climbers of the ability to navigate, so that among snow and ice fields and deep gorges they often find their graves in icy, bottomless cracks covered with snow. In the foothills there are many poisonous snakes, wolf packs are often found, very dangerous wild dogs, bears inhabit large and small caves in which climbers often try to make a halt, and, in addition, Kurdish bandits reappear from time to time. In addition, by decision of the Turkish authorities, the approaches to the mountain were guarded for a long time by gendarmerie detachments.

Many historical evidence that something similar to a ship was noticed on Ararat belonged to those who visited nearby settlements and cities and admired Ararat from there. Other observations belong to those who, traveling with caravans to Persia, passed along the Anatolian plateau. Despite the fact that many of the evidence dates back to ancient times and the Middle Ages, some of them contained details that modern researchers noticed much later. Beroes, Babylonian chronicler, in 275 BC. wrote: “... a ship that sank to the ground in Armenia,” and, in addition, mentioned: “... the resin from the ship was scraped off and amulets were made from it.” Exactly the same information is given by the Jewish chronicler Josephus, who wrote his works in the first century after the conquest of Judea by the Romans. He presented a detailed account of Noah and the Flood and, in particular, wrote: “One part of the ship can still be found today in Armenia ... there people collect resin to make amulets.” In the late Middle Ages, one of the legends says that the resin was ground into powder, dissolved in liquid and drunk as a medicine to protect against poisoning. The references of these and other ancient writers to this ship tar are interesting not only because they clearly correspond to certain passages in the book of Genesis, but also because this huge ship turned out to be quite accessible centuries after the Flood, and because it gives a fairly realistic explanation of that the wooden pillars and beams from which the ship was built were well preserved under a layer of eternal ice high on the mountain.

Josephus, in his “History of the Jewish War,” makes the following interesting remark: “The Armenians call this place a “dock,” where the ark remained forever, and show parts of it that have survived to this day.” Nicholas from Damascus, who wrote the “Chronicles of the World” in the 1st century after Christ, called Mount Baris: “... in Armenia there is a high mountain called Baris, on which many fugitives from the global flood found salvation. There on the top of this mountain One man stopped, having sailed in an ark, the fragments of which were preserved there for a long time." Baris was another name for Mount Ararat, which in Armenia was also called Masis. One of the most famous travelers of the past, Marco Polo, passed near Ararat on his way to China in the last third of the 15th century. In his book “The Travels of the Venetian Marco Polo” there is a stunning message about the ark: “...You should know that in this country of Armenia, on the top of a high mountain, Noah’s Ark rests, covered with eternal snow, and no one can climb there, to the top , especially since the snow never melts, and new snowfalls add to the thickness of the snow cover.However, its lower layers melt and the resulting streams and rivers, flowing into the valley, thoroughly moisten the surrounding area, on which a thick cover of grass grows, attracting people from all over the area in the summer numerous herds of herbivorous large and small animals."

This description of Mount Ararat remains relevant to this day, with the exception of the statement that no one can climb the mountain. His most interesting observation is that snow and ice melt the ground and water flows out from under the glacial ice. It is especially important to note that modern researchers have discovered wooden beams and posts processed by human hands in glacial cracks. The German traveler Adam Olearius visited Ararat at the beginning of the 16th century and wrote in his book “Travel to Muscovy and Persia”: “Armenians and Persians believe that on the mentioned mountain there are still fragments of the ark, which over time have become hard and durable like stone ".

Olearius's remark about the petrification of wood refers to the beams^D that were found above the border of the forest zone and are now located in the Etchmiadzin monastery; they are also similar to individual parts of the ark that were found in our time by the French climber and explorer" Fernand Navarre and other travelers. The Franciscan monk Oderich, who reported his travels to the pope in Avignon in 1316, saw Mount Ararat and wrote about this: "People , living there, told us that no one climbed the mountain, since this probably could not please the Almighty..." The legend that God does not allow people to climb Ararat is still alive. This taboo was broken only " in 1829 by the Frenchman J. F. Parrot, who made the first ascent to the top of the mountain. The glacier on the northwestern slopes of the mountain is named in his honor. Half a century later, essentially, a competition began for the right to be the first to find the remains of Noah's ship. In 1856 " three atheist foreigners" hired two guides in Armenia and set off with the goal of "refusing the existence of the biblical ark." Only decades later, before his death, one of the guides admitted that "to their surprise, they discovered the ark." At first they tried to destroy it, but they failed because it was too big. Then they swore that they would not tell anyone about their discovery, and they forced their accompanying people to do the same...

In 1876, Lord Bryce, at an altitude of 13 thousand feet (4.3 kilometers), discovered and took a sample from a piece of processed log 4 feet (1.3 meters) long. In 1892, Archdeacon Nuri, along with five accompanying people, observed a “large wooden vessel” near the summit. True, "" his testimony remained unconfirmed. "In 1916, during the First World War, the Russian pilot V. Roskovitsky reported in a report that he had observed a “lying large ship” on the slopes of Ararat from an airplane. Equipped by the Russian government, despite the war, the expedition began searching. Subsequently, direct participants claimed that the goal was achieved by them, photographed and examined in detail. Apparently, this was the first and last official expedition to the Ark. But, unfortunately, its results were lost in Petrograd in 1917, and the territory of Greater Ararat was captured by Turkish troops...

In the summer of 1949, two groups of researchers went to the ark at once. The first, consisting of four people led by a pensioner from North Carolina, Dr. Smith, observed only one strange “vision” at the top. But the second, consisting of Frenchmen, reported that “they saw Noah’s Ark... but not on Mount Ararat,” but on the neighboring peak of Jubel Judi. There, two Turkish journalists subsequently allegedly saw a vessel measuring 500x80x50 feet (165x25x15 meters) with bones of sea animals. But three years later, Ricoeur's expedition found nothing of the sort. In 1955, Fernand Navarre managed to find an ancient ship among the ice; from under the ice he removed an L-shaped beam and several planks. After 14 years, he repeated his attempt with the help of the American organization "Search" and brought several more boards. In the USA, the radiocarbon method showed the age of the tree to be 1400 years old; in Bordeaux and Madrid the result was different - 5000 years old!

Following Navarro, John Liby from San Francisco went to Ararat, having recently seen the exact location of the ark in a dream, and... found nothing. Seventy-year-old “Poor Liby,” as journalists dubbed him, made seven unsuccessful ascents in three years, during one of which he barely managed to escape from a bear throwing stones! Tom Crotser was one of the last to make five ascents. Returning with his trophy board, he exclaimed in front of the press: “Yes, there are 70 thousand tons of this wood, I swear on my head!” And again, radiocarbon analysis showed the age of the boards to be 4000-5000 years old... The history of all expeditions (official ones, at least) ends in 1974. It was then that the Turkish government, having placed monitoring posts along the border line on Ararat, closed the area to all visits.

In parallel with the “land” expeditions, evidence of the ark comes from pilots. In 1943, two American pilots, while flying over Ararat, tried to see something similar to the outline of a large ship from a height of several thousand meters. Later, while flying along the same route, they took with them a photographer who took a photograph that later appeared in the American Air Force newspaper Stars and Stripes. In the summer of 1953, American oilman George Jefferson Green, flying in a helicopter in the same area, took six very clear photographs from a height of 30 meters of a large ship half buried in the rocks and sliding down a mountain ledge of ice. Greene subsequently failed to equip an expedition to this place, and when he died nine years later, all the originals of his photographs disappeared...

In the late spring or even summer of 1960, American pilots of the 428th Tactical Aviation Squadron, stationed near Hell) in Turkey and under the auspices of NATO, noticed some kind of ship"-like structure on the western spur of Ararat. The American captain Schwinghammer wrote about this flight in 1981: “A huge cargo cart or rectangular boat in a water-filled crevice high up on the mountain was clearly visible." Moreover, he argued that the object was slowly sliding down the slope and should have gotten stuck among mountain ledges and boulders. In 1974 year, the American organization "Earth Research Technical Satellite" (ERTS) took photographs from a height of 4600 meters of the mountain spurs of Ararat. The photographs, obtained with multiple magnifications, clearly presented this extraordinary object lying in one of the crevices of the mountain, "very similar in its shape and size of the ark." In addition, the same area was photographed from an altitude of 7500 and 8000 meters, and the resulting images of glacial formations were quite consistent with what had been seen earlier by pilots who spoke about the ark or other unusual object they had seen. However, not a single object recorded from such a height, even with high magnification, can be completely confidently identified with the ark, because it is more than half hidden under the snow or is in the shadow of rocky ledges. In 1985, T. McNellis, an American entrepreneur living in Germany, traveled through the northwestern and northeastern foothills of Ararat and communicated a lot with the local residents, most often old Turkish officers who had received military education in Germany, and young Turks who have been working part-time in Germany in recent years. Many of them are firmly convinced that the ark can be easily found: “Go left along the edge of the Aor chasm up the slope, then turn left again and after a while you will reach the ark along this path.” They explained to him that the ark was not visible from the lower ledges, since this ship, which had been sliding from the top of the mountain for thousands of years, now lay quietly under the dense ice cover of a huge glacier.

So, there is a lot of evidence about the existence of the ark. But in order for them to become reliable, it is necessary to find the ark itself. Maybe now, due to the general warming of the international climate, expeditions to Ararat will resume? In the meantime, we can only hope that the ancient ship preserved in the ice will not crumble while waiting for researchers...

Thanks to Noah and his obedience to God, the human race did not perish during the global flood, animals and birds were saved. A wooden ship 147 meters long and smeared with resin, at the behest of God, saved living creatures from the raging elements. The famous biblical legend haunts people to this day.

What is Noah's Ark?

Noah's Ark is a huge ship that God ordered Noah to build, board it with his family, and take all the animals, two male and one female, for further reproduction. And while Noah and his family and animals are in the ark, a flood will fall on the Earth to destroy the entire human race.

Noah's Ark - Orthodoxy

Noah's Ark from the Bible is known to all believers and not only. When people fell morally, and thereby angered God, he decided to destroy the entire human race and arrange. But not everyone deserved this terrible fate of being wiped off the face of the Earth; there was also a righteous family pleasing to God - the family of Noah.

How many years did Noah take to build the ark?

God ordered Noah to build an ark, a wooden vessel three stories high, three hundred cubits long and fifty wide, and coat it with pitch. There is still debate about what kind of wood Noah's ark was built from. The gopher tree, mentioned once in the Bible, is considered to be a cypress, a white oak, and a tree that has long ceased to exist.

There is not a word in the Holy Scriptures about when Noah began building the ark. But it follows from the text that at the age of 500 Noah had three sons, and the command from God came when he already had sons. The construction of the ark was completed on its 600th anniversary. That is, Noah spent about 100 years building the ark.

There is a more precise figure in the Bible, around which there is debate whether it has anything to do with the construction period of the ark. In the book of Genesis, chapter six, it talks about God giving people 120 years. During these years, Noah preached about repentance and predicted the destruction of the human race through a flood, while he himself made preparations - he built the ark. Noah, like many antediluvian characters, is hundreds of years old. There is an interpretation of the verse about 120 years as meaning that now the life span of people will be shortened.

How long did Noah float on the ark?

The legend of Noah's Ark from the Bible says that it rained for forty days, and for another hundred and ten days water came from underground. The flood lasted one hundred and fifty days, the water completely covered the surface of the earth, even the tops of the highest mountains were not visible. Noah floated on the ark even longer until the water left - about one year.

Where did Noah's Ark stop?

Very soon after the flood ended and the water began to recede, Noah’s ark, according to legend, landed on the mountains of Ararat. But the peaks were still not visible, Noah waited another forty days after he saw the first peaks. The first bird released from Noah's Ark, the raven, returned with nothing - it did not find land. So the raven returned more than once. Then Noah released a dove, which on its first flight did not bring anything, and on the second it brought an olive leaf, and the third time the dove did not return. After this, Noah and his family and animals left the ark.

Noah's Ark - fact or fiction?

The debate about whether Noah's Ark really existed or is just a beautiful biblical legend continues to this day. Detective fever affected not only scientists. American anesthesiologist Ronn Wyatt was so inspired by photographs published in Life magazine in 1957 that he set out to find Noah's Ark.

A photo taken by a Turkish pilot in the area showed a boat-shaped trail. An enthusiast, Wyatt retrained as a biblical archaeologist and found that place. The controversy did not subside - what Wyatt declared to be the remains of Noah's Ark, that is, petrified wood, according to geologists, was nothing more than clay.

Ron Wyatt has a whole crowd of followers. Later, new photographs were published from the “mooring” site of the famous biblical ship. All of them depicted only outlines that resembled the shape of a boat. All this could not fully satisfy scientific researchers, who even questioned the existence of the famous ship.

Noah's Ark - facts

Scientists have found Noah's Ark, but some inconsistencies still make skeptics doubt the reality of the biblical tale:

1. A flood of such magnitude that the tops of the highest mountains are hidden is contrary to all natural laws. The Flood, according to scientists, could not have happened. Rather, the legend is about a specific territory, and philologists confirm that in Hebrew land and country are one word.
2. It is simply impossible to build a ship of this size without the use of metal structures, and beyond the power of one family.
3. The number of years Noah lived, 950, confuses many and involuntarily suggests that the whole story is fiction. But philologists came to the rescue here too, saying that there is a possibility that the Biblical Testament meant 950 months. Then everything fits into the normal life span of a person, subject to modern understanding.

Scientists believe that the biblical parable of Noah is an interpretation of another epic. The Sumerian version of the legend talks about Atrahasis, who was ordered by God to build a ship, just like Noah. Only the flood was of a local scale - in the territory of Mesopotamia. This already fits into scientific ideas.

This year, Chinese and Turkish scientists discovered Noah's Ark at an altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level in the vicinity of Mount Ararat. Geological analysis of the found “boards” showed that their age is about 5,000 years, which coincides with the dating of the Great Flood. The expedition members are confident that these are the remains of the legendary ship, but not all researchers share their optimism. They skeptically remind that all the water on Earth is not enough to lift the ship to such a height.

Briefly about the article: As you know, the Ark was built by amateurs, and professionals designed the Titanic. Perhaps the sanctuary ship of the biblical Noah is not the most famous of the ships that plied the world's oceans, but the motif of the flood and the salvation of mankind appears in almost all the mythologies of the world. And half a century ago in Turkey they found something that, if desired, could be mistaken for the remains of the Ark... So is it still a legend or history? Read in "Time Machine"!

SHIP OF LIFE

THE LEGEND OF NOAH'S ARK

Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction must stay within the bounds of plausibility, but truth does not.

Mark Twain

The ancient Greek "Argo", the German battleship "Tirpitz", the reconstructed Indian raft "Kon-Tiki", the infamous "Titanic", the heroic "Varyag", and the "Black Pearl" from "Pirates of the Caribbean" - the names of these ships have gone down in history and do not require much explanation. However, the world's most famous ship was built thousands of years ago. He is rarely remembered. He was larger than most of the above-mentioned “celebrities” and, according to legend, it was thanks to him that you and I were able to be born.

“Noah’s Ark” is a concept that is associated with something incredibly distant and old. By ear, it can be confused with the “Ark of the Covenant” - in other words, a portable sarcophagus in which the stone tablets of Moses with the Ten Commandments were kept. There is nothing strange in the fact that the ship was called the “ark”: after all, it was designed to preserve the greatest value on Earth - life. What is Noah's Ark through the eyes of a modern researcher? What facts might be hidden in the confusing biblical texts?

Cleansing

This story is told in the Old Testament (chapter six of Genesis). Some time after people were expelled from Eden, the human race fell victim to many vices. God decided to cleanse him of filth, and to do this in the literal sense of the word - with the help of water. The only people on the entire planet who deserved to be saved were the family of the patriarch Noah.

According to the extremely precise instructions of God, Noah built a ship of enormous size and put on it his wife, sons Shem, Japheth and Ham along with their wives, as well as pairs of different sexes “of all flesh” - 7 pairs of clean animals, 7 pairs of unclean and 7 pairs of birds (some Bible translations do not mention the number 7, but simply talk about animals and birds). In addition, food and plant seeds were taken on board.

Noah left the ark and made a sacrifice to God (the Bible does not specify where he took the sacrificial animals from - probably the same “lucky ones” whom he saved were used). Seeing Noah's righteousness, God promised not to destroy the human race again, “for all evil is from his youth,” and also provided people with the first Testament.

Humanity was now given the right to use nature at its own discretion, but not to eat anyone alive (“flesh with soul, do not eat its blood”). God also established the simple principle of “thou shalt not kill” (blood for blood), and sealed his Covenant with a rainbow appearing in the clouds.

Ark drawings

God told Noah to build an ark out of wood gopher. What it is is unknown. This word is used only once in the Bible. It can be assumed that it comes from the Hebrew “kofer” - resin. The ark was probably made of some kind of wood treated with resin.

Researchers believe that in ancient times, cypress was the most popular ship material in the Mediterranean region. It was used by the Phoenicians and even Alexander the Great. It is popular among boat designers even today, because cypress resists moisture and rot well.

The design data for the ark was described in detail by God. The vessel was 300 cubits long, 50 wide and 30 high. There were two additional decks inside - the ark was “three-story.” Despite such accuracy, the exact dimensions of the ark are difficult to determine. The fact is that the Bible does not say which qubit it is referring to. If measured in Egyptian cubits, the ark was 129 meters long, 21.5 meters wide and 12.9 meters high.

It turns out that the ark did not even reach half the length of the Queen Mary 2 superliner (345 meters) - the largest liner on Earth, however, for its time, Noah’s ship was not just a supergiant, but something completely incredible and unthinkable. If we measure it in Sumerian qubits, then the ark will be even larger: 155.2 x 25.9 x 15.5 meters.

The ratio of the length and height of the ark (6 to 1) is still used by shipbuilders as optimal. It gives the ship maximum stability (unlike the cubic ark of the Babylonians described in the Epic of Gilgamesh).

Artists usually depict the ark as a very large ship (more likely even a mega-boat) of a traditional design with the same bow and stern shape. Sometimes some kind of building is placed on it - probably because Jewish texts use the word "tebah" (box) in descriptions of the ark - but most often the upper deck of the ark is open, which is completely untrue, especially given the 40 days of rain, under which he swam.

The Bible says that the ark had a door in one of its sides, as well as a window in the roof. The Hebrew word tzohar (window) literally means “hole for light.” Whether it had rain shutters or served as a ventilation shaft is unknown. God ordered “to reduce it into a qubit at the top” - that is, the diameter of the window was about half a meter.

"Pros and cons"

The story of how God became disillusioned with humanity and decided to destroy all people except Noah and his family is itself very complex and sensitive. Atheists criticize it in terms of moral issues. On the other hand, the Old Testament vision of God (Yahweh) is radically different from Christian norms.

It should be kept in mind that the God described in the first half of the Bible is not a kind old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud. From a modern point of view, he can behave extremely cruelly, but for those times and conditions this was almost the norm.

The historical reliability of information about the Flood is still hotly debated. On the one hand, the Bible meticulously describes the chronology of this event, and modern science has accumulated a sufficient amount of information that such disasters actually took place - and more than once.

On the other hand, global floods of biblical proportions occurred millions of years ago - at a time when prehistoric monkeys had not even climbed out of the trees. Recording the global flood in the memory of unreasonable ancestors for millions of years is an unrealistic task, unless, of course, one assumes the existence of some kind of proto-civilization of people and does not turn to theories about the intervention of aliens in our evolution.

In earlier times and to this day, the vast majority of humanity lives close to water - oceans, seas or large rivers. Since not a single planetary-scale flood occurred on Earth for several thousand years BC, it can be assumed that local, local floods could be considered by certain cultures in a limited geographical perspective - that is, as “worldwide”.

The great civilizations of antiquity - Egypt, Assyria, Sumer, Babylon - existed on regularly flooded plains. This may explain the amazing unanimity of myths that arose in different parts of the world and tell about a certain hero who miraculously escaped the global flood.

And finally, another popular interpretation of the flood myth is a metaphor. The death and rebirth of humanity is a fictional (or partly fictional) plot device that has a very clear moral and educational function, and therefore is universal for both China and South America.

From the Book of Genesis it follows that before the flood people lived 700-900 years, but after the flood life expectancy dropped sharply to about a century. Proponents of the reality of the flood explain this for two reasons: genetic defects that inevitably arise due to cross-marriages between the descendants of Noah's family (8 people in total), as well as deterioration of living conditions due to the environmental consequences of the flood.

The most painful theme of the flood myth is the number of animals that should have been taken on board the ship to reproduce the fauna of the Earth. Modern biology includes thousands of species of living beings - all of them simply could not fit into the ark. There are other mysteries - how were they all able to survive 150 days outside their natural habitat? Diseases, aggressiveness of animals towards each other, issues of feeding fresh meat to predators during and the first days after a flood - all this raises very serious doubts about the need for a literal interpretation of the “universal flood”.

How did different types of rescued animals end up on different continents? Marsupials are characteristic only of Australia, and, for example, lemurs are characteristic only of Madagascar and the nearest islands. Rising sea levels would certainly lead to salinization of fresh water bodies, and this would kill almost all their inhabitants. Finally, most plants would not survive being flooded and deprived of sunlight for 150 days.

Proponents of the myth have their own objections. Firstly, of all currently classified species of living beings, about 60% are insects, which would not require much space on a ship. Secondly, biblical terminology (“every creature in pairs”) allows that it was not “species” of animals that were taken into the ark, but the most common representatives of their orders or even families. The total number of “passengers” would then be only a few hundred.

Predators could be fed with dried meat or caught sea creatures (fish, turtles). As practice shows, fresh water can “drift” for a long time in a separate layer in salt water, without mixing with it. And finally, many types of plant seeds are capable of hibernating for many months and even years, surviving unfavorable periods.

Stories about the global flood are repeated in the myths of different nations - almost each of them has its own ark and its own Noah. Among the Babylonians (“The Epic of Gilgamesh”), this is the immortal Utnapishtim, who was warned by the god Enki about the upcoming flood and built a huge ship (it was decided to drown the people only because they made a lot of noise and disturbed the god of air Enlil from sleeping). In Sumerian culture, the god Chronos similarly warned a man named Ziusudra to create a ship for himself and load his family and a pair of each animal onto it.

The ancient Greeks believed that one day Zeus decided to drown the people of the golden age, and Prometheus, having learned about this, taught his son Deucalion to make a vessel. After the flood, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha landed at Mount Parnassus. At the instigation of the gods, they began to throw stones behind their backs. Those thrown by Deucalion turned into men, and by Pyrrha into women.

In Norse mythology, the ice giant Bergelmir and his wife were the only ones of their kind who were able to survive the death of the ancestor of the giants, Ymir. God Odin and his brothers killed him, and the giant’s blood flooded the earth. Bergelmir and his wife climbed into the empty trunk of a fallen tree, survived the flood and revived the race of ice giants.

The supreme deity of the Incas, Kon Tiki Viracocha, once decided to arrange for the people living around Lake Titicaca a significant event called “Unu Pachacuti,” that is, a great flood. Only two survived, and instead of a ship, their refuge was walled up caves.

According to Mayan beliefs, the god of wind and fire, Huracan (it is believed that the word “hurricane” came from him) flooded the entire earth after the very first people angered the celestials.

The Chinese ruler Da Yu ("great Yu") once spent 10 years working with the goddess Nuwa to repair the leaky sky - from which it rained all the time, causing a great flood.

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An unexpected surge of interest in Noah's Ark occurred in 1956, when Turkish Air Force captain Ilham Durupinar, while flying around Mount Ararat, photographed a rocky object that suspiciously resembled an ancient ship. Later, measurements were taken from the photograph - the “petrified ark” was indeed about 150 meters long.

It is located in a place named after the pilot - Durupinar, at an altitude of about 2 kilometers. Its “nose” looks exactly at Mount Tendyurek - as if the ship really moored near its top, and when the water went away, it slid down.

Unfortunately, numerous expeditions and new aerial photographs (even American shuttles and military satellites were involved) showed that it was just an unusually shaped rock - although there were indeed shells embedded in it, indicating the former presence of water.

But the modern Indiana Joneses are not discouraged: there are theories according to which the wood of the ship could mineralize, turning into rock, and the interior of the ark would gradually fill with a mixture of ice, clay and stones, creating the illusion of ordinary rock.

Did Noah's Ark Exist? You and I will probably never know about this. In general, it does not at all have to exist in reality - this legend is so old and endowed with such inner strength that it is simply inseparable from human culture, and in some sense is much more real than many other stories of distant antiquity.