| vizunary said: I know it was many men over many years, which could easily lead to even more personalization of the works. Not to mention the vast number of translations leading to errors.... Like I SAID, I've taken it out until I can find the source. I don't have any urge to familiarise myself to the Bible any more than I've already been subjected to. Gross impossibilities like the Ark, at least literally, have stopped any reasonable explanations coming from that particular source. Even the story of Jesus parallels older similar tales, or do you think he was the 1st son of a god that rose from the dead.... I can't copy and paste with my PS3, but I'll give some sources when I get back to work. Or just look for folk lore and legend "heroes" and you'll see a few that easily outdate Jesus. |
First, these 'gross impossibilities' of the ark are severely overstated. The bible says that Noah took 'two of every kind, and seven of every clean animal' on the ark. The ark was to be 300 cubits wide, 50 cubits long, and 30 feet wide. A cubit is 22 inches, so therefore 300 x 22 inches = 6,600; 50 x 22 inches = 1,100; 30 x 22 inches = 660
6,600/12 = 550 feet; 1100/12 = 91.7 feet; 660/12 = 55 feet. 550 x 91.7 x 55 = 2,773,925 cubic feet. If we assume that a little less than half (about 45%) of this was taken up by storage and a small area for human living quarters, we are left with 1,525,658 cubic feet.
The following is using a much lower calculation of size (18 inches as the absolute minimum size of a cubit) taken from gotquestions.org.
The total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts.
The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters] --that would be equal to the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars.
Now comes the question, how many land dwelling air breathing animals would have had to be taken aboard the ark to survive the flood?
According to Ernest Mayr, America's leading taxonomist, there are over 1 million species of animals in the world.
However, the vast majority of these are capable of surviving in water and would not need to be brought aboard the ark. Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish or the 1,700 tunicates (marine chordates like sea squirts) found throughout the seas of the world, or the 600 echinoderms including star fish and sea urchins, or the 107,000 mollusks such as mussels, clams and oysters, or the 10,000 coelenterates like corals and sea anemones, jelly fish and hydroids or the 5,000 species of sponges, or the 30,000 protozoans, the microscopic single-celled creatures.
In addition, some of the mammals are aquatic. For example, the whales, seals and porpoises. The amphibians need not all have been included, nor all the reptiles, such as sea turtles, and alligators. Moreover, a large number of the arthropods numbering 838,000 species, such as lobsters, shrimp, crabs and water fleas and barnacles are marine creatures. And the insect species among arthropoda are usually very small. Also, many of the 35,000 species of worms as well as many of the insects could have survived outside the Ark.
How many animals needed to be brought aboard?
Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book,The Genesis Flood state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark. In his well documented book, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, John Woodmorappe suggests that far fewer animals would have been transported upon the ark. By pointing out that the word "specie" is not equivalent to the "created kinds" of the Genesis account, Woodmorappe credibly demonstrates that as few as 2,000 animals may have been required on the ark. To pad this number for error, he continues his study by showing that the ark could easily accommodate 16,000 animals.)
But, let's be generous and add on a reasonable number to include extinct animals. Then add on some more to satisfy even the most skeptical. Let's assume 50,000 animals, far more animals than required, were on board the ark, and these need not have been the largest or even adult specimens.
Remember there are really only a few very large animals, such as the dinosaur or the elephant, and these could be represented by young ones (not babies, but younger and no more than half the size of adults). Assuming the average animal to be about the size of a sheep and using a railroad car for comparison, we note that the average double-deck stock car can accommodate 240 sheep. Thus, three trains hauling 69 cars each would have ample space to carry the 50,000 animals, filling only 37% of the ark. This would leave an additional 361 cars or enough to make 5 trains of 72 cars each to carry all of the food and baggage plus Noah's family of eight people. The Ark had plenty of space.
The bigger problem would have been the construction of the Ark. But the Bible indicates that Noah did this under Divine guidance and there is no reason to believe he did not hire additional workmen.
Also, your comparison of Jesus to 'legends and folklore' is rediculous. Jesus is a historical figure written about, not only in the bible, but in secular texts as well.
To determine if a text is accurate, historians look at these things:
1. The closeness in time and geography to the actual events
2. The number of copies in existence
3. If the copies have blatent contradictions or factual innacuracies
4. If the description of the historical layout (roads, buildings, etc are accurate)
Other ancient documents are concidered reliable, for example- The accounts of the Gallic wars, written by Julius Ceasar and a few others. The earliest copies of these accounts are from 1000 years after the original date of writing and there are only 10 such copies in existence and they are concidered by historians to be accurate.
In contrast, there are over 5000 ancient copies of the new testament in existence, written by eyewitnesses of the events, and many of these date as few as 300 years after they were originally written. Archaeology backs up all of the descriptions of the physical layout of ancient cities described in the new testament. These copies have no significant discrepencies in descriptions of events with each other, or with the current translations (the discrepencies that have been found are typos, not factual problems). If writings with far fewer copies that farther removed from the original timewise are concidered accurate by historians, then the new testament should be concidered VERY accurate. And if the historical and archaeological accounts are accurate, why would the accounts of miracles not be?
THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS: THEIR DATE AND ATTESTATION: http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc02.htm
And to say "I don't have any urge to familiarise myself to the Bible" takes away much of your credibility on the subject. In order to argue against any subject, you must be willing to become familiar with that subject.
