Noah’s Ark

[FaithT]

We have a Noah's Ark in my state. It is a water park. I do not remember going, or maybe have gone only once.


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We used to have a restaurant named Noah’s Ark in my state. It was shaped like an ark but I never ate there.

 

[AlexB23]

We used to have a restaurant named Noah’s Ark in my state. It was shaped like an ark but I never ate there.

That sounded cool. What food was it?

 

[FaithT]

That sounded cool. What food was it?

I don’t know.

 

[AlexB23]

I don’t know.

Hopefully, it was delicious for others who have been to Noah's Ark.

 

[jep0233]

I read with see and read with incredulity. People with a belief in God have trouble with God and Noah's Ark? Is anything too hard for a Creator, a Father God? There are several Noah's Arks built to specifications in the world and they are enourmous marvels of innovation. Only God could have directed Noah. He was not a maritime ship builder. People having never needed boats or ships before that. Then the feeding of all the animals. Aaah, someone stumbles at the feeding. God fed his people during times of famine. The widow of Zarepth had only a handful of flour and a spot of oil and Elijah said give it to me and it will not fail you until plently has come again. It lasted until the famine was over and the rain came and it fed Elijah, she and her son without fail. Lions and Lambs? Isn't it prophesied the time will come when the lions will lie down with the lambs? This is God's doing. And yet, even Christians can't belief and call it a fable, tale or child's story. The trouble here is how one looks at the Bible. The Word of God or collection of men's stories. The Devil dances! smh

 

[Gnarwhal]

Are Catholics obligated to believe in a literal Noah’s Ark? Because I just saw a segment on our news that featured the zoo caretakers and how much they feed the animals. It would seem to me it would be impossible to have kept all the animals fed.

I think there are some accounts that suggest all of the animals essentially hibernated during the voyage, which would've negated any need to feed them. So that makes sense.

Also, there are "great flood" narratives in several ancient cultures. I remember reading within the Epic of Gilgamesh the Sumerian flood myth, though it differs from the ancient Hebrew account of Noah. The Mesopotamian version had five gods secretly plotting to cause a flood, one of them (Ea/Enki) breaks his secrecy and tells the man Utnapishtim and tells him to demolish his house and build a boat from it. Ea was specific about the dimensions of the boat. The story subsequently follows the major plot points of the Noahic account.

A lot of scholars, both secular and Christian, draw different conclusions. Some say all of these accounts are evidence of a severe regional flood that may have even reshaped the terrain and caused mass-devastation of the societies that existed there at the time. Others have suggested these are just a series of myths that subsequent cultures have borrowed from those preceding them to communicate a point about sin and consequences and God's sense of justice.

While scholars hold that stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh predate the Genesis account, I think there's a distinct possibility that the devil could've corrupted the timeline somehow as well as the content of the story. I think it's entirely possible there was indeed a global flood that God used to actually restructure the cosmos because the corruption of sin had spun out of control (not his control, but just as an expression). There are some notes about the natural world in the antediluvian period (pre-flood) that indicate the physical world was ordered differently with features like the firmament. Obviously that could just be the word used to describe a very different perception by antediluvian man of the same thing we see today, or perhaps God really did originally create the world with a layer of water in the sky. Who knows, he is God after all. He can make creation however he wants and then remake it again like he did.

Sorry for the longwinded post but to answer your question @FaithT, I've never heard anyone other than maybe fundamentalist baptists or non-denominational Christians say that belief in a literal flood is required, binding, and linked to salvation.

 

[iarwain]

I think there are some accounts that suggest all of the animals essentially hibernated during the voyage, which would've negated any need to feed them. So that makes sense.

Yes, I've heard the possibility of this raised also. You have to remember that the ark story is a miracle, and includes God's intervention. He could have put the animals in a hibernated state, or rained manna (or something like it) down in their stalls if He wanted.

 

[RileyG]

I don’t know.

I think there’s one in Iowa! I think it’s Italian food!