From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark Free

FREE AND THERE WAS LIGHT: FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD TO NOAHS ARK PDF

Noah's ark is described in detail in the Torah as an enclosed four sided structure with only one opening to the outside, on the very top, as the verse says, " make a window for the ark. Some of the commentaries suggest that it was a skylight; others describe it as a type of precious stone that emitted light. How was it possible that one small opening, either a single window or a precious stone was able to light up the entire ark, especially since each type of animal had its own compartment Rashi on and each floor was separate from the next? Also, we know that the light of the sun and the moon did not penetrate during the Flood see Rashi so how could a window have helped anyway? There had to have been other light sources. Thus, we understand that Noah was not given every single small instruction about the ark's construction or furnishings, only those that were not obvious, and that details like bringing oil lamps and wicks and any other needs were left to Noah's judgment. Therefore, there must be And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark special intention in the commandment to make a " tzohar ", applicable not only for Noah's ark but for future generations. What is the difference between a window and a light producing stone? A window's light comes from outside, while a tzohar stone shines from within. Within this creation is hidden divine light, in every aspect of our day to day lives. Our purpose is to remove the concealment - to make a "window" within the concealment of nature so that the divine light can shine through. Chassidim tell a story about a man balancing his income and expenses, until he got to the sum total; "What is the real bottom line? What does the shining stone mean for us? Though a person must remove the concealment, he can also transform the world until the physical reality itself will shine with the divine light. We must cause the "stone" i. This is the businessman who realizes that the purpose of every challenge — i. He can do this by making it part of his business to learn Torah; or to "interrupt" his work to pray the afternoon prayers; or even to share a Jewish word with his business opponents across the table because this is the true purpose. It's a deal! Shabbat ShalomShaul. Copyright by KabbalaOnline. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or portions thereof, in any form, unless with permission, in writing, from Kabbala Online. Text with broken underline will provide a popup explanation when rolled over with a mouse. Here's a great tip! And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark your email address to get our weekly email with fresh, exciting and thoughtful content that will enrich your inbox and your life. No Thanks. Weekly Magazine Daily Dose. Ask the Rabbi. Chabad Locator Find. Tools Directory of Tools:. Birthday Lookup. Candle Lighting Times. Chabad Locator. Date Converter. Email Lists. Event Directory. Greeting Cards. Halachic Times. Jewish And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark. Judaica Store. Knowledge Base. SMS Shabbat Times. Yahrtzeit Lookup. Popular Tools:. Shabbat Times. Email Subscriptions. More Sites Today is Wed. Classic Kabbalah. Details…were left to Noah 's judgment…. Our purpose is to remove …the concealment of nature so that the divine light can shine through…. By Shaul Yosef Leiter. Rabbi Shaul Yosef Leiter is a co-founder, executive director and featured teacher of Ascent-of-Safed. If you enjoyed this article, we encourage you to distribute it further, provided that you comply with Chabad. Outside-In Perception Satisfaction. You may also be interested in How did Noah fit all the animals in the Ark? Feeding Animals. Life in a Box. Join the Discussion Sort By:. Newest Oldest. Posting Guidelines. Email me when new comments are posted. Please send me Chabad. We will not share your email address. Connie Canton, GA February 23, Current Torah Portion. Archives Bereishit - Genesis. Shemot - Exodus. Vayikra - Leviticus. Bamidbar - Numbers. Devarim - Deuteronomy. Daily Zohar - Hok L'Yisrael. Related Topics. Window 4 Noach 83 Ark, Noah's 32 Kabbalah The larger, bold text is the direct translation of the classic text source. Subscribe to get our weekly magazine! Kazenpioneer of TorahJudaism and Jewish information on the web. Noah's Ark - Wikipedia

Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius c. Many searches have been mounted for the Ark, but no confirmable physical proof of the Ark has ever been found. The structure of the Ark and the chronology of the flood are homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship. For well over a century, scholars have recognized that the Bible's story of Noah's Ark is based on older Mesopotamian models. There are nine known versions of the Mesopotamian flood story, each more or less adapted from an earlier version. In the oldest version, inscribed in the Sumerian city of Nippur c. This story is known as the Sumerian Flood Story and probably derives from an earlier version. The Ziusudra version tells how he builds a boat and rescues life when the gods decide to destroy it. This basic plot is common in several subsequent flood-stories and heroes, including Noah. Ziusudra's Sumerian name means "He of long life. In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood. The version closest to the biblical story of Noah, as well as its most likely source, is that of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh. From the fragments that survive, it seems little changed from the versions of two thousand years before. The parallels between Noah's Ark and the arks of Babylonian flood-heroes Atrahasis and Utnapishtim have often been noted. Atrahasis' Ark was circular, resembling an enormous quffawith one or two decks. Noah's Ark was rectangular with three decks. There is believed to be a progression from a circular to a cubic or square to rectangular. Professor Finkel concluded that And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark iconic story of the Flood, Noah, and the Ark as we know it today certainly originated in the landscape of ancient Mesopotamia, And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark Iraq. Linguistic parallels between Noah's and Atrahasis' arks have also been noted. The word used for "pitch" sealing tar or resin in Genesis is not the normal Hebrew word, but is closely related to the word used in the Babylonian story. However, the causes for God or the gods And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark the flood differ in the various stories. In the Hebrew myth, the flood inflicts God's judgment on wicked humanity. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh gives no reasons, and the flood appears the result of divine caprice. There is consensus among scholars that the Torah the first five books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis was the product of a long and complicated process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile. The myth of the flood closely parallels the story of the creation: a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the Ark plays a pivotal role. The Talmudic tractates SanhedrinAvodah Zarahand Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the Ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. God placed lions and other ferocious animals to protect Noah and his family from the wicked who tried to keep them from the Ark. According to one Midrashit was God, or the angelswho gathered the animals and their food to the Ark. As there had been no need to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the Ark. A differing opinion is that the Ark itself distinguished clean animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter. According to Sanhedrin b, 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. They did not procreate so that the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to leave 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. According to one tradition, 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 interpretation described the refuse as being stored on the topmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, as And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured the food remained fresh. Interpretations of the ark narrative played an essential role in early Christian doctrine. The First Epistle of Peter composed around the end of the first century AD [34] compared Noah's salvation through water to Christian salvation through baptism. Hippolytus of Rome died sought to demonstrate that "the Ark was a symbol of the Christ who was expected", stating that the vessel had its door on the east side—the direction from which Christ would appear at the Second Coming —and that the bones of Adam were brought aboard, together with gold, frankincenseand myrrh the symbols of the Nativity of Christ. Hippolytus furthermore stated that the Ark floated to and fro in the four directions on the waters, making the sign of the cross, before eventually landing on Mount Kardu "in the east, in the land of the sons of Raban, and the Orientals call it Mount Godash; the Armenians call it Ararat". He says male animals were separated from females by sharp stakes to prevent breeding. The early Church Father and theologian Origen c. He also fixed the shape of the Ark as a truncated pyramidsquare at its base, and tapering And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark 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. Early Christian artists depicted Noah standing in a small box on the waves, symbolizing God saving the Christian Church in its turbulent early years. Augustine of Hippo —in his work City of Goddemonstrated that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which according to Christian doctrine is the body of Christ and in turn the body of the Church. Jerome c. In contrast to the Jewish tradition, which uses a term that can be translated as a "box" or " chest " to describe the Ark, surah of the Quran refers to it as a safinaan ordinary ship, and surah describes the Ark as "a thing of boards and nails". Abd Allah ibn Abbasa contemporary of Muhammadwrote that Noah was in doubt as to what shape to make the Ark and that Allah revealed to him that it was to be shaped like a bird's belly and fashioned of teak wood. Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawiwriting in the 13th century, explains that in the first of its three levels, wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second human beings, and the third birds. On every plank was the name of a prophet. Three missing planks, symbolizing three prophets, were brought from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the flood. The body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide the men from the women. Surah says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of Allah it moves and stays! The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi died wrote that Allah commanded the Earth to absorb the water, and certain portions which were slow in obeying received salt water in punishment and so became dry and arid. The water which was not absorbed formed the seas, so that the waters of the flood still exist. Masudi says the ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Meccacircling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judiwhich surah gives as its final resting place. This mountain is 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 Masudi says that the spot could be seen in his time. While research shows a literal Noah's Ark could not be practical, [3] nor is there geologic evidence of a biblical global flood, [45] commentators throughout history have made attempts to demonstrate the Ark's existence. It also attempts to explain how the Ark could house all living animal types: " Buteo and Kircher have proved geometrically, that, taking the common cubit as a foot and a half, the ark was abundantly sufficient for all the animals supposed to be lodged in it The edition attempts to solve the problem of the Ark being unable to house all animal types by suggesting a local flood, which is described in the edition as part of a "gradual surrender of attempts to square scientific facts with a literal interpretation of the Bible" that resulted in "the ' higher criticism ' and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of species" leading to "scientific comparative mythology" as the frame in which Noah's Ark was interpreted by In Europe, the Renaissance saw much speculation on the nature of the Ark that might have seemed familiar to early theologians such as Origen and Augustine. At the same time, however, a new class of scholarship arose, one which, while never questioning the literal truth of the ark story, began to speculate on the practical workings of Noah's vessel from within a purely naturalistic framework. In the 15th century, Alfonso Tostada gave a detailed account of the logistics of the Ark, down to arrangements for the disposal of dung and the circulation of fresh air. The 16th-century geometer Johannes Buteo calculated the ship's internal dimensions, allowing room for Noah's grinding mills and smokeless ovens, a model widely adopted by other commentators. Today, the practice is widely regarded as pseudoarchaeology. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Redirected from Noahs Ark. Not to be confused with Ark of the Covenant. For Noah's flood, see Genesis flood narrative. For other uses, see Noah's Ark disambiguation. The vessel in the Genesis flood narrative. Main article: Flood myth. This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. July Main article: Noah in rabbinic literature. Main article: Noah in Islam. Main article: Searches for Noah's Ark. Religion portal Christianity portal Islam portal Judaism portal Mythology portal. See Cresswellp. The word for the Ark of the Covenant is quite different. The Ark is built to save Noah, his family, and representatives of all animals from a divinely-sent flood intended to wipe out all life, and in both cases, the teva has a connection with salvation from waters. See Levensonp. Oxford : Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 8 February Retrieved 17 January Creation Evolution Journal. Archived from the original on Retrieved Collins National Geographic. October 7, Jewish Encyclopedia. New Advent. Archived from the original on 17 April Retrieved 27 June Augustin [c. In Schaff, Philip ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers [ St. The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark | National Center for Science Education

Suppose you picked up the newspaper tomorrow morning and were startled to see headlines announcing the discovery of a large ship high on the snowy slopes of Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey. As you hurriedly scanned the article, you learned that a team from the Institute for Creation Research had unearthed the vessel and their measurements and studies had determined that it perfectly matched the description of Noah's Ark given in the book of Genesis. Would this be proof at last—the "smoking gun" as it were—that the earliest chapters of the Bible were true and that the story they told of a six-day creation and a universal flood was a sober, scientific account? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is no. Even this sensational find is not enough to validate a literal reading of Genesis. Our continuing skepticism is in the tradition of philosopher David Hume, who wrote that "the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature. Despite ingenious efforts to lend a degree of plausibility to the tale, nothing can be salvaged without the direct and constant intervention of the deity. To make this point clear, let's start at the beginning of the biblical narrative and follow the story step by step. From the moment the impending storm is announced Genesis13, 17 and Jehovah sets forth the design and dimensions of the ark Genesisproblems start appearing. The ark is to be made out of gopher wood according to a plan that calls for the ark to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits tall x75x45 feet, according to most creationists. See Segraves, p. It is to contain three floors, a large door in the side, and a one cubit square window at the top. The floors are to be divided into rooms, and all the walls, inside and out, are to be pitched with pitch. Since the purpose of the ark is to hold animals and plants, particularly two of "every And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark thing of all flesh. Most creationists simply breeze through this description of the size and requirements of the ark without a second glance "It is hard to believe that intelligent people see a problem here" — LaHaye and Morris, The Ark on Araratp. But Noah's boatbuilding accomplishments have not been fully appreciated by his fans. In the first place, the analogy with the Seven Wonders does not hold. Only one, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, comes within two thousand years of Noah's day, and it is really the only one whose construction could conceivably approach the level of sophistication of the ark. But the Great Pyramid did not spring de novo from the desert sands; rather, it was the culmination of over a century of architectural evolution, beginning when the "experimenting genius," Imhotep, inspired by the ziggurats of Babylon, built the Step Pyramid around BC, passing through some intermediate step pyramids to the Bent And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark of Snofru, then the first true pyramid, and finally the masterpiece at Cheop Stewart, pp. On the other hand, in an era when hollowed-out logs and reed rafts were the extent of marine transport, a vessel so massive appeared that the likes of it would not be seen again until the mid-nineteenth century AD. Before he could even contemplate such a project, Noah would have needed a thorough education in naval architecture and in fields that would not arise for thousands of years such as physics, calculus, mechanics, and structural analysis. There was no shipbuilding tradition behind him, no experienced craftspeople to offer advice. Where did he learn the framing procedure for such a Brobdingnagian structure? How could he anticipate the effects of roll, pitch, And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark, and slamming in a rough sea? How did he solve the differential equations for bending moment, torque, and shear stress? Ancient shipbuilding did achieve a considerable level of technological sophistication, so much so that marine archaeologists are divided over its history Basch, And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark. But this was for vessels that were dinghies compared to the ark, and this skill emerged slowly over many centuries: nearly a millennium passed while Egyptian boat lengths increase from to feet Casson, p. Despite this, the craft remained a And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark art, acquired through long years of apprenticeship and experience, and disasters at sea due to faulty design were so persistent that the And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark was strong for a more scientific approach Rawson and Tupper, p. Obviously, the astronomical leap in size, safety, and skill required by Noah is far too vast for any naturalistic explanation. Not only was the ark without pedigree, it was without descendants also. Creationists Kofahl and Segraves tell us that civilization quickly redeveloped after the flood because the survivors carried over the prediluvian culture: Noah lived years afterwards, Shem The Creation Explanationp. During this time, people were fanning out and "replenishing the earth," carrying with them reminiscences of the deluge that would And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark excite American missionaries from Sumatra to Spitzbergen. Yet Noah's primary contribution to humanity, his incredible knowledge of naval engineering, vanished without a trace, and the seafarers returned to their hollow logs and reed rafts. Like a passing mirage, the ark was here one day and gone the next, leaving not a ripple in the long saga of shipbuilding. As if the rough construction of the ship weren't headache enough, the internal organization had to be honed to perfection. With space at a premium every cubit had to be utilized to the maximum; there was no room for oversized cages and wasted space. The various requirements of the myriads of animals had to be taken into account in the design of their quarters, especially considering the length of the voyage. The problems are legion: feeding and watering troughs need to be the correct height for easy access but not on the floor where they will get filthy; the cages for horned animals must have bars spaced properly to prevent their horns from getting stuck, while rhinos require round "bomas" for the same reason; a heavy leather body sling is "indispensable" for transporting giraffes; primates require tamper-proof locks on their doors; perches must be the correct diameter for each particular bird's foot Hirst; Vincent. Even the flooring is important, for, if it is too hard, hooves may be injured, if too soft, they may grow too quickly and permanently damage ankles Klos ; rats will suffer decubitus ulcers with improper floors Orlansand ungulates must have a cleated surface or they will slip and fall Fowler. These and countless other technical problems all had to be resolved before the first termite crawled aboard, but there were no wildlife management experts available for consultation. Even today the transport requirements of many species are not fully known, and it would be physically impossible to design a single carrier to meet them all. Apparently, when God first told Noah to build an ark, he supplied a complete set of blueprints and engineering details, constituting the most intricate and precise revelation ever vouchsafed to humankind. So Noah grabbed his tools and went to work. LaHaye and Morris tell us that Noah and his three sons could have built the entire thing by themselves in a mere eighty-one years p. This includes not merely framing up a hull but: building docks, scaffolds, workshops; fitting together the incredible maze of cages and crates; gathering provisions for the coming voyage; harvesting the timber and producing all the various types of lumber from bird cage bars to the huge keelson beams—not to mention wrestling the very heavy, clumsy planks for the ship into their exact location and fastening them. What's worse, by the time the job was finished, the earlier phases would be rotting away—a difficulty often faced by builders of wooden ships, whose work took only four or five years Thrower, p. Faced with such criticism, the creationists quickly convert the humble, righteous farmer into a wealthy capitalist who simply hired all the help he needed Segraves, p. It is estimated that the construction of the Great Pyramid required as many asslaves; Noah could have probably gotten by with less there were, after all, "giants in the earth in those days" according to Genesisbut what he lacked in numbers he sorely needed in experienced and highly skilled craftsmen. How did he learn when to fell a tree and how to dry it properly to prevent rot and splitting, when the larger beams might take several years to cure cf. Dumas and Gille, p. Did And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark local reed-raft builder have equipment to steam heat a plank so it could be forced into the proper position? A shipyard in nineteenth-century Maine would have been overwhelmed by the size and complexity of this job, yet Noah still supposedly found enough time to hold revivals and preach doomsday throughout the land Segraves, pp. God told the patriarch to coat the ark, both inside and out, allsquare feet of it, with pitch, and, in fact, this was a common practice in ancient times. But when Noah hurried to the corner hardware store, the shelf was bare, for pitch is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar to petroleum Rosenfeld, p. Morrisp. Meyer reveals that all the wood recovered by arkaeologists on Mt. Ararat is "saturated with pitch" p. Thus it seems that God accommodated Noah by creating an antediluvian tar pit just for the occasion, and we have another miracle. Finally, our farmer-turned-architect had to confront the gravest difficulty of all: in the words of A. Robb, there was an "upper limit, in the region of feet, on the length of the wooden ship; beyond such a length the deformation due to the differing distributions of weight and buoyancy became excessive, with consequent difficulty in maintaining the hull watertight" p. Pollard and Robertson concur, emphasizing that "a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. This is the major reason why the naval industry turned to iron and steel in the s. The largest wooden ships ever built were the six-masted schooners, nine of which were launched between and These ships were so long that they required diagonal iron strapping for support; they "snaked," or visibly undulated, as they passed through the waves, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly, and they were only used on short coastal hauls because they were unsafe in deep water. John J. Rockwell, the designer of the first of this class, confessed that "six masters were not practical. They were too long for wood construction" Laing, pp. Yet the ark was over feet longer than the longest six-master, the foot U. Wyoming, and it had to endure the most severe conditions ever encountered while transporting the most critically important cargo ever hauled. Clearly, God had to imbue this amateurishly assembled gopherwood with some very special properties to fit it for the voyage. So it should be clear by now why "intelligent people" somehow see a "problem" in the building of the ark. With the huge freighter near completion, the time was drawing And There Was Light: From the Creation of the World to Noahs Ark when its colorful cargo would clamber aboard. We now turn to this subject to see if we can learn who and how many made the fateful trip. Genesis declares that two of each kind of animal were to be collected and brought on board. This is repeated in Genesisand it is explicitly stated that this applied to clean and unclean beasts as well as to birds. But Genesis specifies that clean beasts and birds were to be taken by sevens. Whatever the numbers, it is clear that no animals could be left out. Genesis states that "every living substance" that God made was to be destroyed "from off the face of the earth" by the impending flood. Genesis repeats the point and adds that only those things with Noah in the ark could survive. Creationists realize that the ark had a limited amount of room and they are aware of the large number of species in the animal kingdom. Therefore, they have employed various tactics to reduce the population needed on board. Probably the most important tactic is to restrict the command to "kinds" rather than species and to argue that the former are much fewer in number than the latter. A kind or "baramin" in creationist jargon is the unit of life originally made by God. Within each kind is an enormous potential for variation, resulting, during the past six thousand years or so, in a large number of similar animals that scientists classify into species. By juggling the number of kinds, LaHaye and Morris reduce the total population aboard the ark to 50, p. Arthur Jones squeezes it down to a bare bones total of 1, quoted in Balsiger and Sellier, p. Is this a valid argument? Without going into the details of genetics, it can be stated that every inherited trait, however small, is coded for by one or more genes, and each gene locus may have a substantial number of variants alleleswhich accounts for the great variety observed in a given population. Any specific individual, however, has at most only two alleles per locus—one from each parent. As James C. King writes:. There is good evidence for concluding that every message coded in the DNA exists in any sizeable population in numerous versions, forming a spectrum grading from grossly defective alleles—such as the one for albinism—at one end, through the slightly deviant, to the normal at the other end. And the normal is probably not a single version of the message but a collection of slightly different alleles. Hence, for a trait such as human pigmentation, "we can visualize not merely a few dozen interacting loci but an array of perhaps a dozen or so alleles at each locus" p. From this we can see that the original canine baramin in Eden would have needed a fantastic set of giant chromosomes with alleles for every trait that would someday be manifest in coyotes, wolves, foxes, jackals, dingos, fennecs, and the myriad of minute variations in hair color twenty-four genes at nine lociheight, face shape, and so forth that are seen in the domestic dog cf. So, too, for the feline kind, within which creationists Byron Nelson p. Similar giant chromosomes would be required for the bovine kind, equine kind, and so on. In the centuries before the deluge, these strange progenitors must have rapidly diversified into their potential species, as the fossil record shows.