When I managed three book clubs, members had to mail in a card if they did not want a main selection. If you wanted to buy the main offering, you did nothing. (Please stick with me on this!)

Then I got the bright idea of offering dual main selections—two books at once—on the theory that members would have twice as many opportunities to say, “yes.”

I was wrong. Instead, I gave the members twice as many reasons to say, “no.” The number of cards we received skyrocketed. Members didn’t want one or the other or both of the books.

That’s what the movie Noah got wrong. Very wrong. By trying to offer something for everyone, it offers viewers twice as many reasons to say, “no.”

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post says, “If you liked Braveheart, Gladiator, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones or Titanic, you will like Noah.” Kathleen Parker is behind the times. If you liked the movies that were in previews when I viewed Noah in my local theater, you’ll like Noah—Guardian of the Galaxy (based on a Marvel Comic, it involves a manhunt in the far reaches of space), The Amazing Spiderman 2, Transformers: Age of Extinction (by the way, the Watchers in Noah bear a remarkable resemblance to Transformers), and Transcendence (A researcher in Artificial Intelligence creates a machine combining intelligence and emotions).

Asking if Noah is biblically accurate is like asking if Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is green. The question doesn’t make sense. It’s irrelevant. Paramount’s disclaimer that "The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken” is accurate. The rest of the disclaimer is a somewhat questionable: “We believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide.”

Noah was not written to cater to evangelical Christians. It was written by two self-described "not very religious Jewish guys" from New York City. The story written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel first appeared in a French-language graphic novel with a six-armed giant rock-angel on the cover. Noah was described by Slashfilm as a ‘Mad Max-style warrior.’ The movie was written for an audience that loves graphic novels and Mad Max (a 1979 Australian dystopian action film).

Noah “lives with his wife and three children in a land barren and hostile, in the grip of severe drought. (It’s) a world marked by violence and barbarism,” says the publisher of Aronofsky’s graphic novel.

Darren Arronofsky and Ari Handel wrote their story of Noah for themselves; they produced it to appeal to those who like graphic novels and Transformers: Age of Extinction. There’s nothing wrong with that, but trying to retrofit the movie to appeal to Christians has resulted in something that gives viewers twice the opportunity to say, “no thanks.” I’m sorry, but a scene of giant six-armed transformer-like rock angels defending the ark and throwing the wicked followers of Tubal-Cain around does not mix well with a 1950s-type sappy ending of everyone living happily ever after, Noah telling his children to “be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth” (in the Bible God said that), and a rainbow filling the screen with comforting colors.

Yes, the movie deals with some important theological questions. Balancing justice and mercy is an important theme in the movie. But it’s not really resolved. Robert Schuller said God creatively combined justice and mercy at the cross. Noah never makes it to the cross. What Noah does do is gives us the opportunity of talking about justice and mercy.

Noah also gives us the opportunity of asking if we are always sure of what God is telling us. And if we are sure, how do we deal with people who disagree with us? And if we are not sure, how do we deal with that uncertainty? Noah didn’t deal with his uncertainty very well. He alienated his entire family when he attempted to do what he thought God was telling him.

But we don’t need the movie Noah to lead us into theological and moral discussions. Schindler’s List—or several dozen other movies—will do just fine for that, thank you.

The question frequently asked is, “Should I go see Noah?” If you would enjoy seeing Guardian of the Galaxy, The Amazing Spiderman 2, Transformers: Age of Extinction, or Transcendence, by all means see Noah. It’s creatively done, a terrific adventure, the stars are great, and the special effects and digital creations are amazing.

But if you’re expecting a retelling of the biblical account with traditional-type additions to the story, you’ll probably be disappointed.

But if you do go, I would encourage you to go with friends, take some time afterwards to discuss the movie over pizza or dinner, and use the Discussion Guide on this website. You'll have a good time.

If “all” means sixteen thousand, yes. (See the March 4 blog below for why sixteen thousand is mentioned)

After going through some elaborate calculations, researcher John Woodmorappe says sixteen thousand animals would require about 46.8 percent of the floor space of a three-deck ark, based on several assumptions.

First, he says, “the ark represents temporary confinement of animals in an emergency situation,” more analogous to a modern laboratory or an intensive factory farm than to a zoo, which is a “relatively comfortable confinement of animals on a permanent basis.”

Second, he assumes the representatives of animals on the ark were juveniles. For instance, an animal weighing more than 2,200 pounds as an adult would be represented on the ark as a 110-pound juvenile. At the upper extreme, a two-year-old African elephant, the heaviest land mammal, weighs about 1,900 pounds and a walrus weighs between 100 and 150 pounds at birth and nurses for more than a year before it is weaned. And fewer than 10 percent of all adult mammals weigh more than fifty pounds. The heaviest reptile (the crocodile, weighing between 880 and 2,200 pounds), bird (the ostrich, weighing between 140 and 320 pounds), and amphibian (the Chinese giant salamander, weighing between 55 and 66 pounds) all weigh much less than the larger mammals. 

Third, Woodmorappe’s calculations do not assume cages for small animals were stacked on top of each other. But they could have been.

In addition to the animals themselves, the ark would have needed storage room for water —which Woodmorappe calculates to be about one million gallons weighing 4,461 tons and taking up about 144,000 cubic feet, which was about 9 percent of the ark’s 1.5 million cubic feet. It would also have been possible for Noah to have collected rainwater for the first forty days.

Noah was also told to take food for his family and the animals. The bulk of the food would have been hay and grain. Woodmorappe again goes through detailed calculations to conclude that 100,000 to 200,000 cubic feet was necessary to store “the 371-day supply of food for the 16,000 animals.”

It would mean a lot of work for Noah and his family, but it would have been possible to fit sixteen thousand animals on the ark. For more details, see Noah: The Real Story.

The most widely read article about the discovery of Noah’s ark appeared in Life magazine, September 5, 1960.

Heavy rains and three earthquakes in 1948 exposed a formation that looked remarkably like a boat at the “Durupinar site,” eighteen miles south of Ararat’s summit. The uniqueness of the formation was discovered by Turkish army captain Ilhan Durupinar when he studied photos taken for NATO in 1959. The next year an expedition conducted by the Archeological Research Foundation (ARF) visited the site. After much digging inside the boat-shaped formation, the group concluded, according to their press release, “there were no visible archaeological remains” and this formation “was a freak of nature and not man-made.” In spite of ARF’s conclusion, Life published pictures from the expedition with the headline, “Noah’s Ark? Boatlike form is seen near Ararat.”  

The Durupinar site was largely ignored until 1977, when Ron Wyatt, a former nurse anesthetist, adventurer, and self-taught archaeologist from Madison, Tennessee, began promoting it as the site of Noah’s ark. In spite of his efforts to convince others—including astronaut and ark expert James Irwin and John Morris, who later became president of the Institute for Creation Research—that Noah’s ark was at the Durupinar site, he found few to agree with him.

Was Wyatt merely overenthusiastic or a fraud? Probably the latter, although perhaps he believed his own press releases. He made extravagant claims such as saying the Durupinar site contained “trainloads” of gopherwood. In addition to the ark, he claimed to have found the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, the site of the Tower of Babel, and the place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. He even claimed to know where the ark of the covenant was (the one Indiana Jones searched for). And yet, scientists, historians, and biblical scholars dismiss his claims. The Garden Tomb Association (Wyatt claims the ark of the covenant is in a chamber on the grounds of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.) says it “totally refutes the claim of Mr. Wyatt.”

The story of Noah and the ark is not unique. More than three hundred stories of great floods are found around the world from South America to India to Australia.
    
The Anishinaabe Nation, called Ojibwe in Canada and Chippewa in the United States, live around the Great Lakes. Long ago the Anishinaabe people began to argue and fight. The Great Spirit, or Gitchi-Manitou, decided to purify the earth with a flood that would destroy the Anishinaabe people and most of the animals.

When the flood came, only Nanabozho—an important figure in many Anishinaabe stories; he even has his own Facebook page—survived by floating on a huge log with a few animals. (A version told by the Ottawa says he was in a great canoe with many pairs of animals and birds, rowed by a most beautiful maiden.) “I am going to swim to the bottom of this water and grab a handful of earth,” he said. “With this small bit of earth, I believe we can create a new land for us to live on with the help of the Four Winds and Gitchi-Manitou.”

But Nanabozho was not able to reach the bottom. The loon, the grebe, the mink, and other animals also tried to reach the bottom, but failed. Then the muskrat said he would try. The other animals laughed and made fun of the muskrat. “Only Gitchi-Manitou can place judgment on others,” said Nanabozho. “If muskrat wants to try, he should be allowed to.”

After a very long time, the muskrat floated to the surface. He had died, but in his paw was a small ball of earth. The muskrat had given his life so life on earth could start again after the flood.

The turtle then offered to “use my back to bear the weight of this piece of earth.” The little ball of earth the muskrat had brought up grew and grew on the turtle’s back, becoming an island today known as North America. The Ottawa version says the maiden and Nanabozho repopulated the world.

The Anishinaabe story is a lot different from Noah and the Ark. But Dr. John Morris analyzed more than two hundred flood stories and said if the common features are combined, the story would read something like this: (the percentages are the percentage of the stories he analyzed containing the element, for instance 88 percent of the stories involve one righteous family)

Once there was a worldwide (95 percent) flood, sent by god to judge the wickedness of man (66 percent). But one righteous family (88 percent) was forewarned (66 percent) of the coming flood. They built a boat (70 percent) on which they survived the flood along with the animals (67 percent). As the flood ended, their boat landed on a high mountain (57 percent) from which they descended and repopulated the whole earth.

Interestingly, nine percent of the stories say specifically that eight people were saved and seven percent mention a rainbow.

Why are there so many flood stories with so many comment elements? Perhaps some accounts borrow details from other stories. Perhaps floods are a common disaster and people tell stories about them.

Or perhaps these stories from around the world are a collective memory of an actual Great Flood that covered the entire earth.  

We’re not told how old Noah was when God told him to build the ark. It does say he was more than 500 years old when his three sons were born, and that he was 600 years old when the Flood came. It is usually thought it took him between 60 and 80 years to build the ark. After the flood he lived 350 years more—950 years total. Is that for real?

Such a long life was not unusual before the Flood. The Bible says the ages of the first patriarchs at their deaths were—Adam was 930; Seth was 912; Enosh was 905; Cainan was 910; Mahalalel was 895; Jared was 962; Methuselah was 969; Lamech was 777; and Noah was 950. 

If you think the ages given in the Bible is a long time, the first eight kings in the ancient Sumerian king list all reigned between 18,600 years and 43,200 years. 

After the Flood, the ages of the patriarchs at their deaths, according to the Bible, decreased from Shem (one of Noah’s sons) at 600 years to Terah at 205 years and his son, Abraham, at 175 years. That’s still rather old, but it’s young compared to Noah’s 950 years. 

    God told Noah, “The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. . . . You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.”
    In the ancient world the cubit was the most common unit of measure—the length of a man’s forearm from his elbow to the tip of his middle finger. Usually considered to be eighteen inches, the cubit was divided into six “palms,” each with four “fingers”—twenty-four fingers to a cubit.
    At 18 inches per cubit, the ark would be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide (1½  times the length and half the width of a football field) and 45 feet high—one of the largest wooden boats ever built. You can be pretty sure the ark did not look like what most of us remember from a nursery picture or from a storybook—a cute boat with a deck full of animals. It was shaped like a long box, not like a seagoing vessel built for speed. In fact, some scholars think the word for “ark” may be related to the Egyptian word for “coffin.”  
    The word ark is itself confusing. The English Bible uses ark as a name for both Noah’s boat and for the holy box containing the Ten Commandments, Aaron’s rod, a jar of manna, and the Torah scroll written by Moses—the ark made famous by Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Hebrew uses two very different words for these two objects—and uses tebah only for Noah’s ark and for the basket in which baby Moses was placed by his mother. We don’t know if tebah means a boat, something covered in pitch, a certain shape, something that preserves life—or something else.   
    According to the Bible, Noah’s ark had three decks with rooms (which would provide structural support), a door, and a window. There was probably not just one window, but a row of them just under the roof.
    The ark was made of gopherwood—whatever that is. Translators had no idea what the Hebrew word gopher meant and so they merely transliterated it. When you say “gopher,” you’re saying a Hebrew word with an unknown meaning. The oldest Greek translation of Genesis calls gopherwood “squared timber.” The most popular Latin translation calls it “smoothed wood.” Some have thought it is cedar or cypress. But the bottom line is . . . we don’t know.
    God said to cover the ark inside and outside with “pitch,” probably for waterproofing, although there is no agreement on whether the pitch was an oil-based substance (as it is thought of today) or a gum-based resin extracted from trees, or something else.
    Although the Bible gave these specifications for the ark, it was Noah who had to design it—how to house the animals, where to build the living quarters for his family, what design elements would make the ark the most seaworthy. You can learn how Noah might have done this in Noah: The Real Story.

There have been several stories of vivid photographs of the ark, but strangely, none survive. Here are two such stories.

The Stars and Stripes

During World War II, the U.S. military made hundreds of flights from Tunisia in North Africa to a Russian air base in Yerevan, Armenia, flying directly over Mt. Ararat. In 1943, two American pilots saw what they thought looked like a huge ship and later took an Air Force photographer on a supply run. His pictures and an accompanying story were said to have been published in the Mediterranean edition of Stars and Stripes, one of the dozens of editions of the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper.
 
Many veterans remember seeing the article, but it has never been found. One said the Stars and Stripes article caused such a sensation on his base that the French chaplain preached a sermon about Noah.

George Greene

George Greene, an oil and pipeline engineer, was working in Turkey in the summer of 1953. Since he had a helicopter at his disposal, he went looking for the ark and spotted it in an almost inaccessible region of Mount Ararat between 13,000 and 14,000 feet. While the pilot hovered above the ark, George photographed it and carefully noted the location on his geologic maps. George said the ark was sitting on a shelf on the side of a vertical rock cliff. Only 1/3 was visible, the rest was covered by snow and rock debris. He could see the planking and photographed it.
            
When George got back to the United States, he wanted to raise money to return to Turkey to find the ark again, and showed his pictures to dozens of people. He never raised the money, partially because his work kept him on the road. A friend in Texas kept the pictures for him until 1961 when George picked them up. A bit later he went to British Guiana to help out at a gold mine. We don’t know whether he took the pictures with him.
            
What we do know is that on December 27, 1962, George Greene was found face down in the swimming pool at his hotel in Georgetown, British Guinea. Some think he had been thrown from the balcony of his room. Perhaps his killers – if there were killers -- thought he had gold in his room. Nothing was taken . . . except the contents of his briefcase, which was empty. Did he have the pictures with him?
            
At least 30 people say they saw the photos and one even sketched out what the picture of the ark looked like in the photos. But no one knows where they are now. As far as anyone knows, George Greene’s pictures of the ark on Ararat have not been seen in more than 50 years.

For more stories of the search for the ark, check out Noah: The Real Story.

The movie Noah starring Russell Crowe is going to be a lot of fun. There are spectacular special effects, great acting, the most complex scene ever created by the amazing artists at Industrial Light & Magic, and it’s a good adventure film.

But the movie is Darren Aronofsky’s story, not the Bible’s. Paramount Pictures has said, “The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people.”

It’s good because Noah will raise our awareness of the Bible.

This impressive movie based on a story in the Bible (and the Quran, for that matter) will raise our awareness of the content of the Bible.

We Americans say the Bible is important to us, but we don’t know what it says. We’re a nation of biblical illiterates. The Barna Research Group says 60 percent of Americans cannot name five of the Ten Commandments. And 12 percent believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.( In case you missed that lesson in high school history class, Joan of Arc was a French heroine who lived from 1412 to 1431.) At least the movie Noah should clear up that.

The movie Noah will get us talking about a story, which in the Bible is one of love, redemption, and God’s provision and covenant promise. God tells Noah and his family to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” It’s a story of new beginnings.

It’s bad because it misses the reason God sent the Flood.

Like people throughout history, we enjoy and encourage sin; God, however, is holy and cannot tolerate sin, even though He loves us. The Bible says God sent the Flood because wickedness was rampant on the earth. There was violence, sexual immorality, corruption, and widespread lawlessness. People ignored God. “Human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night.”

Aronofsky’s God, however, destroys the world because mankind has destroyed the environment. Evil is pictured as killing animals for their horns, much as poachers in Africa kill elephants for their tusks. Aronofsky’s story contains a strong environmental message: God “must be giving us a chance,” says Noah. “If we change; if we work to save (the world), perhaps He will too.” Aronofsky has said his “Noah was the first environmentalist.”

The point of the ark in the Bible was to save humans and animals; the point of the ark in the movie is to save the environment.

A few details

One of the key inventions in the movie is Noah’s uncertainty on how to carry out the will of God. It leads to dramatic tensions that are good for an adventure movie, but are not in the Bible. It also results in a profound statement (at least in an early draft of the script). Noah becomes upset with Ham, slaps him, realizes with horror what he has done, and says, “we are no different than them (the sinners outside the ark). The same wickedness is in all of us.” Noah realizes he is an imperfect sinner. We like to make people into heroes, but in reality, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We put an intolerable burden on our heroes when we fail to realize “the same wickedness is in all of us.” Perhaps Aronofsky overdoes it because his Noah is a dark character, but the point is valid.

The movie fancifully answers two questions that are always asked about the animals.

How did the animals get to the ark? In the movie Noah plants a magic seed and a healthy forest grows in the midst of a barren world. A gentle fountain springs up and flows throughout the world. The animals then follow the water to the ark. It's as good an answer as any because the Bible says the animals "will come to you to be kept alive."

How did the animals survive a year on the ark? They sleep the entire voyage under the spell of a smoke Noah creates. God causes them to hibernate.

Noah is a terrific adventure. The stars are great. The special effects and digital creations are amazing. It’s worth watching.

But biblically accurate? Don’t count on it. It’s a story by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel that uses the story of Noah as a framework to deliver their own environmental message.

In a world where the Bible is too often ignored or misunderstood, though, it’s a great opportunity to talk about Noah: The Real Story.

While there are only twenty-six letters in the English language, there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters. In practice, though, a person needs to know fewer than four thousand to be functionally literate.

The earliest Chinese characters were probably mostly pictograms—where the character looks like the thing it represents—and ideograms. Over the years they have evolved to where they are hard to recognize. Here are three examples.














Today only about four percent of Chinese characters are pictograms, but one is particularly intriguing—the character for “ship” or “large boat.” It’s formed by combining the words for “eight” (the number of people on the ark), “person,” and “boat.” 

Did ancient Chinese know about the Flood? We don’t really know, but the coincidence is intriguing. There are more than 300 flood stories around the world. Six of them are told in Noah: The Real Story.

How many animals were on the ark?

A lot, but probably not as many as you might think.

The key here is the meaning of “according to their kinds” when God told Noah to take birds, animals, creeping things “male and female . . . according to their kinds.”
   
Does “kind” mean species? There are millions of species—somewhere between three and thirty million, a rather large range caused in part because taxonomists (biologists who figure out classifications) don’t agree on what a species is. The most common definition of a species is a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
   
Or does “kind” mean genus? A group of similar species is a genus. The Boa genus, for instance, includes several snakes, one of which is the Boa constrictor.

Or does “kind” mean family? A group of similar genera (the plural of genus) is a family. Canidae is a family that includes dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and similar animals. Biological families number in the thousands, not the millions. Did Noah take two dachshunds, two beagles, and two grey wolves? Or did he take a pair of animals representing the Canidae family? 

Many animals did not need to be on the ark for survival. Sea animals, for instance, could survive a flood. Many of the one million species of insects could probably survive without being on the ark. Interestingly, the Bible says, “Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died,” but insects don’t have nostrils or lungs. They get their oxygen through their cell walls.
   
While God told Noah to take two of every kind of animal into the ark, He clarified his instructions so that the animals should be two of every unclean animal and “seven of each kind of clean animal” and “seven of each kind of the birds of the heavens.” People who study the Bible are equally divided on whether there were seven of each clean animal or seven pairs of each clean animal on the ark. We don’t know.
   
John Woodmorappe, author of the most detailed study of the ark and its animals, says if a “kind” means what we call today a genus, there would have to be just under 16,000 animals (8,000 genera). Others say that a “kind” means a family and so there would be about 2,000 animals (1,000 families).
    
   
How many animals were on the ark? There were perhaps as many as sixteen thousand. But there didn’t have to be hundreds of thousands. A lot—but not as many as you might think. Check out eight more of the most common questions about the animals on Noah’s ark in Noah: The Real Story.