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.

Do you know who the real Noah was?

Everyone knows about Noah and the ark.

The story has been the subject of mystery plays in the Middle Ages, of movies, and of television shows such as Captain Noah and His Magical Ark. Noah and the ark have been the subject of board games, toys, children’s books, and nursery wallpaper. And there are even a handful of theme parks built around Noah and the ark.

But what do we really know about Noah? Not much that we can say for sure.

Noah was the grandson of Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, and father of Ham, Shem, and Japheth. We don’t know when Noah lived, but estimates range from 5,500 BC to 2,300 BC, putting him squarely in the Neolithic Period—the last part of the Stone Age when metal tools were becoming widespread, agriculture was developing, and humans began to domesticate animals.

Noah is remembered for having built an ark in preparation for a Great Flood that destroyed the world, with only Noah, his family, and a boatload of animals being saved. It’s a story told in the Bible and in the Quran. And similar stories are found throughout the world.

The Statler Brothers recounted the beginning of the Bible’s Noah story pretty well.

The Lord looked down from His window in the sky,

Said, "I created man, but I don't remember why.

Nothing but fighting since creation day.

I'll send a little water and wash ’em all away."


The Lord came down to look around a spell,

And there was Mister Noah behaving mighty well,

And that is the reason, the Scriptures record,

That Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

After Noah, his family, and animals got on the ark, a flood came that covered “all the high mountains.” When the waters receded, the ark rested “on the mountains of Ararat,” Noah opened the door, let the animals out, built an altar, and worshipped God.

God promised He would never again destroy the earth with a flood and gave the rainbow as a sign of that promise.

Noah is mentioned several times in the New Testament and praised in Hebrews as a hero of faith: “It was faith that made Noah hear God's warnings about things in the future that he could not see. He obeyed God and built a boat in which he and his family were saved. As a result, the world was condemned, and Noah received from God the righteousness that comes by faith.”

There’s much more to the story of Noah—the animals, the ark, the Flood, the search, flood stories around the world, and the movie starring Russell Crowe opening on March 28. Read about Noah and more in Noah: The Real Story.