Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Posted on 08/24/2016 8:13:47 AM PDT by fishtank
The cartoonification of Noah’s Ark
How such ‘delightful depictions’ downplay the Deluge—and Christianity
by Phil Robinson
A cartoon is a drawing in an unrealistic style, usually for satire, caricature or humour, and/or to appeal to children. ‘Cartoonification’ (aka ‘cartoonization’) is a recent colloquialism for the process of making something that’s real look ‘cartoonish’. I.e. drawing it in a (usually ridiculously) oversimplified, child-friendly or ‘delightful’ manner.
Unfortunately, this has happened with Noah’s Ark, marker of one of the key events in biblical history. Most depictions of it have become thoroughly cartoonized!
With the Bible so clear on the size, purpose and shape of Noah’s Ark, its pervasive cartoonification is nothing short of amazing!
Today’s common version of the Ark portrays it as a ridiculously-shaped small houseboat. It is mostly only able to carry a handful of the more well-known animals, with giraffes’ heads poking out of windows, and elephants’ trunks hanging down the side. This rather pathetic-looking, definitely non-ocean-going boat is featured on children’s books, celebration cards, novelty ornaments, and more. It has been made into children’s toys and, most disappointingly, put onto Sunday school walls.
The real Noah’s Ark
The Bible in Genesis Chapter 6 very clearly sets out the dimensions, purpose and shape of Noah’s Ark.
... Even using the smaller common cubit of c. 46 cm (18 in),1 Noah’s Ark would have been a massive vessel: L × W × H 137 × 23 × 13.7 metres (450 × 75 × 45 ft), more than adequate for its task.2
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Doesn’t matter if you look at the Bible as a relationship book (how to relate between God and man), rather than a historical, factual recording of the past.
IMHO, the Bible is meant to be instructive and relational, not factual. It highlights important people who showed their devotion to God, and uses easy-to-remember numbers and stories to show that devotion.
Like Samson killing 1000 with the jawbone of a donkey. Assuming that was his weapon, it was clearly hand-to-hand combat. Assuming a 14 hour day (about as long as they get in Israel), that is more than 1 man a minute, non-stop.
Did Samson actually kill 1000, or 1001, or 997? Doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that Samson, armed with the barest of the bare weapons, succeeded in the face of insurmountable odds because God was on his side.
Sorry to be so acerbic in my reply. I’m just sick of the Sunday morning comedians masquerading as preaches of a SOBER gospel.
Yes, exact precision doesn’t really matter. Order-of-magnitude does, insofar as it indicates whether it’s “ballpark” reasonable or just plain absurd. Yes, Samson could kill something on the order of a thousand people (alright, maybe it was several hundred) within a reasonable time (less than a day). But if we look at the objective reality about animal species & sizes, compared with a pretty clear statement of how big the boat is, and conclude they’re incompatible by (as I like to put it) orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude, then the “Noah’s Flood” story is just preposterous ... or maybe the numbers do work out kinda close, making the story plausible (allowing for details unnecessary in a summary telling of the story).
First thing to consider is the purpose of the flood. My personal opinion based upon the amount of time in the ark, and the dove finding a green leaf says the flood was localized. I think it was domesticated animals that Adam named that Noah housed.. Course there would also be a need for the scavengers to keep the earth clean.. And the beasts of burden for transportation.
Waste, I can understand - pull a cruise ship and dump overboard... :)
Nevertheless, that’s a LOT of shoveling!
But, think about feeding just two elephants (300-600 pounds of food a day, for 378 days). A standard hay bale is 45 pounds, and is 5.25 cubic feet. You need 20 bales of hay per day - 7560 bales for just the elephants.
That’s about 40,000 cubic feet of space. That’s equivalent to about 3.5 typical US houses! Yes, you need 3.5 piles as big as homes just to feed the elephants.
Sure, the ark dimensions are big - but you just used up a huge chunk of it just to feed the elephants. And we aren’t even talking about other big eaters. A water buffalo eats about half that amount, as do rhinos and bison. Asian elephants eat about 70% of what their bigger African cousins eat.
So with just African and Asian elephants, rhinos (all 5 species - remember, no evolution!), water buffalos (two species), and bison, we’re talking 41 house-sized piles of hay. Or about 46,000 cubic meters.
Using the dimensions above for the ark, we can see an internal volume of around 30,000 cubic meters. So we’ve filled all of the ark - and half a second one - just for food for elephants, rhinos, bisons, and water buffalos.
Oops.
No rock people??? I saw that in a movie.
Don't you think that the God who created the earth, and the animals and plants that inhabited that earth, and who could flood that same earth, would be able to bring back multitudes of species that wouldn't necessarily have made the ark journey? Omnipotent means exactly that.
Who said the animals were all adults. It's very possible they were all very young.
Ah! Let’s bring the bible up in our text editor and destroy all instances of “joy.”
Nope. It’s people who think so grimly that they don’t understand that cartoons are only cartoons. It’s possible even that there was also a miracle of space within the ark, making it even bigger than our mere mortal physics would calculate it to be.
Your “SOBER” = in God’s view “SELF RIGHTEOUSLY GRIM”
What do you think the Behemoth was then that was referred to in Job 40?
I picture that myself also coupled with a lot of sorrow & grief.
The frustration level must have been extremely high as well based on how many times he frowns upon the faithless generation he was among.
And there is a reasonable basis to accept the size and configuration description of the Ark in the Word. Among other things, there is an artifact on Mt. Ararat that suggests confirmation.
But there are other Flood issues that are significant in the modern era as well as Ark issues.
The Ancients; not the first and second Millennium BC ancients but the historic tablets that describe an even earlier set of events much like the description in the Old Testament, is of a second Ark artifact, several hundred miles South of Mt. Ararat of an even greater antiquity.
For those who study the Bible, there is no doubt that the Old Testament contains a precise time line all the way back to Adam and the Garden--Bishop Usher placed the Adam date at 4004 BC; Faulstich and the IBM computer jocks working with Tuckermans analysis place Adam at 4000 BC. In both cases they put the flood of Noah at about 2344 BC.
Plato reports on Solon's conversation with the Egyptian priests in which he was told that his history (Greek) included only a single worldwide flood event--the Egyptian records include four such events. Native American legend includes a fourth event around 15400 BC.
Gilgamesh's epic includes a third event around 11000 BC (because Ziustrada is about 7000 years old when he is telling Gilgamesh his story in the third or fourth millennium BC).
Ballard's work in the Dead Sea area fixes a second event in the 6700BC period.
The Ice build up on the South Pole tends to be less stable as it built up in the very cold periods and thus subject to disruptions by major geologic and Astrologic events.
So when we look at these historical events with a diminishing ability to narrow the dates, we can see a pattern that appears to reflect a cyclical flood condition about every 4400 years, +/-. Probably a little less than 4400 years.
So when Jesus Christ describes the period of His return as being "as it was in the days of Noe"; we may be able to look at the probable period of expectation as including this cyclical class of event.
In the warming period we are presently seeing, we can reasonably expect that, as God tells us, flooding on a global scale is not going to be an agent after the event of Noah--because there isn't going to be an ice build up condition that fits the planetary alignment again--the destruction by fire ending the Millennial Kingdom will occur before the sixth cycle.
No, I did not. He was hovering over the waters of something formless and empty. Empty = no dinosaurs.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Using the dimensions above for the ark, we can see an internal volume of around 30,000 cubic meters. So we’ve filled all of the ark - and half a second one - just for food for elephants, rhinos, bisons, and water buffalos.
One pair of elephants, 1 pair of rhinos, 1 pair of water buffaloes. http://creation.com/speciation-conference-brings-good-news-for-creationists As for the food and care, there are some limited explanations on their web site but the best discussion of it I have seen is in the book Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, which is available on the site.
My main point is you are basing your arguments on assumptions that have already been discussed in detail and are not accepted by those you seek to refute. The only thing you have demonstrated is a lack of understanding of your opponent's position.
The scribes of the Fertile Crescent at that time always exaggerated numbers by orders of magnitude.
They didn't get left behind, as a quick look in Webster's 1828 Dictionary will reveal: Unicorn.
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