A team of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers believe that they have found  the remains of the Biblical artifact, Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGIUfWXvwJI&feature=player_embedded

video  source: Noahs-Ark-found-in-Turkey

Read more:slideshow/scitech/2010/04/27/noahs-ark-discovered  /  slideshow/scitech/2010/04/27/noahs-ark-discovered

This picture released by the evangelical group claims to  show one of the explorers examining part of a structure which they claim might  prove the existence of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. There are no external images  of the site and the Hong Kong-based group refuse to say precisely where they  made their discovery until the Turkish government designate it an archaeological  site

The snow-capped peak of Mt. Ararat. The discovery is  said to have been made 12,000ft up the mountain which lies in eastern Turkey

GOD’S COMMAND

 

This photo, also put out by the evangelical group, is  said to show part of a wall inside the structure found by the explorers. One of  the team said: ‘It’s not 100 per cent that it is Noah’s Ark but we think it is  99.9 per cent that this is it’

In 2006, U.S. national security analyst Porcher Taylor  claimed this satellite image revealed a baffling ‘anomaly’ on the mountain’s  north-west corner that he believed to be the remains of the Ark

Wooden beams which the explorers said they found at the  site. The search for the physical remains of Noah’s Ark has held a fascination  for Christians, Jews and Muslims for hundreds of years. But despite various  claims no scientific evidence has ever been found

BBC VIDEO :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZu3GXoKXU4

                       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZu3GXoKXU4

 

Noah’s Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח‎; Biblical Hebrew: Teyvat Noaḥ) is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative (Genesis chapters 6–9) by which the Patriarch Noah saves himself, his family, and a remnant of all the world’s animals when God decides to destroy the world because of mankind’s evil deeds. God gives Noah detailed instructions for building the ark: it is to be of gopher wood, smeared inside and out with pitch, with three decks and internal compartments; it will be 300 cubits long, 50 wide, and 30 high; it will have a roof “finished to a cubit upward”, and an entrance on the side.

Origins

The Hebrew word for the ark is teba, which occurs only twice in the bible, here and in the Book of Exodus, where it is used for the basket in which the infant Moses is placed by his mother. (The word for the ark of the covenant is quite different in Hebrew). In both cases, therefore, teba has a connection with salvation from waters. The etymology of the term is unclear, but most scholars connect it with an Egyptian word meaning a chest, box or coffin. It is made of “gopher” wood, a word appears only here in the entire bible, and is divided into qinnim, a word which always refers to birds’ nests elsewhere, leading some scholars to amend this to qanim, reeds, the material used for the boat of Atrahasis, the Babylonian flood-hero. Noah is instructed to kapar (smear) the ark with koper (pitch): in Hebrew the first of these words is a verb formed from the second, and this is the only place in the bible where “koper” means “pitch”. God spells out to Noah the dimensions of the ark, 300 cubits by 50 by 30, approximately 137 by 23 by 14 meters (440 feet long, 73 feet wide, and 43 feet high), with three internal divisions (which are not actually called “decks”, although presumably this is what is intended), a door in the side, and a sohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight.

The story of the flood is closely connected with the story of the creation, a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the ark plays a pivotal role. The universe as conceived by the ancient Hebrews was made up of a flat disk-shaped habitable earth with the heavens above and Sheol, the underworld of the dead, below. These three were surrounded by a watery “ocean” of chaos, protected by the firmament, a transparent but solid dome resting on the mountains which ringed the earth. Noah’s three-deck ark represents this three-level Hebrew cosmos in miniature: the heavens, the earth, and the waters beneath. In Genesis 1, God created the three-level world as a space in the midst of the waters for mankind; in Genesis 6-8 (the flood story) he fills that space with waters again, saving only Noah, his family and the animals with him in the ark.

The parallels – both similarities and differences – between Noah’s ship and that of the Babylonian flood hero Atrahasis have often been noted. Noah’s is a rectangle, while Atrahasis was instructed to build his in the form of a cube; Atrahasis has seven decks with nine compartments on each level, Noah has three decks, but is not given any instructions on the number of compartments. The word used for “pitch” is not the normal Hebrew word but is closely related to the word used in the Babylonian story.

Traditions

Rabbinic Judaism

“Rabbinic Judaism” is the Judaism of the first millennium CE, beginning approximately with the 2nd century

Talmudic tractates Sanhedrin, Avodah Zarah and Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. In order to protect Noah and his family, God placed lions and other ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who tried to stop them from entering the ark. According to one Midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals to the ark, together with their food. As there had been no need to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the ark. A differing opinion said 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 108B, 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. The animals were the best of their species, and so behaved with utmost goodness. They abstained from procreation, 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 utmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, said to be as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured that food remained fresh. Some more unorthodox interpretations of the ark narrative also surfaced: the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as being a vessel that remained underwater for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.

Christianity

Interpretations of the ark narrative played an important role in early Christian doctrine. St. Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) 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, frankincense and 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”. On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the lowest of the three decks was for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top level for humans, and that male animals were separated from the females by sharp stakes so that there would be no breeding on board.

The early Church Father and theologian Origen (c. 182 – 251) produced a learned argument about cubits, in response to a critic who doubted that the ark could contain all the animals in the world. Origen held that Moses, the traditional author of the book of Genesis, had been brought up in Egypt and would therefore have used the larger Egyptian cubit. He also fixed the shape of the ark as a truncated pyramid, square at its base, and tapering to 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. St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work City of God, demonstrated 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. St. Jerome (c. 347 – 420) identified the raven, which was sent forth and did not return, as the “foul bird of wickedness” expelled by baptism; more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and, eventually, peace. The olive branch remains a secular and religious symbol of peace today.

Islam

In contrast to the Jewish tradition, which uses a term which can be translated as a “box” or “chest” to describe the Ark, surah 29:14 of the Quran refers to it as a safina, an ordinary ship, and surah 54:13 describes the ark as “a thing of boards and nails”. `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote 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-Baidawi, writing in the 13th century, explains that in the first of its three levels wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second the human beings, and in the third the 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 11:41 says: “And he said, ‘Ride ye in it; in the Name of Allah it moves and stays!’”; this was taken to mean that Noah said, “In the Name of Allah!” when he wished the ark to move, and the same when he wished it to stand still.

Noah spent five or six months aboard the ark, at the end of which he sent out a raven. But the raven stopped to feast on carrion, and so Noah cursed it and sent out the dove, which has been known ever since as the friend of mankind. The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (d. 956) 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 that the ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, circling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judi, which surah 11:44 states was 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.