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Noah's Ark could float! (theoretically)

Or it could be that, as was proposed by those who thought it's a copying error, the original word was "resin wood". Which is why some translated it as cypress wood.

Personally my personal guess in that case would be actually the Lebanon Cedar wood. Which actually grew all over the middle east, all the way to (where nowadays we we find) Turkey. It was extensively used for shipbuilding at the time (circa 10'th century BC, when Genesis was composed,) from Egypt to the mighty Phoenician fleet. If someone around the time were to make up a mighty boat, I could see them going for that particular wood.

ETA: also cedar was associated with preservation. It was used by the Egyptians for mummifications, for example. And it's mentioned LOTS in the OT too. So, you know, if you wanted to make some symbolism about it, you could probably use cedar.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Or it could be that, as was proposed by those who thought it's a copying error, the original word was "resin wood". Which is why some translated it as cypress wood.

Personally my personal guess in that case would be actually the Lebanon Cedar wood. Which actually grew all over the middle east, all the way to (where nowadays we we find) Turkey. It was extensively used for shipbuilding at the time (circa 10'th century BC, when Genesis was composed,) from Egypt to the mighty Phoenician fleet. If someone around the time were to make up a mighty boat, I could see them going for that particular wood.

ETA: also cedar was associated with preservation. It was used by the Egyptians for mummifications, for example. And it's mentioned LOTS in the OT too. So, you know, if you wanted to make some symbolism about it, you could probably use cedar.
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Yours is better that mine. :)
 
Also, just for the record, cedar (as used in most boat building at the time) typically has HALF (or less) the bending strength of white oak, and even cypress has about two thirds. Bending strength (a.k.a. the modulus of rupture) being the load the wood can withstand perpendicular to the grain before breaking.

And in stiffness cedar ranges from less than half that of white oak, to slightly less than two thirds, and cypress is up there at three quarters the stiffness. Stiffness being how much load you can apply to the wood before it bends a certain amount.

So basically when comparing the Orlando or Wyoming to a bronze age vessel made of cedar... yeah, the planks of the cedar boat will bend a lot more under a lot less stress. The kind of stresses that made the planks of the Wyoming open up, would flat out break a similar sized ship made of cedar.

Just, you know, to put things into perspective.

ETA: reference, for example: http://workshopcompanion.com/KnowHow/Design/Nature_of_Wood/3_Wood_Strength/3_Wood_Strength.htm
 
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HansMustermann said:
Well, technically it's inexact to say that there is no such thing as gopher wood. Best we can say is that we have no bloody clue what גֹּ֫פֶר means, because it ONLY ever appears in Genesis 6:14. A case has been made by some that it's a transcription error that got propagated, and it doesn't mean anything. But even in that case, there probably was SOME kind of wood mentioned there in the original.

The better case to be made, IMHO, is basically that the ancients weren't frikken stupid. Or not all of them. If material A was better than material B for purpose C, they used it and wrote about it. That's why for example everyone wanted their weapons made of bronze rich in arsenic in the bronze age, for example.

People didn't wait for God to personally tell them which ore to mine, or which wood to use for boats. They had lots of people trying lots of stuff, and whatever worked, stuck around. If it turned out that using ore from province X made a harder sword, someone eventually tried it, and eventually everyone who could afford it would want one of those. Ditto for wood for boats.

If there were some kind of wood that's as hard as steel, we'd have heard about it. In fact, we'd find lots of stuff made of it, because everyone would want their chariots, boats, whatever made of it. If nothing else, naval warfare was based on ramming, so if anyone had some super-strong wood to make their boats out of, soon the only combat-worthy boats would be those made out of that wood. Because, you know, when your side planks get rammed, it makes all the difference in the world. And we'd find lots of manuscripts about how you should only use that wood for your navy.

Hell, considering that lots of people took the possibility to take it with them very seriously, to the extent that pharaohs were buried with only the finest imported wine and whatnot, we'd find the boats in pharaohs' tombs made of that super-strong wood.

So whatever wood is mentioned there, it can't really be much stronger than the usual wood used in boats at the time.
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But if people did not wait for God to tell them what wood to use, why, according to the text, did God tell them what wood to use?
 
bruto said:
But if people did not wait for God to tell them what wood to use, why, according to the text, did God tell them what wood to use?
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For the same reason mom feels a need to tell me what temperature to set the washing machine on? ;)
 
Rincewind said:
Surely without knowing the properties of gopher wood, it's impossible to know if any vessel is seaworthy when built from such material?

Also - there's absolutely no evidence for the Biblical Flood, so what would be the point of the ark?
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I used to get the apprentice to gopher wood
 
Sent a guy out to collect a bucket of steam.
.
My dad told me of sending newbies out to the parade ground to get the cannon report after Taps in the evening, in the cavalry.
 
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I Ratant said:
Sent a guy out to collect a bucket of steam.
.
My dad told me of sending newbies out to the parade ground to get the cannon report after Taps in the evening, in the cavalry.
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On my first day working at the hardware store, the guy who used to have my job came in and asked if I had a "nine inch reproducing tool". I said I'd have to ask the boss...

Hey! I was only 15.
 
That was a good seed line!
I wonder how many other newbie tasks there are in all the professions?:rolleyes:
 
rwguinn said:
Since we know that elephants, lions, tigers, Kodiak bears, and 2 (or 7) of every animal, along with their food weigh almost nothing...
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Not to mention the 1 million lbs of water falling on it every minute - utterly weightless, it was.
 
Poor Noah trying to make up his mind to save lice, rats, and other vermin. Egads this man saved species that didn't exist on his continent so it seems. How would this work? He travels to America and loads up some Bison, Grizzlies, etc. and high tails it back to Africa and starts loading up all the fierce species. After the flood he gets back to America and puts out the appropriate species and what a job!!
 
Gawdzilla said:
Oh, more than that. It averages ~two feet a hour, over the entire planet.
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If you take the volume of water that would fall on the ark itself it sums to 1 million lbs a minute.

30000/40/24/60 = 0.52 ft/min

450*75 *0.52 = 17550 cubic ft

17550 * 62 lbs/ft^3 = ~1 million lbs
 
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