X-DreamersReading A
A floating box
Plausible
The word tevah is used elsewhere only for the basket of baby Moses: a container made to float, not to sail.
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Genesis 6:15
Three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high
15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
Scripture: King James Version (1769).
God gives Noah three measurements and little else. Four doors show what the text fixes, what it leaves open, and where you can stand beside the ark at full size.
When: before the dated history
Genesis gives Noah's age, six hundred years when the flood came, but no calendar we can tie to other history. Readers differ on whether the numbers of Genesis 5 and 11 can be added up into dates.
Scripture
6And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
What we know, and how sure
SpeculativeResearchThe flood: undated on the Time Map.
Genesis 1–11 gives genealogies but no calendar, and readers differ on whether its numbers can be added up into dates. These events are shown before the dated timeline, without years.
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Where: the mountains of Ararat
The text does not say where the ark was built. It came to rest on 'the mountains of Ararat', a region, the kingdom later called Urartu in the highlands of eastern Anatolia, not necessarily the single peak that bears the name today.
Scripture
4And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
What we know, and how sure
Strongly supported“Ararat” is the region of Urartu in the eastern Anatolian highlands.
Ararat is a kingdom elsewhere in the Bible (2 Kings 19:37; Jeremiah 51:27) and matches Assyrian Urartu.
SpeculativeThe ark landed on the peak now called Mount Ararat.
A tradition from about the 11th century onward. The text names a mountain land, not a peak, and no remains have been verified.
The space: the vessel
At about 0.45 metres to the cubit, the ark was about 135 metres long, 22.5 wide and 13.5 high, with three decks, rooms, a door in its side and an opening a cubit from the top. It was coated with pitch inside and out.
Scripture
14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
What we know, and how sure
Textually statedThe ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high.
Stated directly in the text.
PlausibleOne cubit is about 0.45 m (roughly 18 inches).
Consistent with ancient Near Eastern common cubits and with the Siloam tunnel inscription; the text itself does not give a conversion.
Readings: what shape was it?
Genesis gives the size but not the shape of the hull. Two pictures are common; the Noah's Ark lab lets you switch between them. Both are shown with their evidence; we do not choose.
Reading B
A ship-like hull
SpeculativeA pointed bow and a fin at the stern would have turned the ark to face the waves; the text neither says nor rules it out.
What we know, and how sure
Strongly supportedGenesis gives the ark's length, width and height but says nothing about the shape of its hull.
Genesis 6:14–16 lists measurements, material, rooms, levels, a roof opening and a door, and no hull form.
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Doors into the verse
Back to the verse
15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
For discussion
- 1God gave Noah exact sizes but left much unsaid. Where in your life has God given clear instructions and left the details to you?
- 2Noah built for years before any rain fell. What does faithful work look like when you cannot yet see the reason?
See this verse's connections in the Knowledge Graph
Read Genesis 6 in full
Every door is drawn from the Bible Labs knowledge graph: each claim keeps its evidence level, and readings that link one passage to another are marked as interpretation. King James Version (1769).