Old Testament: Noah's Liberty Ship

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OLD TESTAMENT Noah's Liberty Ship What did history's most famous boat look like? Though many religious scholars doubt the story of Noah and the Flood, there has been no lack of efforts to depict his ark. Medieval artists tended to portray it as a big houseboat.

In the most recent Hollywood version, The Bible, John Huston pictured it as a pregnant sampan. Now, an Israeli with sound credentials has produced perhaps the most logical rendition of Noah's ark to date. Last week in Jerusalem's Hechal Shlomo (Solomon's Palace), the seat of Israel's Chief Rabbinate, the model went on display—and it looked totally different from earlier versions.

It is the work of Meir Ben-Uri, 59, one of Israel's leading religious painters and synagogue designers, who made a long, scholarly study of the historical evidence. Many geologists reckon that around 4000 B.C. a flood devastated what is now Iraq; archaeologists have dug up cuneiform tablets in the region relating the tale of a man who survived by building a vessel.

Ben-Uri reasoned that the ark was probably built of either bamboo or lightweight wood, both common to southern Iraq. To reconstruct the design, he relied entirely on God's cryptic commands to Noah (Genesis 6: 14-16) that the ark should have a door in its side, a skylight and three decks. The Scriptures mention three dimensions: the vessel was to be 300 cubits (492 ft.) long, 50 cubits (82 ft.) wide, and 30 cubits (49 ft.) high. That would make it somewhat larger than a World War II Liberty ship. After exhaustive reckoning, Ben-Uri concluded that to meet such requirements, the ark had to be what he calls a "prismatic rhomboid." Essentially, his version is a long bar whose cross section is shaped like a diamond.

2,000 Animals. Such a vessel could have been built while lying at an angle on one side. Animals could easily climb a gentle incline on a side and enter through a door. As the ark began to float, it would right itself; as a result, the door would tilt and become a skylight in the roof, and water could not enter the craft from its sides. The design, according to Ben-Uri, could easily accommodate three decks and provide a capacity of some 5,500 tons, enough for at least 1,000 pairs of animals.

An Orthodox Jew, Ben-Uri argues that his version of the ark is evidence that, for all of today's demythologizing, the Bible has a basis in fact. "I be lieve," says he, "that the Bible is a true account of what actually happened. It is up to us to unravel its secrets."