Noah and his ark have been in the news quite a bit over the past several months. A friend recently shared a story on American News X about Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, soon to open in Kentucky. It may be open already, but I haven’t been down yonder lately. I’m not going to attempt to match the well-deserved snark of Thomas Clay’s article, but I did find the design of Ham’s ark worthy of comment. I’m afraid I’ll have to wait while you check the article since photographs are covered by copyright and, well, I haven’t been down yonder. What first strikes me about Ham’s ark is that it has a rudder (as well as a keel). The Bible does imply that this was the first boat built, but then it also states the plans, like the Bible itself, came directly from God. The Almighty surely understands fluid dynamics, but I was wondering what the rudder was for. Did Noah plan on going someplace? Presumably in his flat world he’d have wanted to just stay afloat over the same place since, to quote another scripture, “there’s no place like home.”

Genesis doesn’t say anything about a rudder. In fact, apart from the inexact measurements in cubits, all we know about the ark are the following features:

•its dimensions (300 cubits by 50 cubits by 50 cubits; RMS Titanic, by comparison, was approximately 548.5 cubits long)
•it had three decks
•it had a door
•it had a window.

The Ham-style ark design is based on that advocated by Sun Pictures some years back as being especially seaworthy. Nobody knows what gopher wood is, but there was plenty of it around since all the plants were considered expendable in the face of a flood that would kill everything. But a rudder?

The biblical ark took its cue, somehow, from the much older tale of Utnapishtim. There are even earlier versions than that in the Gilgamesh Epic, but the parallels between Gilgamesh and Genesis have been known for well over a century now and are pretty remarkable. The original ark, however, was a cube. It had six decks. Now a cube of wood—even gopher wood—would sink like, well, a cube of gopher wood. Such a ship wouldn’t require a rudder to help it find the bottom of the New World Ocean.

Before my academic career took a tumble I was slated to write a book on Noah. Too bad that never happened, what with all the interest these days. A cottage industry in making arks has been launched. As modern-day arks sail, or at least get towed, through the present-day oceans, or are built high on dry ground, we can be glad for a rudder in the prescient mind of the sender of all floods.

Photo credit: Centre for Research Collections University of Edinburgh, via Wikimedia Commons