How many animals did Moses take to his ark? Truth and fiction

The erudite reader immediately mentally retorted: "The ark was built not by Moses, but by Noah", and will certainly be right. These two biblical characters are often confused. So, first you need to figure out who is who. But first things first.

Causes of confusion

First of all, it should be noted that it arises from the lack of familiarity with the Bible, because this book is the source of reliable information about these people. But most prefer reading to viewing feature films on biblical themes, but they often have many inaccuracies or fictions. Many directors distort the story, creating stories in which they unite such characters, whose life paths never crossed in time. For example, in one of them Noah, floating on the ark, met Lot (who lived about 500 years after the flood), who was moving on the water on a catamaran! Therefore it is not surprising that there are questions like "How many animals did Moses take to his ark?" And the like.

Naturally, there are many skeptics who question the fact of the Flood, and the miracles of the time of Moses, for example, that the waters of the Red Sea diverged and allowed a whole nation to pass through the dry bottom. This is their opinion, to which they are entitled. Of course, there are a lot of arguments and facts that prove the opposite, but now it's not about that. The purpose of this article is to generalize the information that is in the source, and the right to believe or not to leave for the reader.

What is known about Moses?

The first mention of him is in the book Exodus, which tells about his birth and life to 80 years of age. His father was Amram, and the mother of Jochebed, both were descendants of Levi, the great grandson of Abraham. According to biblical chronology, Moses was born in 1593 BC. In Egypt at a time when his people - the Jews - were in slavery. Moreover, the life of the newborn Moses was immediately threatened: shortly before his birth, an order was given to kill all the male babies. But the mother put it in a papyrus basket and put it on the bank of the Nile, where the child was found by the daughter of Pharaoh, who adopted the boy. Therefore, he was given the name Moses, which in translation means "taken out of the water."

He was raised at the court of the pharaoh, received a high education, and before him a remarkable career opened, but he knew about his origins and was very eager to help his enslaved people. When he was 40 years old, he left Egypt and went to live in the area of Madiam. After another 40 years, he received a mission from God to return to Egypt and lead the Jewish people from captivity and bring them to the land where their ancestors used to live. This was preceded by 10 executions against the Egyptians, and the apogee was the crossing of the Red Sea, which became a grave for the pharaoh and his army.

Next followed a grueling 40 years of walking through the Sinai desert. But the threshold of the Promised Land to Moses could not be crossed, he died at the age of 120 years. If you briefly answer the question of what Moses did, who this person was and what role he played in the history of the Jewish people, it should be mentioned that he was an outstanding leader, a military leader, a judge, a prophet and a writer of six books of the Bible. But he had no direct relationship to the flood, so the question of how many animals Moses took to his ark does not make sense.

Briefly about Noah

He was born about 1000 years before Moses. His father was a contemporary of Adam, the first man. Because of the strong moral decline, God decided to destroy the evil people with water and instructed his faithful minister Noah and his family to build a ship later known as Noah's Ark. Animals, as well as humans, could be saved if they went there. But, unfortunately, only the Noah family did it.

"Each creature in pairs"

Those who ask about how many animals Moses took to his ark, are interested in how much they could fit on one ship at all. According to the Genesis account (chapter 7), it was necessary to take seven of each genus (now zoologists call them species) of the so-called pure animals and two of the impure (hence the expression "every creature in pairs").

What do the numbers say?

Does this mean that all the existing species of animals should fit on the ark? This sounds implausible. It is believed that hundreds of thousands of species of modern animals can be reduced to a relatively small number of "genera", such as the "genus" of sheep or the "genus" of dogs. Therefore, some scientists calculated that if there were only 10 "genera" of reptiles, 43 "genera" of mammals and 74 "sorts" of birds in the ark, then they could produce the entire population of the living world that exists today. There was no need to save the inhabitants of the seas and oceans from water.

Now counting: 10 + 43 + 74 = 127 species of animals could approximately get on the ark. The animals were both clean and unclean, but it is not known how many were there, and how many others. Therefore, the number of individuals could vary from 254 (127 * 2) to 889 (127 * 7). Even if their number really was within 9 hundred, they would fit nicely on a ship, the length of which was 133 meters, width 22 meters, and height 13 meters.

Proceeding from all this, if to answer the question, how many animals Moses took to his ark, then the answer is one: not at all, because Noah was doing it, it was he who had to place several hundred individuals on his ship.

For skeptics, all of the above sounds like a fairy tale. Nevertheless, even many respected archaeologists and historians admit that at some point the whole earth was suddenly covered with water, and on Ararat mountain the search for the ark does not stop.