Of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark. Genesis 6:19Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. Genesis 7:8-9
Every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. Genesis 7:14-15
Of every clean beast thou shalt take thee by sevens, the male and his female. Genesis 7:2
How Many Animals would Noah have had to bring on his boat?
- The 1.9m estimation on Wikipedia is an inconsistent source, scientific studies show variable results. The issue we have is due to defining “what is an animal”, what is a species, and when you get into taxonomy you can have varying figures
- There is over 1 million known Mammals alone
- However, bacteria, fungi, insects are also species of animals
- There’s about 400k species of Beetles
- Bacteria, and microbial animals make up the largest populations of living species, and the estimate of these alone put the number in billions, and could even put it into the trillions
Does the texts specify wether Noah had to bring 7 of every clean animal? Or multiplied 7x2, making it 14 of every clean animal?
- Even if two of every living animal species you can get into pretty ridiculous figures, as the clean animals alone could be anywhere from 200m-Several Billion animal species, the writers obviously did not have an understanding of animals and species
- Even at the lowest possible figures you are over 1M animal species even at 2 or 7 or 14 as I propose this number of creatures would need food, water, and for god to stop these animals from excreting waste, and most importantly these animals eat each other, there are parasitic and blood sucking creatures like ticks, fleas, leaches, bats, and many species of blood sucking birds I.g.Vampire Finch, Oxpecker (literally found on Oxen and typically larger Mammals)
- So how would Noah and his family keep these creatures docile and tame
- considering wild dogs and wolves can travel up to 200-300mi in a day and need a ton of exercise, so how did Noah ensure these animals didn’t go insane as many creatures will destroy things, attack others, and rip their own bodies apart?
- Then you get into all the diseases that would have been on board
When did Noah live?
- The Bible creates a contradiction here with how long ago the events of Genesis occurred.
- Traditionally, Christians believed this occurred around 2000-2800 BCE and bases this on their accepted flood date (surprise this is also contested among Christians)
- The flood date was commonly considered to be around 4-5000 BCE which pushes, other Biblical “scholars” push the flood date back to about 7000 BCE
- Then you have the contradictions of when Abraham lived as well, and considering the genealogies could also widely vary due to the myth that these people could live for 400-900+ years depending on which version of the events you follow
- I bring this up because I’m this 4k-8k year age range creates a problem with how many animals Noah would have had to bring aboard as species have come and gone in anywhere from 6k-12k years ago
I’m not sure if these have been covered already but these are just observations that I have made