I think the answer to this question is that it would depend on the environmental conditions. If it was very cold, and very dry, and if the boat was held static in those cold, dry conditions, it could survive indefinitely.
If it was wet and humid, it would rot pretty quickly.
That’s how I remembered it too.
-XT
Well, we know where he was building it was hot an dry. And we know that during the voyage it had to be warm enough inside for the animals to have survived. We know that the inside was covered in animal waste, water, etc…all a perfect environment for rot. I don’t know what the conditions outside the ship would have been…since it’s impossible for such a flood to have happened, it’s impossible to speculate what the climate would have been like. I’ve heard that so much water falling would have super-heated the atmosphere, so I guess it might have been fairly warm.
I guess it would depend on how long until the current glacial conditions on Mt Ararat got back in full swing as to whether or not the Ark would have completely rotted away before the glacier had a change to tear it apart.
One question I’d have about cold conditions is, has any large structure of wood dating back to before 2000 BC or so ever been found? I know there was the ice man and his wooden impliments, but those were pretty small scale. I also know that in the Black Sea they have found ships almost perfectly preserved below the anoxic layer. But have any large wooden structures been found from that long ago in cold regions? Just curious.
-XT
You know pissed you are when you’ve been working on a document for a few hours, and forget to save, and then the power goes out. Imagine you’ve been working on it for two whole days! No way was he going to delete and start over. He just got Noah to save them all onto a wooden pen drive while he reinstalled creation.
That would be Xenu’s Ark.
Good christian rock band name, tho.
I can just see the elephants and other pairs of animals rappelling down the face with crampons and little ice axes … or maybe Noah was more devious than The Bible lets on.
You’d find unicorn skeletons. It isn’t that they missed the boat, they just wouldn’t get off.
So… 896 years *before *creation… now that is a good trick. 
If the waters came up, rather than down – flooding / rising water rather than predominately rain that wouldn’t then be a critical issue.
Since the ark would be a good souce of lumber (probably the only source) Noah and family should dismantle the ark and use it to make shelter or firewood.
I’m pretty sure the bible doesn’t say anything about “Mount Ararat”. It says the Ark landed “in the mountains of Ararat” and that the mountain we call Ararat got that name after and because of the story. So, where the hell was Ararat?
Cite: Genesis 8:4
And what would those challenges be?
Imagine all that humidity when the thousands of feet of water evaporated at the rate it had to, as there was no place on earth for it to sink in. Oh, the steam and cold as it did. With all those animals who then were crowded together then on almost no food, they had to swim the oceans to get back to Australia, the Americias. the North and South Poles. Plus how could any plants grow, they were covered with water for nearly a year and couldn’t pollenate. It insects would have been a real problem and frogs, toads,crocodiles would have had a fun time for a year! Best of all how could the dove find a palm branch on top of a mountian that was covered with 15,000 feet of water for nearly a year?
The stated purpose of the deluge is that God repented having created man and decided to drown them all (even the little babies?. . . . .guess so!) But God wanted non-human animal life and Noah’s family to continue.
You might make the argument that as long as he was going to kill all the adults, it would be no kindness to let the children remain alive and die of neglect.
But what had all the other animals not on the ark done to deserve drowning? Can animals be evil? Dunno.
But you end up with this final question. Why couldn’t God just appear in the sky, tell the human race he was going to eliminate them all except Noah’s family, snap his divine fingers, and presto, they disappear. Mission accomplished. No need for a flood, no need to drown millions of cute little animals, no need to make Noah build an ark. Why is God so damned inefficient?
Maybe the rainbow was Noah’s Arc.
And your point is what?
The point is that biblical literalism isn’t a coherent explanation for Earth and human history.
You’re the Urban Spaceman, baby – here comes the twist: God don’t exist.
Not a “coherent explanation for Earth and human history.”
coherent? How so?
I’ve read a whole lot of different “theories” and “assumptions” in this thread so far…but what about this one?
Suppose somehow that part of the water which now comprises our oceans was suspended in the atmosphere in a dense layer of cloud cover and that rainfall before the flood was drastically different than it is now. And suppose that another part of the water which now comprises our oceans was held within deep underground caverns.
So if “God” was able to use an as yet unobserved meteorological phenomenon to keep that water where it was up until the point where he decided to flood the Earth - maybe all he really did to cause the flood was to “pull the plug” as it were, and release all this water. The result would be that we now have a very different continental structure than we would have had before the flood…and that all the water currently on the Earth is the same water which was here before the flood…but it’s just in a different place now.
The mention in the Bible of “all the Earth” being covered could have just as easily meant “all the known Earth” just the same way as the apostle Paul meant it when he said that the good news was preached in “all creation that is under heaven” in Colossians 1:23. Clearly this only referred to the then known world…because we know Paul didn’t make it to South America…
And the whole rained for 40 days thing…40 days is a number that pops up quite often in the Bible…often enough to make one wonder if it wasn’t a culturally acceptable abbreviation for “really long but unknown time”.
Any ship could be drifting in open water for as much time as the ark did and not even need as much space as “the whole earth”. Think of the fact that the ark had no sails…and if there were no currents it may have not even moved very far…
The biggest question I’ve ever had is this - All the animals? Really? If I could ask Noah a question today…it would be about the animals… Even if God helped out and sent them all to him…it could only feasibly be the animals in the local region…say…the size of the contiguous united states. Otherwise you would run into an awful lot of overcrowding.
Anyhooo…just my two cents. Feel free to rip it up.
There are over 175 species of Poison Dart Frogs alone. That would have been a logistical nightmare for even the most nimble of Noahs.