This staff column raises some more questions for me. According to this, God gave Noah permission to eat animals right after disembarking from the ark. Now supposedly there were only two of each species left on Earth, right? That strikes me as a particularly bad time to become a carnivore. Noah would have had to wait several generations before he could eat a member of a species without severely endangering it’s existence.
Furthermore, if I remember the story correctly, the first thing Noah did after getting off the ark was to sacrifice an animal to God. Was this the end of that kind of animal? Is this what really happened to the dinosaurs?
Actually, according to Genesis, there were seven (or seven pairs) of each kosher animal. And since only kosher animals were offered as sacrifices, it wasn’t as bad a problem as you might have thought. (Dinosaurs indeed…)
Ah, I just read the story again and found my mistake. However, as with most bible stories, it also brought up even more questions. Like were birds considered kosher? Noah releases a dove that flies away, never to return. Assuming Noah still has its mate in the ark, what are the odds of them finding each other again? I guess we’re just supposed to accept that God intervenes in the sex life of His creations.
And the dinosaur thing was a joke. I just found the mental picture of Noah munching on bronto-burgers to be hilarious.
Doves are kosher birds and are acceptable for sacrifices (see Leviticus).
I guess I knew that you were joking about the dinosaurs. One of my favorite moments in Fantasia 2000 is when you see the dragon, unicorn and other similar beasts laughing at Noah…
I’ve been teaching Sunday School to first-graders for 11 years now, and every year when we study the unit on “Noah”, the curriculum blandly continues to ignore the issue of “what the carnivores on the Ark ate”. The teacher’s book goes into happy detail about the herbivores–“Ask the children if they know what elephants eat (hay), and have them guess how much hay Noah would have had to bring for the elephants…”–but the subject of “how many rabbits would Noah have needed to bring along to throw to the wolves” is somehow completely glossed over.
Even that is awfully simplified. Elephants will eat pretty much anything in the vegetable kingdom. In the wild, they eat bark, foliage, and various grasses, but in captivity, they also eat bread, potatoes, rice, and most human-style fruits and vegetables (from what I’ve heard, pumpkins are their favorite).
Read the answer again. Antedelugian wolves, and lions and tigers and bears, were all exclusively herbivores 'cause God hadn’t permitted them to eat meat yet. And if you buy that I have an exciting investment opportunity in cold fusion for you . . .
So, you’re saying that the landing site of the Ark suddenly became a carnivorous free-for-all as half the animal population suddenly got a hankerin’ for the flesh of the other half?
Depends on which verses/sources in Genesis you read. If you accept the thesis that Genesis (along with the rest of the Torah) is a work compiled from multiple original sources, and accept the conventional wisdom about those sources, the “P” document describes Noah as taking two, not seven, of every animal, clean and unclean alike:
**P Document Verses:
**
In contrast, the “J” document verses has Noah taking seven of each of the clean animals, and it is in J, not P, that a sacrifice is described later on:
**J Document Verses:
**
It’s one of the more commonly cited examples of the mingling of two ancient texts to create the Torah. (J = dove, P = raven; J=LORD {=YHWH, actually}, P =God {Elohim}; etc.)
How was Noah supposed to know which animals were clean and which were unclean? There’s nothing in the story about it, and the specific kosher laws weren’t created until many years later (after the exodus, I believe). Was there a Jewish cultural tradition on kosher foods that predated the laws in Leviticus?
All of that “everyone was a vegetarian until the ark landed” business is false testimony straight from the devil!
We know this because of the Far Side cartoon where a couple of lions (or whatever they were) have killed, and are eating, the unicorns, thus irritating Noah and causing him to restrict all carnivores to “C” deck.
The Leviticus tradition relates to what animals one may eat as food - something that Noah wouldn’t have been allowed to do prior to the flood, as per the Staff Report. Jewish tradition indicates that since the time of Adam, there was an understanding of which animals were acceptable as sacrifices (Abel sacrificed a sheep, you might recall) - that’s the context of “clean” for Noah. Basically, cattle, sheep, goats, and birds of the dove family.
And, according to the Torah, the rainbow didn’t exist before the flood, either. And I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to add to your investment offers.
Questions about Noah’s meat? I never heard of such a thing! Young man, that’s a terrible way to treat one of our most revered patriarchs! Why do you need to know about Noah’s private parts? The Bible cannot be trifled with! Shame! Shame! Why I oughta…
