Genesis 8:5, Where is Noah’s Ark?

Posted on Sunday, November 11, 2012 in Bible Commentary | 8 comments

And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

//Whatever happened to Noah’s gopher-wood Ark? Expeditions to Ararat have tried to find it, but so far, nothing very convincing has been discovered.

Today’s verse tells how the ark ran aground, presumably on Mount Ararat, the tallest mountain in Turkey. It was another three months before the “tops of the mountains” were seen. This would refer to the remaining, lower-elevation mountains in the range, right? But no green vegetation could be seen yet.

Another forty days’ wait and Noah starts sending birds out to scout the land. In time, a dove returns with an olive branch in its mouth, evidence that the waters had receded down to the green stuff, so Noah knows it’s time to exit the ark. But whatever happened to the ark?

Maybe the answer is in plain sight. 

And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. –Genesis 8:20

One estimate of the number of clean animals would be 192 species, plus about a comparable number of now-extinct species. Many of them quite bulky. Atop the glacier-capped mountain of Ararat, way above the tree line, where did Noah get the wood for all these burnt offerings? Would gopher wood work?