How big was Noah’s foot? when the KJV says God told Noah “the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits”. Genesis 6:15 KJV
Silly Question? Not when you remember Noah’s Ark is given the length of 450 “feet” in many modern Bibles. Never thought about it? Now is the time, since it assumes present day translators’ feet are the same size as Noah’s. The old measurement “foot” is quite literally based on the length of man’s feet. The old King James Bible left the Ark measurements in their original form when it said the ark was 300 cubits long. But a cubit was an arm measurement, not a foot measurement. It was the distance from elbow to fingertip. If you assume this is 18in long, (therefore 300 cubits is 450 feet) then you are assuming Noah was the same size as the modern Bible editors. Just as well the editors were not African pygmies or they really would have trouble answering the sceptic’s question: “How did Noah fit everything on the ark?”
That raises the more serious point of how big Noah actually was, and how wise it is to translate cubits into space age measurement rather than leaving them as cubits with explanatory footnotes. Most of our creation research indicates many of today’s tiny creatures such as tassel ferns, dragonflies and goannas were absolutely gigantic in the past. The explanation is probably that creatures originally lived in a much better world and therefore lived much longer. Many creatures today grow every day as long as they live but they don’t live very long because the climatic conditions in the modern world are so extreme. The Bible records Noah as the last man to live over 900 years, so modern man does not live very long in comparison.
Humans do not grow every day of their lives for as long as they live, but their size does depend on the quality of the environment and all indications from Genesis 1 – 9 (creation to flood) are that the perfectly created world was a much better place to live. There were no extremes of summer and winter, desert and snow, storm and dust, combined with the hazards of carnivores, disease and pollution. These are all long term consequences of man’s rebellion and God’s judgement.
All of this means the bigger Noah was, the bigger his cubit was and the bigger the ark was, and the easier it was to fit in two of each kind of creature, particularly if they were taken as babies. The fossil evidence for many creatures tells us that babies have always started the same size. You might also find it interesting that a quick flick through many encyclopaedias will tell you that 2-3,000 years ago the foot was over 13 inches.
So, how big was Noah’s foot? Get the point?
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