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Noah's Ark as Metaphor

The story of Noah's ark, understood as a metaphor, conveys a significant religious tenet, whereas as a factual occurrence it poses numerous problems. The foremost question that arises is how Noah, living as he did more than a thousand years before the Iron Age, could possibly have constructed a vessel of the size of the ark as described in the Bible. He would have had to accomplish this task without hammers, axes or saws with which to fell trees or cut to equal size those which nature had uprooted. To hold them together without nails is another unimaginable task. The history of shipbuilding tells of no vessel even remotely this size in the epoch in which Noah lived. Nor does the biblical text intimate that Noah found a vessel which had been constructed by heavenly sources; to the contrary, it says specifically that he was to build it. (1) Equally hard to imagine is how Noah could have harvested, transported and stored enough food to keep himself, his family and a very large assortment of animals--some of considerable size--alive for as long a period as the ark was occupied. (2) The question of the carnivorous species appears particularly problematic. Furthermore, archeology has so far discovered no evidence of a flood of this dimension having occurred at the time when Noah lived. (3) The proper way to understand the narrative of Noah is as a metaphor. What is the lesson of this metaphor? There is one outstanding feature in the story of Noah and his ark which helps elucidate its meaning. The story of the ark is an almost exact parallel to the biblical report of the original Creation. In the beginning of the world, as reported in Genesis, the universe was a mass of water (Gen. 1:2). In Noah's time the destruction is carried out by reducing the earth to a surface where only water is in view. The first tangible act of creation (third day) was the appearance of dry land. In Noah's story the return to normalcy started with dry land's reappearance (Gen. 8:5). The next step in the original Creation was plant life. The parallel thereto is the branch from an olive tree brought to the ark by the returning dove. This little episode, which seems to serve no practical purpose for Noah as he still cannot exit the ark, becomes important to show the symbolic parallel as outlined. In the first Creation story this is followed by the creation of fish and birds. Fish did not need a new creation since they easily survived the flood. In Noah's time of creation, the dove which failed to return serves as the parallel. Thus, for a short time, the earth was once again inhabited by fish and birds only. On the sixth day, God created land animals and humans. The emphasis placed on the fact that man and land animals left the ark to re-inhabit the earth at the same time (Gen. 8:15-19) could not be better explained than as a reference to the sixth day of creation. In our comparison we left out the first, second and fourth day. Light and Heaven needed no recreation. Neither did the heavenly bodies, the determinants of seasons on earth. But to maintain the metaphorical parallel the text added a verse: While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (Gen. 8:22). The symbolic approach to the story of Noah and his ark appears to contradict the exact dates reported for the beginning of the rain and its termination. If, on the other hand, we can find that these dates themselves have a symbolic meaning, they no longer contradict the metaphorical approach. The dates of the beginning and the end of the rain are the exact opposites of the natural season of rain in the Near East. These dates therefore, the 17th of the second month (Iyar) and the 17th day of the seventh month (Tishri), being the opposite of the natural rainy season would serve to demonstrate that the story of the Deluge refers to a special act by the Creator and not a natural occurrence. …