Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T13:03:05.994Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The date of ‘Noah's Ark’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. E. Taylor  and
Rainer Berger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One of the most widely-known narratives contained in Judaeo-Christian literature is that of ‘Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood’. The version best known to most English readers is derived from the translation of Genesis VI-VIII contained in the 1611 King James Version of the Bible and its subsequent revisions. According to this account, near the end of the Biblical Deluge, the Ark rested ‘upon the mountains of Ararat’. From this locality, according to the story, the ancestral stock of all terrestrial life, including mankind, left the Ark with the order that they ‘be fruitful and multiply upon the earth’. The Hebrew word which has been transliterated as Ararat in English texts may have been ultimately derived from an expression meaning ‘highlands’, and apparently referred to a region at the headwaters of the Tigris River which lay within the ancient boundaries of the Urartu of Assyrian records (Mellick, 1962).

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 54 , Issue 210 , March 1980 , pp. 34 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, L. R. 1977. Wood from ‘Mount Ararat’: Noah’s Ark?, Biblical Archeologist, XL, 137—46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, L. R. 1978. Where is Noah’s Ark? (New York).Google Scholar
Balsiger, D. & JR.Sellier, C. E. 1976. In search of Noah’s Ark (Los Angeles).Google Scholar
Berger, R. 1980. UCLA Radiocarbon Dates X, Radiocarbon (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Callow, W. J., M. J. Baker , & Hassail, G. E.. 1965. National Physical Laboratory Radiocarbon Measurements III, Radiocarbon, VII, 156—61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damon, P. E., Lerman, J. C. & Long, A.. 1978. Temporal fluctuations of atmospheric C14: causal factors and implications, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, VI, 457—78.Google Scholar
Mellick, M. J. 1962. Ararat, in (ed.)G. A.Buttrick, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, I, 194—5 (New York).Google Scholar
Navarra, R. 1974. Noah’s Ark: I touched it (Plainfield).Google Scholar
Ralph, E. K., Michael, M. C. & Han., 1973. Radiocarbon dates and reality, MASCA Newsletter, IX, 1—23. Google Scholar
Suess, H. E. 1979. A calibration table for conventional radiocarbon dates, in (eds.)R. Berger & H. E.Suess, Radiocarbon dating, 777—84 (Berkeley).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, R. E. 1980. UCR Radiocarbon Dates III, Radiocarbon (forthcoming).Google Scholar