99 Fun Facts About Noah's Ark

Who does Genesis 5 name as Noah's father?

Lamech named his son Noah, saying the boy would bring comfort from the toil of the ground God had cursed.

According to Genesis, how long did rain fall during the flood?

Forty days and nights of rain fell, yet the earth took over a year to dry, so Noah's family stayed aboard the ark until then.

In Genesis, what did the dove carry back to Noah, showing him the waters were going down?

An olive leaf, freshly plucked; Noah waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, and this time it never returned.

What are the names of Noah's three sons?

Shem, Ham and Japheth: Genesis 10 traces the nations of the earth to these three, and Abraham's line runs through Shem.

What did God command Noah and his sons after the flood, repeating his blessing on Adam and Eve?

Be fruitful and multiply, God told them, and he also put the fear and dread of humans into every beast, bird and fish.

Genesis gives the ark's size in cubits; what was a cubit originally based on?

The forearm, from elbow to fingertip, so a cubit's length varied between peoples and over the ages.

Genesis 7 tells Noah to take which animals aboard by sevens rather than a single pair?

Clean animals came in by sevens, and after the flood Noah built an altar and burned some of them as offerings.

From what material was Noah told to build the ark?

Gopher wood is found nowhere else in the Bible, so the King James Version left it untranslated; guesses have ranged from cedar to cypress.

With what was the ark to be sealed inside and out?

Pitch, probably bitumen: Genesis uses koper, thought to be borrowed from Akkadian kupru, and the Babylonian hero Utnapishtim seals his boat with bitumen too.

Besides Noah's Ark, what is the only other object the Hebrew Bible calls a 'tevah'?

Moses's basket, set among the Nile reeds, is the only other tevah, which is why the King James Version calls it an 'ark of bulrushes'.

Under God's covenant with Noah after the flood, what were humans permitted to eat for the first time?

Meat was allowed from then on, but never with its blood, and the same covenant made killing a human a crime to be paid for with the killer's life.

Which giants does Genesis 6 say were on the earth in the days before the flood?

The Nephilim, mighty men of old; oddly, the Book of Numbers later has Israel's spies report seeing giants descended from them in the Promised Land.

What sign did God set in the clouds as a pledge never again to destroy all life by flood?

A rainbow; Genesis has God say that whenever he sees it he will remember the covenant, so the sign is a reminder to God himself.

In the Quran's flood story, who refuses to board the ark and drowns?

One of Noah's sons says a mountain will save him; when Noah pleads for him, God replies that the son is not of his family because of his deeds.

Which of Noah's grandsons was cursed after Ham saw his father naked in his tent?

Why the curse fell on Canaan rather than Ham has puzzled commentators since antiquity.

Which mighty hunter, whose kingdom began at Babel, does Genesis name as a great-grandson of Noah?

Nimrod later became, in Josephus and the Talmud, the man who led the building of the Tower of Babel, though Genesis never says so.

Which Mesopotamian poem has the flood story closest to Noah's, told by Utnapishtim?

Gilgamesh's flood tablet so thrilled George Smith when he read it in 1872 that he reportedly leapt up, ran around the room and began undressing.

In the Babylonian flood story, Utnapishtim frees a dove and then a swallow; which bird does he free last?

A raven, which finds food and never comes back, telling Utnapishtim the waters have fallen; in Genesis, Noah sends his raven first.

After the Babylonian flood, what do the gods grant Utnapishtim and his wife?

Eternal life, which is why a grieving king later seeks Utnapishtim out to learn how to escape death, only to fail a test of staying awake.

Who is the hero of the Sumerian flood story known from a tablet found at Nippur?

Ziusudra, a king of Shuruppak, overhears the god Enki warning him of the coming flood by speaking to a wall beside him.

What shape was the ark of the Babylonian flood hero Atrahasis?

Circular: a cuneiform tablet read by the British Museum's Irving Finkel gave enough detail for a team to build a copy.

Which Babylonian priest retold the Mesopotamian flood story in Greek in the 3rd century BCE?

Berossus dedicated his history of Babylonia to the Seleucid king Antiochus I, but it is lost except for passages quoted by later writers such as Eusebius.

Which son of Prometheus is often compared to Noah for surviving a flood in an ark?

In one telling, Deucalion built a chest on his father's advice, and after the flood he and his wife Pyrrha repopulated the world by throwing stones that became people.

In which modern country does Mount Ararat, traditionally identified as the ark's landing place, stand?

Turkey: writers in the 1700s and 1800s reported that Armenians believed the ark still sat on the summit and that no one was allowed near it.

What kind of mountain is Mount Ararat?

A dormant volcano: its last eruption, in 1840, came with an earthquake and landslide that buried the village of Akhuri.

In Genesis, what does God see the earth filled with before deciding to send the flood?

Violence, Genesis says, and God regretted making humans at all, resolving to wipe out people, animals and birds alike.

In Fantasia 2000, which Disney character helps Noah load the ark to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance?

Donald Duck musters the animals, but along the way he and Daisy lose each other before they are reunited.

Which event about 7,500 years ago has been proposed as a real inspiration for the flood story?

A Black Sea deluge through the Bosporus was proposed by geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman in 1997, though later studies suggest a far milder inflow.

In Julian Barnes's novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, what creature narrates the Noah's Ark story?

A woodworm, one of a colony that sneaked aboard as stowaways, and it doubts that Noah was fit to be God's chosen man.

According to the Midrash Tanhuma, how much did Noah sleep during the year aboard the ark?

Not at all: Noah and his sons had to feed every creature at its own hour, some by day and others deep in the night.

By what name is Noah known in the Quran?

Nuh preached to his people for 950 years, the Quran says, yet only a few ever believed him.

What does 'safina', a Quranic word for Noah's Ark, mean in Arabic?

Ship: where the Hebrew word suggests a box or chest, the Quran calls the ark an ordinary ship, a thing of planks and nails.

In which US state is Ark Encounter, the theme park built around a full-size ark?

Kentucky's Ark Encounter opened on July 7, a date chosen as a nod to Genesis 7:7, the verse where Noah's family enters the ark.

Carpenter Johan Huibers built a full-size Noah's Ark replica, opened in 2012, in which country?

The Netherlands: Huibers said he was inspired by a 1992 dream in which storm waves swept over his country.

Which Australian creationist, a founder of Answers in Genesis, created the Ark Encounter theme park?

Ken Ham's ministry had the park's state tax incentives withdrawn over its religious hiring rules, then sued in federal court and won them back.

Who plays Noah in Darren Aronofsky's 2014 film?

Russell Crowe got the role after Aronofsky's earlier choices, Christian Bale and Michael Fassbender, proved unavailable.

Aronofsky's Noah drew on which non-canonical text for its fallen-angel Watchers?

The Book of Enoch supplied the Watchers, fallen angels who in the film are stuck on earth as stone giants and end up helping Noah build the ark.

In the 2007 comedy Evan Almighty, which actor plays a congressman ordered by God to build an ark?

Steve Carell starred, and costly effects and filming live animals pushed the budget to about $175 million.

Which country's Nakhchivan exclave is one of the four states that nearly meet at Mount Ararat?

Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan lies beside Ararat, whose summit passed from Persian to Russian control under the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay.

What did geologists conclude the boat-shaped Durupınar site near Mount Ararat really is?

A natural rock formation: David Fasold, who had promoted it as the ark, later co-wrote the geology paper exposing it as a common structure.

Which Apollo 15 moonwalker led expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of the ark?

James Irwin, who said space made God more real to him, was hurt falling from a cliff on Ararat in 1982, yet he kept searching for years after.

Who led the first recorded ascent of Mount Ararat, in 1829?

Friedrich Parrot reached the summit only on his third attempt, guided by the Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian.

According to surah 11:44 of the Quran, on which mountain did the ark come to rest?

Mount Judi: the verse has God order the earth to swallow its water and the sky to hold back its rain, and then the ark comes to rest.

The Quran holds up Noah's wife as a warning to disbelievers alongside the wife of which other prophet?

Lot: the Quran says both wives betrayed their prophet husbands, and being married to prophets did not save them from the Fire.

Who directed the 1928 Warner Brothers part-talkie epic Noah's Ark?

Michael Curtiz shot a flood scene so dangerous that extras reportedly drowned; a young John Wayne was one of the extras caught up in it.

Which TV science educator toured Ark Encounter just after it opened and called its science exhibits 'absolutely wrong'?

Bill Nye, who had debated the park's founder in 2014, argued with him again as the two walked through the ark together.

Aronofsky's 2014 film Noah was denied release in which country for 'religion-related reasons'?

China, and Egypt's top Islamic body al-Azhar also urged a ban, saying that portraying a prophet contradicts the stature of prophets.

In Aronofsky's Noah, who plays Methuselah, the hero's grandfather?

Anthony Hopkins's Methuselah cures Ila, the orphan Noah's family adopted, of the barrenness everyone believed was permanent.

Which New Testament letter compares Noah's salvation through water to baptism?

1 Peter, and later writers pushed the image further: Augustine called the ark a figure of the Church, its proportions matching a human body.

Which actor plays God in both Bruce Almighty and its ark-building sequel Evan Almighty?

Morgan Freeman's God picks a newly elected congressman from Buffalo as his ark-builder, and the politician's changing looks soon scare off his own staff.

Michelangelo painted scenes from Noah's life, flood included, on the ceiling of which Vatican landmark?

The Sistine Chapel ceiling has nine Genesis panels, and Michelangelo began with the Noah ones. He seems to have misjudged the ceiling's size, because their figures are smaller than the others.

Counting Noah, his wife, their sons and the sons' wives, how many people rode out the flood aboard the ark?

Eight people made up the whole passenger list, all from one family. Genesis goes on to say that the entire earth was repopulated from them.

Once the flood was over, Genesis says Noah turned farmer and planted what kind of crop?

A vineyard was Noah's first project as a man of the soil. The story then takes a turn when he drinks too much of his own wine and passes out in his tent.

The Animals Went in Two by Two takes its tune from which Civil War song?

When Johnny Comes Marching Home was written by bandleader Patrick Gilmore, and its tune was later recycled for children's songs about paired-up animals and marching ants.

Which planet has a geologic period called the Noachian, after a cratered region named the 'Land of Noah'?

Mars spent its Noachian period under heavy asteroid bombardment and possibly with abundant surface water, a fitting echo of the flood story.

Which country's coat of arms shows Noah's Ark perched on top of Ararat, flanked by an eagle and a lion?

Armenia has shown Ararat on its arms since 1918, and the peak stayed there even on the emblem of the Soviet republic.

Which adjective for anything hopelessly out of date was coined in the 1640s to mean 'before Noah's flood'?

Antediluvian joins the Latin words for before and flood. The physician Sir Thomas Browne coined it, and within a century writers were using it to mock anything very dated.

According to Genesis, what was the very first thing Noah built once he stepped off the ark?

An altar came before any shelter or field. Noah made burnt offerings on it, and God answered with a vow never again to curse the ground.

Which Harry Potter star plays Ila, the orphan Noah's family takes in, in Darren Aronofsky's 2014 film Noah?

Emma Watson took the part after the Potter films had wrapped, and her character grows up to marry one of Noah's sons.

God's building plan in Genesis gave Noah's Ark one window, one door and how many decks?

Three decks, which Genesis calls the lower, second and third stories, filled a hull 300 cubits long and 30 cubits high.

Genesis says Noah was already a father of grown sons when the flood came; how old was he that year?

600 was only middle age for Noah. Genesis has him live another 350 years after the flood and die at 950.

Before the flood, Genesis 6 says God looked at human wickedness and felt what about having made people?

Regret is the surprising emotion in the story. The Authorized Version says it repented the Lord that he had made man, and that it grieved him at his heart.

When Noah lay uncovered in his tent, how did two of his sons come in to cover him without looking?

Walking backwards with a garment across their shoulders, the two brothers kept their faces turned away, and their father blessed them for it once he woke.

Which Hindu god took the form of a fish, Matsya, to rescue the first man, Manu, from a world-drowning flood?

Vishnu's fish avatar, often counted as the first of his ten, is said to tow Manu's boat by its horn to high ground in the northern mountains.

Noah's Ark, a giant water park opened in 1979, is a landmark of the Dells resort area in which US state?

Wisconsin's Noah's Ark spreads across about 70 acres in the village of Lake Delton and opens only for the warmer months, from May to September.

Which English astronomer told the Royal Society in 1694 that a passing heavenly body caused Noah's flood?

Edmond Halley blamed the close approach of a comet, then left the paper unpublished for 30 years because he feared censure from the clergy.

Arca noae, a Mediterranean species nicknamed the Noah's Ark shell, is what kind of sea creature?

A bivalve with a two-part hinged shell, it is gathered commercially in the Adriatic by divers and by boats dragging rakes along the seabed.

The English word 'ark' derives from the Latin arca, the term used in the Vulgate Bible, which meant what?

A chest or large box is what arca meant, which is why English uses the same word for the Ark of the Covenant, the coffer that held the tablets of the law.

Walt Disney's 1933 cartoon Father Noah's Ark belongs to which series of music-driven animated shorts?

Silly Symphonies gave Disney room to experiment, and this one shows the animals helping to build the boat before the storm rolls in.

In a 2009 VeggieTales video, the adventurer Minnesota Cuke hunts the world for which powerful relic of Noah's?

An umbrella is the prize, the mysterious Noah's Umbrella, while the rich man who funds the quest wants the ark itself as a tourist attraction for his backyard.

Besides rain from the 'windows of heaven', Genesis says Noah's flood burst from what other source?

Fountains of the deep broke open on the same day the sky's windows did, so the flood rose from below as well as falling from above.

In the Authorized Version of Genesis 6, Noah alone 'found' what in the eyes of the Lord?

Grace arrives at the bleakest moment of the story, in the verse straight after God resolves to destroy everything he has made.

Which New Testament letter's roll call of the faithful praises Noah for building an ark to save his household?

Hebrews says Noah acted on a warning about things not yet seen, and it lists him just ahead of Abraham among its heroes of faith.

The prophet Ezekiel names Noah, Job and which third man as his models of righteousness?

Daniel completes the trio, and Ezekiel's point is a bleak one: in a land under judgment, even these men could rescue no one but themselves.

In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says which future event will arrive as suddenly as Noah's flood?

The Son of Man's coming, Jesus warns, will find people eating, drinking and marrying, just as the flood did on the day Noah entered the ark.

Noah's name derives from a Hebrew root meaning what?

Rest is the literal sense of the name. At the birth his father says the boy will comfort the family in the hard labour of their hands.

Jewish tradition holds that all humanity, not only Israel, is bound by how many Laws of Noah?

Seven laws make up the code: six prohibitions, among them idolatry, murder and theft, plus a duty to set up courts of justice.

Which name is traditionally given to Genesis 10, the chapter that follows Noah's sons after the flood?

Table of Nations is the usual label. Its list runs to 70 names, a number scholars read as a symbol of the unity of all humanity.

In the theology of the Latter-day Saints, the prophet Noah is the mortal identity of which heavenly angel?

Gabriel is taken to be Noah's heavenly name, which makes the ark-builder the same figure who later announces the birth of Jesus to Mary.

In the Babylonian story of Atrahasis, which god floods the earth because human noise keeps him awake?

Enlil, chief of the gods, decrees the flood to wipe out an overgrown and noisy human race, while a rival god quietly tips off one man.

Which former banknote engraver found fame in 1872 by translating a Babylonian tablet that echoed Noah's flood?

George Smith read his translation to an audience that included Prime Minister Gladstone, and a newspaper then paid for him to dig at Nineveh for the missing lines.

Which Asian city has a Noah's Ark theme park on Ma Wan island, beside the Tsing Ma Bridge?

Hong Kong's ark opened in 2009 as part of Ma Wan Park, and it houses an exhibit about expeditions that claimed to have found the original.

Which first-century historian claimed that pieces of Noah's Ark were being shown to visitors in his own time?

Josephus in fact named two different resting places in his writings, each time adding that local people showed the remains to travellers.

Operation Noah rescued more than 6,000 animals from the rising waters behind which newly built African dam?

Kariba Dam drowned a gorge on the Zambezi in the late 1950s, and rangers spent five years moving elephants, rhinos, lions and snakes to safe ground.

Which folk group formed in Toronto had a 1968 hit with The Unicorn, about creatures that missed Noah's Ark?

The Irish Rovers took the song from Shel Silverstein, the children's poet, who had recorded it himself six years earlier.

Super 3D Noah's Ark, an unlicensed 1994 Super Nintendo game, runs on the engine of which first-person shooter?

Wolfenstein 3D's engine was licensed from id Software, and its Nazi guards became goats that Noah knocks out with a slingshot full of sleep-inducing food.

Peter Spier's 1977 picture book Noah's Ark won which American prize for children's book illustration?

Caldecott Medal judges named it the year's most distinguished American picture book, and its paperback edition later won a National Book Award too.

Which composer wrote Noye's Fludde, the children's opera performed in Wes Anderson's film Moonrise Kingdom?

Benjamin Britten based it on a medieval Chester mystery play and premiered it in 1958, written for amateurs, with a chorus of children as the animals.

Which Russian-born composer wrote The Flood, a musical play about Noah first shown on CBS television in 1962?

Igor Stravinsky conceived the piece for the small screen, and its premiere broadcast was conducted by Robert Craft.

Which director cast himself as Noah, and also voiced God, in his 1966 epic The Bible: In the Beginning...?

John Huston narrated the film as well, and it went on to become the highest-grossing release of 1966 in North America.

Which Oscar-winning actor played Noah, opposite Mary Steenburgen, in the 1999 NBC miniseries Noah's Ark?

Jon Voight also supplied the uncredited voice of God, and the second night set a movie ratings mark that NBC did not beat for five years.

Which pudding of grains, dried fruit and nuts, made in the month of Muharram, is nicknamed Noah's pudding?

Ashure, one legend says, was first cooked by Noah's family from the last scraps in the ark's stores to celebrate reaching dry land.

The midrash Genesis Rabbah names which sister of the metalworker Tubal-cain as the wife of Noah?

Naamah is only one tradition's answer, since Genesis never gives the woman a name. The Book of Jubilees calls Noah's wife Emzara instead.

Scholars trace Noah's flood story to two sources, the Priestly and which other, named for its word for God?

Yahwist and Priestly strands were spliced together, which is why the finished story repeats itself and gives two different counts of the creatures taken aboard.

Which British archaeologist argued that a thick flood layer he dug through at Ur lay behind Noah's story?

Leonard Woolley took the silt as proof of a real but local disaster, noting that for the people of the valley it was the whole world.

The biblical name Ararat is cognate with the name of which Iron Age kingdom centred on Lake Van?

Urartu ruled a whole highland region, and Genesis speaks only of mountains in the plural. Pinning the ark to a single peak is a later tradition.

Which 17th-century Jesuit polymath published Arca Noë, his research into Noah's Ark and its creatures?

Athanasius Kircher argued that species changed as they spread out after the flood, so that a deer moving into a colder climate became a reindeer.

Which city in Phrygia struck coins in the third century AD showing scenes of Noah and his ark?

Apamea's coins are among the earliest biblical scenes in the art of the empire, and some also carry the city's other name, Cibotus.

Which comedian played Noah in Richard Rodgers's 1970 Broadway musical Two by Two, for a time on crutches?

Danny Kaye kept performing on crutches and in a wheelchair, and he had a castmate's song cut so that no one in the show had a funnier number than his.