by Tim Chaffey
Finally, Romans 8:22 explains that “the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs.” The reason the whole world suffers is due to man’s sin. So earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural disasters are almost certainly included in the groaning of the whole creation, and this has been going on since the Lord cursed the ground because our first parents sinned in the Garden. Verse 19 states that all of creation eagerly waits for the time when God will make all things new. In the new heavens and new earth, there will not be any earthquakes or other natural disasters.
Did Noah really believe the earth traveled around the sun?
In chapter 24, we see Noah express a basic understanding of a heliocentric solar system as opposed to a geocentric solar system. He told Tubal-Cain that the earth occasionally moved between the sun and the moon, which caused the moon to have a brownish appearance. Would Noah have known this information given that so many people up until the 16th century a.d. held to the belief that the sun and other heavenly bodies orbited the earth?
It is true that geocentrism was popularly held from the time of the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemaus (Ptolemy) in the second century a.d., and it was not widely rejected until the time of Nicolaus Copernicus. However, roughly four hundred years before Ptolemy, Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system.
We regularly discover that ancient people had a better understanding of the heavens than is generally supposed. Archaeological discoveries throughout the world have shown that ancient people used the stars for navigation and timekeeping, which was one of the reasons God created them on the fourth day (Genesis 1:14). Very early records of eclipses have also been discovered. Incidentally, lunar eclipses demonstrate the roundness of the earth since the moon passes through our planet’s shadow, revealing earth’s curvature. At the Ark Encounter, visitors can view a globe of the pre-Flood world in Noah’s Study.
We cannot be sure what Noah did and did not know on this subject, but based on the discoveries from the ancient world, it is not unreasonable to think that people in the pre-Flood world had a fairly good understanding of the heavens.
Did people really have huge families prior to the Flood?
In our story we mentioned a few families as being rather large. For example, Noah’s brother and sister-in-law, Jerah and Pivi, are described as having 31 children and we mention that Tubal-Cain and Adira had 17 children. Is it realistic for a couple to have so many children?
The Bible does not tell us how many children certain individuals had prior to the Flood. Cain’s descendant, the evil king in our series, had four children that are mentioned. The men in the line from Adam to Lamech, Noah’s father, in Genesis 5 each had at least five children (one is named, and then we are told that they had other sons and daughters).
The novel is actually probably too conservative on the number of children in a given family. A Russian woman from the 18th century is believed to have given birth to 69 children, and she only lived about 75 years. There are more than a dozen women reported to have given birth to more than 30 children in the past few centuries. In the pre-Flood world, men lived much longer lives than they do today, so women presumably did as well. If a woman who lives fewer than a hundred years can give birth to over 30 children, then it is quite believable that a woman who lives for many centuries could have dozens of children.
At this point in our story, Jerah and Pivi are nearly 500 years old. You may recall from the explanation in the first book that we proposed that people during that time would have aged slower. So a 500-year-old person would look similar to a 50-year-old today. Consider that Pivi could have become pregnant from the time she married until she was around 450 years old. That would mean that she had over 400 years to bear children. Even if she had just 1 child every 10 years, she would have had 40 children. The fact that we only gave her 31 kids is probably an underestimation of the size of many pre-Flood families.
Why was God portrayed as a large flame?
Perhaps the trickiest decision we had to make in writing these books is how we were going to depict God when He spoke with Noah. The Bible simply tells us that the Lord spoke to Noah, but it does not say how He did that. Throughout Scripture, God communicated with people through various ways. The following list gives some of these means.
• Appearing as a man to Abraham in Genesis 18
• A burning bush to Moses in Exodus 3
• Still small voice to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:12–13
• In a vision to Isaiah in Isaiah 6
• In a dream to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2
When God appears in some type of physical form in the Old Testament, theologians identify the occurrence as a theophany, from the Greek words for “God” and “appearance.” In this case, the Bible does not even say that God appeared at all. He may have simply spoken to Noah without appearing. So there were plenty of options available to us that would have been consistent with how God speaks to people in the Bible.
We chose to use a vision combined with an appearance similar to the burning bush for several reasons. The use of the vision and some of its details will be significant in the third book, Noah: Man of God.
Having the Lord appear as a flame tied together several biblical concepts. As mentioned above, Moses saw God as a burning bush, but the bush was not consumed. In our story Noah saw a single flame, but there was no bush or anything else for the flame to burn.
When describing the way God revealed Himself to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, the Bible states that “the sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain” (Exodus 24:17). This idea is repeated in Deuteronomy 4:24 and 9:3. Also, Exodus 13:21 states that “the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.”
One of the earliest appearances of God in physical form recorded in Scripture occurred when the Lord established His covenant with Abraham, called Abram at the time, in Genesis 15. Abraham gathered the sacrificial animals God instructed him to bring, and then the Lord put him into a deep sleep. God, in the form of a fire pot and flaming torch, passed between the animals that had been sacrificed. Much could be said about the significance of this event, but the point here is that we have another example of God appearing to someone as a fire.
The single flame was essentially an attempt to combine aspects of these ideas while remaining unique. After all, there are differences between each of these appearances, so we did not want to copy any of them in every detail.
Why did God only give Noah part of the details about the Flood and the Ark in this book?
When God appeared to Noah in our story, He described just a fraction of what we read in Genesis 6. Would it not have been better to simply quote exactly what God said to Noah so that someone does not think we were attempting to take away from God’s Word?
The short answer is that we will include the entirety of God’s message to Noah at the appropriate time. As mentioned in Chapter 26, Noah will hear from the Most High again.
We do not know if the Lord’s message to Noah about building the Ark was delivered all at one time even though this seems to be the most natural way to understand the text. However, we need to remember that the Bible does not always include every detail. It is quite possible that God revealed certain aspects of His plan to Noah at various intervals, but when the text was eventually recorded, the writer (Moses) simply put all of the communication into one segment.
This is also the reason Noah did not receive all of the information about the Ark at this point. He does not know at this point how large it will need to be, what kind of wood to use, or any of the other details that God revealed in Scripture. He just knows that he will need to build an Ark large enough for eight people and plenty of animals.
Our decision to divide the Creator’s instructions into at least two portions had more to do with storytelling than any clues from the text. We wanted God’s statement about Noah having sons after centuries of ch
ildlessness to be an opportunity for Noah to trust God at the heart of his greatest frustration. He had grown discouraged over the years, so he could have responded in various ways upon hearing about having sons. He could have laughed as Sarai did in Genesis 18:12 when God promised that she would have a child in a year’s time. He could have doubted the message as Zacharias did in Luke 1:18 when the angel told him that he and his wife would soon have a son (John the Baptist). Instead, we chose to have Noah respond with complete trust in what God told him, which underscores why the Bible identifies him as a righteous man. His confidence in the Lord will continue to grow as he sees the Creator’s faithfulness.
Didn’t Noah have 120 years to build the Ark? If so, shouldn’t God have spoken to him 20 years earlier than He did in the novel?
In our novel, Noah was nearly 500 years old when God first spoke to him. The notion that he had 120 years to build the Ark would mean that God would have spoken to him when he was about 480 since the Flood struck in Noah’s 600th year. This idea is a rather common misconception among Christians. I cannot count the number of times I have heard people say, “Noah had 120 years to build the Ark.” This is based on Genesis 6:3, but there are at least two problems with this view.
When the Lord gave Noah the details about the Ark, He told him that He would establish a covenant with Noah, his wife, his sons, and his sons’ wives (Genesis 6:18). So it sure seems as if the sons were grown up and married when God told him to build the Ark. Since the oldest of Noah’s sons was born when Noah was 500 years old (Genesis 5:32), and the Flood came in his 600th year, then Noah would have had much less than 120 years to build the Ark. In fact, he would have had fewer than 100 years to build it, since we need to consider how long it would take for the three boys to be born and to grow up and get married (perhaps 25–50 years), and then subtract that number from 100 to figure out the maximum amount of time for building the Ark (approximately 50–75 years).
The second problem with the idea that Noah had 120 years to build the Ark is that the verse it is based on, Genesis 6:3, is not even about the timing of the Ark’s construction. In the first book, we briefly discussed two popular views about the meaning of this verse in which God stated, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” Many people believe it refers to God’s judgment on man’s lifespan. Prior to the Flood, many of the men mentioned in Genesis 5 lived beyond 900 years. The only two exceptions in the line between Adam and Noah were Enoch (365) and Lamech (777). For God to drastically reduce man’s lifespan would indeed be a severe judgment.
Others believe this verse refers to a countdown to the Flood. That is, from the point God made the announcement there would be 120 years before the earth would be destroyed by the Flood. Even if this happens to be the correct view, notice that it would still not mean that Noah started building the Ark at this time. In fact, God commanded Noah to build the Ark 11 verses later.
Finally, in an Answers magazine article about the construction of the Ark, I wrote about the following problem in thinking it took 120 years to build the Ark.
Consider the implications of building such an enormous boat out of wood over the course of many decades. Exposed to the elements, wood tends to warp and decay as it endures heat, cold, and changes in humidity. Imagine trying to complete one part of the Ark decades after another section had been built. The earliest parts of the construction might need repair by the time the Ark was finished.
To read the rest of the Answers magazine article, please see “Fantastic Voyage: How Could Noah Build the Ark?” at www.answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/fantastic-voyage-how-could-noah-build-ark.
Were there really giants prior to the Flood?
In the dramatic arena chapters in our story, Noah encounters a giant guard that would have easily outsized anyone alive today. We depicted Noah as a fairly tall man. While our story never uses modern units of measure, like feet and inches, we decided that Noah should be about 6'2" tall to match how he is depicted at the Ark Encounter. The reason he is that height is based on the 20.4-inch cubit that was chosen for the construction of the Ark Encounter. But even at that height, Noah only reaches the man’s midsection. Were there really giants in ancient times or is this idea just a tall tale?
Genesis 6:4 states, “There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”
This verse appears at the end of one of the most controversial and misunderstood passages in the Bible, which is one of the reasons Tim decided to write his ThM thesis on this subject. People have long disagreed over many of the details included in Genesis 6:1–4, particularly the identity of the “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” (Genesis 6:2). Scholars generally adopt one of three views regarding the sons of God. Some believe they were godly men in the line of Seth, others believe they were tyrant kings who viewed themselves as divine, and others believe they were angelic beings who left heaven to marry women. The ministry that built the Ark Encounter, Answers in Genesis, does not hold an official position on the identity of the sons of God. For a balanced overview on this topic, read my article from Answers magazine, “Battle Over the Nephilim” at www.answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/battle-over-the-nephilim.
So where do giants fit into this picture? Well, they are often viewed as the offspring produced by the sons of God and the daughters of men. This idea is sometimes disputed as well. Some people will say that the giants were already on the earth when the sons of God and daughters of men had children. However, a close look at the Hebrew language favors the former view. Regardless of one’s position on that debate, Genesis 6:4 states that there were giants on the earth in the days before the Flood, and it describes them as “mighty men” and “men of renown.”
But does the word translated as giants in Genesis 6:4 actually refer to physical giants? After all, many English Bibles use the word Nephilim, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew word. Some popular level writings contend that this word means “fallen ones” and comes from the Hebrew verb naphal (“to fall”). However, this is unlikely since the Hebrew language follows patterns when a term is used as a basis for another word. Please bear with me for a brief discussion of technical details in this paragraph. In this case, to transform the verb naphal into a word that means “fallen ones,” the word would be nephulim. To convert it into a noun meaning “those who fall” would yield the word nophelim. Notice that neither of these terms is spelled the same as the word in Genesis 6:4 (“Nephilim”), and there is a pretty good reason for that. The term Nephilim is likely the Hebrew plural form of the Aramaic noun naphil, which means “giant.”
The translators of the Septuagint, the name given to the Greek translation of the Old Testament begun in the third century b.c., translated Nephilim as gigantes. You can probably tell just by looking at it that gigantes means “giants.” It is interesting that every single Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon that I have examined lists “giants” as the primary meaning of Nephilim, and not one states that it means “fallen ones.”
When we compare Scripture with Scripture, we find another reason to view the term in question as meaning “giants.” Nephilim appears two more times in the Bible, and both occurrences are in the same verse. Numbers 13:33 records the words of the spies who returned to Moses and the Israelites after searching the land of Canaan. They said, “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Both occurrences of the word “giants” in this verse translate to the term Nephilim. Notice that they are described as being very large people. Some commentators have argued that the spies were lying about seeing giants in the land because the previous verse states that the spies gave a “bad report.” However, the term translated as “bad report” does not refer to a false message but to a
true report of bad tidings. Furthermore, the narrator of this passage, Moses, already explained in verse 22 that the spies had seen three giants known as Anakim. In fact, the Bible describes several other people groups in the land of Canaan and surrounding regions as giants: the Amorites (Amos 2:9–10), the Emim (Deuteronomy 2:10–11), the Zamzummim (Deuteronomy 2:20–21), and the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3:11–13). Since Moses wrote both verses in which the word Nephilim appears, and the context of each passage describes some of the physical attributes of these individuals, it makes sense to interpret them consistently as being giants. At the Ark Encounter, we depict a couple of giants in the Pre-Flood World exhibit. We made them to be about the same size as Goliath — six cubits and a span, which is nearly ten feet tall. The giant in the novel is described as being about the same height.
Why did you depict the giant as a cannibal?
Legends and other stories of giants often describe them as having a taste for human flesh. The cyclops Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey is probably the most infamous of cannibalistic giants, but he is not alone. In fact, Odysseus had previously lost his entire fleet of ships except for one when they stopped at the island of the Laestrygonians. The residents of this island were giants who sunk Odysseus’ ships by hurling huge rocks at them, and then they speared Odysseus’ men as one would spear fish and carried them off to feast on them. The popular story of Jack and the Beanstalk also features a giant with a hankering for human flesh.
In our story, the giant guard is not a very nice character. He made a comment about wanting to devour Noah and then attempted to take a bite out of Elam. What was the rationale in making this guy a cannibal? Was it simply to make him scary and unlikeable or was there a biblical and historical basis for it?
