Let's do some math -- Each deck would have had 33,750 square feet of room. This means that there was a total of at least 1,500,000 cubic feet of room on the ark. So, to picture how much that is, let's consider a standard
railway boxcar, pictured here. The ark was so big that it could have held 500 of these railway freight cars! Each one of these cars can hold over 200 sheep-sized animals (and the average size was much smaller than that). In fact, experts have figured out that all of the animals that would have needed to be on board might have only needed two of the three decks. That would leave one deck for Noah, his family, and for the food required.
There's another important thing to remember about the animals. There are many people who think that the Bible teaches that Noah took two of every BREED, or variety, of animal with him. He didn't. The Bible says that he took two of every KIND of animal (and seven of certain kinds). What is the difference between a BREED and a KIND?
To help make this clear, consider dogs. If you saw one, you would say, "What KIND of animal is that?". The answer would be a "dog". That is what KIND of animal it is. But, the dog might be a German Shepherd. That is its BREED. All breeds of dogs come from a kind. So, Noah possibly had one or maybe several kinds of dogs on the ark, not all of the many, many varieties (or breeds) we have today. All of the many varieties (breeds) of
animals we have on the earth today come from the original created KINDS. So, this greatly reduces the number of creatures that needed to be aboard.
Lastly, Genesis 6 & 7 make it very clear that only creatures that have the "breath of life in their nostrils" that live on "dry ground" were taken on board. This would further greatly reduce the number of creatures that had to be on the ark.
We'll look at several more reasons next week...
