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Agroup of 150 children are using LEGOs to build a huge miniature ship. Modelled after Noah's Ark, it is 12 feet (3.7 meters) long, 2 feet (0.6 m) wide and 18 inches (0.45 m) high. They expect the model to be included in the recordholders.org website with other LEGO world records.
The children are making LEGO history at a Harvest Bible Chapel summer camp in Elgin, Il. A major reason for building the model is to demonstrate the size of the ark, as described in the Book of Genesis.
Many people have misconceptions about Noah's ark. According to a prevalent caricature, a couple of monkeys are waving their hands in sunshine while giraffes' heads tower high above the tiny boat.
But the Book of Genesis describes an entirely different kind of vessel:
Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. And this is how you shall make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits (Gen. 6:14-15).
A cubit is the length of one's forearm, often measured from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. While different cultures used slightly different cubits, there were attempts at standardization. The Egyptian royal cubit was one of the earliest cubits. It measured roughly 20. 6 inches or 523-525 millimeters. If Moses, who after all was well versed in Egyptian royal culture, used this cubit, the ark would have been 515 feet (157 meters) long.
However, there were some shorter cubits as well. The (ordinary) Egyptian cubit was approximately 18 inches or 457 millimeters long, which would make the ark 450 feet or 137 meters long.
The New International Version (NIV), for instance, uses this conservative cubit length. It says that the ark was 450 feet (137 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide and 45 feet (13.5 m) high. The first ocean-going vessel to exceed this length was actually built in the 1860s, so the ark was certainly no small tug boat.
The shape of Noah's ark made it exceptionally seaworthy. Korean scientists carried out seaworthiness tests on a model of the ark in the early 1990s and found that it could have survived intact in a category 5 hurricane with waves rising to over 90 feet (30 m).
In contrast, the ark of the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (a cube) would have capsized even in a minor storm. It is thus not difficult to see which of them is the original account.
The LEGO ark will be displayed at the Harvest Bible Chapel during worship services until July 11.
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