Why gopher wood

We have received so many questions about the Ark Encounter based on misconceptions about the project itself. Some come from people who are supporters and others come from critics and skeptics.

We have received several inquiries of this nature. Some are genuinely curious to find out if we will be able to use the same type of wood that Noah did, while others are more skeptical in nature and are simply trying to mock Scripture and our efforts.

Are we going to build the Ark Encounter out of gopher wood? So there is a small possibility that our Ark will be constructed from the same type of wood. Identifying certain plants and animals mentioned in the Old Testament is often difficult since the Bible often does not describe the plant or animal for us.

The difficulty is compounded when the word in question refers to an item from the pre-Flood world and when the word appears only one time in all of Scripture these types of words are called hapax legomenon.

Short of finding the actual Ark, it may not be possible for us to determine what type of wood Noah used to build it. Why did God choose gopher wood of all the many types of wood? Is there really such a thing as gopher wood? Today, no one actually knows what gopher wood is. But there are some theories as to what exactly is this type of wood. Many modern scholars consider gopher wood as cypress wood because of its extreme durability.

Gopher tree can be cypress or any of the following: cedar, pine, ebony, fir, wicker, juniper, acacia, bulrushes, and boxwood. There is a large number of plants and trees that may have become extinct since the time of Noah. There are some archaeologists who say that gopher may have referred to a lamination process which was done to improve the stability of the wood due to the extreme size and weight of the ark.

The ark was said to be about feet in length! The similarity between a g and a k in the Hebrew alphabet both letters resemble a backward c may have caused the confusion. Therefore some scholars have proposed that the first letter in the word gopher was accidentally misspelled by a scribe and that the word should actually be kopher. Zee News App: Read latest news of India and world, bollywood news, business updates, cricket scores, etc. Download the Zee news app now to keep up with daily breaking news and live news event coverage.

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